Paint the Void

A nonprofit public art initiative built to support artists, small businesses and the city itself.

Paint the Void brings public art into everyday spaces, creating paid opportunities for artists while helping neighborhoods, businesses and shared spaces feel more vibrant.

Created by Building 180 and Art for Civil Discourse, Paint the Void began in 2020 as a response to a city suddenly covered in plywood. The initiative turned those blank surfaces into paid opportunities for artists and visible signs of care for neighborhoods, small businesses and public life.

Through murals, utility boxes, asphalt paintings and citywide public art programs, Paint the Void makes everyday surfaces into sites of connection, creativity and camaraderie.

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When the city needed care, art paved the way forward.

After public life disappeared, Paint the Void brought artists, businesses and neighborhoods back into view.

In 2020, storefronts across San Francisco were boarded up. Events were canceled. Artist opportunities disappeared. Small businesses were struggling. Streets that once held the rhythm of daily life suddenly felt empty, quiet and uncertain.

Building 180 saw those blank walls not as signs of abandonment, but as places where artists, businesses and communities could begin to reconnect.

Paint the Void turned plywood into possibility. What started as a response to crisis became a way to bring color, work and energy back into the streets.

230+

Wall murals

355

Utility box murals

20

City street murals

400+

Paid artists

A temporary response turned into a lasting model for public art.

Paint the Void created a structure that allows public art to happen at scale, connecting artists with public-facing spaces, raising funds, coordinating with businesses and property owners, organizing volunteers and making sure artists are paid for their work.

That structure allowed the initiative to move quickly, then keep growing. What started on plywood expanded into utility boxes, asphalt paintings, community walls, civic partnerships and public art programs across San Francisco.

Paint the Void proved that public art can respond to an urgent moment while building something that lasts.

500,000

Square feet of public
space reimagined

175+

Small businesses supported

2,000

Volunteers engaged

3,000+

Artist applications received

Artists found work. Communities found a way in.

Paint the Void built participation into the process: artists were paid to lead the work and communities were invited to help shape it.

Volunteers painted alongside muralists. Businesses offered their walls. Residents saw their neighborhoods reflected in the places they passed every day.

That approach showed how cities can support artists, engage residents and turn public space into something people feel connected to and responsible for.

In January 2022, Paint the Void organized The City Canvas: A Paint the Void Retrospective, the world’s largest exhibition to date of pandemic-inspired murals.

Held over seven days at Pier 70 in San Francisco, the exhibition brought together 49 murals, two live paintings, and one community mural, drawing more than 8,000 visitors. The show captured a defining moment in the global mural movement, when artists transformed boarded-up storefronts into spaces for expression, connection and collective healing.

The story was memorialized in a book.

Paint the Void’s impact was documented in Painting the Void: How Art Transformed the San Francisco Bay Area During A Global Pandemic, a published collection capturing the artists, murals and movement that revived the Bay Area during COVID.

Order a copy by emailing shannon@building180.com

Paint the Void kept growing.

What began as a rapid-response mural initiative grew into a wider ecosystem of public art projects, community programs, publications and civic partnerships.