THE PEAK OF BLISS
On the morning of July 5, 2020, my friend Leo and I met for coffee. We were out of school for the summer and wanted to do something big. As artists, we looked to stamp our marks on Palo Alto in the best way we knew how, and decided on a road that would drive us halfway to madness but leave us feeling so incredibly proud.
A mural.
We set out to paint a mural that would bring a brightness back into our community that was lost during the early stages of the pandemic. Over the next couple of weeks, we drafted a handful of designs and biked around Downtown Palo Alto scouting blank walls. I must’ve sent out nearly a dozen emails, but only got one back. And they said yes.
Fortunate to have received permission and support from Eric Hassett of Hassett Ace Hardware, we then looked to the city for approval. Turns out there’s lots of hoops you need to jump through to paint a public picture legally, and Leo and I were running out of summer. The 2021 school year began and we shifted focus, pushing the painting to the side. Leo is probably the most ambitious creative I've ever met, someone who truly doesn’t believe anything is impossible. Me though, I was starting to believe this wasn’t gonna happen. Soon it was time for college applications and there went my energy. Then track season. I sent so many painful emails that year telling Eric we weren't ready yet.
I don’t know how, but we managed to get all of our paperwork in and on August 24, 2021, we got our green light from the city.
We scrambled to prep for painting. Leo had a small projector that we used to trace out our cardboard stencils, and in my backyard we taught ourselves how to use spray paint (his mom had to buy the cans since neither of us were 18 and could buy them ourselves. Shoutout Taryn). We gave ourselves 3 days to practice, then approached the wall. Working tirelessly over the next week, we finished our mural, 'The Peak of Bliss,' on September 5, 2021. Exactly 1 year and 2 months after we began. To this day it's hard to think of anything I've been more proud of.
'The Peak of Bliss' depicts a young boy leaping into a ball pit. At the crest of his jump, he is experiencing joy in its purest, most concentrated form—unadulterated bliss. As we worked, Leo and I were approached by a passer-by who viewed the picture with a puzzled look on his face as if he was trying to decipher a riddle. He turned to me and asked what it meant, to which I replied, "well, what do you think?" He said he wasn’t sure, just saw a happy kid jumping into a pile of balloons.
I laughed. That's all there is to it.
Our mural can be found in the alleyway that cuts behind Hassett Ace Hardware on 875 Alma St. in Palo Alto, CA. A massive thank you to Eric Hassett and the crew at Hassett Hardware, to Nadya Chuprina and Elise DeMarzo of the City of Palo Alto, and to Leo, my brother.
