When graffiti artists recently protested Los Angeles’ ban on street art by tagging their names in the sky where millions of Angelenos could see them, Judy Baca, executive director of the nonprofit Social and Public Art Resource Center, commented, “The graffiti made a wonderful statement: They can’t write on walls. The only place to express themselves is the sky.”…………More From LA Weekly

By Tony Cella and Simone Wilson

Artist/activist Saber has never been one to do anything in a “small” way as evidenced by his world record holding graffiti piece on the L.A. River — done in 1997 and visible from space before it was buffed last year. His latest projects are no exception. A couple weeks ago he unleashed a genius skywriting campaign over city hall to try to end the L.A. County mural moratorium and this week he joined forces with Occupy L.A. to contribute his Protest Flag, a 32 x 16 ft flag that divides into 64 separate protest signs, with slogans like “Bail Out Skid Row,” “Ass, Cash or Grass, Republicans Ride For Free” and “Art Is Not a Crime.”……………… MORE FROM Shelly Leopold at LA WEEKLY

Only Time Will Tell from Vans The Omega on Vimeo.

I am not really sure what to write here other than another beautiful mural in Los Angeles is gone. This one was named “Only Time Will Tell”. Murals in LA are a endangered species not only from the law makers with vendettas but people pasting advertisements over them. This is the fourth mural in a month that has been destroyed by advertisers using street art tactics. Its part of the game to get dissed by jealous haters, or buffed beige by the city, but it is especially difficult to swallow when a nonprofit raising awareness for a noble cause decides to blatantly disrespect you. I hope that every time I blow a head gasket over this issue people become more aware that they are encroaching into a world they obviously don’t understand and that there is a code of conduct that must be respected. Murals are our artistic legacy in Los Angeles and we as Angelinos need to be protect them……

The nonprofit group Falling Whistles is sorry for the destruction of the mural.

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Dear LA neighbors, artists and anyone else-

We screwed up.

Three years ago we learned about a war in Congo. A war that has taken millions of lives and continues to rape and kill daily.

Since that day we have hitchhiked, ridden bikes across the country and gone door to door building a coalition of people who want to see peace in Congo.

In our travels, the first place we felt truly welcomed was the Arts District. This was the neighborhood that accepted us for who we were and showed us – literally on the walls – how to speak up.

And so it was tragic to learn today that other members of that community felt disrespected by us and our actions.

After weeks of searching for a free wall, the wall on 2nd and Garey was donated to us. We were told by the building manager that the beautiful mural on the wall was scheduled to be sandblasted clean to the brick in the next 2 months. Before the wall was cleaned, we wanted to use it to make a statement of solidarity in the community.

And so we gathered hundreds of faces from around LA and Congo who all stood for an end to our worlds deadliest war, and we pasted them side by side. Instead of asking for signatures, we asked for faces. And each of those faces will be faxed directly to the White House.

The man in the center of the wall was a music photographer in the 70s who documented the peace movement of Dylan, Marley and Hendrix. The man on the left built a hospital in the war-region and does over a dozen surgeries a day for raped women and injured children. The woman on the right has pulled together women from across the war-region to take a stand and publicly take rapists to trial.

It was not our intention to disrespect the artists of that wall. Or any wall. We love the art in our community and treasure the freedom to say what we feel however we feel it. The point was to elevate the heroic nature of protest. And give people a chance to make themselves heard and seen. Something this neighborhood helped teach us.

But in the end, we did all of this on the wrong wall. And we screwed up. We respect the time, energy, money and talent that went into creating that mural. To the MSK crew and supporters – we apologize.

Had we known yesterday what we know today, we would have gone directly to the artists and talked about how we could do it together. We did not.

We learned today of the campaign against LA’s recent mural ban. Whistleblowing, like art, is about saying what needs to be said. And we are joining a chorus of voices in saying that that this ban must be revoked.

There is an important blog about it here http://saberone.com/blog/2011/09/19/art-is-not-a-crime…end-the-mural-moratorium/

We are committed to partnering however we can to gather signatures for this petition, offering policy support and doing all we can to continue to make our city an evolving, provocative, and beautiful place.

Tomorrow at 6pm, I will be at the wall at 2^nd and Garey to speak openly and freely with anyone who would like to talk further.

Sean

FALLING WHISTLES

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ARTISTS WHO WERE FEATURED ON THE 2ND STREET WALL

REVOK1

RIME

DABS & MYLA

ASKEW

VANS THE OMEGA

DEUS

SCORE

WITNESS

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Read more:

Revok Mural in L.A. Arts District Accidentlly Plastered Over by ‘Peace in Congo’ Campaign - LA WEEKLY

Group Apologies for Covering Iconic Street Art Mural - LA Times (L.A. Now blog)

Congo Charity Pastes Over Graffiti Crew’s Mural in Downtown Los Angeles - Huffington Post Arts

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100% of the proceeds from the sale of this T-shirt will go to furthering the “End Mural Moratorium” campaign.

