Through partnerships with organizations like The Salvation Army and the Mako Foundation, Pezer97 has designed and painted community murals across Southern California that bring color, inspiration, and identity to educational spaces and nonprofit facilities. We believe art has the power to transform environments and uplift communities.
School and nonprofit projects run differently from commercial work. There are more people to satisfy — funders, administrators, staff and students — and the finished wall has to hold up to daily contact with a young audience for years.
Art a School Can Stand Behind
The design brief for a campus is narrower than it first appears. Color has to be energetic without being agitating, imagery has to stay appropriate and legible across a wide age range, and every element needs to be something staff are comfortable defending to a parent. Within those limits there is still enormous room for real work — this is not decoration by committee.
Surfaces on school sites tend to be the hardest going: block walls, stucco, exterior panels in full sun. Exterior work gets UV-resistant paint and a professional protective coating, so a mural funded once still looks funded a decade later.
Funding, Partners and Approvals
Many of these projects are commissioned by foundations and nonprofits rather than by the school itself — The Salvation Army and the Mako Foundation among them. That means fixed budgets, real reporting requirements, and a scope that needs to be right before anyone starts painting.
Concepts and digital mockups are approved by every stakeholder before a single can is opened, so the funder, the school and the students all know exactly what is going on the wall. We work throughout Los Angeles and Southern California, and travel nationwide for the right project.
At a glance: Schools, nonprofits and public spaces · Interior and exterior · Foundation and grant-funded projects welcome · Los Angeles, Southern California and nationwide
