{"id":391080,"date":"2026-07-29T21:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/391080\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T21:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:02:09","slug":"new-mural-depicting-neighborhood-community-and-culture-nears-completion-in-west-oak-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/391080\/","title":{"rendered":"New mural depicting neighborhood community and culture nears completion in west Oak Cliff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Progress of the Sue\u00f1os Oak Cliff Community Mural Painting project on Monday, June 27. Photo by Victoria Hernandez.<\/p>\n

Despite the temperatures hitting above 90 degrees throughout July, community members have been coming out to spend hours outside of J&E Express on West Clarendon Drive.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just to soak up the sun, but to participate in the Sue\u00f1os Oak Cliff Community Mural Painting project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mural on J&E Express is the first of many pieces planned for 11 local auto shops in west Oak Cliff. Jerry Figueroa, owner of J&E Express, said that the inspiration for the murals came from the conversations surrounding the West Oak Cliff Area Plan.<\/a><\/p>\n

Known as WOCAP, the goal of the area plan is to provide \u201ca long-range vision for land use, urban design, transportation, mobility, infrastructure, open space, and community concerns around gentrification, displacement, and revitalization.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThat started right during COVID,\u201d he said of the WOCAP process. \u201cSo for two years, unbeknownst to me, there was a lot of potential zoning changes that were going to take place in this community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Figueroa said that the original plan was \u201cvery imperfect\u201d and that many neighbors pushed back on it. He became involved after Yolanda Lameda came to his shop to let him know about WOCAP.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was literally out here doing the city job, informing the community of what\u2019s going on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lameda helped inspire him to start attending the community meetings to speak his mind regarding the area plan. Figueroa said those gatherings became very confrontational at times.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people that were there, they did not want to be there,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people were really, really pushing back on this area plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a previous version of WOCAP, automotive-related businesses were prohibited. Auto mechanics on Clarendon organized in response,<\/a> with mechanic-shop owners speaking out to remove that restriction.<\/p>\n

During that process, Figueroa said a common response was that automotive shops were \u201cunsightly.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we were like, \u2018Well, you know what? Unsightliness can be fixed, right?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a problem that can\u2019t be fixed. So during those talks with the automotive shops, we came up with an idea: how do we beautify our shops? How do we do that? How do we mobilize ourselves to do something about it, and show everybody in our community we want to stay, and also get our community involved. So we talked about the murals \u2026 and that was something we talked about in 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

The area plan was adopted by the Dallas City Council in October 2022, with the final scheduled authorized hearing of WOCAP for the Hampton\/Clarendon rezoning passing Aug. 13, 2025.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

Almost a full year later, the first auto shop mural is nearing completion with support by community donations, fundraising by Somos Tejas and a grant from Texas Woman\u2019s University.<\/p>\n

Issy Martinez, an Oak Cliff native and a recent BFA graduate of TWU, was brought on to the mural design process by her former art professor Giovanni Valderas. Valderas was also active in the WOCAP process, attending nearly every meeting according to Figueroa. <\/p>\n

Martinez first heard about the project from Valderas in 2024, and the two of them worked with Figueroa on the design process starting in January.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted the Virgin Mary, and I also wanted a lot of people working and doing all these jobs that we do around here,\u201d Figueroa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Martinez added that the first version of the design was too simple and lacked a point, going through over a dozen versions to today\u2019s final version.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that\u2019s when I knew I needed to start actually going back to my childhood, going to my parents\u2019 childhood, because my family were all from here, and I wanted to take bits and pieces of what\u2019s actually around here in the shop,\u201d Martinez said. \u201cSo I noticed the barber, ladies selling flowers, the paleta man, nails getting done. I did notice some kids; they were running to go get the paleta, so I took mark of everything I saw here, and I wanted to take a snapshot and include it into this mural. And then I also wanted to include just how we are Hispanics and Mexicans, just how we are a community of hard workers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those hard workers were shown through a person picking strawberries, a police officer, a graduate and a doctor, to name a few depicted in the piece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people come to this country with nothing, and they work all these jobs from the fields, selling flowers to working in restaurants, whatever they got to do to make it ahead and doing all these sacrifices for their children to be in better places and spaces that they\u2019ve never even dreamed of,\u201d Figueroa said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Local business owners and community leaders are also highlighted in the piece, including local activist Sylvia Collins who was killed in the May gas explosion at The Clyde apartments.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the mural, it\u2019s like from the fields to your plate,\u201d Figueroa said. \u201cWe do just about anything, and to some people it means different things, right? To some people it means resistance. Art is a form of resistance. Art is a form of resilience, or art as a form to prepare your community to come out and do something about it, right? Or community outreach or community empowerment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The block party celebration of the piece is planned for Sunday, Aug. 2 from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. at J&E Express and to help raise money for the future murals. The finished mural will be on full display, plus a vendor market, back-to-school resources, lowriders, food, and music.<\/p>\n

J&E Express is located at 2220 W. Clarendon Drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Progress of the Sue\u00f1os Oak Cliff Community Mural Painting project on Monday, June 27. Photo by Victoria Hernandez.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[110429,137796,102,104,103,137797,137798,137799,40197,137800,137801],"class_list":["post-391080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-community-art","tag-community-mural","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-giovanni-valderas","tag-issy-martinez","tag-jerrry-figueroa","tag-west-oak-cliff","tag-west-oak-cliff-area-plan","tag-wocap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}