Great Wall Restoration
Press conference today at the Great Wall of Los Angeles:
The Longest Mural in the World
The Great Wall of Los Angeles is getting a face-lift.
After many years, the mural has suffered extensive damage due to sun exposure and lack of restoration funds. Repair and repainting of the largest monument to interracial harmony in America continued this month and will startup again in the summer of 2010. SPARC has recruited a team made up of muralists, UCLA students and community youth, some include Great Wall alumni from the original 400 youth workers of thirty years ago.
“As SPARC’s first public art project and signature piece, I am proud to announce that the Great Wall has been declared a site of public memory worth preservation by California’s Cultural and Historic Endowment,” stated Judy Baca, Founder and Artistic Director of SPARC. The mural chronicles the contributions made by ethnic and diverse people to the history of America, in particular California; it goes from pre-historic time to the 1950’s.
About SPARC:
Creating Sites of Public Memory Since 1976. SPARC is committed to socially responsible art and art makers; to helping individual communities find their voice, giving it public expression, and having others hear it; breaking down barriers, real and perceived, between communities. What SPARC does is as much about public good as it is about public art.
See Great Wall Restoration in Faces
First 1000 feet restored.
Green Bridge
In addition to the mural’s face-lift, SPARC has partnered with the well-respected architecture firm, wHY Architects, to build an interpretive green bridge, a new component to the project. This newly designed replacement bridge will become a central public entrance and viewing platform for the mural and river. The defining metaphor of the Great Wall is: “a tattoo on the scar where the river once ran.” Therefore the “green bridge” will be built of recycled debris of the Los Angeles River.
