COUNTYWIDE : Artists’ Mural to Show Beauty, Grit

It’s intended as a cross between Picasso’s gritty “Guernica” and the pastoral murals found on citrus shipping boxes of the 1930s and 1940s.

The mural-in-progress is the work of Ojai Studio Artists, a group of painters who want to publicize their plans for an artists’ open house in Ojai next month.

About 10 of the group’s 24 artists began work Saturday on the side of Meiners Oaks furniture reupholstery shop at 321 El Roblar Drive. The artists hope to continue through the week and finish by next weekend, said Karen Lewis, one of the artists.

“We think it would be wonderful if Ojai had more murals,” Lewis said. “What we’re trying to do here is juxtapose the beauty that inspires art and that we live in and the other things that inspire art, starving children and other images.”

One side of the mural--painted in dark, muted colors--will include a Los Angeles freeway sign superimposed on a book of matches, a starving Somalian child below a healthy woman eating an ice cream cone, and other such images. The other side is a replica of a fruit box mural, a vision of green citrus groves sprawling around a cream-colored building on a perfect day.

The group chose the building, only feet outside the Ojai city limits, with the specific desire to escape the city’s restrictive sign ordinance, said artist Mick Reinman.

Bill Kaderly, keeper of the reupholstery shop, said he and the building owner gave the group permission to splash colors on the concrete wall. So far, he said, he is pleased with the work.

“There’s a lot of talent in this valley.”

The project is designed as a permanent billboard to advertise the annual open house for area artists. It is scheduled for Oct. 24 and 25, and 21 Ojai artists will open their studio doors to the public on walking tours.

Tickets for the art weekend, at $10, are available from the Ojai Chamber of Commerce, (805) 646-8126.