Sometimes the lines get blurry between calling something a work of art and defacing property. Joey Martinez said he was trying to bring some color to the community by painting a mural over an abandoned building at Boston and Erskine. Martinez said someone put graffiti on his original mural of Cesar Chavez so he was painting a new mural over it. That artwork was interrupted by code enforcement.
According to Martinez, the enforcers told him what he was doing was graffiti and needed the owner's permission to continue.
"I'm not trying to paint any graffiti,” Martinez said. “I'm doing graffiti art. It’s a mural. It’s day of the dead. Know it's something beautiful. It’s a beautiful tradition."
"It's our information that the individual did not have permission to put that mural on that piece of property,” Stuart Walker, Code Administration Director, said. “It's our understanding that the property owner told him to take it off."
As of now Martinez has not been charged. He said he now understands and will follow the city's procedures. The building he spent hours painting is scheduled to be demolished in a few months.
