Ground Turbulence : Winds at LAX Threaten Huge Canvas Wall Mural for World Cup

It looked more like the start of the America’s Cup than the World Cup.

There Lilya Voroby was, barking out orders to her crew to pull the ropes and hoist the canvas into the wind as she tried to tack to the left.

Except that Voroby was at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday afternoon--not the ocean. And instead of clutching the wheel of a 12-meter racing yacht, she was hanging on to the edge of a 46 1/2-foot-tall soccer mural.

She was trying to hang the hand-painted mural on the side of an airport parking structure elevator tower as a welcome to sports fans arriving for the upcoming World Cup soccer matches.

But the 30 m.p.h. wind that funnels past the United Airlines terminal was causing the $35,000 mural to billow and snap like a mainsail caught in a hurricane.

It was the second day that Voroby had struggled to attach the 40-foot-wide, half-ton mural on the airport wall. On Tuesday, the mural had turned out to be too heavy for the rod it was rolled onto and had bent in the middle as it was being hoisted off the ground.

The colorful painting is one of five murals around town commissioned by World Cup organizers to promote the soccer championships. It is the only one designed to hang from a wall instead of being attached to it, however.

The mural’s billowing sent artist Willie Herron bellowing.

“They’re trying to raise it like a sail,” said Herron, 40, a native of City Terrace. “When I got here and saw what was happening, I blew up. They’re jeopardizing my work. This is real serious.”

Herron, who spent 16 hours a day for two months painting the mural with assistant Umberto Caiafa, 29, said the flapping has caused the paint and sealer used on the canvas to crack. That means the painting--depicting soccer players reaching for a globe--could wash away the first time it rains.

“This is supposed to be up until 1999. It may not last the week.”

The five soccer murals were commissioned by World Cup officials through a Venice-based group called the Social and Public Art Resource Center.

Debra Padilla, associate director of the center, said airport officials insisted on a hanging mural that could be removed easily because the city may soon use the wall for revenue-producing advertising. She said World Cup leaders chose the elevator wall, even though airport officials warned that the site was a “wind channel.”

Tom Winfrey, a Department of Airports spokesman, replied: “The mural was presented to us as a temporary thing. We are considering advertising at the airport, but where and how has not been determined.”

The flapping mural was causing a mural flap of another kind from onlookers, meantime.

Arriving passenger Juan Quesada of Puerto Rico said the soccer players in the painting looked more like rugby players to him.

“Take it down!” said airport baggage handler Charles L. Davis III. “We don’t want to look at this thing for four years.” The Laker Girls might be a better subject, he suggested.

Airport security guard Michael Simpson pronounced the mural’s pastel colors “dull looking.”

But airport passenger Guy Wright, a Miami jewelry designer, praised the colors as “exquisite.” “The minute I walked out of the terminal and saw it I said, ‘Wow, that’s beautiful!’ ”

Bobbi Vix of Chatsworth agreed. “It’s cheery and very optimistic looking,” she said. Back at the elevator shaft, Herron shook his head. “I wish I could have painted it directly on the wall,” he said.

Fifty-five feet over his head, Voroby was gradually getting an upper hand with the balky canvas.

“I wish he’d painted it on the wall too,” she said.