CAPA Student Mural by Jesse Vaughan and Pete Lambert

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In the 90’s, a wise lady and homeowner in Oakland hired some artists from the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School (CAPA) to paint a mural on a garage wall. She realized then what we’ve realized since we began mapping all the murals – that the street artists tend to respect other artists. Her primary goal was to stop the constant tagging that kept showing up on that wall, and her efforts were mostly successful. For 20 years no one defaced the artwork and even now the damage is relatively minor.
She requested an angel to be included in the design, but left the rest of it up to the artists.
Jasmine K. contacted us with the story and this old photo of a portion of the mural before the vines and weeds overtook it.

Jasmine told us that about 10 years after the mural went up, someone from the city noticed it and realized that there was no permit for it. They wanted the artwork removed, but a strong community effort along with the help of our current mayor (then councilman) Bill Peduto saved it. This artwork was especially important to the neighborhood because one of the artists died in 2004, at the very young age of 23. No one wanted to lose this piece of Jesse Vaughan.
We weren’t able to find out the last name of the other artist that worked on this. If anyone knows Pete, please send us an email.
In 2015 the woman that commissioned this mural contacted us:

Hi! I am the "wise lady" who commissioned the mural and Jasmine's mom. I wanted a mural on that wall because I could see it from my kitchen window, and the view from my kitchen was so abominable - a garbage dumpster overflowing with garbage. We were trying to figure out how to go about getting the owner's permission to put a mural on their garage wall, and then learned that they wanted to sell the property, so we bought it. The year was 1996. Thank you for featuring our mural and this story. Best regards, Nan