URBAN ART

A few years ago, Mike McNeilly’s specialty leaned toward pop art, including airbrushed paintings of dream girls, legs spread in black leather lingerie and fishnet hose. But his recent work has more of a political tone, a change inspired by the 6 o’clock news. “After General Motors laid off 74,000 workers,” the 38-year-old Los Angeles artist says, “I felt inspired to create something that was symbolic of the struggle facing American workers.”

That’s how McNeilly explains his plunge into what he calls “guerrilla street art.” Last September, McNeilly sent out 500 dollar bills (“power tools”) stamped with a “Buy American” slogan to government officials, including the President, corporate bigwigs, unions and the media. About the same time, he and a crew plastered New York and Los Angeles with 12,000 posters of his vibrantly colored, androgynous portrait of the Statue of Liberty, flanked by the words, “Buy American.” After Magic Johnson’s announcement in November that he was HIV-positive, McNeilly projected a 50-foot image of the words, “Do or Die”--with a torn condom package dotting the i --onto the the Playboy building in Hollywood for four hours.

McNeilly calls his genre “Lethal Art.” “I hope my art will open people’s eyes and make them aware of the individual’s power to change things,” he says.

The only child of a Herald Examiner Linotype operator and a secretary who migrated from Oklahoma City, McNeilly is no starving artist. Twenty years ago, he made enough money doing commercial photography to invest in pinball arcades. “I acquired a lot of wealth during the Reagan years.” It comes in handy too, now that he wants to keep his work pure. “I’m not represented by a gallery and I haven’t sold my work,” he says. “I want to get my message out on the streets without the wine-and-cheese confines of a gallery. I’ve spent several thousand dollars so far.”

So far, it’s working. Gannett Outdoor advertising is displaying his work, which also addresses child abuse and gang wars, on 50 L.A. bus stop shelters and he’s renting ad space on 450 bus benches. And his billboards will appear in the upcoming Warner Bros. film, “Falling Down.”

McNeilly bops around town “wild posting” his art--always within the confines of the law. “I don’t like to deface city property,” he says. “We don’t need to junk this city up more than it is.” And he continues to trade those almighty power tools stamped with his creed for goods and services made in the U.S.A. “I’m waiting to hear from the Treasury Department,” he says. “It’s probably totally illegal to rubber-stamp money. But it’s a gray area as far as I’m concerned.”