Muralist

Much is made these days of politics and art. A few painters and sculptors feel pretty set up about themselves for having the courage to make pictures that express indignation over, say, violations of human rights. It is laudable to let conscience guide one's art but our chaps are going to have to get cracking if they hope to equal the intransigence of the hemisphere's leading social-rebel artist, David Alfaro Siqueiros, the great Mexican muralist.

Catching up with Ed Fuentes isn't easy. A running start helps. The 52-year-old Fuentes - I call him the human cyclone - moves so fast on so many fronts in any given day that whiplash is possible: photographer, muralist, blogger, modern-day historian, humorist. He briefly touched down in the Arts District last week. But it wasn't that simple, of course. Like one of the Weather Channel's "storm chasers," I tracked him from where he was interviewing a muralist in East Los Angeles to a site just off Alameda Street in downtown L.A., where he had been hired to shoot publicity stills for a local theater company.

The mural outside Erma Winfield's Mid-City home has a Grandma Moses look to it. And not just because the artist who painted it is 94, either. The artwork stretches across a 40-foot fence and depicts the four seasons in a linear, primitive folk-art style that captures scenes from Winfield's past, just as Grandma Moses' work did when she took up painting in her 70s. Like Moses, Winfield was raised on a farm and is a self-taught artist whose...

Along old U.S. Route 66, the once-kitschy Overland Motel is crumbling, vacant lots pock downtown and, as if this remote desert outpost weren't suffering enough, the last car dealership folded up and left behind a blanket of empty asphalt. Not a pretty picture for travelers who might pull off the highway for a burger or to spend the night. Then, about five months ago, a man with a sun-stained face and paint-crusted fingernails drifted in, and the tiny old railroad town of Needles started looking a little brighter.

Kero Sarkis Antoyan, oil painter and muralist also known for his stained-glass windows, has died at the age of 81. Antoyan, a native of Turkey who lived in Los Angeles, died Aug. 19 of an apparent heart attack while visiting his son, Ares, in Lyon, France. He had exhibited widely throughout the United States, France and Armenia, and his paintings are in collections at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, the Laguna Beach Museum and the Yerevan State Museum, and several Armenian churches.

Ruth Duckworth, a noted modernist sculptor and muralist who created abstract ceramic forms for pieces breathtakingly large and charmingly small in her studio in a renovated Chicago pickle plant, has died. She was 90. Duckworth died Oct. 18 at a Chicago hospice after a brief illness, said Thea Burger, her agent. She was both a master of ceramics and of escaping easy definition, the Washington Post said in a 2006 article on a traveling retrospective of Duckworth's work, which was shown at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery.

Judy Baca, assistant professor of studio art at UC Irvine, has been elected to the board of trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles. A muralist and arts activist, Baca co-founded the Social and Public Art Resource Center in the Venice area of Los Angeles. She is artistic director for the center. MOCA announced that its six new trustees were chosen "to reflect the changing Los Angeles multi-cultural, multi-ethnic community."

A colorful, informative fold-out map and guide to 200 Los Angeles murals will be unveiled this morning at a downtown news conference led by Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs and muralist Kent Twitchell. Produced by the Los Angeles Mural Conservancy, the handy guide will be made available to the general public for $2 as soon as funding for reproduction and distribution is found, say conservancy officials, which could be within the next month.

Stage Seven Dance Theater will premiere another work by Paul Koverman, "The Cycle," to be paired with the reconstructed "The Mist Leaves No Scar" at its spring concert starting Friday. "The Mist" is a haiku-inspired dance choreographed in 1978 by Three's Company's Jean Isaacs. James Kelly's "Fronteras," with decor by muralist Mario Acevedo Torero and a dramatic cross-cultural theme, will close the program. Performances are scheduled for 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the City College Theatre.

William Wilson is wasting his time writing art criticism. He should devote himself to judging Mr. Universe contests. His article about the Diego Rivera retrospective at the Philadelphia Art Museum dealt more with Rivera's body than with his painting aesthetics ("Fanfare of Uncommon Muralist," July 27). I was gargantuanly offended by the many references to Rivera's fat. After informing us that Rivera "weighted in at 300 pounds," Wilson went on to use "fat" words interchangeably when discussing the "magnetically unattractive" Mexican muralist or his work.

