Crow Mural Raises a Flap : Subject of Underpass Project Already Has Critics, but Artist Calls the Birds Misunderstood

Terry Knutson took one look at the gigantic crows and ravens painted on the tunnel walls at the Lassen Street freeway underpass and thought he had walked onto the set of a Hitchcock movie.

“I thought ‘The Birds’ were coming back,” complained Knutson, an area resident who has griped loudly to police, transportation and elected officials about the mural beneath the San Diego Freeway.

While Knutson puts crows and ravens in the same “bottom feeder” category as cockroaches and rats, the student artists responsible for the mural think the birds have gotten a bad rap--and are far more pleasing than the graffiti they replaced.

“Crows and Ravens,” which was painted by Monroe High School art teacher Michelle Obregon and 20 of her students, is the fifth mural to be unveiled under an innovative program to replace the eyesore of graffiti with the elegance of art.

The Adopt an Underpass program is a joint effort of the Los Angeles Police Department and the California Department of Transportation. Since the program’s inception in 1994, murals have been painted on tunnel walls at Plummer, Nordhoff and Parthenia streets and at the Chatsworth train station, said Coley Maddigan, coordinator of the Devonshire Community Police Advisory Board. The latest work, completed about two weeks ago, is to be dedicated Aug. 18.

The mural consists of two scenes depicting ravens and crows in a playful manner while at the same time showing their place as a revered bird in the culture of some Native American tribes.

On the tunnel’s north wall, a large black crow and a Hopi Indian dance around a basket filled with Native American artifacts. Other crows, with streaks of blue and purple highlighted in their wings, are set against an earth-toned Southwestern desert landscape and a cloudless blue sky.

On the south wall, snow-covered Alaskan mountains, stately evergreens and bright red totem poles serve as a backdrop for a colony of ravens peacefully perched or soaring in the sky.

Like the other murals, plans for the “Crows and Ravens” project were presented to the advisory board and later to community groups, Maddigan said.

The board then presented a package--including an artist’s statement of intent, renderings, a budget, letters of support, a work schedule and project specifications--to Caltrans officials, who give final approval, Maddigan said.

“Out of our mural program, this particular mural has received an abundance of support,” Maddigan said. “This is a community-driven project. If it didn’t have the support of the community, it wouldn’t continue.”

Indeed, a letter from the North Hills Community Coordinating Council says the mural projects “certainly meet with the community’s approval.” Another letter from the North Hills Optimist Club said that “the murals will enhance the community of North Hills, and will engage our young people in positive alternatives to graffiti and criminal activities.”

Still, Knutson contends that the mural skated through the approval process and that he and some of his neighbors were not contacted.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Knutson said he sees none in the black birds with a sinister reputation.

“Crows are black, and that is death and dying and all the things that are pulling you down,” Knutson said. “There’s no rationale for memorializing crows on a mural.”

Not so, Obregon said. “Unfortunately, crows are wrongly misunderstood and are associated with superstitious myths that promote a lot of negativity,” she said.

“The fact is crows and ravens are the most intellectually evolved birds,” she said. “They are playful. They sing. And they have a complex social life.”

Obregon acknowledged that she knew crows and ravens would be a controversial subject because of the negative feelings they engender in Western culture.

“We wanted to portray them in a whimsical manner,” she said. “We wanted to state how beautiful these birds are and to get people to take a second look at them.”