J
udy Baca is an artist acclaimed for her large-scale public murals, and the most ambitious project yet undertaken by the professor in the College’s César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies has reached a new plateau, after 37 years in planning, creation, and restoration. The “Great Wall of Los Angeles”—2,740 feet of mural along the façade of the Tujunga Wash Flood Control Channel in the Los Angeles River—has been restored to its original luster, and grand plans for new work are underway. Baca (left) conceived the project in 1974 that depicts the history of the peoples of California from prehistoric times to the 1950s. Painting started in the summer of 1976; the work required five intermittent summers and concluded in 1984 (painting is possible only in the dry months when the channel is clear). Involved in production of the Great Wall were local artists, historians, community members, and more than 400 students, many of them young offenders involved as part of their rehabilitation. Created through Baca’s Social and Public Art Resource Center (SPARC), the Great Wall runs more than a half-mile along the river adjacent to the Tujunga Greenbelt. The mural has been acclaimed as a testament to the spectrum of heritages
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www.sparcmurals.org
that have been part of the local culture, from Chumash Indians to soldiers to settlers to farmers to defense plant workers. Twenty-five years of pollution and sunlight dulled the mural’s vivid colors, so restoration began in 2009 with sandblasting, repainting, and sealing the surface with a protective acrylic coating that was completed in September 2011. Baca’s recent UCLA students and alumni of work on the Great Wall from 30 years ago were involved. Next for the Great Wall: an interpretive viewing bridge, constructed in part from debris found in the river basin. And Baca is planning to continue the mural on the opposite wall, with panels that highlight the 1960s to 1990s. “The mural is not art simply as art,” Baca said. “It’s also an approach to art that has a strong relationship to place and community, as well as to the issues they’re facing. Everyone finds a piece of themselves in it.” The Great Wall of Los Angeles is in the San Fernando Valley, on the west side of the Los Angeles River flood control channel next to Coldwater Canyon Avenue between Burbank Boulevard and Oxnard Street. To view the Great Wall, exit the 101 Freeway at Coldwater Canyon and go north one mile; park near Burbank Boulevard.
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