Painter places canvas over mural for holiday

By Lawrence Ferchaw

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Already charged with painting a mural without city permission,
artist Mike McNeilly added another layer to the case last week.

Early Friday, McNeilly covered the original painting of the
Statue of Liberty at the Westwood Medical Center on Wilshire
Boulevard with a new canvas. The new mural depicts the Statue of
Liberty looking up at the Constitution and surrounded by patriotic
images.

McNeilly was in the middle of painting the original mural on
Feb. 20, 1999 when authorities told him to stop painting. He was
charged with misdemeanor counts of painting a mural without a city
permit, failing to have a state contractors license, and disobeying
an order to stop.

The trial of McNeilly and his co-defendant, building owner John
Muller, was suspended Friday as McNeilly appeals the
constitutionality of his arrest.

The three-judge Los Angeles Superior Court appeals division
halted their trial hours after it began, allowing McNeilly to argue
that his arrest violates his First Amendment right to free
speech.

The trial is now on hold as the court considers the arguments. A
decision from the appeals division could be months away.

In April, as a form of protest, McNeilly added a banner reading
“censored” to the mural, which still remains underneath
the new canvas.

McNeilly said he added the new canvas, which features images of
the Vietnam Memorial, Iwo Jima, a lone jet fighter and the cemetery
at Omaha Beach, because he didn’t feel the censored sign on
the Statue of Liberty mural was appropriate for Memorial Day.

“It just wasn’t right to leave that thing up
there,” McNeilly said Monday.

“These guys didn’t fight so we could have liberty
censored up there,” he said of veterans.

The building overlooks the National Cemetery at the corner of
Wilshire Boulevard and Veteran Avenue.

McNeilly did not go through the process required by the Los
Angeles Cultural Affairs Commission and did not follow the law in
putting up the original mural, said Gloria Dabbs-Mann, the
prosecuting attorney for the city of Los Angeles.

“Our belief is that the First Amendment is not
unabridged,” Dabbs-Mann said in a previous story.

McNeilly said he did not apply for a permit because he
didn’t think City Councilman Mike Feuer would approve of the
project.

Feuer and his representatives were unavailable for comment
Monday, but he’s said he considers such works a blight.

“In my district, people know better than to propose these
things,” Feuer told the Associated Press.

McNeilly said he did not have a timetable for taking down the
new canvas, but said he would like to leave it up until at least
the Fourth of July.