Sonia Romero
Draft Concept for Parking Structure at Telegraph Road and Camfield Ave City of Commerce
AltaMed
March 20, 2023
www.SoniaRomero.net
I have completed more than 10 permanent public artworks in Southern California in low maintenance materials and I have worked in several Chicano neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, Echo Park, East Los Angeles, El Sereno etc. I have long relationships built with Self Help Graphics, Avenue 50 Studio, and Plaza de la Raza. I also have fine art in many high profile Chicanx/Latinx collections such as the Cheech Marin collection, the Ricardo Romo collection and the Smithsonian.
Theme:
A portrait of Los Angeles symbolized by the home garden fence and the plants people grow. I envision a bright and colorful artwork, in contrast to the grey concrete surroundings. A beautiful contrast of the natural and urban worlds.
I would like to create a large-scale Los Angeles garden fence intertwined with plants that symbolize LA culture, native flora, food, and medicine.
I envision a chain link fence representation, a recognizable popular urban material.
I will do further research to choose plants that represent the City of Commerce residents, but some options could be bougainvillea, geraniums, night-blooming cactus, nopales, etc.
Plants used for medicinal reasons could include yerba Buena, elderberry, sage, etc.
I would also be interested in including plants native to Southern California.
Location:
To maximize visibility from all directions, the artwork will be placed near the top of the parking structure, on the surface. The amount of coverage we have will depend on design aesthetics and budget. The great thing about this concept is that we can add or subtract plants depending on cost. It is not necessary for the fence to entirely wrap the building; we can design fence and plant sections depending on the side we are working with.
Materials:
If you want to do something fast without structural permits, the easiest thing to do would be a fully painted mural. The only drawing backs to a painted mural is that the paint will fade eventually, think 20 or 30 years, and if it gets tagged you would need to hire a skilled artist to touch it up. My design are fairly graphic however, so it wouldn’t be that hard to repaint if need be. There are some coatings we can put over the paint to make it more durable.
Here is a quick concept sketch, I can put much more time into this if we choose to move forward in this direction. For this sketch, I used flowers I had on file, and nothing is to scale.