by Timothy Rutt
If you were turning off of the 210 at the Lincoln Avenue offramp recently, you might have seen a strange sight. Altadena artist Mark Dean Veca was hurridly putting together a mural Thursday and Friday on the second floor of the appropriately-named Offramp Gallery, 1702 Lincoln Avenue. Veca said that he approached gallery owner Jane Chafin about sprucing up her second floor as seen from the street. Chafin said that she agreed, moving a detachable mural on the wall to the garden and preparing the second floor exterior with marigold-colored paint. Veca went to work Thursday, starting by drawing the basic design in chalk. By Friday morning, he had outlined the work in black and was filling in the details, and expected to finish before the weather got too hot. Veca is a nationally-known artist, who has received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in painting three times, and has held residencies at institutions such as the Bronx Museum, the MacDowell Colony, and Villa Montalvo. The mural installation is in conjuction with the gallery’s upcoming exhibition, Kirk Pedersen: The Urban Asia Series and the Evolution of Zero+ Publishing,. Veca is one of the artists included in the exhibition. Zero+ Publishing recently printed the monograph Mark Dean Veca: Twenty Years, which will be for sale at the gallery. The exhibition will run from Oct. 27-Nov. 24. The official mural unveiling will be held at a reception on Sunday, Oct. 27, from 2-5 PM.
And the County will swoop in with great bravado and an order to have the mural removed in a day or two at most, just like they did at Patty Cakes.