Last Monday, artist Yana Zegri passed away at the age of 73. She's well-known in the Haight as the creator of the "Evolutionary Rainbow" mural at Haight and Cole streets, which she first painted in 1967.
Born in 1946 in Ottowa, Illinois, Zegri was a transplant to the Bay Area during the Summer of Love.
That same year, she painted "Evolutionary Rainbow," which depicts a rainbow being transformed into sperm, animals, cities, and humans.
Over the decades that followed, Zegri remained committed to maintaining "Evolutionary Rainbow." The mural was first touched up in 1981, then painted over and restored in 1982 and 1983. It was refinished again in 2006.
Zegri was also a musician, and her family has launched a GoFundMe campaign to help complete an album she was working on, called "Hippie Uprising."
In 2017, Zegri, a Vallejo resident, helped organize a five-day festival there to mark the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Her family hopes to use proceeds from the GoFundMe to host another show there in her honor this fall.
The base of the mural is currently adorned with memorial flowers, photographs and candles, left by Zegri's friends to commemorate her life and work.
