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You don’t need to go to Europe to see some well-preserved trompe l’oeil (trick-of-the-eye) murals; you can just take a stroll in downtown Palo Alto. Fifty years ago, in 1975, artist Greg Brown created his first trompe l’oeil mural of the Palo Alto Pedestrian Series.
Nine murals still exist, and the Palo Alto Public Art Program has created a scavenger hunt to help downtown visitors find them. Brown, who died in 2014, was inspired by people and events in his own life, and he brought a sense of humor to paintings that included aliens, burglars, birds and everyday people in his murals.
A quote from Brown on the city’s scavenger hunt page says that he called the Pedestrian Series “because it’s … geared toward people being on foot, walking around, and discovering these things.”
Brown was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and moved to Palo Alto at the age of 2. He went to Palo Alto High School and graduated in 1969. Brown was interested in drawing and art throughout his childhood and took a few classes at the Palo Alto Art League. However, at the age of 13, he ended up apprenticing with an Italian artist, Roberto Lupetti, who lived in his neighborhood in Barron Park.
Lupetti was born in Milan and studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. He assisted in the restoration of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican and immigrated to the United States after World War II. He lived on the West Coast the rest of his life and taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. Lupetti died in 1997.
Brown learned the trompe l’oeil technique from Lupetti, in which the artist makes two-dimensional paintings look three-dimensional and realistic. This new skill helped him, at the age of 24, to become Palo Alto’s first artist-in-residence. He was funded by a Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) grant, a federal jobs program supporting public service jobs under President Richard Nixon, receiving $4.75 an hour.
The ideas for the mural motifs came from Brown himself and he reached out to business owners to gain permission to paint murals on their buildings. According to Nadya Chuprina, public art program coordinator for Palo Alto: “He exercised artistic license to come up with the subject matter and he was really inspired by the community.”
Brown may have been influenced by the talk of UFO and alien sightings among the public and in the press in the 1970s, because four of his Pedestrian Series murals include aliens. The most prominent one is an alien in a UFO that has crashed into the side of the Comerica Bank building off of Lytton Avenue. It is called “Poor Parking Skills” and shows a dazed, green alien in a broken, blue UFO stuck in the wall.
“Garbage Man with Venusian in Can,” located on the corner of Hamilton Avenue and High Street, depicts another alien visitor. A garbage man, whose likeness was inspired by Brown’s brother-in-law, is carrying a garbage can on his back with a green alien sticking its head out of the top of the can, with the man seemingly unaware of his cargo.
This mural was recently restored by the city of Palo Alto’s Preservation Arts Murals team, which consists of Bay Area-based fine arts conservators. However, Elise DeMarzo, Palo Alto’s public art director, explained that they are careful with restorations because every time a mural is repainted, “the risk is you lose a little bit more of Greg Brown’s original hand.”
Despite its title, an alien also appears in “Man Pushing Cat in Stroller,” located on Bryant Street off of University Avenue. The mural depicts a man pushing a brown alien with tentacle eyes and long eye lashes in a stroller. Initially, the piece depicted a cat in the stroller, as the title says, but Brown was asked by the building’s owner to change it to an alien when Brown was restoring the mural.
The man looks remarkably similar to President Nixon’s Vice President, Spiro Agnew, who resigned in 1973 due to a charge of tax evasion. Ironically, Brown was paid by a CETA grant under President Nixon.
The mural was restored a couple of times, in 2010 by Brown himself and then again in 2024.
DeMarzo met Brown in 2010 with her children when he was restoring the mural and she described him as, “wickedly funny,” and with a “very big personality.” She recalled that, “he was just very warmhearted, quick to laugh, (and with a) great sense of humor.”
Another group of murals features bank robbers and law enforcement. One mural, named “Roofhoppers (or Burglars II)” on the back of Chase Bank on Hamilton Avenue shows two bank robbers. One is hanging onto a rope at the top of the wall, and the other robber appears to be falling to the ground with a briefcase in his hand.
Brown apparently was inspired by a dream he had for this mural and modeled the bank robbers on his son and daughter. An earlier version of the mural was located on University Avenue and was modeled after Brown himself and his wife.
Also touching on the law enforcement theme is “The Inspector” (also known as “Agent Man with Bird on Hat”) on the side of the Vivo Capitol building on Lytton Avenue. A man is standing on a ledge of the building, wearing a brown trench coat, a hat, sunglasses, gloves and carrying a briefcase. “It stirred some controversy, allegedly, because … the mural was so realistic that it startled one of the council members when he encountered it,” Chuprina said.
A bird sits on top of the man’s hat, but he seems to be completely unaware of its presence.
The bird’s apparent partner in crime can be spotted on the other side of the building facing Emerson Street. In “Pelican with Money in Mouth” (or as Brown nicknamed it, “Bill with Bills in his Bill”), we see a pelican escaping from a window with several dollar bills in its mouth. So the burglar is escaping from the inspector on the other side of the building.
Yet another mischievous bird is perched on Waverley Street off of University Avenue, with “Lady Watering.” A woman in an orange dress and a straw hat is watering plants with a surprised look on her face as she discovers that a bird has landed on the tip of the hose. Apparently, Brown modeled the painting on his grandmother, who had that exact experience with a bird.
Only one mural features a child, and it is located on the side of the post office on Hamilton Avenue. It is called “Boy with Fishing Pole” and the boy was modeled after the postmaster’s son. It shows a boy throwing his fishing line and hook, which gets caught in the window of the post office. However, a closer look reveals that this is a trompe l’oeil window, not a real one. According to DeMarzo, the original mural only featured the trompe l’oeil window: “Nobody really noticed that the window was painted or fake, so he went back and added the boy.”
In a 2007 Palo Alto Weekly article, when Brown was voted Artist of the Year for the 11th state Senate district, he said of the Palo Alto Pedestrian project: “I wasn’t a muralist. I was a guy doing murals.” However, the Palo Alto series “spawned a love affair with murals,” he said. In the same article, Brown is also quoted as saying, “I don’t care if people see (my work) as art. I’m happy if they see it as entertainment.” Many people will likely enjoy his murals as both art and entertainment, even 50 years later.
The scavenger hunt for the murals was developed by a Public Art Program staff member during the COVID-19 pandemic. DeMarzo said, “it was just a great way to get people out looking at public art when we were all walking around and trying to stay socially distant.”Â
The scavenger hunt is still available and can be found at tinyurl.com/GregBrownScavengerHunt.
