Enlisting the Help of Students

In 1997 when the original Ballona Postcards Mural was painted on the side of the Ballona Creek bike path in Culver City, the adult artists were assisted by students from the Culver City schools. The hope is that the same interest can be generated for the renovation starting on April 19.
On Friday, April 3 I attended the 8:00 am Ballona Postcards Mural Restoration presentation at Culver High School. Present were two of the original mural artists, Francois Bardol and Lucy Blake-Elahi. Cathi Lamm, a teacher at the school and a member of the Ballona Creek Renaissance Program, was the facilitator.
Francois Bardol started off the discussion with a general overview of the history of murals starting with cave paintings and on through the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans to the present day. He showed some examples of his own work, including the mosaic at the corner of the Culver Police Station building.
Lucy Blake-Elahi talked a little about some of her public art including the sundial on the top of Culver Park.
The students were shown a movie describing the creation of the original Ballona Postcards Mural and how it has deteriorated over the past decade because of neglect, vandalism, and graffiti. About ten students were invited to create drawings of something important in their lives. Francois then asked the artists to explain why they chose to draw what they did and why it was significant to them.
One student drew her future tattoo symbolizing that people can make things better or worse. Another drew a design representing baseball. Another drew a peace sign enclosed in an eye. (One of the drawings by a talented student.)

Francois then said he was going to rip up the drawings because nobody cared about them. Some of the students protested. He explained this was exactly what happened to the mural. The people who vandalized it were in effect saying this mural is not important.
He asked for help from the students. Could they come up with solutions to keep the mural from being vandalized in the future? He suggested one way is to report any graffiti right away while it is still small enough to deal with. The problem now is that the deterioration of the mural has gone on beyond the point of return and has to be completely redone from scratch.
Lucy stated that the mural depicts the history of Culver City and how important the creek was to the development of the city and to the Indians who inhabited the area before that.
She said we can think of the mural as a symbol. If we can keep the mural clean perhaps we can keep the creek itself clean, and that effort could spread out into the community. Today the creek is already so much cleaner than it was ten years ago.
Cathi Lamm closed the session by adding that we don’t want to be spending money on restoration, we would rather have money to spend on new projects.

Click here for more information about this project and how you can help! You don't have to be a student!
(photos copyright roslyn m wilkins)