ArtAlert on the Hollywood Freeway

For two months, artist Karen Kitchel braved fuel fumes, a scaffolding that shook with speeding cars and earthquakes, and the noise of rush-hour traffic to paint a mural of an idyllic setting that might be a commuter’s dream of escape.

The result is a 22x100-foot mural of a peaceful landscape on the wall of the northbound Hollywood Freeway at the Barham Boulevard exit. The life-sized depiction of a huge bluish/purple river surrounded by orange and red trees is entitled “Urban Eden.”

“It conveys a feeling of escape and yearning. When people stuck in traffic look at it they see a completely opposite image from the one in front of them,” Kitchel explained. “For some it represents what they moved away from, for others, what they’re trying to get to.”

Kitchel, who moved from Michigan to Pomona 10 years ago, has been painting landscapes for the last three years. But this was her first mural. Kitchel decided to make the transition from the canvas to a concrete wall after she read a newspaper advertisement for muralists. She later submitted her idea to Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC) and was chosen to participate in the city-sponsored “Neighborhood Pride: Great Walls Unlimited” project.

The project started in July of 1988 as part of SPARC’s ongoing effort to beautify the streets of Los Angeles and provide teen-agers with an opportunity to work with muralists. The City of Los Angeles, the National Endowment of the Arts and Arco Foundation funded the yearlong program, which commissioned nine murals throughout various Los Angeles neighborhoods. “Urban Eden” is the only freeway mural.

“We were impressed by the striking image of the work she had prepared and decided it would best fit a freeway setting,” said Joe Rodriguez, Executive Director of SPARC. “Although she had never done a mural before, we liked her work and felt it was unique and different.” Kitchel was the only non-muralist chosen to participate in the project.

“SPARC took quite a gamble on me. It was quite a jump. It was the first time I ever did a landscape on a landscape scale,” the 32-year-old artist said. “But working on a bigger scale wasn’t that hard, I had a lot of things to figure out in terms of adjusting the size, but once I got started it was just like being in my studio.”

Kitchel was assisted by teen-agers, who are part of the SPARC project. They helped her in preparing for the mural, but Kitchel painted it herself.

“The most exciting part of working on it was all the comments people made. Many people who saw me there made a big effort to reach out and meet me,” Kitchel said. “I think they liked the images, because they were very different from most murals, which tend to be political or educational in nature. My mural was more related to painting and was more site-specific. It was like designing a kind of park for the freeway.”

Although she felt she was “being poisoned every day” and had to wear a respirator and earplugs, Kitchel said the project was worth it. “It was really exciting to work in a public setting and interact with people as I did it,” she said, adding “I’d really like to do another one.”

APPOINTED: Lucinda Barnes, formerly the curator of exhibitions at the University Art Museum, Cal State Long Beach, has been appointed associate curator of the Newport Harbor Art Museum.

Barnes, who will assume her new position on Oct. 1, will be responsible for the New California Artist series and the museum’s large biennial exhibition. She will also assist chief curator Paul Schimmel in the museum’s exhibition and acquisition programs.

“I think it’s a wonderful museum,” Barnes said. “The Newport Harbor Art Museum has had a long and stimulating repertory in terms of organizing very singular exhibits.”

Barnes has been associated with the museum in the past, as a lecturer, docent educator and contributor to the “Action/Precision” exhibition catalogue in 1984.

“I love working in the academic environment with students, but the environment outside of the academic community is very different and I look forward to the new challenges it brings,” she said.

LACMA GRANT: Entertainment industry lawyer Marvin B. Meyer has established a $50,000 endowment at the County Museum of Art to purchase works by emerging Southern California artists. The endowment is a memorial to Meyer’s late wife, Nan Uhlman Meyer, a painter who died in 1978 in a skiing accident.

Under terms of the endowment, an annual purchase for the museum’s 20th-Century art collection will be announced each April 11, Nan Uhlman Meyer’s birthday. Acquisitions will be limited to works by artists who are not regularly represented in commercial galleries.

SHEETS AT CGS: The family of the late Millard Sheets and the Claremont Graduate School will present an exhibition of Sheets’ late paintings, Saturday through Sept. 15, at CGS’s galleries, 251 E. 10th St., in Claremont. Sheets, who died in March, was influential in the development of the art departments at Scripps College and the Claremont Graduate School.