Freeway Lady Is Returning

Slowly but surely, the Freeway Lady is coming back to life.

On Saturday, about a dozen volunteers joined muralist Kent Twitchell in helping restore his great-grandmother’s striking image, which became an icon to motorists on the Hollywood Freeway near downtown Los Angeles before it was painted over in 1986.

Volunteer Shakuntala Zakheim says this is the least pleasant part of the job because the volunteers have to cautiously use hand-held heaters and spatulas to scrape away 10 to 15 layers of paint before the more detailed work can be done.

As the work progressed Saturday, globs of melted paint fell from the wall, occasionally splotching a volunteer’s hair or clothing.

“This is the most gross stage, but it’s necessary,” the 24-year-old Zakheim said, adding that she doesn’t mind, if it means preserving outdoor artworks like the mural.

“Public art is the most important part of art today,” said the former student at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, “because it touches everyday life.”

The mural, the result of a county art program funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, was completed in 1974 but was covered up without warning by an outdoor advertising company, Blue Wallscapes, 12 years later.

It also had been covered since then by multiple layers of white paint and graffiti.

As the scraping went on Saturday, the face of the 30-foot-tall Freeway Lady was clearly visible, but her piercing blue eyes and white hair needed more work.

“We still have a month to six weeks to go before it’s really done,” Twitchell said during a break.

As more volunteers arrived, including those from the arts high school, they were heard to say, “Boy, she is coming back. She is coming back.”

“Destroying this was awful,” said Lisa Cabrera, one of the student volunteers.

The restoration effort seemed quite feasible shortly after the mural was painted over in 1986, when Twitchell, Zakheim and her father, art restoration expert Nathan Zakheim, exposed the lady’s blue eyes by peeling away a 3-square-foot patch of white block-out paint.

“I remember that day as if it was yesterday,” said Shakuntala Zakheim, who was 11 at the time. “I remember the process--the spatulas, the peeling, everything.”

Until then, solvents had been used--to no avail--in an attempt to remove the layers of paint.

Then Nathan Zakheim hit upon the idea of using heaters and spatulas on areas where varnish had been applied. Once the preparation material had been put on, the paint came off easily with the help of the heaters.

Nevertheless, the restoration effort--on the side wall of the Prince Hotel, adjacent to the freeway’s southbound lanes--stalled.

Twitchell sued the hotel owners in 1988 to ensure the mural’s restoration.

That was also the year that state lawmakers enacted the California Art Preservation Act, requiring that creators of public art be given 30 days’ notice before a work is destroyed.

In 1992, Twitchell’s lawsuit was settled, allowing him to make plans to begin the restoration.

In the meantime, however, more layers of white paint had been applied to the mural. Taggers, attracted to the white space, added their own graffiti.

After the Northridge earthquake in 1994, Twitchell moved from Echo Park to the Northern California town of Upper Lake.

But none of that--or the circuitous route of hotel stairwells and slanting roofs that the restoration crew must negotiate to access the mural--would discourage Twitchell from getting on with his rescue of the Freeway Lady.

“Everybody is so thrilled about this,” he said. “This is good news.”