Back in the late 1980s my sons attended Otis Parsons Art Institute in L.A. and lived near Alvarado Street in an old, poor Mexican neighborhood. In the mornings in their new neighborhood an old man would walk through with a bucket full of freshly made tamales, crying out ‘Tamales for Sale’. It was a episode straight out of another time and another place–still alive in Los Angeles.
And for my sons, two young men who had been raised in suburban San Fernando Valley, the tamale man was a surprise, a representative of whole different world, even though less than 10 miles separated them.
I hadn’t thought about the tamale man in years until this morning when I was taking photos of the murals of Highland Park, when I came across an old man sitting outside of a store peeling the pads of prickly pear cactus–no doubt with the intention of selling them. They are very tasty! He and his friends and their grandchildren were seated in front of a very contemporary mural, one that didn’t face right onto the Metro Gold Line tracks, and I loved the contrast of ‘then and now’.
Some of that “Then and Now” shows clearly in the murals of Highland Park.
Just before the Metro Gold Line leaves Marmion Street in Highland Park, an artist has gone all out with a wall mural entitled ‘She Rides the Lion’ with a long row of figures mounted onto the fence facing the Gold Line tracks. The name of the art studio: 2 Tracks Studio.
I’m showing two of four parts of this mural which is entirely repainted and changed several times a year. It seemingly is being redone by different artists with different styles. I am not sure if a local art collective doing it. As I write this in 2020, this mural no longer exists with this image. Some other image by another artist occupies this space.
What surprised me at the time I took the photos was that the mural–which is about a half a block long–was tagged with graffiti. Tags on neighborhood murals are uncommon–at least it used to be that way–because there was a huge uproar by well-known Los Angeles artists and muralists chastising local taggers about disrespecting art and the artists after murals were sponsored by the City Government for the Olympics back in 1984. That gave the murals an official stamp of approval.
And I leave this topic with this charming amateur mural on the side of a garage. It’s visible from the Gold Line train.
Go here to see previous post about Highland Park murals.
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