By Sara Ballenger
A picture is worth more than a thousand words to Chris Halmo and Ruth Williams. So much so, that they and others who have been involved with the Los Altos mural project during the last 29 years are working to save the 100-plus murals on walls at Blach, Egan and Covington schools from demolition.
During initial construction projects at the school sites, construction officials said only a few murals would have to be demolished. That has changed since work began on seismic upgrades.
The mural project began at Blach Junior High School under the direction of art teacher Michael Durket. Halmo joined the project as a student at Blach then became a mentor in the mural program.
In 1988, Halmo co-founded the Covington Musee, an outdoor mural project, with Clay Cahoon, another student from the mural program. Halmo is now a filmmaker in Los Angeles and owns his own film production company.
Williams has been working as a muralist with the program for the last 10 years.
“Unfortunately, Chris’ concern is a little too late. The work is proceeding,” said Dave McNulty, construction manager for the school district. “It was an economic factor in most cases. It was more cost effective to do external retrofitting and it’s structurally superior.”
AR Construction was awarded the bid on Covington School and has been working on the site for the last six months, McNulty said. Thompson Pacific Construction has been working at Blach since June, he added.
The architects were made aware the district wanted to preserve as many murals as possible, McNulty said.
“I think the architects preserved as much as they could,” he said. “In cases where we could relocate a mural, we tried to do that as a necessary part of the project.”
To re-stucco external walls after the upgrades means losing all the present murals at Covington, McNulty said.
“They are all painted on stucco that will be replaced,” said Los Altos School District Superintendent Marge Gratiot. “We are saving as many murals as possible at Blach and Egan.”
That’s not enough for Halmo and Williams.
“It’s really hard to fight for the cultural significance of things,” Halmo said. “It might just be student work but it stands for something greater than that.”
Art is crucial in the education of young people, Williams said.
“There is so much of the inner self in drawing and in art,” she said. “This project was a springboard for many of these students to continue on in the arts.”
Halmo graduated from Mountain View High School, received a bachelor’s degree in English from University of California at Los Angeles and a master’s degree in filmmaking at the University of Southern California. He continued to work with students on the Los Altos Mural Project.
“As a student I worked on two dozen murals, each mural involved six to a dozen students,” Halmo said about the murals at Blach. Students have ownership of the artwork, he added.
“There is no villain,” Halmo said. “There were construction oversight committee meetings open to the public and the community. But, the artists, myself and others, were not there to protect the artwork. We were not notified about the demolition and did not have a chance to say goodbye to our work.”
The district photographed the murals that were not able to be saved.
“Last year we paid Russell Hoffman and Mike Durket, former art teachers, to make sure the names of all the artists were recorded,” said Gratiot. “We will be asking them to come up with a plan for displaying the photographs of those murals and the artists’ names.”
The district sees this as a chance for new art to be painted on the walls once the upgrades are complete.
“We will probably give a new generation of students the chance to have the experience of painting new versions of those particular murals,” Gratiot added.
Halmo wants the mural program to continue, but not at the expense of other artwork.
“The school board needs to realize this is not just stucco, this is people’s lives,” he said.
For more information, contact Chris Halmo at (310) 399-8360 or e-mail chrishalmo@hotmail.com.
