Out with Blight, In with Art.

Using the thousands of illegal billboards in Los Angeles

to brighten the city with art.

1. Last week's LA Weekly article "Billboards Gone Wild: 4,000 Illegal Billboards Choke L.A.'s Neighborhoods. Is City Hall corrupt, or just inept?" by Christine Pelisek, really stuck with me the whole week. How can you escape giant billboards for Coke Zero, Burger King breakfast wraps, the tv program Hell's Kitchen, and all the other unending appeals by corporate America for you to buy, watch, listen or consume? Don't get me wrong, I love the Dodgers billboards that come around every spring. But wouldn't you rather have a tree or two in many of these spots, rather than a 12'x25' ad for some show you don't even watch, or food you'll never eat?

2. in the Los Angeles Times on what happened when artist Kent Twitchell's Ed Ruscha Monument mural was painted over. The artist won a $1.1 million lawsuit

Los Angeles artist Kent Twitchell has settled his lawsuit against the U.S. government and 11 other defendants for painting over his six-story mural "Ed Ruscha Monument," painted on the side of a federal government-owned downtown building, for $1.1 million.The settlement,
disclosed Wednesday, is believed to be the largest awarded under the federal
Visual Artists Rights Act or the California Art Preservation Act, both of which
prohibit desecration, alteration or destruction of certain works of public art
without giving the artist 90 days' notice to allow the artist the option of
removing the artwork.

("Matt, so your great idea is to paint a mural, have it painted it over and get a big award in a lawsuit?" -- Yang. ... NO. but.. maybe later!)
3. My screen's wallpaper. I've had this spraypaint art of Buddha as my wallpaper for more than a year. And, in a record for me, it's not going anywhere soon. The work is a collaboration by Elmac and Retna. Their collaborations are, imo, gorgeous.

Originally uploaded by eq23

So 1+2+3=my idea: let the billboards be taken over by art.

Here's V 2.0 of the idea. Allow artists and even regular citizens to take over the billboards to create artwork that can enliven and enhance the city. Wouldn't you rather have something by Elmac+Retna on your way to work, rather than another ad for fastfood or cars? Maybe even David Hockney could paint something. Maybe allow school's to have contests to have their designs displayed. Maybe more than just visual arts, how about a garden? As many of these billboards are potential hazards, they should be taken down eventually, but the art can be stored somewhere. There are thousands of professionals artists and creative amateurs who could come up with endless ideas for a blank billboard canvas.

The hurdles are many -- billboard company's legal departments and L.A. city hall. But massive anti-blight projects in Major metro areas have been done before. New York City's High Line project comes to mind (which itself is modeled after the Promenade Plantee in Paris.) Then there's the push to restore the L.A. River. And this seems more like something that San Francisco or Berkeley could pull off, but not Los Angeles.

the orginal idea for this, V 1.0: just give the keys and access to all illegal billboards to graffiti crews. What's the billboard company going to do? Say their illegal billboard is being vandalized?

Maybe it can turn L.A. into Jet Set Radio's Tokyo-To...

Still I will say that the recent trend of taggers defacing and destroying some of L.A.'s best mural's is disappointing.

Los Angeles Marathon Sign
Originally uploaded by Hachimaki

and from that same L.A. Times article, here's what Kent Twitchell had to say about it.

Twitchell has mixed feelings about creating murals in Los Angeles. "What's
really discouraging about most public art is the way that, in this city of
ours, spray paint vandalism has kind of taken over the streets," he said.
"What was once the mural capital is now the graffiti capital -- although I
don't call it graffiti, I call it spray paint vandalism. We cannot coexist."

Maybe this idea can help unite many areas of Los Angeles' visual arts community. Whatever the case, more art, less commercial ads is good for everybody.