PACOIMA >> It’s Van Nuys Boulevard. There’s the auto insurance business, the trailer-rental lot, the travel agency, the restaurant — and Danny Trejo’s eyes.
Stare at them too long and they’ll freeze you in your tracks as Pacoima’s mix of mom-and-pop businesses blend with stunning murals that turn aging exteriors into canvasses for some of L.A.’s most vital artists.
Recently, Trejo was yet again the muse as Levi Ponce repainted his 10-year-old mural of the tough-guy actor, humanitarian and entrepreneur on an exterior wall near Van Nuys and Tamarack Avenue, in the northeast San Fernando Valley corridor known as Mural Mile.
It was a multi-day project, complete with a visit from the famed actor, and the help from Ponce’s father, Juan Hector Ponce — whose own high-profile street art adorns exteriors throughout L.A.
The younger Ponce touts his projects as works that bring the community together. This effort was no different, ultimately attracting artists, the local media and the gazes of passersby, whose everyday lives — whether going to the market or to rent a trailer — intersect with high-profile street art.
“I imagined The Great Wall of Los Angeles as a ‘tattoo on the scar where the river once ran,’ ” she said in a statement on Friday. “This tattoo would tell the history of California and its overlooked communities in a way that honored and centered them on a scale that has not been done before or since. The process of what it took to create a mural with the youth of Los Angeles, the context in which it took place, and the partnerships forged with community leaders, historians, scholars, is told through The History of California Archive. As an artist my concern does not only lie with the aesthetic considerations of a space, but the context of where my work is displayed.”