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Chicano Park
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Barrio Logan, is found in southeast San Diego. At one point in its history, Logan Heights had contained the second largest Chicano Barrio community on the west coast, with a population of almost twenty thousand. On November 9, 1969, the 1.8 acre-parcel of state land in Barrio Logan became a neighborhood park.
An artist, Salvador Torres, in a speech, expressed his vision of local Chicano painters and sculptors turning the bridge pylons into things of beauty, reflecting the Mexican-American culture. Local Chicano art groups, Los Artistas de los Barnos, Los Toltecas en Aztlarz and El Congresso de Artistas Chicanos en Aztlan, had established themselves in San Diego between 1968 and 1972. Salvador Torres, an artist and resident of Barrio Logan, had been a member of the two previous groups, and had organized the third. He is generally referred to as the architect of the dream of Chicano Park.
The Chicano Park Monumental Public Mural Program was conceived by Torres in 1969. Chicano artists wanted to express their identity as Indian / Spanish / European / American. The paints were all laid out. And there's this gigantic wall there, and all of U.S. just looking at this wall. So we pour out the paint, took some rollers, and attacked the wall with the rollers. We put color everywhere. There was at least two or three hundred people there, that all of a sudden were all over the walls. It was done spontaneously. We exploded on the walls. At this early stage of the mural program, community involvement was important in obliterating the grayness from their park.
In 1980, Chicano Park was designated San Diego's Historical Site #143. Chicano Park is historically significant for the controversy created by its development and because it is a significant representation of an era in the development of the City. The Chicano Park Murals Committee was, founded in 1989 for the restoration process. The original artists would be contacted and offered the designated amount of funding for the specific mural If the original artists chose not to participate, they were allowed to select artists of their choice to complete the process.
If the original artists did not choose others to work, then other artists would be allowed to submit proposals for evaluation Scaffolding would be set in place, and concrete surfaces would be washed and cleaned. Techniques and materials would be evaluated to prepare damaged surfaces. Sandblasting, scraping, and sanding would remove surface paint. Damaged areas would be repainted or retouched. Restoration work began on the first ten murals in August, 1991.
The restoration process served to bring official city recognition to the Chicano Park Murals and the Chicano artists involved. In June of 1992, the Commission for Arts and Culture issued a press release regarding the completion of the restoration process of eleven murals. With 41 gallons of paint, 64 brushes, nine gallons of varnish, and a ton of 'elbow grease' the first phase of the process had been completed on "what is considered the largest, most important collection of outdoor murals in the country."
Excerpts from a history by Kathleen L. Robles
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