Sandow Birk Isn't Laughing
The artist answers critics of his Hollenbeck mural
By Ron Garmon
To Sandow Birk, the public detonation over his new mural must have all the charmlessness of a premature joybuzzer. Soon to absorb a monumental stretch of the new Hollenbeck police station, the work took a preliminary PR beating last week while still packed in crates awaiting installation. Some Boyle Heights residents are angered by photos of sections reportedly depicting the venerable Mexican-American neighborhood as “a crime-ridden dump filled with fat women, stray dogs, beer-swilling men and illegal street vendors.”
Admittedly, Birk’s made important bones as a satirist with a knack for ironically chosen subjects oft-rendered in terms of the mock-heroic, such as The Liberation of Baghdad, or mock-idyllic, like a series of landscape paintings of each of California’s 33 state prisons. Still, from public and official response to a relative handful of the mural’s 4,000-plus tiles, anyone would think the neighborhood had been reimagined as a MAD magazine cover, with LAPD station commander Blake Chow opining, “This really paints a dark picture of Hollenbeck.”
Only the story isn’t so simple as an elite outsider cocking a snook at a working-class community. “I’m really quite distressed that there’s been such an outcry on what I think is a great project, and that the criticisms are so outlandish and false,” Sandow Birk let me know via e-mail. “The LAPD was involved in the project at every step of the way, and the imagery in the mural was suggested by LAPD officers from Hollenbeck station themselves. This has been a huge project that has been going on for five years, from planning to coming up with a design to the final creation of the mural. At every meeting that I have attended there have been LAPD members and community members involved. They told me stories about the history of the precinct, gave me a tour of the facilities, and showed me their favorite places to eat, as well as memorabilia and stories of remarkable police officers. All of their input was used in the creation of the final design.”
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Boyle Heights will be an almost half-block-long and 14-foot-high tribute to Diego Rivera and the “Big Four” muralists Birk studied at the behest of the Mexican government. To be installed in late May, the mural comes after four years of research, interviews and Birk’s serious-minded immersion in this vibrant, contentious cultural hub. I live there myself, and the watery-looking photos making the Internet rounds look like acute observations of a joker in love. I know this impulse well, as does comedian George Lopez, whose megabuck mug is ubiquitous here.
“I’m completely baffled by it,” admits Birk of the uproar. “So many people helped design the image and paint it; it’s been a real community project, as a project of this scale and importance should be. The criticisms I’ve heard are wacky and don’t make any sense and are simply not true. For example, there are no illegal activities depicted whatsoever – no beer-drinking, no wild dogs, no people ‘drying their clothes,’ no gangbangers, nothing ‘dark’ at all. What there are are renowned police officers and children and historical figures and buildings and events. Every image was suggested by the community, from the war veterans to the children with balloons and the boxers and the references to the history of the community and its Japanese and Jewish heritage. I can’t wait for someone to actually see it before making any judgment calls on it. It’s really spectacular.
“As of now,” revealed the artist, “the only people who have seen the mural in its final state are those community members who worked on the project, due to the nature of firing the tiles individually and then storing them for delivery. The only images that can be seen are of the mural in the process of being painted. It’s the firing that gives the glazes a beautiful, bright, sparkling color. And in the photos the colors look dull and flat and chalky. It’s going to be spectacular when it goes up, it’s going to be vibrant and bright colors and brilliant in the sun.”
Published: 04/17/2008
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The cultural affairs department did an excellent job selecting the most qualified artist they could find. Sandow Birk is arguably the most promising young artist in America and that is why he was chosen out of all 150 applicants. His mural would garner worldwide attention for East L.A. and be a destination stop to art aficionados around the world.
But a public mural is a sticky situation.
The same type of negative reception met David Alfaro Siqueiros when he was selected to do an 80-foot mural for Olvera Street in 1932. The content was too charged and controversial for what the community could handle then. The Mural was immediately whitewashed and lost to the world for 75 years. Now over 7 million dollars is being spent to restore the masterpiece. The world will soon be able to enjoy this censored artwork.
Michelangelo once said ignorance is the enemy of art, after preventing irate citizens from stoning his offensive David statue to rubble. After witnessing the lynch mob meeting last week I see what he has talking about.
Birk the only wacky one here is you. In case you haven't heard, this piece of rubbish will never see the light of day. The "community" stands united on its destruction. That's a promise.