Pasadena mural painted over in apparent mix-up

Quetzalcoatl and Tlaloc were supposed to live together for at least five years on a Pasadena street corner, coexisting on the side of a Fair Oaks Avenue grocery store.

The Aztec deities had come together at the hands of a local artist who -- with the help of a $2,500 city grant -- painted them on a bursting-with-color mural complete with the San Gabriel Mountains and the Arroyo Seco.

But last month, in an apparent mix-up, the 60-foot-long, city-sponsored mural was whitewashed out of existence. The artwork had stood the test of time for all of three months.

According to city records, a city inspector sent a warning notice in early November to Izydor Wilchfort, the owner of the lot where the grocery store stands, about several code violations.

Rosalinda Huerta, owner of the ABC Nutrition store on the property, said a city inspector had left a message with one of her employees, warning to bring the building up to code, including painting a recently repaired portion of the wall.

She said Wilchfort never mentioned the warning letter to her.

Worried about losing her business permit, Huerta scrubbed the outdoor signage, installed new windows and put coats of blue and white paint over the Aztec- and Mayan- inspired artwork outside her door.

Huerta, 56, said the mural had been marred by graffiti and believed that covering it was part of the city’s directive.

“He told me I had to clean, so I cleaned,” Huerta said of the city inspector.

But a city spokeswoman said the store owner was never ordered to get rid of the mural.

“There is absolutely no way that that was part of the direction, either written or verbal,” said the spokeswoman, Ann Erdman.

City officials plan to meet with Wilchfort and the mural’s designer, who said he feels caught in the middle of a misunderstanding.

“My mural is completely gone -- everything from top to bottom,” said Christian Alderete, 30. “I was just saddened by the whole situation.”

Alderete said he had applied for the grant in February as part of the city’s Neighborhood Enhancement Mural Program. He chose the ABC Nutrition store as his canvas, thinking the dilapidated building would benefit from a new look, while the pictures would inspire the predominantly Latino neighborhood.

Huerta was on board when production began in May and had signed an agreement to retain the artwork for five years.

Huerta said she never meant to upset the community and would allow a new mural on her property as long as there was no contract, the details of which she said she hadn’t understood.

“I do a mistake,” she said. “I don’t want to be in trouble.”

Creating another mural isn’t a problem for Alderete. It’s the hours of community collaboration that he mourns the most.

While he primed the building’s cinder-block walls and laboriously chalked an outline of the pattern onto them with the help of fellow artist Arturo Gonzalez, Alderete enlisted the help of dozens of children to help finish the mural.

Over the course of three months, they met at the store to work with acrylic paints. For some, it was their first time using a paint brush. When it was finished in August, contributors were encouraged to sign their names.

“If their names go on the wall, they have a sense of pride in the community and will stop anybody they see defacing the wall,” Alderete said.

Unfortunately, after ABC Nutrition’s latest paint job, he said, its exterior is now a clean canvas for the kind of graffiti vandalism it had hoped to erase.

corina.knoll@latimes.com