‘Old Woman’ Mural Being Restored

Kent Twitchell, standing on a hotel roof, used his left hand to blast scorching hot air on what had been a mysterious-looking grandmother. With his right hand he took a metal spatula and dug in, scraping away paint that had hidden her face for more than a decade.

“She’s looking better now,” he said Saturday, noting the return of a pinkish tone to the face. “It takes a lot of patience, but she’ll be back up soon.”

Twitchell, one of Los Angeles’ most renowned muralists, and a dozen volunteers began to bring back to life “The Old Woman of the Freeway,” a 20-foot mural painted by the artist in 1974 with the face of his great-grandmother in mind.

The mural near downtown was meant, the 56-year-old artist said, to highlight the “deep wisdom” and “mystery” of older women. He painted her afghan shawl, wrapped serpent-like around her neck and flying off into darkness, to represent comfort cloaked by danger. He painted her eyes to simultaneously cast judgment and unconditional love.

For just over 12 years the old woman peered out over motorists driving from downtown Los Angeles toward Hollywood on the Hollywood Freeway.

“If you were in your car and you had just been cheating on your wife, [the old woman would] scorn you,” said Twitchell. “But if you had just come from doing a good deed, she’d look upon you with love and kindness.”

In 1987 the mural was painted over in white by the hotel’s owner, Koichi Kurokawa, who wanted to use the wall space for a billboard.

There followed years of wrangling highlighted by an angry public outcry, state intervention that kept Kurokawa from putting up advertising space, and a lawsuit, filed by the artist and settled out of court.

In the meantime, Twitchell moved to Northern California after the Northridge earthquake destroyed his Echo Park studio.

Now, Twitchell and his supporters at the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles are finally poised to bring the artwork back to life.

Employing a technique developed by art restoration expert Nathan Zakheim, the workers used heat guns to blister the white wall and spatula-like scrapers to peel the paint away. As planned, a covering of varnish, applied by Twitchell in 1974 to protect the mural from pollution, proved resistant to the heat guns and ended up protecting the painting.

Zakheim and Twitchell had teamed up to try to restore the mural in 1996. That effort ended in failure when they ran out of money, the old woman’s face partially brought back to the world. When the restoration effort was abandoned, the mural was again painted over in white.

Now the hotel owner is giving Twitchell a new chance to restore the work, and the artist believes the restoration will finally be completed.

The volunteers included muralists, art lovers and others simply out to help restore what one woman called “L.A.’s graceful grandmom.” On Saturday, they huddled in clusters, earnestly poring over small sections of the wall.

The smell of bubbling latex paint wafted in the air like scorched rubber. Freeway sounds droned away in the background, forcing the workers to shout instructions to one another over a hum of passing cars and tractor-trailers.

Twitchell, who has created such notable L.A. murals as the 80-foot painting of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra that adorns a 7th Street parking structure, said it will probably take six more days to get all the paint off. He hopes to complete the task by midsummer, since finding days when all of the volunteers can work together has proved difficult.

“It’ll be a real blessing when we have her back,” said Terry Supple, who showed up just to watch.