Non-Criminal Graffiti : Santa Monica Mural Harnesses Spray-Painters’ Artistic Energy

Frankie Juarez and his friends are at it again, spray-painting graffiti on a wall in Santa Monica. But this time the cops aren’t giving them a hard time. They’re giving them the paint.

Frankie and his friends, students at Olympic High School, a continuation school, are pioneers in what organizers hope may become a pilot program to “take the crime out of graffiti.”

The unusual alliance, which produced a mural heralding Santa Monica and its Police Department on an oceanfront wall, brought together the students, police, a local artist and city officials in an exercise that, like art itself, manages to question both perception and reality.

Location of Earlier Mural

The nearly completed wall is actually three sides of an old bathhouse set into the hillside overlooking the ocean just below Pacific Palisades Park. Years ago, a mural had been painted there by local artist Jane Golden, but it was vandalized and the wall was whitewashed.

In its current incarnation, the wall screams “Santa Monica” in hot pink and blue letters six feet high below a huge yellow sunburst interspersed with palm trees and clouds. An adjoining wall boasts a 20-foot replica of the Santa Monica Police Department insignia, complete with a topless mermaid--anatomically correct, but only after much discussion. The third surface of the wall has been “tagged” with the artists’ graffiti signatures: Resume, Ease, Prism, Resy and Serene.

Their names come from things that have significance in each boy’s life: Ease, to Juarez, “has to do with how I do everything, with ease.” Prism, for Jose Gomez, “comes from how a crystal when it’s hit with light strikes different colors.”

The young artists agreed to give up their furtive careers as graffiti writers, but that had its advantages. “I’ve only done a couple of pieces in twilight,” said Juarez, 16, “and in the dark you can’t see your mess-ups and what you didn’t get to do.”

The project started when Bruria Finkel, Olympic’s artist-in-residence, met with city officials concerned about a burgeoning graffiti problem. Since 1985, the city has funded several graffiti-removal programs. But, said a police spokeswoman, all those programs are “reactive.” Finkel suggested that perhaps there was a way to see the positive side of graffiti as a form of artistic expression.

She then told her class that the city might be willing to support their artistic endeavors--but they would have to go through the proper channels. That meant meeting with the police and city officials to ask permission, planning and making sketches. At first, the students balked.

“These young men did not want any contact with any kind of police officer,” said Joe Analco. In a program called “Officer Joe,” the local police officer acts as liaison between the department and the community’s children.

Analco says he was “honored” when the students agreed to meet with him and other city officials to show their sketches. “I felt like here are some kids who see a dream,” he said. “I was so moved, I volunteered out of my (Youth Program) budget for it.”

Juarez is a slim, dark-haired teen-ager who dresses gang-style in gray pants, white T-shirt and baseball cap. A disarming self-awareness often peeks through his tough-guy veneer.

‘You’re Only Here Once’

“I felt a little bit uncomfortable,” he said of the meeting at City Hall. “But you’ve got to overcome your fear, I say, because you’re only here once.”

The mural is just about done, but all did not go smoothly. The initial group of nine artists dwindled to five due to attrition, artistic disagreements and an unwillingness to relinquish illegal graffiti, one of Finkel’s stipulations. But the boys adapted and the remaining five are determined to finish the wall and even have hopes for future murals.

“It’s different than usual graffiti,” said Luis Franco as he sprayed on his 4-foot high signature, “because here, we’ve got permission. You can take your time and not worry about being caught by the cops.”

“We’d like to do more for the city,” says Juarez, “maybe put messages across, like drug abuse, abortion, maybe the topics of society’s problems. Because that’s what graffiti art’s mostly about, just expressing what you feel inside, what comes from your heart and soul.”

He paused, then added, “Mostly from your soul.”