BUY HERE

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Statement from the Artist:

9.19.2011

End Mural Moratorium. Art Is Not A Crime…

The reason I hired five jet planes to sky write over City Hall and downtown Los Angeles is to bring awareness to how ridiculous a moratorium on public art is.

The city states that all public murals are signage, effectively banning art from the walls of Los Angeles. And it is removed at the taxpayers’ expense. Money is given to private graffiti removal companies, who have broken onto private property to paint murals beige. The owners of small businesses where murals have been painted have been harassed and threatened with fines if they do not remove the artwork. Police officers raid homes and places of work, intimidating artists and building owners. During this time of economic crisis, “mural signs” are an easy target for the city to extract money. This moratorium is a clear violation of the first amendment right to free speech and enforcement for these unreasonable laws is a complete waste of taxpayer funds.

To put things in perspective I recently visited the beautiful set of murals inside the Terminal Annex Building on Alameda. This mural was painted in 1941-44 and was funded by the “Works Progress Administration” (WPA). Murals are just a part of the legacy of a national program that put the country to work during the Great Depression.

Fast-forward to the Great Recession, taxpayer money is now used to obliterate all traces of the artwork my generation have created. I believe this is city-funded censorship pushed by lawmakers with personal vendettas. Potential jail time is more probable for us than the opportunity of creating an artistic legacy for the next generation. In a city that used to proudly call itself the “Mural Capitol Of The World,” the officials who enforce this ban should be ashamed to call themselves “Angelinos.”

Art Is Not A Crime… End Mural Moratorium.

- SABER

Tell Mayor Villagaigosa and the L.A. City Attorney’s office to end the mural moratorium now:

Long War on Public Art in Los Angeles County

Click on the links below for more information:

* Mural Ordinance Update to the Cultural Affairs Commission

Heal the Bay House (Santa Monica – 2011) photo: saberone.com

* The ‘Heal The Bay House’ was created to by Risk and Retna raise awareness for Coastal Cleanup day.  RESTORE AND PROTECT THE WORLDS OCEANS is written in complex lettering on bands of color representing sky, pollution and water. A spokesperson for Heal the Bay called it “a powerful and beautiful way of reminding people of the value of the ocean,” but not everyone agreed. The day the artwork was unveiled, the city ordered an immediate take down and demanded a $5000 a day fine. Saber was on the scene to describe the cops initial response. While many in the upscale community wanted it to stay up longer, public pressure succeeded in keeping the artwork up through Costal Cleanup day.

* Despite the ban on murals, the Art District of downtown Los Angeles remains a “Haven for ‘Street’ Murals”

Fairfax Avenue Mural by Renta, Rime, Revok, Norm, Os Gemeos, Saber. Photo by Melrose and Fairfax

* One week before the opening of MoCA blockbuster exhibition Art in the Streets, a private contractor working for the city of Los Angeles broke into fenced private property to buff a mural by several artists featured in the upcoming controversial show. The building owner and surrounding community were furious and stopped the whitewash halfway across the mural. The contractor was forced to come back the next day remove the dull beige paint.

* A North Hollywood woman on a fixed income commissioned a 75 ft. mural  to brighten the alley next to her home, but Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety inspectors concluded that a single word included in the fanciful swirls and other spray-painted designs turned the piece into an illegal “sign.” Facing mounting fees and unable to pay $10,000 for a permit, she was forced to have it painted over. One of the young men who painted it over said “Instead of this, the city ought to be fixing potholes. Let the art survive.”

* The owner of the Studio City Car Wash had an artist paint The Great Wall of Studio City but the 64-foot-long mural is threatened with a $1,000-a-day fine for violating city codes.

* City council panel’s take on the ‘mural vs. commercial sign’ debate in June of 2010

* Private residents commissioned the artist, Phil Lumbang to paint this cheerful mural on the front wall of their home, but the city’s Building & Safety Department found the mural violated the city’s restrictions on outdoor advertisements and they were told they must paint over the illegal mural. A commenter said “I live just up the street from this house and I miss the mural every time I pass by.”

* Despite protests, as of 2009 murals continue to be outlawed.

Photo: knowngallery.com

* The SABER piece in the LA River, with reputation for being the largest graffiti piece had drawn admirers from around the world for 12 years before it was buffed by the Army Corps of Engineers and city sub-contractors.

