New mural honors independent journalism in South Valley

Valley Voice owner-publisher Catherine Doe wanted to do more than whitewash a common problem shared by many Visalians. A shared wall at a property she manages at the corner of Caldwell Avenue and West Street was the target of a vandal.

“Back in January someone had graffitied on both our walls, the Shell station wall and our wall,” she said. “Then I thought, I can make something good out of this.”

Doe saw an opportunity, not a problem. So she took it.

A Reminder of Why We’re Free

Just covering up the graffiti didn’t seem like the right response this time. It’s a high-traffic area. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of cars idle for long minutes at a time at the busy intersection. They do it all day long. It goes on all night too.

Occasionally, some of those drivers and their passengers stop staring at their phones and look around. With an ever-changing, semi-captive audience 24 hours a day Doe decided to do more than paint over the graffiti.

She opted to commission a work of public art, a mural.

“It’s sort of an extension of the ‘broken window’ concept,” she said. The idea is to keep decay from gaining a foothold and spreading through a neighborhood. “If there’s something nice there, then people want to keep it nice.”

But she also wanted to present a reminder to our community about an important American institution: independent journalism. It’s a cornerstone of American democracy. A healthy free press is considered widely to be an unofficial fourth branch of the government at every level, standing alongside the executive, judicial and legislative branches.

And so the mural features a simple message in large words: SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM.

“I hope I’ve set an example. I hope others commission a muralist for their empty walls,” Doe said.

‘An Update of the Concept of What a Newspaper Is’

Now, Doe needed someone to design and paint her concept.

“It was the chance to give a young artist a jump start in their career,” she said. “So I called COS (the College of the Sequoias in Visalia) to see if they had someone who wanted to get paid to paint a mural.”

She found local artist and art student Joanna Sanchez. She and Doe worked together on the design, coming up with a simple message to honor three local newspapers, their local reporting, and the many people who work to make it happen. Sanchez described their final design:

“We have a computer screen, a hand with a newspaper and a cell phone, all representing three of the local newspapers in the Valley: the Valley Voice, the Visalia Times-Delta and the Fresno Bee (are) represented in this mural,” she said.

The design, Sanchez said, is intentionally uncluttered at Doe’s request.

“She wanted something more legible, simple so that the people could see it when they’re passing by on the street and just read it and be reminded of what the meaning is,” Sanchez said.

It’s also a reminder of progress, said Doe.

“Things have changed. We needed to do a cell phone, a laptop, and a tablet,” she said. “It’s really how people read the newspaper now. It’s an update of the concept of what a newspaper is.”

From Tattooing to Teaching Art

While Sanchez is an art student at COS, she’s already a seasoned artist with years of experience. She’s worked on a lot of walls. And on a lot of skin, too.

“Normally, I’m a tattoo artist,” she said.

Sanchez’s day job is applying ink at the Body Art Gallery in Tulare. She’s a self-taught artist, but felt she needed to hone some of the basic skills of her craft.

“Within this last year, I decided to go back to COS just to get fundamentals and art classes,” she said. “I feel that helped me elevate as an artist, taking everything that I know and then just putting it into like a next level.”

Working for years with a local art consortium has also given her a lot of chances to practice. It was a stepping stone to getting paid to paint.

“I’m also part of Urbanists Collective, which is a nonprofit in Visalia, so we get to paint a lot of school murals. We get to do a lot of murals within the city,” Sanchez said. “So that’s where I’ve gained experience to be able to do something like this.”

The collective’s work continues, now branching into Washington and Arizona. For more information, visit them online at urbanistscollective.com.

Urbanists Collective has also given Sanchez the chance to share her skillset with young, aspiring artists. Passing along the artform is something that’s captured her attention.

“I’ve been with the collective since I was 18, which is about 14 years now,” she said. “We’ve done a lot of work throughout the community, and we’ve been able to just paint, and teach kids how to paint along the way, which is really interesting.”

The journalism mural is her first payoff for the time it took to learn the artform well enough to do it at a professional level. Sanchez is rightfully proud of herself.

“I feel like I’ve worked hard, honestly, to be able to paint things like this, but I’ve also done my fair share of community work where nothing was paid,” she said. “So it was a blessing to be able to acquire this mural and be supported through it financially.”

Another Pro-Democracy Mural Is in the Works

Between the time Sanchez met for the first time with Doe at the wall and when the work began, Sanchez faced a life-threatening medical crisis. A lifelong problem with ulcerative colitis turned acute. Then it became an outright emergency.

“I basically had my large intestine removed,” Sanchez said.

That put an enormous kink in the work schedule, but it didn’t stop the dedicated artist. By May she was ready to start painting.

“It was interesting, because this was the first mural that I did (post-surgery),” Sanchez said. “I had my surgery in February, and so I was three months post-recovery. It was challenging in that I was still trying to build my strength back up. It’s a lot of up and down movement with your body.”

Pushing herself paid off once the work was done and the pain behind her.

“It definitely gave me the confidence to keep painting murals,” Sanchez said.

And that’s good, because Doe is ready to put another mural on the same wall. Sanchez will do this one as well.

The new mural will honor and serve as a reminder to the public of the freedoms granted by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, as it is enumerated in the Bill of Rights. It will sit next to the recently finished journalism mural. Doe and Sanchez have yet to finalize a design.

“My daughter and I walked by a historical marker in Philadelphia last September that had the First Amendment carved into rock. I was struck by the words and how far the country has strayed from them on occasion.”

“We forget easily,” she said, “that freedoms we enjoy everyday are rare in some parts of the word, and nonexistent in others. England doesn’t even have a constitution and some countries who want a constitution copy America’s and make it their own,” she said. “We take our constitution for granted. Americans need to get back to their roots.”

The mural also celebrates the country’s upcoming semiquincentennial celebration. July 4, 2026 will mark 250 years since the signing of the US Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia in 1776. Nationwide celebrations are being planned.

Doe plans on celebrating America’s birthday by christening a new mural.

The text of the First Amendment is:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

More of Sanchez’s work is available through her Instagram, Facebook and other social media accounts by searching Misty.Pinks.