The Mural Paint-Out of 1981: Canal Neighbors to the Rescue


By Ann Arens

Advocates of property development and those favoring community preservation have long lived in uneasy coexistence in the Venice Canals, but never have the factions been in more open conflict than during a few Spring days in 1981 when residents took action against paint compressors with rags and turpentine to preserve a symbol of the Canal community.


The mural on the side of the building at the corner of Dell and South Venice Boulevard is dismissed by some as “people’s art” and revered by others as an icon of the glory days of the canals of Venice. Mostly, it is ignored by all but a few who stop to take in its rich detail and consider its origin.

In 1975 the Citywide Mural Project granted a few hundred dollars to a women artists’ collective called Jaya - a Sanskrit word meaning ”non-violent victory - to create a mural depicting life in the unique Canal community. Through lengthy and often lively discussions, the content of the mural was determined by these women and other residents of in the Canals. Artist Emily Winters, a Canal resident, was chosen to put all the ideas together in an overall design and carry out the actual creation of the mural on the side of the building which then housed John’s Market, the local stop-off for beer and snack foods. Working with Winters, the women of the collective (whose names can be seen at the lower right of the mural) painted the mural over six months time.

At first glance, the mural seems to depict an idealized view of people living their lives in innocent pursuits - enjoying the company of friends, farming, playing music, embracing. Each of the figures depicted was a specific Canal resident of the time, including an elderly couple who lived near the mural, a ceramicist in her studio, a couple who were expecting a child, Jay “the bubble man”, Mr. Leslie, who fed the birds while making his was around the canals on an electric cart among others. The mural shows the park that the community built with their own hands and resources, enduring conflicts with the City of Los Angeles. On closer inspection, the mural also reveals another level of what was happening in the Canals at the time.

“The mural is essentially a picture of the struggles the people who were living here and were trying to preserve the Canal community,” according to long-time Canal resident Mandy Peck. “It has a pastoral feel, and that’s the way it was. We had a lot of people here from all walks of life. And it was an inexpensive and safe place to live, and we were being encroached upon by the Marina del Rey development from the South.
So when you look at the mural, you can see the Southern part is where the bulldozers are coming from. Back in the ‘70s, our community was being attacked, you might even say, by developers and speculators, who suddenly realized that this was some pretty valuable property.”

During this time, the face of the Canals, long an ethnically diverse mixed- generational Bohemian enclave, suddenly faced radical change, often causing disruption in personal lives. Sudden evictions were common, and people were getting 30-day notices left on their doors while they were at school or at work. ‘Our little paradise that we lived in was being eyeballed by the speculators and developers,” says Mandy.

Mural artist Emily Winters was one of those displaced. “I was living in the Canals at the time and, like a lot of places, the building was sold and the new owner raised the rent. So, in the middle of painting the mural, I had to move out of the Canals.”

One of the central images of the mural depicts an example of the callous attitude the Jaya artist collective felt outsiders had toward the Canal community. Sadie Hayes, a woman in her late eighties was unable to pay her property taxes because of failing health. Two days after she died, the City, claiming the property as its own, sent a bulldozer to tear down her small house before her family had been given time to remove any of her possessions. Community residents stood firm, preventing the driver from carrying out his assigned work. When he was filled in on the background leading up to the demolition order, the driver climbed down and joined with the group of protesters. The family was given ample time before the destruction was carried out.
An assault on the mural itself would come in March of 1981.

“Early one morning we heard a commotion outside the window,” recalls Toby Watson, long-time Canal resident who was then living on Carroll Canal near John’s Market. “When we looked out, we saw the guys painting over the wall a dark greenish-gray with rollers. When they finished and left, my friend Brian, who lived across the canal from us, came out of his house with one of those little spray bottles. He went up to the wall and spritzed it and saw that the paint was water-based.” Toby and wife Debbie Hall were among those who started a barrage of phone calls around the Canals. “All of a sudden, all these people just poured out with hoses and buckets and brushes,” Toby recounts.

