Students’ Mural Is Defaced by Vandals

Just a week ago, a group of Sylmar High School students began painting an elaborate mural on a wall next to the Astoria Terrace Retirement Center, a surface that has been repeatedly defaced by graffiti vandals.

The mural--in moody strokes of brown and black--featured a series of oversized portraits, including those of several residents of the retirement home across the street from the high school.

But the elderly residents awoke Friday to find that the unfinished mural had been covered with graffiti, angry slashes of red spray paint marring the faces of their friends.

“That’s a darn shame, you know?” said Ed Sherman, 77, as he fingered scarlet graffiti that snaked across a portrait of himself.

“This is a rough district around here,” he said. “But this would have been nice.”

The mural was started as a class project by 20 photography students from Sylmar High. The students took photos of their subjects and then used them to paint the mural.

The project was sponsored by Graffiti Busters, a local anti-graffiti group, as a way of covering a surface that, according to Astoria residents, has been repeatedly hit with graffiti.

“I’ve been here 20 years and I just knew they couldn’t wait to mess it up,” said the Astoria’s cook, Nora Avina, referring to the graffiti vandals who apparently struck sometime Thursday night or Friday morning.

Tony Milici, a Sylmar High art teacher who oversaw the mural project, said his students hadn’t had time to apply an anti-graffiti coating to the mural, which would have allowed the spray paint to be removed without damaging the underlying artwork.

But he was philosophical about the vandalism.

“It looks like we’ll just repaint it,” he said. “This is summer, but I’ll talk to the youngsters. More than likely we’ll take another two or three more days on it.”

“Maybe we can do it better.”