Murals

A Miami artist who created a mural for the Livermore, Calif., library found to be riddled with spelling errors has agreed to return and fix the mistakes. Maria Alquilar, who originally refused to fix the misspellings despite being paid $40,000 for the project, said Assistant City Manager Jim Piper persuaded her to rethink her decision. "He convinced me the easiest way to lay the matter to rest is to correct it," Alquilar said.

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.

Just a week ago, a group of Sylmar High School students began painting an elaborate mural on a wall next to the Astoria Terrace Retirement Center, a surface that has been repeatedly defaced by graffiti vandals. The mural--in moody strokes of brown and black--featured a series of oversized portraits, including those of several residents of the retirement home across the street from the high school.

In the early 1950s, Danish-born artist Kay (rhymes with sky) Nielsen spent two years on scaffolding in the library of Sutter Middle School, restoring and extending his masterpiece. Called "The First Spring," the enormous mural is still housed in the Canoga Park school, a little-known treasure threatened by the Valley's punishing climate and the Los Angeles Unified School District's lack of funds.

The recent restoration of a community mural depicting Mexican and Chicano history will be celebrated Saturday at the Salvation Army Anaheim Temple Corps. Damaged by graffiti several months ago, the 6-foot-tall, 106-foot-wide "Nuestra Experiencia en el Siglo Viente" (Our Experience in the 20th Century) mural on an a wall adjacent to the Salvation Army's parking lot was restored by local artist Emigdio Vasquez.

Just three weeks ago, the images on a landmark West Los Angeles mural were dull and fading. The red, white and green stripes of the Mexican flag were anything but bright. And the open arms of the Virgen de Guadalupe needed some redefining. But today, the images of "Chicano Heritage," which celebrates the history of West Los Angeles' Mexican Americans, appear as clear and vibrant as when it was created 20 years ago.

There has been no recent progress for artist Kent Twitchell in the legal battle involving his large-scale mural "Ed Ruscha Monument," a longtime fixture on the side of a building in downtown L.A. owned by the federal government that was painted over in early June.

Missing L.A.'s murals Re "Patt Morrison asks: Judy Baca, Muralista," Aug. 28 Patt Morrison's interview should be enlarged and decoupaged into a mural on a wall in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's office, and onto all four walls in City Council chambers. What's happened to these works of art in our city is an embarrassment and a shame. Every drive I take past the site of Kent Twitchell's lost "Freeway Lady," I see her ghost. The politics of graffiti removal and the new anti-supergraphics law as described by Judy Baca would be funny if they weren't so tragic.

In East Los Angeles, murals are as common and overlooked as clouds in the sky, but both take shape and significance when looked at through a different lens. A group of students from Monterey Continuation High School learned this lesson recently by writing and performing one-act plays about the wall art in their neighborhood and the muralists who put them there. About…Productions oversees the Young Theaterworks program at the school and encourages students to communicate through the arts.

Religious murals painted by Native Americans more than 200 years ago were rediscovered behind a trapdoor and the main altar of San Francisco's historic Mission Dolores. The two men who rediscovered the forgotten murals -- freelance artist Ben Wood and archeologist Eric Blind -- have taken digital photographs of the red, black and yellow artwork done in 1791. They are projecting the images at the modern Mission Dolores Basilica next door in a display that runs through Feb. 7.