Muralism Passing from One Generation to the Next: Restoring the Great Wall of Los Angeles

Posted: September 8th, 2011

SPARC’s Artistic Director Judy Baca and Project Manager Carlos Rogel restore the Great Wall of Los Angeles in the Los Angeles River.

Click here to see the Slide Show and Photo Gallery of the Great Wall Restoration by The City Project.

The Great Wall restoration is rich with meaning at many levels.  The Judy Baca of today is reexamining the artwork created by the Judy Baca of the 1970s.  The Judy of today is also reexamining the younger Judy.  Judy Baca is passing down muralism to the next generation as she teaches SPARC crews to restore the Wall, just as she studied at David Alfaro Siqueiros’s studio.  Restoring the Great Wall helps revitalize the Los Angeles River, and river revitalization helps Great Wall restoration.  Judy was revitalizing the River decades before others.  The next phase is to expand the Great Wall to the present.  The Great Wall creates jobs for artists, youth and others during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  The Great Wall is a best practice example for urban revitalization and public art.

The Great Wall of Los Angeles is the largest monument to inter-racial harmony in the United States.  The Great Wall was created and directed by Judy Baca, California Chicana muralist and the Founder and Artistic Director of SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center, Debra J.T. Padilla, Executive Director).  The Great Wall is a half-mile long monument and a landmark to the history of the United States and California from prehistoric times to the 1950’s. Begun in 1976 and completed over five summers, the Great Wall employed over 400 youth and their families from diverse, social and economic backgrounds working with artists, oral historians, ethnologists, scholars, and hundreds of community members.

“The purpose of any monument is to bring the past into the present to inspire the future.”  Judy Baca.

Come to the Great Wall Community Picnic to celebrate the restoration! Saturday, September 17, 2011, at Coldwater Canyon between Burbank Boulevard and Oxnard Street in the San Fernando Valley.

Click here for more information about the Great Wall and SPARC.