CULVER CITY — A historic public artwork by the pioneering Chicano muralist collective East Los Streetscapers was recently painted over, leaving questions as to how or when it will be restored.
“Moonscapes III,” a cosmic tableaux wrapping around all four sides of the the Culver City Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), depicted Maya astronomers, contemporary astronauts, Albert Einstein, and other scenes related to the study and exploration of space. It was completed in 1979 by David Botello and Wayne Healy with funding from the California Arts Council and Office of the State Architect’s Arts in Public Buildings program.
The original project was for an artwork inside the DMV, “but it was glass doors and wood panelling,” David Botello told Hyperallergic of his site visit in 1977.
“We thought, ‘We can’t do anything here,’” Botello continued. “So we leave, and I turn around and see the building is painted black. ‘We could do a giant black velvet painting of the moon,’ I thought.”
Their proposal for a space-themed exterior mural was accepted, and the pair brought on David’s younger brother Paul who was still in high school, and fellow artist George Yepes, whom David had known since childhood, to assist. Scenes ranged from futuristic vehicles cruising extraterrestrial freeways, Einstein riding a bicycle, astronauts in a lunar rover, and astronomers from different eras and places, “each pointing to the same point in space, each documenting the life of the same star,” Botello said.
“The Maya [astronaut] sees a red giant. The Chinese figure sees a supernova, and the modern scientist looks through the new radio telescope in Arecibo pointing to the nebula-remains of the star,” Botello explained.
In 1986, they touched up the mural and added additional scenes, such as a memorial to the astronauts who were killed when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff.
At the end of February, artists Harry Gamboa Jr. and Barbara Carrasco were driving through Culver City when they passed by the DMV and saw an orange-vested work crew painting over “Moonscapes III” with a coat of dull, beige paint. Carrasco snapped some pictures and sent them to the Botellos, who immediately contacted the DMV office in Sacramento, getting them to halt the whitewashing before the last wall was covered over.
“It was emotional. The piece was beautiful,” Paul Botello told Hyperallergic after seeing the painted over wall. “The remaining panels were still in great condition.”
Chris Orrock, a public information officer for the California DMV, said the agency had made the decision to repaint the mural because the wood had deteriorate and the work had become a target for graffiti. “The DMV attempted to locate information on the mural, its artists and the organization(s) responsible for the mural, with no success,” Orrock said. “The DMV is now engaged with the artist about restoring some or all of the mural.”
Botello says he was never contacted about the mural, despite the fact that his name and Healy’s are clearly visible on the artwork. According the California Art Preservation Act (CAPA) and the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, artists must receive a 90-day notice if building owners want to alter or destroy their work. These pieces of legislation have been applied to other cases, notably when Kent Twitchell’s downtown LA mural of Ed Ruscha was painted over in 2006, resulting in a $1.1 million settlement for the artist after he sued the federal government and 11 other defendants.
East Los Streetscapers invoked CAPA in 1988 when their 1980 mural “Filling Up on Ancient Energies” was all but destroyed alongside the Shell Gas Station it adorned on 4th and Soto streets. After losing their initial case, the artists won on appeal, receiving damages from Shell in 1991.
Botello says he sees no need to pursue legal options yet, since the DMV said it has agreed to work with him on restoration. What that process will look like remains unclear, however. The artist has been consulting with an art resorter to ascertain whether the primer and paint used by the DMV can be safely removed, and whether the mural will need to be completely repainted. Once that is determined, he will send the DMV an estimate.
For artist Vincent Ramos, who grew up in nearby Venice, the mural offered rare examples of Latine representation in images of space, and STEM more broadly.
“All of my uncles worked for the aerospace industry, and I remember hearing older people talking about that mural,” Ramos told Hyperallergic. He specifically referenced a large image of an astronaut on the lunar surface, its mirrored helmet reflecting a sunny LA street with cars, palm trees, and a small zoot-suited pachuco figure. “I vividly remember that as a kid,” Ramos said. “Almost as a kind of camouflaged reference to the communities there.”
While LA’s Eastside has a prominent legacy of Chicano muralism, there are fewer extant examples on the Westside, as the area’s demographics have shifted more dramatically over the past few decades. “Venice now is unrecognizable to folks who grew up there. A lot of those murals have disappeared,” he said. “This mural had elements of culture embedded within it.”