Friday, July 21, 2006

More murals bite the dust

Apparently the Ariel Rios Building murals are not the only ones in extremis.

According to this story by Diane Haithman in the Left Coast Times:

"On Thursday, attorneys representing artist Kent Twitchell filed a claim against the U.S. Department of Labor in connection with Twitchell's large-scale mural "Ed Ruscha Monument" — a six-story portrait of fellow artist Ruscha on a building owned by the federal agency — being painted over in early June. Twitchell said he received no notice, as required by law, that the paint-over would take place.

Within the past few days, two more downtown murals, Frank Romero's "Going to the Olympics" and Willie HerrĂ³n's "Luchas del Mundo" (Struggles of the World) were partly covered with mud-colored paint, an apparent error by a Caltrans work crew cleaning up graffiti.

A Caltrans spokeswoman described the covering as a mistake and said plans are in place to remove the paint next week. Because of a protective coating, she said, the removal process will not affect the artwork."
Read the entire article here.

However, Bill Lasarow at LAMurals.org states that the partial painting-over of Frank Romero’s celebratory "Going to the Olympics" mural was done "in order to save it from graffiti taggers" - not on purpose to destroy it, and that in fact the covering up was apparently scheduled and part of the process and Romero is going to work on the mural some more!

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