Koreatown Muralist Celebrates His American Dream

Stroking the final touch-ups on his latest mural, “Koreans,” at 7th Street and Wilshire Place, artist Dong-In Park said he is finally realizing his American dream to make art with and for the community.

“This mural symbolizing freedom is especially for those hard-working Korean-Americans, those who came to the United States for the second chance in their lives and for the prosperity. Of course, I am one of them, too,” said the 42-year-old artist.

From 7 to 18 feet high and 160 feet long, “Koreans” depicts through a series of individual paintings the plight of newly arrived immigrants. It expresses such themes as culture shock and loneliness, the rewards of hard work and the blending of culture differences.

The artist says the mural, his fifth, completed two weeks ago, is a celebration of life that reflects today’s multi-ethnic society.

“I think the city of Los Angeles is becoming the mecca of murals, and it is happening right at this moment,” Park said. “I used to paint on a canvas, but now I finally find myself feeling at home (painting) these street walls all over L.A.”

Known in the community as the creator of abstract images that resemble reflections on windows and an artist who favors blue, Park collaborated on “Koreans” with his friend, Dong-Jin Lee, 16, and other young Korean students as a community project. It is the eighth mural in Mayor Tom Bradley’s Neighborhood Pride project. Park was commissioned by the nonprofit Social and Public Arts Resource Center in Venice.

“It is an honest image of the community,” said Judith Baca, artistic director of the center. “This mural is a contemporary abstract style but still understandable for what it means to the community. That’s why it is as much an important work to the public as it is a unique mural. And, I suppose, that’s the beauty of Neighborhood Pride.”

Each mural costs an average of $25,000. For “Koreans,” Park was paid a $7,000 fee, $6,000 covered paint and labor expenses, and the remaining $12,000 went to the center as a management fee, said Joel Rodriguez, the center’s executive director.

In 1984, Park designed his first mural, “Ansel Adams Memorial” at Highland Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard, which was painted with the Korean artists’ group Gallery Scope. Later that summer, to celebrate the Los Angeles Olympics, Gallery Scope led by Park produced “Mask Dance,” a mural on a wall of a six-story building at Western Avenue and Olympic Boulevard.

Since then, Park has completed two more murals, “Working” and “Boy With Paper Plane,” at 8th and 6th streets in Koreatown.

Park came to Los Angeles from Seoul in 1974. A Vietnam War veteran with combat service in the Korean army, he worked as a janitor, a dishwasher and gas station attendant. With his limited English ability, Park said he felt his life was more miserable in the United States than in Vietnam.

He decided to join the armed forces again, but this time signed up in the U.S. Army. After a two-year hitch, he returned to Los Angeles and enrolled under his GI Bill benefits at the School of Alliance Francais to study French.

“My lifelong dream was to become an artist, though I never took any art courses in my college days. I majored in architecture instead,” Park said.

At the age of 32, he went to Paris in 1979 to attend Ecole des Beaux Arts, one of the national art schools in France.

Shortly thereafter, he won a third-place prize from the International des Creations Artistiques et de Recherche, which earned him recognition and a subsidy from the French government.

After spending three years in Paris, he returned to Los Angeles in 1982. Since then, he has been involved in a series of one-man and joint exhibitions.

“Every day was some sort of learning experience,” he says of his beginnings in art, “and I always opened my eyes to see the things around me. In this art community, I eventually realized that creating my own world was not necessary unless it was to be in the public good.”