Los Angeles graffiti artist Alejandro “Man One” Poli Jr. hunched near the top of a steep incline underneath the 57 Freeway at West Crowther Avenue in Placentia. Car sounds ricocheted off the walls like a grating, mechanical song as he guided his 2-inch paint brush over the coarse concrete.
Stray pieces of broken glass hint that the underpass used to be a large homeless encampment.
But today, the 185-foot-wide by 29-foot-tall slopes on either side are Poli’s 10,730-square-foot canvas. The vibrant new artwork emerging there, he said, “is based on the mythology of the sun and the moon and how it relates to our current views on housing, shelter and community.”
The transformation began two years ago when the city cleared the area, moving about 90% of the people sheltering there to the Placentia Navigation Center, which opened in March of 2020, Deputy City Administrator Luis Estevez said.
Then, Caltrans officials contacted the city about the Clean California initiative that was launching, part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California Comeback Plan, which commits $1.2 billion toward road and neighborhood beautification projects across California, including hiring more crews, holding cleanup events and supporting public art pieces.
From that, the Placentia Gateway Public Art Project – the creation of two murals and a sculpture – was born. The sculpture, by artist Cliff Garten, will be installed at the southbound 57 Freeway off-ramps at Orangethorpe Avenue.
Estevez said the city wanted to create a dramatic presence at one of the main entrances to the Placentia Packinghouse Transit-Oriented District, a newly renovated neighborhood featuring a mixture of housing, office space, retail and transit in a walking-friendly community.
Poli’s “Good People Under Our Sun and Moon” mural design was selected a year ago by Arts Orange County, an independent nonprofit council. He met the city’s goal for the project by creating a “bold and colorful design,” to…
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