Murals

Some of Kent Twitchell's murals are best known because they no longer exist. His "The Old Lady of the Freeway" greeted travelers along the Hollywood Freeway from 1974 until it was painted out by a billboard company in 1986. More recently, "Ed Ruscha Monument," a six-story portrait of artist Ruscha on the side of a government-owned building in downtown L.A., was painted over, in June 2006.

Everyone's an art critic when it comes to a $195,000 mural for the LAPD's new Hollenbeck station. The tile mural was meant to depict a quaint Sunday in Boyle Heights. Many angry residents say it makes their neighborhood out to be a crime-ridden dump filled with fat women, stray dogs, beer-swilling men and illegal street vendors. And don't get them started about the pinata. "There's no American flag.

THE MOSAIC on the ceiling looks as old as the 1921 house. Actually, older. Griffins guard one side, twin phoenixes another. Grapevines coil across a trellis. The motifs are ancient. But the artwork? Completed last month. It took a house painter from Sierra Madre to propose the idea. The son of one of Mexico's most prominent muralists to guide the execution. A researcher at the Boston Public Library to keep it historically accurate.

When this city declared the aging Bohemian Hill neighborhood blighted and opened the door to the possibility of using eminent domain to redevelop it, social activist Jim Roos decided to protest in a big way. He hired an artist to paint a two-story-high mural on the outside of a duplex, turning a late-1800s brick facade into a massive declaration of outrage easily spotted from the city's major arteries.

Paul Trujillo decided it was time to do something positive and inspiring. The 16-year-old graffiti artist's moniker, ERA, was scrawled on retaining walls and in alleyways throughout Denver. But after the Democratic National Convention came here in late August, Paul decided to try something new: He and two friends spray-painted a 26-foot-long mural of Barack Obama along the rear fence of his grandparents' house. Now the city is ordering him to get rid of it.

ACCOMPANYING last Sunday's Calendar story on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was a photo of the mayor in his City Hall office, standing in front of a 9-by-13-foot mural of L.A. by an "unknown artist." The mural, Villaraigosa's staff had told us, dated to Richard Riordan's administration -- but neither Villaraigosa's staff nor Riordan's representatives could identify the artist.

A once-vibrant work of public art obscured by grime and graffiti is the focus of a "restoration" of sorts by the Petersen Automotive Museum and SPARC, the Social and Public Art Resource Center. "Los Angeles: The Living City," a damaged 16-by-94-foot mural outside H&K Supermarket on Western Avenue, can be seen as it was with the installation of a one-third-scale, digital photographic reproduction in the Petersen's May Family Discovery Center.

About eight months after it was abruptly painted over, a small portion of Kent Twitchell's six-story "Ed Ruscha Monument" -- part of a hand, about 18 by 18 inches -- has become visible as the result of testing to determine whether the mural can be saved.

IN the design empire of Los Angeles, where Modern is king and where clean lines and empty spaces have come to define so many castles, it's something of a surprise to see a resurgence of frescoes, murals and other painterly effects. But sure enough, Cher is working with designer Martyn Lawrence-Bullard on new interiors that will include dozens of Buddhas and scenes of ancient India painted on the walls by Kelly Holden.