For years, a painting of a whale's tail splashing out of the gray, misty ocean has been one of the most popular license plates in California. Nearly 200,000 have been sold, raising millions for coastal and environmental conservation programs. But the artwork by Wyland was deep-sixed after the Laguna Beach muralist's request for 20% of the state's profits from the plates to fund his environmental foundation was rebuffed. Rather than tangle with the artist over the rights to the painting, titled "Tails of Great Whales," the state decided to retire the plate instead and hold a contest to replace it. The new plate to debut Aug. 2 is a crisper, brighter rendering of a whale's tail that California Coastal Commission officials say more closely resembles an actual whale — a humpback — than Wyland's more dreamy design.

The mural outside Erma Winfield's Mid-City home has a Grandma Moses look to it. And not just because the artist who painted it is 94, either. The artwork stretches across a 40-foot fence and depicts the four seasons in a linear, primitive folk-art style that captures scenes from Winfield's past, just as Grandma Moses' work did when she took up painting in her 70s. Like Moses, Winfield was raised on a farm and is a self-taught artist whose...

Alix Soubiran could live quite happily without a stick of furniture. "A chair can be wonderful, but walls are what you see all the time," she says. "To me, walls that create a story or a mood are the starting point. " As a muralist, Soubiran is accustomed to using walls as a blank canvas. But she recently began experimenting with decorating techniques, creating a line of high-end wallpapers called Princes & Crows. Inspired by her memories of her native France, those designs have helped to transform a ramshackle 1923 duplex in Los Feliz into the charming home she shares with husband Joe Mauceri, a film and TV director and writer, and their 61/2-month-old daughter, Monica Moonshine.

In this city on wheels, this city of wheels, an image has to be large and vivid and striking to make an impression. For more than three decades, the light, the climate, the speed, the invitation of long blank walls have made Los Angeles one vast plein-air gallery, the mural capital of the world, exterior-decorated by artists like Kent Twitchell, Willie Herron, Glenna Avila, Leo Politi — and Judy Baca. Baca leads brush-first, blending aesthetics and politics, first as the mother of the city's original community mural project, Neighborhood Pride, and now as founder of the Venice-based Social and Public Art Resource Center, or SPARC.

Tucked away inside of one of Los Angeles' oldest buildings, the artist could be mistaken for a squatter. He sleeps on a ragged piece of carpet. He makes do without a shower. He wears nearly the same clothes every day: a plain T-shirt and worn-out sweat shorts. But around the corner from where he sleeps is Hugo Martinez Tecoatl's masterpiece: an elaborate array of murals vibrantly splashed across 4,000 square feet of space. Aztec gods, bicycles, serpents, marigolds and tributes to Pancho Villa, Benito Juarez and Emiliano Zapata stretch from the hardwood floor up 30- to 40-foot walls and across the ceiling.

All it took was one look. The artists behind a vibrant mural depicting community protection of black youth were a mystery to the folks at UCLA. An image of the work, part of the school's archive, would eventually grace university publications, including an edition of the museum's newsletter Fowler Now, but they didn't know who had painted it. That's when Richard Wyatt came upon it. "The winter newsletter came in the mail one day," recounted Wyatt, 54. "And there it was. I was like 'Whoa!

When I wrote here several weeks ago about the slow deterioration and final demise of the "Jesus wall" in Highland Park, I hoped to receive a call from the anonymous muralist who painted its message of redemption. I wanted to ask him the meaning of the escaping dove and the exclamation "Jesus Set Me Free." I wanted to know what power it had to repel the graffiti writers who had for years infected that humble stucco wall alongside the Pasadena Freeway at Avenue 39.

Re "Artist Allowed to Challenge Legality of Arrest for Mural," May 27: Artist Mike McNeilly paints gigantic advertising murals on the sides of buildings for profit. When L.A. Councilman Mike Feuer blocked the painting of one of these unsightly monstrosities, McNeilly decided to try an end run by claiming his right to free speech was being violated. Knowing that an advertisement would elicit little sympathy for his claim, however, he began to paint the Statue of Liberty. Who could complain about something as patriotic as the Lady?

Ruth Duckworth, a noted modernist sculptor and muralist who created abstract ceramic forms for pieces breathtakingly large and charmingly small in her studio in a renovated Chicago pickle plant, has died. She was 90. Duckworth died Oct. 18 at a Chicago hospice after a brief illness, said Thea Burger, her agent. She was both a master of ceramics and of escaping easy definition, the Washington Post said in a 2006 article on a traveling retrospective of Duckworth's work, which was shown at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery.

Sol LeWitt, an American artist whose modular sculptures and systematic murals rank among the most innovative works of the last 40 years, changing the direction of art internationally, died Sunday in New York City after a lengthy struggle with cancer. He was 78 and lived in Chester, Conn., a short distance from his birthplace in Hartford. In 1966, LeWitt made his first modular sculpture and first masterpiece.