Mural restorer offers insight on growing Glendale’s public art

A longtime mural restorer who helped lift the mural ban in Los Angeles talked about the experience at the Brand Library & Art Center Thursday night and offered advice on how Glendale could grow its collection of art in public spaces.

Isabel Rojas-Williams, executive director of the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, was one of the key players in helping L.A. adopt a mural ordinance in 2013. The effort ended a decadelong ban on public murals in a city that already had several thousand.

The conservancy has restored many artworks that scale the sides of buildings and freeways, many that date back more half a century.

Rojas-Williams said some of the earliest examples include works created in the 1930s by Mexican artists Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Mural-rich neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights and South Central are known for their depictions of the plight of various minorities at different times throughout the 20th century.

But Glendale doesn’t boast the mural portfolio of Los Angeles. Rojas-Williams said Glendale only has a handful, including the one on the side wall of Panera Bread, 300 N. Brand Blvd., and another at Central Avenue Church, 725 N. Central Ave.

She said one of her favorites was a sculpted mural of hanging meats and breads created in the 1970s outside Billy’s Delicatessen, which recently closed.

“I think the people who live here, it reminds them of a specific time in their lives when they used to go there and buy from the deli,” Rojas-Williams said.

But for more murals to be created in Glendale, it’s going to take a community-wide effort, not just to get one up in the first place, but also to keep it and convince people to respect the artwork, she said.

That means asking a property owner for permission, engaging local politicians, inviting school children to draw sketches and posting the mural’s progress on social media.

“Show the progress, tell people about it, invite them to come over and see the mural,” Rojas-Williams said. “People need to agree, we need to work as a community, we need to work together. That’s the only way it’s going to happen.”

Teri Deaver, a member of Glendale Arts and Culture Commission, said she agreed with Rojas-Williams’ advice and that it could play into an effort down the road toward creating more murals in the city.

“From artists to business owners to residents and working with the city of Glendale to not only beautify the city through mural artworks, but to also tell our history,” Deaver said.

Within the past year, the city, through its Urban Art Program, commissioned artists to paint dozens of utility boxes throughout Glendale and Montrose.

Deaver said in the next year or so, she expects the commission will make a recommendation to the City Council on getting a planning process approved for new murals.

So far, she said city-owned parking lots could make appropriate canvasses if the time comes.