Freeway Man and His Sack s, Mixed Media, 6' x 6,' collection of Cheech Marin. by Abel M. Salas David Flury is a Chicano artist. He will say so himself. He won’t say much about the early years he spent attached to a life on the streets of South Central. He will only acknowledge that it was based on loyalty to others. And it was what he did to survive during a time when he and his contemporaries felt compelled to prove they were beyond hope, beyond fear and capable of conducting themselves with no remorse. It is not something he cares to uphold as virtuous or worthwhile. He could have, like many of those he grew up with, been a less than memorable casualty or a permanent resident in one of the state’s penal institutions. His father, he says, was from the deep South and white. “But my mother was from Guatemala,” he shares in a comfortable office at the Goodwill Industries complex in Lincoln Heights where he has worked part-time for some 14 years. The trajectory of his ...

Día de Los Muertos Altar dedicated to los perdidos en Tlatelolco '68 and the 43 in Ayotzinapa. Courtesy of J.A. Aguirre. by Abel Salas To most Angeleños* and roughly two million visitors from across the city, the state, the country and abroad who visit annually, Olvera Street is little more than a touristy relic, an antique collection of structures and buildings that once functioned as the city’s bustling center. For them, it provides a portal to a quaint, picturesque and romantic—if reductive and grossly idealized—vision of an idyllic colonial pueblo once home to the original 44 Native American, African, European and Mestizo settlers who founded Los Angeles along the banks of the Río de Porciúncula (Los Angeles River) in 1781. Declared a state park through the efforts of preservationist and persistent civic booster Christine Sterling, the cradle of Los Angeles had already fallen on hard times by the 1920s when she turned her attention to its shuttered adobe and early brick...

Interview by Pancho Lipschitz, @pancho_lipschitz Master muralist Wayne Healy calls Isabel Rojas-Williams “La Reina de los murales,” but in reality she is more an ambassador or a madrina ; making friends and building coalitions among artists, politicians,  academics and arts supporters on behalf of public art. Her love of street art and murals began in the ’70s when she sprayed anti-government slogans on the walls of Pinochet’s Chile. She wrote her Masters’ thesis on the history of murals in Los Angeles and, unsurprisingly, gave birth to a muralist.  Her son, former street artist Pablo Cristi, studied at the California College of the Arts and now teaches at the Oakland School for the Arts . But her most significant role now, many believe, is her post as the Executive Director at the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles (MCLA) , where she leads an epic and long overdue mural restoration initiative. We met on a drizzly morning at her outdoor office— Nicole’s Cafe in Sout...