FranCisco Vargas spent the better part of six months in 2014 completing the Fresno Mural Stamp. File photo

Fresno’s most Instagram-ready mural — a 4,250 square-foot history lesson and focal point for downtown life — is turning 10.

On the morning of June 7, 2014, muralist FranCisco Vargas unveiled the Fresno Stamp Mural at 1315 Van Ness Ave., the home of The Business Journal. Measuring 35 feet by 125 feet, the mural has become a popular backdrop for selfies, graduation pictures, car glamour shots and music videos.

It may be one of most accessible and utilized pieces of public art in town, with the word “Fresno” spelled in letters 10-feet-tall leaving no doubt about the subject matter.

“More than other murals, you want to have yourself in front of it,” said Elliott Balch, president and CEO of the Downtown Fresno Partnership, which originally commissioned the work. “It’s a caption for the picture.”

Kyle Lowe, operations manager for CMAC (Community Media Access Collaborative) in Downtown Fresno, has a personal connection to Vargas, the artist. In the late ‘90s, his family commissioned late Fresno artist Danny Perez to paint a faux brick wall in their house. Perez brought along Vargas. They spent about two months on the project. Kyle, then 7 or 8, got in on the fun.

“They put a paintbrush in my hand, and I helped out when I could,” Lowe said. “That’s a very special memory for me and my family.”

As a professional director who helps others learn the craft of filmmaking and content creation, Lowe noted its popularity as a shooting location. The mural faces northwest, meaning it’s not as susceptible to sun damage and is usually shaded for people wishing to film.

“It’s a great location to set the scene for Downtown Fresno,” Lowe said. “As soon as you see it, you know where you are.”

The mural consists of more than 50 individual scenes of Fresno notables past and present. One of the most famous living people in the mural is Broadway star Audra McDonald, who adorns the “S.” Broadway playwright and beloved author William Saroyan is on the “F.”

Like the song “Come and Get Your Love” by the band Redbone, featured in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie in 2014? Founding brothers Pat and Lolly Vegas grew up in Fresno. They’re depicted in Native American garb in the mural, holding a red bone and staring down at passersby from the letter “N.”

There are business, historical and even advertising figures including farm labor leader Cesar Chavez, early Fresno physician Dr. Chester Rowell, agriculturalist M. Theo Kearney, businessman Frank Caglia and Lorraine-Collett Petersen, the original Sun-Maid raisin girl.

In addition to showing images from Fresno’s history, the mural is very much an aspirational piece of art. It features scenes of the African Adventure exhibit at the Fresno Chaffee Zoo, which actually opened a year after the mural’s debut.

It also has scenes that have yet come to pass, including architect Arthur Dyson’s design of the long proposed Fresno aquarium and a high-speed rail train cutting through farmland.

It took about six months for Vargas to complete the mural, with help from local artists Mauro Carrera, Ma Ly, Patti Calvert, Rudy Contreras, Richard Bustamante, Nigel Robertson and Stephanie Allison each contributing individual scenes.

The scenes in each letter meant something to Vargas, who died of cancer a year after completing the Fresno Stamp Mural. One of them, a brunette woman in a yellow dress holding a basket of produce in the letter “O”, was his own creation.

“The lady carrying the basket, I fabricated her out of pictures that I’ve seen because I wanted someone to represent a nice, beautiful, wholesome young lady that’s holding all the fruits and vegetables because Fresno is the fruit basket of the world,” Vargas told the Business Journal ahead of the 2014 unveiling.

Vargas died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma on Sept. 7, 2015. In January of that year, he joined The Business Journal as a guest at our annual Book of Lists party. The cover for that year’s publication was adapted from the mural.

It was early on that the mural also became a symbol for downtown and a gateway for Fulton Street — the epicenter of downtown revitalization efforts. Then-Downtown Fresno Partnership Interim CEO Craig Scharton remarked in 2014 about its ability to catch eyes.

“When people drive into downtown from the northern part of downtown or the Tower District, it’s one of those things that’s a pleasant surprise. It reconnects and makes you feel good about where you are,” Scharton said.

Visibility from the street is one of the mural’s most gripping characteristics, though multi-story housing and mixed-use projects that have been proposed would obscure the view. One project from 2020 by Tutelian & Co. would’ve included a viewing platform for the mural inside a parking garage, but it didn’t get off the ground.

With the sale of the nearby vacant CVS building to Fresno Housing, current plans for the block include a multi-story affordable housing complex. Balch with the Downtown Fresno Partnership acknowledges that would lessen the impact of the mural, but a mural that celebrates Downtown Fresno is also subject to the winds of change.

“The answer can’t be to leave a parking lot there forever,” Balch said.