Every superhero has an origin story. For Sonoma County’s anonymous Velvet Bandit, it started off innocently enough.
Imagine a 46-year-old school lunch lady going about her daily routine — one day pizza, the next, sloppy joes. Then all of a sudden, a pandemic hits. Laid off, and at home with two kids, she was inspired to try street art for the first time. It felt urgent, like shouting into the void to see if anyone was listening.
So, late one night in March 2020, she pasted up a small painting of a toilet-paper roll with the words “Let’s Roll” under a bridge along the Santa Rosa Creek Trail. “I stood back and thought, ‘Oh my god, that looks so cool,’” she remembers. “Then I went back into my studio and started painting a bunch more. I was instantly hooked.”
Since then, she’s pasted hundreds of vibrant street paintings on alley walls, utility boxes, and street signs from Willits to Los Angeles. They’re often punny (“Not mushroom for hate here” written on a fungus). Sometimes they’re political (“Tax the Rich” on Abraham Lincoln’s face). And other times oddly inspirational, like an award ribbon that reads, “Didn’t quit my job today.”
As word spread and fans shared photos on Instagram (where she has more than 10,000 followers), a Petaluma restaurant hired her to paint a window, and a cider company asked her to decorate cans and bottles.
If the artist has to make a public appearance — at an art show or on a vlog, she often wears masks or a pink wig and dark sunglasses. Never revealing her real name (because, well, street art isn’t exactly legal, just ask Banksy), she is still known only as the Velvet Bandit.
What’s in a Name? “One of the very first things I bought for myself after my ex-husband moved out was a green velvet couch. I slowly started acquiring more velvet things, like a velvet throw pillow and a velvet bedspread. One of my friends suggested ‘Velvet Bandit,’ and I loved it because it was feminine, but also with the word ‘bandit’ in it.”
Strange Encounters “I was in a situation where a man came out and said, ‘Hey, what are you doing? Stop that!’ That wasn’t fun. He called me a nut job. Later, I went back, and he had taken the paste-up down that I had put up. So I went back and painted a squirrel that said ‘Nut job.’”
Unexpected Outcomes “People have wanted to Venmo me money, and they didn’t want anything in return. They just wanted to help replenish my supplies because they loved it so much. And that was just mind-blowing to me that people wanted me to do art with nothing in return because they were getting such a kick out of it.”
Family Backing “At first, my kids (ages 13 and 16) thought, ‘What’s Mom doing? This is a little crazy.’ But once they saw that I was getting a little publicity, and people were rallying behind me, then they came on board. Now, they think it’s pretty cool.”
