Whose City? Public Art, Power, and Representation in the Urban Landscape

  Street art is a form of art that tends to express itself in the culture and ideals of its region and time. It is meant to be permanent and temporary; it is intended to capture the viewer’s engagement with it to feel a connection or challenge a perspective within their society. Certain artworks reflect the communities from which they originate.  The Site Within the neighborhood of City Terrace, in the streets of City Terrace and Van Pelt, you can find a couple of murals. One was a portrait of Vanessa Guillen, one of the soldiers in old uniforms from a newly formed Mexico. What intrigued me the most was a new mural being created at the time, which depicted a man who closely resembled Antonio Aguilar. At first, it looked like it was being taken out, but as time passed, it was being made, and I found it interesting how quickly it was done. It took them a week and a half to complete the work. Another picture resembles La Virgen Maria, the Virgin Mary. Field Work The Antonio Aguil...

Murals of South Los Angeles   Los Angeles is a massive and diverse city with people from all types of cultures and backgrounds. In South Los Angeles, I've seen representation for POC communities through murals spread out around neighborhoods where I grew up.  FORGIVENESS Location: West Slauson Ave and South Hoover St, Los Angeles, 90037 Artist: Mike Norice  Theme/Background: Mike Norice, born and raised in Los Angeles created this artwork as a part of his Artfully United project, where his goal was to create pieces of artwork in low-income communities to bring forth hope and positive messages within said communities. The artwork showing a young boy spray painting bold black lettering onto a white wall, promoted bringing down gang violence amongst the youth and encourages community healing and growth. Norice stated that this was his way to give back to the community, and to give an outlet to the children.  Representation really matters in communities like this, with...

 Leonard Acosta

Public Art in Garden Grove California   Clock Tower "Tower on the Green" Phase 1: Site I chose this site because it is nearby, a part of my life and a historical piece.  Phase Two: Field Work Artist/history/location -Architect/Artist, Miles Folsum , constructed in January 2002 is a prime face of Garden Grove CA . It was built in honoring the diversity in Garden Grove and to complement the completion of more construction of Garden Grove Mainstreet. This tower was planned, created and built by the Clock & Brick Committee. The tower was built on Garden Groves oldest park, "the Village Green" and is decorated with strawberries to represent Garden Grove's biggest event held at that park, which is the Strawberry Festival .  Materials/sponsors - Electric Time Company of Medford was the company where the clocks mechanism was ordered. -4,300lb black granite obelisks were shipped from India   -30,000-pound main steel -700-pound clock faces The Tower on the Green was...

PHASE 1- THE SITE  Memory Lane: The History and Landmarks of Echo Park Streets For my civic engagement I decided to do echo park, los Angeles. Growing up in echo park i loved the community diversity and how it has so much history. It had so much history because of the morals there in every block in echo park there was a mural with a message it had so much color that it would catch peoples attention. People would even make movies or films in echo park. Each mural serves as a visual history of the neighborhood especially, the chicano and latinx population. Echo park has many bars, restaurants, and coffee shops. Echo park even does events like the cuban festival and filipinotown. Ive always noticed the murals growing up ive always appreciated the public art. Public art like these i appreciate because its what someone was feeling and how it grows big over time and how you research about it.  PHASE 2: FIELD WORK  These are some murals and public art that i have seen as i was g...