Art by the Foot : Dressing Up Construction Site Is Shoe-In for Muralist

Capturing the soul of Woodland Hills is quite a feat. And capturing the soles of Woodland Hills means quite a few feet.

Jill Ann Field is doing both as she paints a mural on a quarter-mile-long wooden safety wall around a high-rise construction site.

Field is letting Warner Center office workers and neighborhood joggers step into her illustration by painting images of their feet as they pass the building site at 21550 Oxnard St.

The feet will contribute to the finished mural’s depicting the recreational and professional qualities of life in the West San Fernando Valley community, according to the development company that has commissioned the work.

Field, a struggling art student from Pasadena, started painting the mural this week after winning the job in a competition held at three art schools.

Fifteen student artists from three colleges submitted proposals after the Voit Cos. offered to pay $1,000 to have 300 feet of the construction wall painted.

Best Foot Forward

But Field, 26, putting her best foot forward with her preliminary design sketches, impressed company officials so much that they tripled her fee and expanded the mural to the whole wall.

Field, a junior at the Art Center College of Design, said the money means a great deal. “It’s going to keep me in school. I was going to have to drop out and look for a job,” she said.

The completed mural will show three-way segments that range, she said, “from deep illusionary space to shallow space to reflective space.”

Translated, that means her panels start with such things as traditional scenic views and end up with abstract paintings of things such as futuristic office window reflections.

In between the past and the future are the feet.

Field is photographing passers-by with a camera and using the snapshots of shoes as the basis for the foot paintings, which depict the present in the West Valley.

“Most people are very cooperative,” she said as she stalked a noontime walker passing by the wall. “I saw a man walking his dog yesterday, and I asked him to come back so I could photograph them, and he said he would. I hope he does, because they’re going to be great.”

Voit property manager Arthur C. Smith said he suggested the mural because Warner Center workers would tire of looking at a plain, battleship-gray construction fence while the 12-story, $35-million office structure is being built.

“That wall would be sticking up like a sore thumb for 15 months,” Smith said.

The work in progress has received rave reviews from office-bound art critics in nearby high-rises.

“It’s great. I’m impressed. I like it a lot,” said Kathleen Murray, a marketing specialist who works on the 16th floor of one of the buildings. “The gray wall was really blah.”

Work Looks Enticing

She added, “I wish I could be out here painting rather than sitting at a desk all day.”

Chris Izquierdo, a computer systems analyst who works in another building, said Warner Center needed brightening up.

“If the mural is going to show professional life here, it should include people working over a terminal,” Izquierdo said. “That’s what I do.”

Besides paying Field, Voit is contributing $2,500 to her art school and paying $500 for a pair of assistants to help her with the painting.

Field recruited two classmates to work with her part time. “I’ll paint as much as I can until the fence comes down or I get tired, whichever comes first,” Field said.

The two helpers are Melissa Kretschmer, 24, and Kendal Cronkhite, 25. As with Field, they said, they had only painted small works until they started on the mural.

Said Kretschmer: “We’re getting all sorts of people stopping and asking for our mural business card. . . . “

”. . . Or else stopping and asking directions,” Cronkhite interjected. “That’s funny, because I don’t even know what street we’re on here.”