Monica Magtoto’s utility boxes: a healing love for San Francisco

Guerrero Street is a bustling thoroughfare for people making their way through the Mission. 

For artist Monica Magtoto it’s an ideal stretch of road to showcase her art. 

Magtoto’s work is featured on ten sidewalk utility boxes, seven of which are on the corner of Guerrero, between 14th and 22nd streets. The boxes–usually painted dark green–are used by the city to house electrical equipment for regulating traffic.

“You get people who are crossing through the neighborhood to go more to the Mission side,” Magtoto said. “You get people who are crossing back over to go more towards the Dolores, Noe Valley, Castro side. So, for me, it’s the perfect location.”

Her other three boxes are on Dolores Street, on the corner of 14th and 15th Streets, and on Folsom, on the corner of 14th.

Magtoto is also a yoga instructor and an energy worker. In the latter capacity, she incorporates “reiki, curanderismo, somatic work and other energy work and spiritual modalities.” She painted each of her utility boxes black before layering on images such as hearts, butterflies, candles, suns, moons, flowers, and skulls in vibrant red, yellow, and white. 

Each box has a unique design but all have a unifying theme: healing. 

“Our city’s been through a lot, and for me, this set of paintings was a little bit of a love letter — like, ‘If I could heal the spirit of the city, this is where I would start,’” she said.

Magtoto is one of the artists selected for the “Paint the City” project backed by two San Francisco-based nonprofits, Paint the Void and the Civic Joy Fund. 

The project’s first round includes 24 artists and 241 city utility boxes, 39 of them in the Mission. 

Other Paint the City utility boxes in the Mission feature Jane Kang’s Korean-themed murals on Dolores and Church streets, native birds by Claudio Talavera-Ballón and various colorful illustrations, including renderings of city fixtures such as Sutro Tower and the Roxie Theater, by Shirley Lee.

Magtoto, a fourth-generation San Franciscan, said she draws inspiration from her multicultural background which includes Filipino, Mexican, Irish, and Cape Verdean family members, as well as from her connection to the city and its diverse community. 

“Like a lot of people in San Francisco, my family was adjacent to the Catholic Church, but my mom was more like, ‘Get the basics and then develop your own way of being with nature and with spirit,’” she said.

As an energy healer, she said, she’s interested in the connection between the physical and the spiritual, and carries that over into her art.

“How we exist in our bodies and how we can attack things from both angles — that intersection is really important to me,” she said.

On one utility box, on the corner of Guerrero and 15th Streets, Magtoto painted a rendering of the Three of Swords tarot card, with white-outlined swords piercing a bright red heart.

“That card is about healing and about removing the swords one by one. So if you find yourself with those three swords in your heart, you can’t really move. Any way you move, it hurts, so you pull each out, one at a time, and deal with it,” she explained.

Magtoto appreciates the attention her boxes get from passers-by. People say, “‘Oh, I saw you painting on Guerrero!’ It’s not often I get to paint and just do my own thing, too. So having this be really authentically me and having people resonate with that and recognize [my work] has been a really high point for me.”

Best of all, perhaps, family members are delighted. 

“My family getting to see my work and sending me photos that they’re taking in front of the boxes when doing errands or going out to dinner — that’s the dream, right?”