Petaluma man honors first responders through art

Pete Maloney is working on a series of digital images featuring recent wildfires that swept through Sonoma County.|

Two weeks after 9/11 forever changed the face of American history, Petaluma’s Pete Maloney played an intimate concert with his alt-rock band Dishwalla at St. Paul’s Chapel, a 250-year-old building that remained standing even as the Twin Towers fell around it.

The stately chapel, which came to be called the “Miracle Church” after it survived unscathed amid the rubble, had quickly turned into a makeshift home for first responders searching for victims. After Maloney, then a drummer with the 90’s band, played the show, a fireman with a photo of a fellow firefighter in his helmet thanked him for performing.

He told Maloney the first responder in the picture was his brother, who had been killed in the attacks that also claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 others. After another concert about six months later, the man’s sister approached Maloney to express gratitude for the role he unintentionally played in her brother’s life.

“She said ‘I want you to know you guys really helped him – it was the first time he started to accept that his brother is gone,” Maloney said. “That moment in time I knew that I wanted to do everything I could to support all those types of things, and so when the fires happened … it pulled at my heartstrings.”

A lifelong artist, the 51-year-old created a series of digital art prints depicting scenes from to the three-week firestorm in Sonoma County, such as a firefighter facing an ominous orange glow, EMTs treating a patient and helicopters engaged in aerial firefighting techniques. The proceeds from sales are used to support the Redwood Credit Union’s relief fund. He’s raised more than $1,000 so far, and plans to continue his efforts indefinitely.

“It made me think of 9/11,” said Maloney, who has lived in Petaluma for five years. “It made me think I wanted to do something.”

Mothers and wives of first responders have been ordering the art, he said, and he plans to continue to churn out prints using the Procreate digital art app on his iPad. A longtime painter and sketcher, he picked up the digital medium by chance after his son, Curtis Maloney, received an iPad from his Petaluma school about three years ago.

Pete Maloney began to tinker with the app, drawing a sketch of a New York skyline that later became one of his bestselling prints. After that success, he created a drawing of a Petaluma landmark and shared it on social media.

He then received an inquiry about drawing the long-shuttered local diner informally called “Scarf and Barf.” He scrounged up a 1974 newspaper clipping with a photo of the eatery and studied the grainy image to gauge the ambiance of the building. He shared that image online, and later received a thank you note from the former owner’s son, he said.

“It took off from there … I like places from the past, places that people just have really warm memories of,” Maloney said.

He’s since painted iconic Petaluma locations, such as the Feed Mill, a former Greyhound terminal, the Hideaway, a downtown watering hole, as well as the Line and Twine factory, Joe’s A-1 Bakery and Carither’s department store.

“One person wrote in a message ‘I really love the way you captured Joe’s A-1, you captured the feeling … it has soul to it,’” he said.

He uses the Sonoma County Library’s historical archives for images of bygone Petaluma favorites. For a recent sketch of KTOB radio, a now-defunct community station, he listened to clips from a 1978 broadcast, he said.

Maloney, who has also worked as a band leader for Dancing with the Stars and been involved with musical numbers for Cirque du Soleil, is still involved with the music industry, but has decided to focus more energy on his art.

A father of two, he acts as an art docent, leading a class that integrates art and music at McNear Elementary School. Art continues to be a source of happiness in his life and he’s looking forward to recreating more of Petaluma’s history.

“It’s just pure joy,” he said. “It’s like my meditation, whenever I’m stressed, I just love to create.”

(Contact Hannah Beausang at hannah.beausang@arguscourier.com.)

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