A Story, but No Writing, Is on the Wall

The annals of public art projects are full of disappointments and disasters. All too often when the art finally materializes, good intentions about making the urban environment more beautiful or interesting disappear in a morass of miscommunications, artistic compromises, aborted collaborations, public objections or committee decisions that please no one.

It comes as quite a surprise, then, to discover “Enrapture: Scene 1,” a recently unveiled pair of outdoor murals by Bay Area painter Mark Stock. They adorn two buildings at Los Angeles Center Studios, a new complex of sound stages on the campus of the former Unocal headquarters in downtown Los Angeles. The artworks not only conform to the artist’s idea, they are unlikely to be dismissed as “plunk art” because their format and theme are related to the film studio location.

What’s more, the murals seem to please everyone involved. Particularly the artist.

“This was a dream project,” Stock said of the ambitious work, dubbed “the slowest-moving story ever told.” The two 61-by-35-foot images--which are photo-enlargements of paintings printed on vinyl--are the first installment of a three-part narrative that will unfold over time. “Scene 2” will replace the currently displayed images with another pair in about a year; “Scene 3” will follow a year later. “To tell a whole story in three moments is hard, but I think it’s going to work,” he said.

The cost of the artwork has not been disclosed, but it was funded by developers Smith, Hricik & Munselle under the city’s “percent for art” ordinance. The law requires that 1% of construction budgets of nonresidential projects costing more than $500,000 be spent either on on-site art or be put into a city trust fund for arts programs.

Many “percent for art” projects that have popped up since 1989, when the ordinance took effect, are tucked away in obscure locations. Stock’s paintings can be glimpsed from a few downtown vantage points, but they are best seen at the corner of 4th and Boylston streets. Viewers who want an even closer view, inside the security fence, must make arrangements by calling Los Angeles Center Studios, at (213) 891-1234.

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On site, one sees two enormous images on adjacent buildings. The panel on the right portrays a woman holding the base of a drinking glass to her ear and pressing the glass to a wall as she tries to hear what’s going on in the next room. The other panel depicts a white vase of red flowers that has fallen to the floor and cracked into several pieces.

What do these pictures mean? Stock isn’t telling.

Among the few clues he offers are that the woman is lonely, lives in an apartment and is “kind of obsessed with sounds coming from a next-door neighbor’s room. She hears the sound of a vase breaking, but she doesn’t know what it is,” he said. “And then the story gets more involved.”

As for films that might have inspired the project, Stock named three--director Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” and “The Tenant” and David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”--then added that they all “deal with obsession.”

He’s much more forthcoming about formal aspects of his painting and the nature of his working process, however. The image of the woman listening through a glass came from one of Stock’s recent paintings. At first he simply planned to create one more image that would relate to the woman and suggest a simple story, he said. Instead, he picked up an idea developed two years ago in an exhibition of his work at Modernism Gallery in San Francisco, and turned the project into a long-running, three-part narrative.

“I’m interested in film, so when I was preparing for that show at Modernism I thought, why not do a storyboard instead of individual paintings?” Stock said. “I did a murder mystery, in eight sequential oil paintings, about a woman who kills her husband. You never really see the murder; it’s all implied. But the paintings are so open-ended, people sort of know what is going on. Doing that set me up to do this series.”

Stock, 48, was born in Frankfurt, Germany, and “grew up all around as an Army brat,” he said. He studied printmaking at the University of South Florida in Tampa, graduated in 1976 and immediately landed a job at Gemini G.E.L., a renowned publisher of fine art prints and multiples in Los Angeles. He left Gemini in 1979 but remained in Los Angeles until 1991, when he moved to Oakland. In the meantime, he taught himself to paint--concentrating on the human figure--and branched out into set design for Los Angeles Chamber Ballet.

“When I started painting figuratively, I began photographing my subjects, who are friends and actors,” he said. “I work from photographs, but I heighten the color so the painting becomes another entity.” Stock also has developed a process of shooting still pictures as his models enact various scenarios. “That’s how I have been painting for the last 15 years, taking photographs in a film setting, looking through a viewfinder as if I am a cinematographer,” he said. “So it’s all kind of related to film.”

“Enrapture: Scene 1” is Stock’s first outdoor work, and it brought new challenges. The murals were printed on vinyl by Gold Graphics, a Pacoima firm that produces museum banners.

“I was concerned about the flatness that I thought would happen, so I tried to make the paintings a little more painterly so the photographs would pick up some kind of brush stroke,” he said. The result is “unbelievable,” he said, and seeing the finished works unrolled from the roof of the buildings at a glitzy unveiling added an unforgettable dash of drama.

“I remember when I was a young artist, wondering if I would ever have a one-man show in a museum or gallery,” Stock said. “After that happened, having the curtain open on a ballet and hearing the audience applaud the set I had designed was a real thrill. But this unveiling topped it all off. The combination of the music, the crowd of 400 people, the size of these paintings and the sight of spotlights hitting them--on a sound stage in a movie studio--I mean, for me that was the most exciting moment in my career.”

“Enrapture” is also something of a landmark for Merry Norris, the project’s matchmaker. A fixture of the art scene who was president of the Cultural Affairs Commission of the city of Los Angeles from 1986-90 and vice president from 1984-86, she also served on the executive committee of the Task Force on the Arts that created the “percent for art” requirement. But Stock’s work is the first “percent for art” project she has facilitated in her career as an art consultant.

“It was a thrill for me because the developers were so responsive to ideas,” Norris said. “Every time I met with them, here were all these happy, smiling men.”

That isn’t exactly normal behavior in “percent for art” territory. But Stephan Smith, one of six owners of Smith, Hricik & Munselle and spokesman for “the smiling men,” said the project was “lots of fun” largely because of Norris’ “vision and energy.” She offered lots of ideas and options, and as soon as they saw examples of Stock’s work, they knew he was the artist they wanted, Smith said.

The firm has commissioned artworks for other buildings, but this one is unusual, he said. “We hope people will look at the paintings, wonder what they are, how they work and get some enjoyment from them.”

So far, response to the project has been positive, he said. Many people have asked what’s coming up in “Scene 2” and “Scene 3,” but Smith tells them he doesn’t know. “It’s true,” he said, “but of course nobody believes that.”