Van Nuys : Teens Paint a Mural That Sends a Message

David could barely contain himself as he paced across the sidewalk holding a cardboard rendering of the three-story mural he helped paint on a concrete wall outside the Mid Valley Youth Center in Van Nuys. The 13-year-old looked up and described the work in a rush of words and feeling.

Jefferey, on the other hand, leaned quietly against a tree. It was his last day at Mid Valley, a residential psychiatric treatment facility for youth.

Jefferey, 14, had worked on the project for six weeks with six other residents. It was almost done. He took his time taking it in before saying goodby and moving to a group home.

Fernando, 15, a grim look in his pale green eyes, stood alone near a chain-link fence chewing a straw. He watched two painters standing above him on a scaffold dabbing flesh-colored paint on the half-finished face of a Latino boy. Fernando was the foreman.

The teen-agers approached the project as if it were a business venture. They were paid $5 an hour through a city summer jobs program. They worked under the tutelage of experienced Los Angeles muralist Hector Rios. They stayed within a budget.

The job entailed four weeks of planning, including writing business letters, getting permission to paint the big wall that fronts Van Nuys Boulevard, taking field trips to study other murals, making a trip to an art museum with Rios and donning neckties to meet with Sinclair Paints representatives, who donated $400 worth of paint.

“This is all what we came up with,” David said. “The title: ‘Choose Your Own Future.’ The idea is you gotta work hard to have a positive life.” He pointed to a man in the mural who was climbing up a mountain of books.

In the middle of the mural are four faces representing four different races. On another side, the pitfalls: “Guiltiness. Drugs. No jobs. Beer. Loss of hope,” David said.