Artist’s Mural on Ecology Draws Wrong Crowd

Vandals have assaulted an artist and defaced the colorful mural he was commissioned to paint on a North Hollywood factory to educate people about the state of the environment.

Artist Hex Rios was punched by three or four men found climbing over the factory fence last Sunday when he arrived to work on the mural, said Michael Gold, owner of the New Hero clothing factory on Riverton Avenue.

Rios, who suffered minor facial injuries, returned to his car and drove away but did not call police, Gold said.

Factory workers arriving for work Monday morning found that the mural had been scrawled with reddish-orange graffiti and reported it to police, Lt. Michael Ranshaw of the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Ranshaw said the investigation is continuing, but police have no leads in the case. “I would have to say chances are slim that we’ll catch anybody,” he said.

Gold commissioned the mural for $6,400 to urge people to be more environmentally aware. Gold is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the vandals.

Composed of six panels, the mural zigzags around the one-story factory. In one panel, neon-orange walruses cavort in a purple sea. In another, a clear-cut forest is littered with dead trees. Nearby, an Indonesian medicine man crowned with red flowers performs a ceremony to heal the soul of the sick Earth.

The vandals painted squiggles and profanity over each panel, including phrases denigrating “your art.”

“It’s allegorical--that’s what we’re doing to the planet,” Gold said of the defacement.

Gold said he has decided to have the mural repainted and covered with an anti-graffiti coating that slightly dulls the color of the paints, but protects the artist’s work.