“We all went changing over there, and about 30 people at least started scrubbing the green paint off,” said Mandy Peck. “It took all day, but we got the darn stuff off the mural. It was sort of fun because it was like a celebration when we got done.”

But the next day, the developer returned – this time with ten professional painters using compressors to spray on oil-based paint of the same green color – and a police car. Again calls went out, but neighbors could only wait and watch. “And when they were done,” recalls Toby, “half a dozen of these guys just stood around with their arms folded for a couple of hours, and, when whey figured it was safe, they took off.”
Debbie (artist D.J. Hall) brought out turpentine from her studio. Neighbors rushed to the local home store to buy paint thinner.

According to Mandy, “More people came out this time because they had all heard about what had happened the first time. There were 40 people out there trying to get the green enamel paint off. And we were successful.”

The owner of the building, a woman who lived in Texas, received numerous calls from residents complaining about the paint-out, and the story behind why the mural had been painted over finally emerged. The owner had received a letter from a pro-development Canal homeowner who told her that her building had dirty words written on it and offered to clean it up. Thinking this could only be an improvement, the owner had authorized the homeowner to take action.

“Stop the Pig” - the phrase the homeowner had represented as offensive – had been written on the wall as political graffiti at an earlier time in protest to incidents where Canal residents had been hassled by police. Then when the women artists were planning their mural, there was an objection to painting over this graffiti.
Mandy Peck recalls, ”A young man named Louie - kind of an eccentric – objected to the mural because he considered “Stop the Pig” to be existing art and free speech and he thought painting over that – even for the creation of a mural - was not a good thing. So Emily, in her infinite wisdom, decided to incorporate it into the mural.” Within the context of the mural, the phrase “Stop the Pig” came to represent not the police but developers.

Mandy conjectures that the homeowner who got permission from the owner to “clean up” the building thought the mural would discourage new homeowners from coming into the Canals. “If you can imagine that. It’s not the kind of mural that you would think would scare anybody. He was afraid it would take away his business.” After finding out that the clean up she had authorized had led to the obliteration of a city-funded public mural, the building owner characterized the letter she had received from the homeowner as “misleading” and rescinded her permission.

The media got wind of what happened in Venice and within a few days stories appeared in the Los Angles Times, The Herald Examiner, and The Evening Outlook – all presenting stories favorable to the community’s team effort to rescue the mural. The pro-development homeowner backed off from any further efforts, but the mural had suffered as a result of the doubled-barreled assault. “After we got the paint off, the mural looked sort of antiqued, “ says Mandy, “like it was very old, almost like a Roman fresco.”

And so the mural remained until 1997 when public funds paid for the restoration to its original form, and the mural was re-dedicated.

“People shouldn’t deface something that was a sanctioned piece of public art,” comments Debbie Hall. “And it really is a piece of history because it represents the Canals, what they were back in the ‘70s, which was the glory days actually for the Canals. It’s sad to see that part of history unrecognized.”

Now, more than 20 years later, the Mural Paint-Out has another lesson for our Canal community, still struggling with some of the same issues of change and divisiveness.

“It was a pretty victorious event for the people who lived here because we got to keep the mural and it sort of represented our tenacity about keeping development down to a reasonable level.” Says Mandy. “This was something that bonded the community. People came out from different backgrounds to do this, and we realized we had a community that cared about what was going on.”

A footnote to this story: In the most recent remodel of the building at Dell and South Venice, a section of the mural at the most southern end was again somehow covered over with green paint. The current owner of the building has agreed to pay for the restoration – a project which should be starting soon. We will be watching.

Reprinted with permission from VOCAL, the Newsletter of Voice of the Canals (VOC), the resident association of the Venice Canal Community.

PHOTOS: Scenes of the Canal Mural by Jim Smith.

Posted: Sun - February 1, 2004 at 06:20 PM          

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