A view of the mostly-complete southern half of the intersection mural - photo by Yuki
We enjoyed another great talk by Mark Lakeman of Portland’s City Repair last Friday night, and on Saturday we were inspired by their example to paint a new intersection repair mural.
These photos are worth many thousands of words – thanks to Kathy Hill and Yuki Kidokoro for documenting the event!
We had a lot of help from the youth of the neighborhood - Jennifer (in red) did a lot of great work - and that's me on the right - Photo by Kathy
Young eco-villager Jean Michel prepping the area before painting
Another very hard-working neighborhood youth named Mohammed, he has just finished outlining that triangle in purple - photo by Kathy
Adonia and Christopher putting down our new crosswalks - photo by Kathy
There’s a lot to say about it… and a lot more folks that did a lot of work whose picture I didn’t get in to this quick blog entry. I am still exhausted and have other work to catch up on… so this blog entry is all too brief, and hopefully others can help fill in more details in comments, etc.
The central wheel of the design is based on a bicycle wheel, extending its spokes into a circle design about 15 feet across - photo by Yuki
Josie at work on the northern part of the mural which features a water swirl design that commemorates the historical waters of Arroyo de la Sacatela and the Bimini Slough
Kwanwoo did a lot of excellent detail lettering in this, the northmost section, which featured a commemoration of the railroad tracks in our street which conveyed the H-line streetcars.
LINKS and LINKS to more articles about the intersection repair:
More historic info on the Bimini Slough, Sacatela Creek, and our train tracks here.
Earlier Eco-Village blog articles in anticipation of this event here1, here2, and here3.
There’s excellent event coverage over at Homegrown Evolution. (Check out the comments there… looks like the new crosswalks we painted look almost too official!)
Eco-Villager Adonia Lugo has more excellent coverage here, including much better descriptions of the railway section where she and Bobby took the lead. She and contrasts how different parts of L.A. approach their common spaces.
Here’s a link to Kathy’s photo gallery on Picassa and to Yuki’s photo album on Facebook. (I am not 100% sure that these are completely available to the public… if they don’t work for you, email us and we’ll see what we can do.)
I covered it on my art blog, too.
At the end of the day we painted handprints and footprints of all the folks who worked on the mural. Here's Mark Lakeman getting his foot painted blue, so he can print it on our new crosswalk. Photo by Yuki
The little boy painting with me is Christopher. He and his sisters Ruby and Stephanie helped out a lot!
[...] by Damien Newton on September 15, 2009 Just another Saturday at the Eco-Village. Photo: Yuki/Eco-Village Blog [...]
I especially like the hand and foot prints made in the sidewalk for all of those that participated…it adds a nice human touch to the overall beauty of it all.
@Ron – The hand and footprints in the crosswalks were Rebexx’s idea… and a very good idea. The kids were definitely into it… and adults too. (I think we missed folks who couldn’t stay all day… so maybe I will have another hand/foot printing session – for Ashley, Leslie and others.)
i had wanted to take my kids over that day, but we just came from somewhere. It was hot and they were tired so we just went straight home and I made them take a nap.
Hello LAEVers. Just wanted to share that I’ll be driving up to Portland for the annual Village Building Convergence in a few weeks and am happy to take additional passengers. Please feel free to post this widely, as I cannot find an appropriate bulletin board for the LAEV online.
I’ll be driving a 5-passenger car, which so far has only me in it, departing San Diego on Friday evening (May 21), going through L.A., spending Saturday evening in Santa Barbara, and then continuing north on Sunday.
I plan to make a few stops to visit friends along the way that are doing cool work. We could stop wherever you’d like. We would camp or couchsurf each evening. We would arrive in Portland sometime around May 27, give or take one day.
Mike.
Have you guys gotten any vibes from the city? I’m interested in doing this kind of thing in Sacramento but wonder what exactly the related laws are.
~JD
The city has completely ignored the project. What I would suggest (and much of this is learned from City Repair experience in Portland – as communicated by Mark Lakeman) is that if your neighbors like your project – and if none of them complain to the city – then the city will be cool with it. The first time we painted this mural, we did contact our local city councilmember. They were supportive, but clear that there wasn’t really a way to straightforwardly permit this… so they kind of looked the other way while we did it.
Just go for it! Get your neighbors together and enjoy. Easier to ask for forgiveness afterward than to get permission before.
[...] City Repair. This weekend, we mostly freshened-up the mural painted in 2009 – covered here – while adding a few new twists. It was a great opportunity to bring people together. Lots [...]
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