Murals Damaged by Vandals Under Repair

Several murals around San Diego were damaged ahead of MLK Day. Kim Phillips-Pea with the Mural Restoration Project is trying to repair them and needs volunteers. She talked to Bret and Veronica and says volunteers can find her on social media.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Murals around San Diego County were vandalized ahead of MLKDA.
There's a group trying to restore them quickly. The Southeast
Art Team of the Mural Restoration Project, Kim Phillips p
has already fixed two of the paintings former President of
Barack Obama, but there's more work to be done. Kim
joins us now on the Coco News liveline.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Good morning, Kim, Good morning, Veronica. Thank you so much
for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Well, thank you for getting out there and quickly getting
this work done, because it's just a tragedy that we
had some you know, not nice people, you know, just
vandalize a lot of artwork.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Yes, it's very unfortunate. Not only does it take away
from the beautification of our community, but also the hard
work and the creativity by our local artists.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
So what kind of damage has done? I mean you've
already worked on a couple of them. How bad were they?
And you know what's left to be done?

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, there's a spray can taken over the faces. In
one case, it's a Malcolm X mural and it's up
on the roof, so someone actually climbed up on the
roof to go vandalize that one. I have access already
by the area manager of South Pest Park and those areas.
I just need special access to get up on the roof.
And I was invited to fix that by the original artist,

(01:19):
Mario Torrero. There is a kind of a pathway that
we have to follow when it comes to restoration. You
can't just go out there and you know, even though
it's damaged, you just fix someone's mural because that takes
away from the original art. So most of the times
you want to have permission, and in this case I
had those permissions. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
And this damage was done in in several spots around
San Diego County, right.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yes, the ninety four freeway is one location which you know,
we you know it's difficult to get on the freeway,
but someone did immaculate work. And I feel like this
is an artist more than just you know, someone that
we want to call like a you know, I don't
want to say criminal, but you know, someone that's doing vandalism.
We think of them in a negative way, but they

(02:03):
need a space to do art. I mean, the freeway
and our murals, isn't it. But they really did a
great job with how they put the tagging inside of
the artwork, and that was on the freeway. There's another
one that is at the park. The two Obama murals
were basically across the street from one another. There's two
very beautiful murals in that Southkrest area and they were

(02:25):
both tagged. And then in another case, this was not vandalism,
but the Billie Holiday murals. The building is just so
old that the walls started to fall down because of
the rainfall, and so I would restore that too as
part of this, you know, just to make sure all
of the murals stay intact.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Right, we're talking to Kim phillipspe who is helping put
together these murals after some vandalism. Now, Kim, you already
were involved in a project centered around the MLK celebration.
So are you having to take away from that works
so you can go replace work that was done before.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
So the MLK mural, it belongs to cal Transits on
state property. So I've gotten in touch with them. Of
course they know about it now with all this attention.
But I am also painting a new MLK mural for
the community parade and festival taking place this Saturday on
January twenty fourth. And volunteers are invited to help out
with that which I'll be painting it later on today

(03:26):
and then also volunteers can get involved with the mural
restoration project and meet every second Saturday of the month
at nine am at the designated mural.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
So if someone just has a good heart and sometime
on their hands, or maybe they're handy, or maybe they're
an artist that never really got a you know, a
canvas to paint on, like that tagger that you said
was really good, maybe they could turn all that energy
into helping do something useful and creative.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
One hundred percent. There are so many locations that need murals.
Since I've been on the news, I've gotten invitations. You know,
this isn't my first. I also create murals in addition
to restoring them. So if anyone is looking to get
involved with murals in any way, please contact me. I
am available. You know, this is my heart and my

(04:15):
dream is what I'm doing right now full time, and
so I can teach anyone who wants to learn, and
I am available for phone calls and emails.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
All right, we hope we get you some help.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
All right. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for
the interview in for your time