Meet Stash Maleski

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stash Maleski. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stash below.

Stash, thank you so much for joining us. You are such a positive person and it’s something we really admire and so we wanted to start by asking you where you think your optimism comes from?
I learned the power or “PMA” or Positive Mental Attitude growing up in the Haight-Ashbury district as a skater in San Francisco in the 1980’s. I remember when I was about 14 years old I went to skate the famous HP Ramp where some pro skaters were skating. I was blown away by the tricks that one of the skaters named Eddie Reategui was doing on the ramp. He was blasting high airs and doing wild bomb drops into the tall vert ramp from the roof. He had a PMA sticker on his board and I asked him about it. He told me that if you can envision a trick in your head and you believe you can pull it off, you can do it. It might take multiple attempts and some scruffs and scrapes, but the most important thing is to believe in yourself. Over the years I have found this to be true. If you watch someone else pull off a trick or a task, then you know it can be done. It gives you confidence. Sometimes, that is all that we need. This can work even if you don’t see someone else go before you. You can just envision it in your head and plot out your course of action. That is the PMA at work. Being positive is a great way to meet others that can help your cause and the positivity means others will want to follow you and help out. You still have to put in the work and have some basic capabilities, but it starts with having the positive mind set that can push you to succeed.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
We are focused on building out our national network of artists and mural locations that we use to paint advertising murals for companies around the country. We lease out walls on the sides of buildings for temporary murals for some of the largest international corporations from Disney and Nike to Pepsi and Spotify. Our artists can paint just about anything from highly detailed renderings of photos to original street-art style murals. I started the company in LA over 30 years ago with some friends. We started by producing large-scale graffiti art exhibitions in storefronts and warehouses. We now focus on temporary murals. We still work with artists that started as street graffiti artists and most of our murals are painted with spray can. My wife Jeanna Penn came on board over 20 years ago and she is now our CEO. It feels great to have a family business that supports a number amazing muralists. We are bringing beautiful murals to the community while generating funds for mom & pop property owners who now get paid for the use of their building in a new way. The ads are not as intrusive as big billboards on the top of a building or by the side of the road because we utilize the existing architecture. Sponsors get their message out at street level in neighborhoods that might not be accessible otherwise. People appreciate seeing a mural hand crafted by artists from their community.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
It was key to form a crew of friends to help each other realize our artistic visions. I found other people that were excited about graffiti art and murals and we worked together to offer our services to some of the most talented and well-known graffiti artists. We provided everything for the artists so they could produce new work on canvas and then show it. In return these artists produced some amazing art and offered up their services as muralists for commercial projects. It is give and take. Do for others and they might help you out.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?
We are looking to scale up and we need talented people to help us do that. We need motivated sales people and competent project managers to for murals projects all around the country. We need a digital designer to help build mural proposals and to manage photos of the projects. We are also open to collaborating with other small companies that may have some similar resources that we can share.

Contact Info:

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