If you wandered around downtown Stockton recently, you may have noticed a flurry of paintbrushes, spray paint and construction lifts dotting the facades of buildings.

Murals & Main launched a public art series in downtown Stockton and held its inaugural event Oct. 19-24. The collective brought local and nationally known artists for the initiative.

Joe Michael, a Downtown Stockton Alliance board member who organized the event, said the alliance allocates money to fund one mural each year in Stockton. But he wanted to think bigger.

Artwork “brings life, color and soul” to the community, he said.

From left, Kamerin Creighton, Adelisa Creighton, Kia Duras-Carter and Sunshyne Acosta work on a mural off north Sutter Street on Oct. 20.

Centered around Main Street, on east Weber Avenue and north Sutter Street, including the Elks Building, eight murals were simultaneously created over the span of a week. The paintings showcase the area’s diverse population, its agricultural history and regional wildlife. 

Three Stockton muralists — Konekham “Koniack” Lathipanya, Kia Duras-Carter and Alexander Suelto — and four national artists each designed and led the creation of seven different pieces of art in the downtown corridor. Noa Hardisty and Kamea Hadar, both of Honolulu, Aaron De La Cruz of San Francisco and Drew Merritt of New Mexico completed Murals & Main’s 2026 lineup.

Noa Hardisty, left, sits on a lift while working on a mural that will fill a wall on a building on east Main Street, right, in downtown Stockton.

Additionally, the entire community was invited to take part in the creation of an eighth mural, the Community Wall, on Oct. 23.

Local artists Tiffany Pech and Garrett Daniells led the effort to create a Community Wall, with support from the Stockton Art League. The painted-brick artwork depicts a covered wagon, cattails and vernal pools in a scenic natural setting. An elk stands surveying the scene, a nod to the Elks Building, where the mural is painted.

Ahead of the community effort, Pech laid down a pixelated base.

“I’m looking forward to having youth come and put their mark on the wall,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of pixels to paint.”

Five people work on a colorful pixel-art sheep mural painted across a brick wall, with painting supplies and a traffic cone along the street.
A person paints a multicolored brick wall while paint buckets and brushes sit in the foreground.
Overhead view of open paint containers, brushes, and paint cans on a tabletop covered in bright and dark green paint.
Child painting a colorful brick wall with an orange brush while an adult observes.

The mural incorporates an 8-bit aesthetic — a stylistic choice to evoke retro gaming culture popular among younger generations — while also including elements from the Oregon Trail, meant to appeal to a wider age group, Pech said.

On a building directly behind the Community Wall, Duras-Carter, a Stockton-born muralist, worked with her family to create a tribute to the San Joaquin County Historical Museum, which is moving its archives to downtown Stockton.

Her vision guides viewers through Stockton’s timetable and features agricultural scenes, an aerial view of the city and the iconic Empire Theatre, which was torn down in 2023 after a massive fire damaged the building.

Duras-Carter also found inspiration in family photographs and wove her grandparents — Martha Vayaca and Bueno Ventura Vayaca — along with her mother and aunts into the mural.

“I’ve been wanting Stockton to do something like this for a long time,” she said. “We’ve got all different cultures, and the influence of immigrants is shown as well, and the history of Stockton.”

Victor Gascon holds up the blueprints for Kia Duras-Carter’s mural off north Sutter Street in downtown Stockton.