‘Valley of Hope’: New Mural Brings California’s Landscapes—and a Community’s Touch—to Stanford Medicine Children’s Health

A red-tailed hawk watches over its nest. Father or mother and baby animals emerge throughout a heat California panorama. Valley wildlife, rocky shoreline, and glowing sundown colours stretch round a second-floor hall, remodeling what was as soon as a clean medical area right into a 90-foot murals.

On Sept. 1, 2026, Stanford Medicine Children’s Health unveiled “Valley of Hope,” a brand new mural at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford created by Stanford Medical Humanities and Arts Program Artist in Residence Ryan Anthony Martinez. The monthlong venture turned a group effort, with Stanford Drugs Youngsters’s Well being care staff members and younger sufferers including their very own touches to the mural.

Amongst them was 10-year-old heart transplant affected person Michael Loktev, who helped paint a part of the mural.

“It’s very thrilling to be part of this mural on the hospital the place I acquired my coronary heart transplant,” mentioned Michael. “I like portray and seeing the creativity, and the way every part comes collectively into one lovely paintings.”

For Martinez, that participation displays the motivation behind the venture.

“It’s the entire function of why we’re doing this mural—to encourage younger youngsters within the hospital who’re going by some heavy issues, to offer them one thing to stay up for every single day, brighten their days, make them smile,” Martinez mentioned. “This actually means the world to me.”

Bringing the California panorama inside

“Valley of Hope” attracts inspiration from the ecosystem themes discovered all through Packard Youngsters’s. Every hospital flooring is related to a colour and a California geographic ecosystem, with animals representing the completely different environments.

Based on Antonia Dapena-Tretter, art curator at Stanford Drugs Youngsters’s Well being, that is the most important, hand-painted mural, and it options a number of of the hospital’s ambassador animals, initially chosen with enter from sufferers and households and vetted to make sure that they’re native to California. The imagery represents all 5 hospital flooring and ecosystems, exploring themes of migration and displacement.

“In lots of circumstances, the animals depicted are clearly guardian and baby pairings, which represents our affected person demographics superbly as each a pediatric and obstetric hospital,” mentioned Dapena-Tretter.

Martinez provides that the colour orange additionally turned a unifying colour all through the work, creating heat whereas connecting the mural visually with imagery discovered elsewhere within the hospital. For over six weeks he prolonged the portray across the nook close to the hospital’s Predominant Pharmacy, bringing the completed mural to roughly 90 ft.

The placement for the mural was chosen deliberately. Though workers members make up a lot of the hall’s every day site visitors, sufferers and households additionally cross by the area. “This hallway was utterly clean and regularly utilized by workers,” mentioned Dapena-Tretter. “The Pharmacy staff expressed how sterile the area felt compared to different corridors. It wanted to really feel the Packard Youngsters’s contact.” Now, the mural wraps across the lengthy hall, inviting individuals to decelerate and uncover particulars all through the scene.

“There may be a lot to unpack,” Dapena-Tretter mentioned. “Scanning the wall from prime to backside and left to proper creates an virtually meditative expertise.”

From digital actuality to a hospital wall

Creating “Valley of Hope” additionally gave Martinez a chance to experiment with a brand new inventive instrument: virtual reality.

For the primary time in his work, Martinez used a digital headset and its app to assist switch his permitted digital design onto the hospital wall. Historically, he would have used a projector or plotted a grid—a course of that would take hours.

“Carrying the headset was like having a projector in my eyes,” Martinez mentioned.

The know-how allowed him to maintain the design inside his visual view as he moved alongside the wall and to scale the paintings utilizing his arms. He mentioned the method dramatically accelerated the preliminary drawing stage and is one he expects to make use of once more for future mural initiatives. And since Martinez was working in a delicate patient-care atmosphere, he additionally used non-VOC paint chosen to reduce robust odors and unstable natural compounds. With restricted colours accessible in that paint kind, he labored from a palette of 12 chosen colours, mixing further shades as wanted with environmentally acutely aware acrylic paints.

Artwork as a part of the therapeutic atmosphere

Stanford Drugs Youngsters’s Well being has integrated artwork into the hospital atmosphere for over 35 years. The artwork program dates to the opening of the West building in 1991 and expanded alongside the opening of the Predominant constructing in 2017. For Dapena-Tretter, hospital artwork is greater than ornament—it could assist soften an atmosphere that will naturally trigger anxiousness for youngsters and households.

“As a result of hospitals are areas the place individuals obtain medical care, they’re inherently scary,” she mentioned. “Artwork within the area helps to calm our sufferers and households with soothing and even playful imagery. It may possibly assist create alternatives for younger sufferers with care groups to find particulars collectively, inform tales, and speak about what they see and really feel.”

Leaving a mark

“Valley of Hope” belongs to greater than its artist. A number of days earlier than the disclosing, hospital staff members and sufferers had alternatives to contribute to the work, turning the mural’s creation right into a shared expertise.

“It offers us right here on the hospital half possession of the venture,” Dapena-Tretter mentioned. “We’ve seen Ryan engaged on this for weeks, and now to be included within the course of, it’s actually particular.”

For Michael’s mom, Ludmila Lokteva, seeing her son contribute was particularly significant.

“It’s fantastic for him to have this expertise, to be part of the hospital’s paintings,” Lokteva mentioned. “Michael enjoys trying on the murals all through the hospital as a result of they make the atmosphere really feel brighter and happier.”

And now a type of works accommodates one thing of his personal. “It positively brightened his day, and can enhance many extra days to come back, to know that each time he walks by the mural, he left his mark,” she mentioned.

Martinez mentioned portray alongside Michael and different members of the Stanford Drugs Youngsters’s Well being group turned an vital a part of the paintings itself.

“It was actually particular,” Martinez mentioned, “and can stay on on this mural for everybody who sees it.”