Frank Romero

FACES "It's a busy time--I'm in the midst of all these projects," says noted Chicano artist Frank Romero, whose show of paintings and pastels on "The Great Theme of Transportation"--featuring his first pastels in five years--opens Saturday at Long Beach's Williams/Lamb Gallery.

From the aging homages to Chicano history on the Eastside to Shepard Fairey's towering "Peace Goddess" watching over downtown, Los Angeles has earned a reputation as the street mural capital of the world. But for nearly a decade, much of this artwork has been done illicitly. City ordinances make it illegal to create murals on the vast majority of private properties. Officials estimate that more than 300 murals have been painted over in the last several years, a fact that has frustrated artists as well as property owners who commission the murals.

The exclamation points flanking Frank Romero's name on the wall at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard are a quick tip-off. This is art that virtually throbs with color and humor. Walk in the front door and you find "Chicano Lowrider," an almost life-size sculpture of a curvaceous old car, framed by two large wooden palm trees.

Gilbert "Magú" Luján — a painter, muralist and sculptor whose whimsical, slyly humorous art works, frequently evoking a rollicking, mythical view of Mexican American life, graced museum walls, the Hollywood and Vine subway station and other public places — died Sunday, according to a Facebook posting by his family. He was 70. The Pomona resident had been battling cancer for several years, according to a number of friends and colleagues who confirmed that he died. A pioneer of the Chicano art movement that took root in the social and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and '70s, Magú, as he was universally known, was among the first U.S. artists of Mexican descent to establish an international career.

For the past two or three years, Los Angeles artist Frank Romero has worked with neon occasionally to punctuate his artwork. Recently, he got the idea of doing something more ambitious. Rather than use neon as merely an illuminating device, he decided to do a whole show of neon drawings.

An elevated freeway cuts through the middle of a vivid downtown scene, a Los Angeles of a dozen skyscrapers and old buildings throwing bright red shadows across canary yellow city blocks. There are the old and the new, the present and the past all jumbled together, in Frank Romero's fanciful signature style. It's not exactly accurate, but it's all recognizable and it's the story of Romero's--and L.A.'s--life.

The Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department has awarded a grant to the Social and Public Art Resource Center for artist honorariums and for administration of a mural restoration program. Artists will receive $500 from the Emergency Relief Fund for Mural Restoration. Recipients are Wallace Cronk, Larry Gruda, Arthur Mortimer, Frank Romero, Ann Thierman, Richard Wyatt, Emily Cordova and Henry Brown III.

An 11-year-old Carson boy shot in the head in a drive-by shooting remained on life-support systems Thursday as his weeping father asked: "Why did this happen?" "They've already told us his brain is dead," said Frank Romero, 43, standing in the apartment where hours earlier his son Francisco (Frankie) Romero lay bleeding. "What a waste of life." Frankie Romero was shot about 8:15 p.m.

From the aging homages to Chicano history on the Eastside to Shepard Fairey's towering "Peace Goddess" watching over downtown, Los Angeles has earned a reputation as the street mural capital of the world. But for nearly a decade, much of this artwork has been done illicitly. City ordinances make it illegal to create murals on the vast majority of private properties. Officials estimate that more than 300 murals have been painted over in the last several years, a fact that has frustrated artists as well as property owners who commission the murals.

Part of "The Four," an activist group of Chicano artists back in the '70s, Frank Romero has always made work that balances acculturation into the American mainstream with a staunch connection to ethnic Mexican and Chicano roots.

Inside the old mosaic-covered building housing Self Help Graphics & Art, the packing has begun ? of the angels and the devils, of the colorful skulls, of the masked lucha libre wrestlers. Thousands of prints collected over four decades are headed to a new home, as the East Los Angeles art center known for shaping the city's most successful Chicano artists ? Frank Romero, Patssi Valdez, Gronk ? prepares to leave its longtime home at East Cesar Chavez and North Gage avenues.

An elevated freeway cuts through the middle of a vivid downtown scene, a Los Angeles of a dozen skyscrapers and old buildings throwing bright red shadows across canary yellow city blocks. There are the old and the new, the present and the past all jumbled together, in Frank Romero's fanciful signature style. It's not exactly accurate, but it's all recognizable and it's the story of Romero's--and L.A.'s--life.

During the early years of the Chicano movement, in the '70s, Frank Romero established a reputation as one of its art heroes. He belonged to the first group of local contemporary Latino artists to crack the hallowed halls of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the 1974 exhibition "Los Four." Their breakthrough was greeted with accusations that they had sold out to the establishment. Sometimes nothing fails like success. Now Cal State L.A.

Frank Romero was mostly an afterthought on last year's Budweiser Jet Sports Tour. But after winning the last two races of the season on the heels of five consecutive second-place finishes on the national tour, he eagerly awaits this weekend's Super Bowl of jet skiing, the Skat-Trak World Finals at Lake Havasu, Ariz. Riding a Polaris Pro Runabout 1,200 for the second year, he has his team riding high. "I think we set the precedent for what you'll see at the world championships," Romero said.

An 11-year-old Carson boy shot in the head in a drive-by shooting remained on life-support systems Thursday as his weeping father asked: "Why did this happen?" "They've already told us his brain is dead," said Frank Romero, 43, standing in the apartment where hours earlier his son Francisco (Frankie) Romero lay bleeding. "What a waste of life." Frankie Romero was shot about 8:15 p.m.

The exclamation points flanking Frank Romero's name on the wall at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard are a quick tip-off. This is art that virtually throbs with color and humor. Walk in the front door and you find "Chicano Lowrider," an almost life-size sculpture of a curvaceous old car, framed by two large wooden palm trees.

Frank Romero was never one who could leave someone stranded for help on the road. "If he saw people stranded he would stop to help them. That was his joy, helping people out," said Romero's daughter, Gilda Jimenez. Romero's last good deed cost him his life. The 62-year-old Los Nietos man and a co-worker were driving down the Corona Expressway near the Riverside-San Bernardino county line Monday when they spotted a car on fire.

During the early years of the Chicano movement, in the '70s, Frank Romero established a reputation as one of its art heroes. He belonged to the first group of local contemporary Latino artists to crack the hallowed halls of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the 1974 exhibition "Los Four." Their breakthrough was greeted with accusations that they had sold out to the establishment. Sometimes nothing fails like success. Now Cal State L.A.

For the past two or three years, Los Angeles artist Frank Romero has worked with neon occasionally to punctuate his artwork. Recently, he got the idea of doing something more ambitious. Rather than use neon as merely an illuminating device, he decided to do a whole show of neon drawings.

FACES "It's a busy time--I'm in the midst of all these projects," says noted Chicano artist Frank Romero, whose show of paintings and pastels on "The Great Theme of Transportation"--featuring his first pastels in five years--opens Saturday at Long Beach's Williams/Lamb Gallery.