City Wide Mural Program – Calle De La Eternidad
Calle De La Eternidad, 1993
By Johanna Poethig
BBF Broadway Building
351 South Broadway (at 4th St.)
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Johanna Poethig was raised in the Philippines through high school and has lived in Chicago, san Francisco and Oakland since coming to the United States. she received her BFA at the UC Santa Cruz and her MFA at Mills College (in Oakland, CA). Poethig’s public art works intervene in the urban landscape, in neighborhoods, on freeways, in parks, hospitals, schools, homeless shelters, cultural centers, advertising venues and public buildings.
ABOUT THE MURAL
“The architecture of the building really affected me because it’s so high off the ground and so much of the background is all those buildings reaching to the sky. Also, the whole context of being in Broadway, in a very Latino neighborhood, is so important to me. I started to look for symbols and artifacts from pre-Columbian America. The arms that are reaching to sky based on Peruvian gold work. The Aztec Calendar contains text by Octavio Paz about time and place. It’s trying to bring poetry to the idea of being at home and in exile at the same time. In the middle of a commercial LA landscape you have something that is talking about connecting us culturally and historically to our past and present.”
-Johanna Poethig
CURRENT CONDITION
The building that the mural was on was demolished for extensive renovations. However, the SPARC Mural Rescue Program preserved a digital rendering of the mural. The digital file is currently in the SPARC archives, awaiting a suitable wall to re-inhabit.
©SPARC
PREVIOUS LOCATION
Archival Photos
Restoration
BEFORE (Building Demolished)
AFTER (Digital Restoration by Original Artist)
