Los Angeles, CA was a natural second stop for our journey for our project and, luckily for us, it also meant extending our time with family and friends. Our exploration of the murals along Mural Mile on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima, CA was starkly different than the time we spent on Balmy Alley and the surrounding alleys in San Francisco’s Mission District. We applied many of the tools we learned about looking at murals from our Precita Eyes tour with muralist Carla Wojczuk since we had a limited amount of information about what exactly we were looking at (for some murals, a title or a historical reference. For others, no information at all.). In some ways, the role Pacoima murals play in the community differs greatly from that of the murals in The Mission. In other ways, the roles are eerily similar. See our last post for more analysis on this comparison.

In addition to further developing our understanding of murals and how to look at them, we spent some time feeding our teacher souls. Ample amounts of sun at the pool and beach, delicious meals in Kat’s Aunt Sharyn and Uncle Richard’s kitchen table, Sunny Spot in Venice, and Kat’s cousin Brett’s restaurant Killer Shrimp on the water in Marina Del Rey, and warm hospitality of the Hillyer Chans continue to revive us and make us feel so full. Just like our students need processing time to fully absorb what they learn in our classrooms, the processing time we had in LA allowed us to more fully understand and appreciate all that we’ve seen thus far.

In Solidarity,

Kat + Alice

Thank Yous:

To Aunt Sharyn and [trippy] Uncle Richard, thank you for opening your home to us, including us in your social events, and supplying us with everything an LA visitor needs from fans to home cooked meals; to Aunt Judy and Zoe, for dinner conversation and the unforgettable candied cayenne bacon; to Kendrick and Mara (and Tony the birthday boy), for including us in your celebration; to Brett and Lisa, for the Killer Shrimp.