College of Alameda

Alameda, California

Working with SLATE Art Consulting and the Peralta Community College District, Bay Area artist Martin Webb designed this mural specifically for the College of Alameda, which sits on an island in the San Francisco Bay, and its New Center for Liberal Arts Building.

Using a simplified abstract language, he references the campus and local community with a collection of buildings on the island (top right). He introduced greenery and foliage into the composition to bring freshness and nature references to the interior space. The artist’s chosen colors complement the building’s interior scheme, but they also align with his own typical painting palette. He describes it as “a color palette that is quite rich and quite intense without being overly bright or primary.”

In developing his composition, the artist also considered the College’s mission of filling a diverse community of students with wisdom and learning, then sending them out into the world with their knowledge. The origami boats in the painting represent the students launching into the world, filled with knowledge from their teachers. The knowledge carried by the students is represented with fragments of text on each of the paper boats. Each of these are teachings from artists and thinkers from different backgrounds and times in history, many also reflecting the teaching disciplines located in the New Liberal Arts Building. The artwork’s title, Thoughts for Navigators, further refers to the universal human challenge of navigating life’s journeys.