Mural That Drew Protest Wins Grant for Artists

A mural of a bare-breasted woman being leered at by a man with an extra-long tongue provoked public outrage when it appeared on the wall of a house facing busy Vanowen Street in Reseda.

Bowing to public pressure, the teen-age graffiti artists painted over the mural last week and said they plan to replace it with artwork on a Christmas theme--but not before it drew enough attention to win them a $2,400 grant from City Councilwoman Joy Picus.

The Reseda High School youths will receive the money to buy supplies for a larger mural tracing Reseda’s history as part of an effort to redirect young graffiti artists, said Edward F. Roes, an aide to Picus.

“This is one of the most positive things I’ve seen happen between graffiti artists and the city,” said Alan Nakagawa, head of educational outreach for the Social and Public Art Resource Center, or SPARC. Nakagawa was instrumental in getting Picus to use some of the anti-graffiti funds for the mural project.

The artists, who call themselves “the Invincible Family,” are pleased with the prospect of gaining more “can-control” experience using aerosol paints as well as other tools on the larger mural. Larry Chavez, 16, whose nickname is Kosk, or Krazy Obscene King, said the boys expected there would be an outcry when they painted the bare-breasted woman with a bandoleer slung across her chest.

And so there was.

“You are destroying our neighborhood” was the mildest of the anonymous messages 72-year-old homeowner John Boyer found in his mailbox after letting the group from the neighborhood paint the bright green, red and blue mural on his six-foot-high cinder-block wall.

“Somebody can look in a magazine if that’s what they want to see--I’d prefer not to have to cover my kids’ eyes when I drive by,” said Olivia Sandoval, who lives nearby and complained to Picus.

“It’s morally offensive,” said Margy Platt, director of the nearby Reseda Baptist Church’s preschool.

But Marco Cisneros, 15, whose nickname is Anger, said he is incensed that “people hassled us when we were out there expressing our art--painting what we feel.”

The teen-agers would not have been permitted to paint the provocative mural had they followed city regulations and sought a permit from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission, said Adolfo Nodal, general manager of the department.

“When you’re doing public art, it’s got to be a marriage of artistic intent and community standards and issues,” he said. “We would have worked with them to come up with a better design.”

Bill Lasarow, president of the private, nonprofit Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles, agreed, saying community tastes have to be considered, especially when nonprofessional artists are involved.

Lasarow praised the city for standing behind freedom of expression in recent decades. In the early 1930s, city officials painted over a mural by David Alfaro Siquieros, which featured a crucified Mexican peasant being pecked at by an American eagle.

As for Boyer, a self-described art lover who has not been to a museum since 1946, said he did not know what the boys would paint when he gave them permission to use his wall. Many of his neighbors did not mind the mural, so the brouhaha surprised him, he said.

“The picture didn’t bother me,” Boyer said. “I’m a nudist anyway.”