Mural Walk

Adrian Lopez

2025 Muralist and Installation Artist

Adrian Lopez is a muralist from El Paso, Texas, whose work celebrates memory, resilience, and community. Drawing on his own experiences from family traditions to labor and education. His murals honor the hardworking spirit of the border city. With bold color and layered symbolism, Lopez transforms public spaces into reflections of El Paso’s people and landscape. His projects, including Pico y Pala and Memories in Bloom, invite viewers to see themselves in the stories of labor, love, and creativity that shape the desert.

Santa Fe St Mural
Pico y Pala

For this year’s Chalk the Block, El Paso artist Adrian Lopez presents Pico y Pala — a self-portrait that honors the labor, learning, and landscape of our border city.

In one hand, a pick: symbol of academic grit and a nod to Adrian’s journey as a UTEP graduate. In the other, a shovel: tool of the land and a reminder of the honest work done under our desert sun. Together, they represent the balance many in El Paso know — of working hard, building dreams, and never forgetting where you come from. Adrian’s cactus shirt roots the portrait in the Chihuahuan Desert, a living emblem of resilience and pride.

Pico y Pala is a tribute to El Paso’s working class, its students, its laborers, and the strength that grows in between.

Installation Mural
Memories in Bloom

As part of the Art on the Move x ESD installation, Adrian Lopez will paint Memories in Bloom live during Chalk the Block! Learn more on our installations page.

This ESD truck is being painted live throughout the festival, a moving mural about love, memory, and the people who make space for us to grow. On one side a bold red rose blooms. A memory of the artist’s Tía Chata, who welcomed him each morning through her front yard rose garden. It’s also a nod to the El Paso Municipal Rose Garden, where his wife once photographed her grandparents for their anniversary, a quiet moment of enduring love.

The opposite side shows a woman and child walking hand in hand, inspired by the artist’s trips downtown as a boy. His Tía took him on the bus to buy fabric for her quilts, always grabbing something for him to craft with too. She encouraged his creativity before he even had words for it. Monarch butterflies drift across both sides as symbols of memory, migration, and transformation.

As you walk by, you’re invited to share your own story.
Who helped you grow?
What blooms in your memory?

Paint the Block
Community Mural

The El Paso Museum of Art invites visitors to participate in the creation of a new mural by artist Christin Apodaca during Chalk the Block on the exterior walls of the El Paso Museum of Art!

Participants will have the opportunity to work alongside Christin, gain hands-on experience in the creative process, and contribute to one of the region’s most exciting annual art events. This is a unique chance to be part of a large-scale artwork that will inspire and engage thousands of visitors.

More information, including registration, is available from the El Paso Museum of Art.