* In 2007, the graffiti gallery Crewest, along with help from the activist group Friends of the L.A. River (FoLAR) organized “Meeting of Styles: LA.” The event brought together over 100 graffiti artists to spray paint a 10,000 square foot section of the L.A. River at the Arroyo Seco Confluence in Highland Park. Despite the fact that the organizers secured all necessary permits for the mural project, and that the event was fully licensed by the county; supervisor Gloria Molina objected to the work after the fact and introduced an emergency measure to the County Board of Supervisors that forced the mural to be whitewashed from the flood walls. A spokeswoman for Molina called the legal graffiti murals a “public nuisance and a potential safety hazard,” and justified Molina’s decision to introduce the mural’s removal by saying the county was “trying to save lives.”

* It wasn’t always like this, back in the 1970’s more than 400 mural productions were supported through the Citywide Murals Program under the Department of Recreation and Parks before the program was disbanded. The non-profit SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center) was founded in the spirit of work like The Great Wall of Los Angeles.

A view of “America Tropical,” partly whitewashed. (Credit: PBS)

* Of course, this sort of thing has a long history in Los Angeles. In 1932, David Alfaro Siqueiros painted America Tropical in a rooftop beer garden on Olvera Street. The mural’s centerpiece featured a crucified Indian, hovered over by an imperial American eagle. The part of the offending mural that could be seen from the street was covered almost immediately; the rest was whitewashed within a year.

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SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Obey, The Seventh Letter, Upper Playground, Juxtapoz Magazine , Willie T, and the amazing people at Worldwide Sky Advertising

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Radio Interviews With Saber On The Project And Petition:

KCRW Which Way, L.A.? Interview

KPCC Patt Morrison Interview

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URBANWORLD Film Festival

In 2008, a deco-style fortress built in the ’50s and originally belonging to a prominent family in Santa Monica fell into foreclosure in the middle of an extensive renovation. Until three months ago it stood vacant, an eerie house on a bluff with a homeless woman squatting the top floor. The terraced gardens in back had overgrown and were infested with rats. The neighbors on this otherwise upscale block wondered and complained.

Then came Adam Corlin, with a cause, a dare, and an endless supply of tarps. Corlin, a successful builder and a fourth generation Santa Monica resident, had his eye on this property, and when the price dropped to 50 percent of its original asking price, he jumped at the opportunity to own it.

But this was no ordinary flip — Corlin had some time in his hacienda rehab schedule and wanted to raise awareness for his favorite charity, Heal the Bay, the environmental group working to restore Santa Monica Bay. In speaking to the organization, he knew it had to be different than the usual donation or doing volunteer work. He had a blank house in Santa Monica, he had resources to do something big, and he had just met a graf artist appropriately named Risk………..

Continue Reading @LA WEEKLY

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Story And More Images From LA TACO HERE

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More Amazing Shots By Carlos Gonzalez @KNOWN GALLERY

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SABER WORD’S:

When I arrived to look at the amazing work my friends have done, the police were all ready there. The Santa Monica Police were actually really cool and thought the project was awesome. Once they got on the phone, the deminor suddenly changed. Their chief was contacted by some “higher ups” all the way from downtown LA, apparently forcing them to harass the people involved. They couldn’t find a reason why they were called then left. Right after, a city & code representative showed up and said he was told from those “higher ups” to figure out some sort of citation to write against the project. Even he was amazed on why he was called to harass this project so he basically had to make up a citation. Then the police came back and still couldn’t believe the pressure that was put on them to cause any sort of problem for the people involved. A couple hours past and another city & code person showed up this time armed with a $5000 dollar a day citation fee for the resident’s owner, basically the violation was working with the artist Risky. No laws were broken on this private property, the install is up to code and safety standards were clean. The Sheriffs even sent an undercover over in the morning posing as a journalist, of course that was a waste of their time as well.

So two local artist come together to raise awarness and possibly money for a great cause to help clean up the local beach and what unfolds is a complete abuse of local city power, sending multiple departments over to shut this amazing project down. That’s four different agencies spending hours of their day running around harassing  private citizens to fine an organization $5000 a day when the goal was to raise money for a great cause. This abuse stems from city hall and even went as far as using other jurisdictions man hours to satisfy some assholes with sticks up his asses. If this is how the City Attorney spends his time on his daily basis then know wonder this city is falling apart. First Amendment rights were clearly violated not to mention taking the money away from a positive cause. This is a perfect example on why we should vote these assholes out of office…….

And I’m sure more will unfold…….

A superhero among the spray-can set and one of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department’s most wanted vandals, the artist known as Revok, aka Jason Williams, has had quite an eventful year. On the heels of his work for MOCA’s “Art in the Streets” show, Revok captured headlines after his most recent arrest (for missing a court appearance) April 21 at LAX. His subsequent bail was set at a record high for vandalism, $320,000, and he was sentenced to six months in jail for unpaid property restitution of $3,700. He served 44 days, yet hasn’t painted an illegal mural or committed art crime in Los Angeles for years……  READ MORE

By Shelley Leopold

REVOK1.COM

KNOWNGALLERY.COM

CLICK HERE