A wall with a muralist’s view in Balboa Village

A busy commuter driving down East Balboa Boulevard might think someone had smashed a giant hole in the rust-colored wall concealing a pump station on A Street. Through the “hole,” one sees sailboats floating across the glassy water of Newport Harbor.

The illusion is the handiwork of mural artist Art Mortimer. The goal was to “make the building disappear in plain sight,” said Ken Drellishak, a Newport Beach resident and president of the Community Foundation of Balboa Peninsula Point, which is funding the mural at a cost of $8,700.

On an unusually humid day this week, Mortimer set out to select the perfect paintbrush and mixture of colors to contrast the brown mast of a boat with its cotton-white sails on Balboa Village’s newest mural. He has been working on the project for two weeks but said he still has some details to finish.

See our photo gallery, at left >>>

Beachgoers on bikes rode past the roughly 8-foot-tall wall, slowing down to catch a glimpse of the painting. Raindrops began to fall, dampening the parched pavement along East Balboa Boulevard, but Mortimer didn’t budge from his seat in front of the wall. He squinted, placed his hands on his paint-spattered pants and leaned back on his seat — an overturned milk crate — to inspect his work.

“When you paint a mural like this one, everyone sees it,” Mortimer said. “It’s a way to make art a part of people’s lives. It draws them in and makes them think a little bit.”

The mural, depicting sailboats floating before a backdrop of rocks at Pirate’s Cove — a popular spot among locals in Newport Beach — is the second one Mortimer has painted in Balboa Village. He estimates he has painted more than 100 murals since he began his craft in 1971.

In 2013, the nonprofit Community Foundation of Balboa Peninsula Point hired Mortimer to replicate a historical photo of a street scene with the Balboa Pavilion as the backdrop. The painting, on a wall of a building on Main Street, has become a place where residents and visitors take photos and pay homage to the neighborhood’s long history, Drellishak said.

“We were encouraged by the response to the first mural,” he said. “We love that we’re a coastal community and want to preserve that.”

Getting the new mural approved by the Orange County Sanitation District, which owns the wall in front of the pump station, took more than a year of emails and persistence, Drellishak said.

“They wanted to conceal the wall, and we were proposing doing the exact opposite,” he said. “They weren’t exactly for us painting all over their wall at first, but now they completely support it.”

When Drellishak came up with the idea for a second mural, he wanted it to include sailboats. He selected Pirate’s Cove as the backdrop because of the memories the area has provided for people who grew up in Newport Beach.

“People remember visiting Pirate’s Cove and playing in the caves,” Drellishak said.

For years, city officials and some residents have been working to improve aging infrastructure in Balboa Village while maintaining the historical charm of the business district, much of which was built in the early 1900s.

Mayor Pro Tem Diane Dixon said the mural, which was completely funded by the foundation, is a creative way to accomplish that goal.

“Public art is a positive enhancement to our community,” she said. “This is a perfect example of a situation where a group of active citizens worked together to improve their neighborhood.”

Don’t expect Drellishak’s artistic vision to be quieted upon the mural’s completion. He has his eye on other unadorned buildings in the area.

“I have a lot of ideas, but I’m running out of space,” he said.