Nico Berry is a San Francisco-based muralist with over twenty years of experience designing and creating large-scale community and commercial murals. He was awarded the 2023-2024 California Arts Council/Youth Speaks Individual Artist Fellowship in the Established Artist category.
Nico’s public artwork primarily deals with themes of community, cultural identity, social justice, and the intersection between the urban, natural, and human environments. His goal is to explore the relationships between residents (human and non-human, long-established and recent arrivals), their environment, and their community, while inspiring conversation and beautifying neighborhoods. Many of his murals have been designed with input from communities they are a part of, often with the help of local elementary and high school students, elected representatives, and residents.
Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, Nico was drawn to visual art at an early age, declaring to his parents at 8 years-old that he was going to be an artist when he grew up. He became deeply involved with skateboarding and graffiti art in high school and moved to San Francisco in 1996 to pursue those passions. In 1996 he began working at Thrasher skateboarding magazine as a designer, writer, and illustrator, and he later served as the magazine’s Art Director. He has worked as a freelance Art Director and graphic designer in New York and San Francisco for a wide variety of clients from from Timberland Boots, Roadrunner Records, and Kid Robot to The Source magazine and Mecca clothing. Nico now does public art full-time and has painted numerous high-profile murals around the Bay Area and around the world.