From the main hallway at Longfellow Middle School to the back wall of the small gym, Santiago Gonzalez’s talent can be seen all over the campus.

Gonzalez, the school’s head custodian, has a passion for art and has used it to build school pride and make academic connections, his telltale hand-lettered “Spartans” appearing in various scripts and fonts in the images featured in the hallways of Longfellow. In his seven years working on the campus, he has created 11 murals in the school’s public spaces and more in individual classrooms.

“The first one was the one outside in the courtyard,” Gonzalez said. “I just asked the principal if I could do a Spartan. She loved it.”

And the rest is history. Sometimes literally. He has artwork in most of the school’s academic hallways, aiming to not only inspire but to teach. In the current social studies hallway, he painted a large mural of an early American flag (used from 1795-1818), with only 15 stars and stripes, representing the 15 states at the time. The words of the Star-Spangled Banner, which was written during the time that variation of the flag was used, are hand lettered on the red stripes of the flag.  

“Everybody thinks it’s just a normal flag, but it isn’t,” Gonzalez said. “That’s the thing I tell the kids: know the history. That’s the flag that they based the Star-Spangled Banner on. And they teach that here in history.”

A Laredo native, Gonzalez got his start with large format art in his advanced art classes, helping to make the breakthrough banners for homecoming and football games. He says he still does his art on the side, but loves working on the walls of the school and seeing the students respond.

“They love it,” he said. “They appreciate that I’m doing this for the school, to make the school look better.”

Gonzalez works 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, attending to the day-to-day operations of the buildings, taking calls for air conditioning service and the occasional tripped fire alarm, while taking care of the needs of his staff of seven. Most of his murals, he says, are done in the matter of a few days, working an hour or so at a time. He completes many of them over the summer or long breaks after the routine building maintenance is complete. 

No matter when he fits it in, his process, he said, is always collaborative.

“I ask for the teachers to give me ideas,” he said. “They give me ideas and I’ll draw something up. That’s the way I go about it.”

He has painted atoms in the science hallway, drums and trumpets outside band, an American flag spanning an entire classroom wall, a flaming basketball in the gym, and collaborated with the choir teacher to create an intricate dragon she uses as part of an incentive program in the classroom. On some of his first murals, he collaborated with Elexus Ortiz, now the head custodian of Madison Elementary.

With so much work representing so many topics on campus, Gonzalez still has a favorite: his “Home of the Spartans” mural near the front entrance, featuring two larger-than-life Spartans. He likes watching the students get excited about it when they first visit the campus.

“When the sixth graders come and they are just seeing the school for the first time and they take their picture with their parents here — that’s why I do it, for the kids and the school.”

See samples of Gonzalez's work below.