L.A. Marathon’s Freeway Mural Is Up and Running--Again

Artist Kent Twitchell is back at work on his L.A. Marathon mural after it was defaced--twice in one week--last July. Twitchell resumed work after assurances by Inglewood social service groups that the mural, along the northbound lanes of the San Diego Freeway, would not undergo another graffiti attack.

“I was back in Philadelphia at the time the mural got hit, and I couldn’t do anything about it,” said Twitchell. “But when I got back, I went to the marathon people, and we discussed that if the mural just kept getting hit by the gangs, that even though I had a contract, I wouldn’t finish the mural if they didn’t want me to.

“But some community and youth service groups in Inglewood have been doing some kind of undercover work, talking with the people down there, because they really like the mural in the neighborhood. And the feedback that I’ve gotten is that people in the community feel pretty confident that I can proceed without it getting hit.”

Ironically, at the time his L.A. Marathon mural was defaced, Twitchell was painting a 35-foot-tall mural of basketball legend Julius Erving--a project commissioned by the Anti-Graffiti Network in Philadelphia.

Now back in Los Angeles, Twitchell on Wednesday began adding figures to his mural, which he began in 1988 and is between Manchester and Century boulevards. He plans to paint a total of about 25 runners on the mural before the 1990 Los Angeles Marathon on March 4.

Twitchell had planned to add three figures to his original two on the first day, but when temperatures soared into the mid-90s, his painting materials began to dry, and he had to stop part way into the second figure, he said.

Nonetheless, the artist says the 30-foot-high by 50-foot-wide mural, which he describes as “having the feeling of people being very powerful beings, but it’s almost in slow motion and completely in silence, so the power is held in check,” will have a total of nine runners within the next couple of weeks.

After that, he said, it’s back to the drawing board to plan his additional figures.

Twitchell, who is perhaps best known for his “The Old Woman of the Freeway” mural that loomed over the Hollywood Freeway until it was painted over by advertisers in 1986, is also at work on a 29-foot-tall mural of Jesus for the east wall of the science building at Biola University in La Mirada.