Muralist to Bring Back Art the City Wiped Out

A former Echo Park gang member-turned-muralist began repainting his best-known work Friday after Los Angeles officials agreed to pay for the paint as compensation for damage caused by a graffiti-removal crew.

At a subdued and wind-chilled ceremony, 29-year-old electrician Ruben Brucelyn put the first daubs of color back into his portrayal of four glowing faces that once graced the gloomy Sunset Boulevard underpass near Echo Park Lake.

A city-contracted crew blanked out the mural with rectangles of gray and beige paint last January. Brucelyn vowed to repaint it, but refused to begin until the city reimbursed him for supplies.

As Brucelyn finally broke out his paint brushes in front of television cameras, Councilwoman Gloria Molina stood behind him, promising that there would never again be such a mishap.

Because of the incident, Molina said, the city’s Cultural Affairs Department has decided to catalogue the city’s many uncommissioned murals, such as Brucelyn’s, and set up a process to prevent their inadvertent defacement by the companies hired by the city to paint out graffiti.

Under the guidance of Los Angeles muralist Kent Twitchell, Brucelyn painted the four faces in 1985 as a tribute to those who helped him escape the bonds of gang life. The faces were his own and those of Pastor Harold Helms of nearby Angelus Temple and the two men’s wives. The artist planned to add the faces of Twitchell and his wife.

Instead, the mural disappeared on Jan. 8 when a painting crew under contract to the Bureau of Street Maintenance was dispatched to the graffiti-splattered bridge where Sunset crosses Glendale Boulevard and Brucelyn’s four faces shared a wall with large patches of graffiti. Deciding the mural was not salvageable, a supervisor ordered it painted out.

Curtis Bianchi, the bureau’s general superintendent, insisted that it was the artist’s responsibility to keep the mural free of graffiti.

Since then, however, the Cultural Affairs Department agreed to pay Brucelyn $3,000 for supplies.