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Health & Fitness

Cat Woman Speaks About Spontaneous Street Art

Julie Newmar responds to the importance of the very special urban craft of graffiti.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted some thoughts on Spontaneous Street Art also mentioning former Cat Woman (Batman & Robin) Julie Newmar and her property in Los Angeles. The lot being so exceptionally and beautifully graffiti-ed was well worth the mention.

What I received in my email box a day letter really stunned me—a letter from Ms. Newmar and a request to share her thoughts. And so without further ado, here is Ms. Newmar’s statement. I decided to let the lady speak for herself:

Dear Tracey Paleo,

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I love your thinking: “waking up to my local Melrose Avenue boarded up retail location getting a brilliant makeover from an ugly uninviting barrier ………I only half understood it.” The “half understood it” part is the genius part. In today’s world, we don’t know what’s coming or what we are going to do. Is that not exciting enough to focus you, full throttle?

It is a “special urban craft” all right. Here we should ask the artist. (You are right again).

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On my property: I am awaiting a dynamic tenant. I’ve tried to build, but the banks won’t loan to small business even though they spend millions of dollars on TV, covering their ass, saying they will. Even after they have bilked the country with the bad loans we all know about. The best idea I have come up with is to have the outstandingly successful Hundreds build their landmark flagship store there. I am waiting for their call. They are the new blood on the block, the new guys of the future, the Ralph Lauren of street wear, street culture. I love them.

Concerning the fence that surrounds the property. I currently need it to help pay the $1,000 a month property tax. It is made of wood, not cement. There are graceful apertures so that you can peer inside. Even their ads are eye friendly and well designed. The company, NPA (National Promotions & Advertising), even cut the weeds and cleaned up the unfriendly, ugly graffiti nearby. These people have integrity. We want that in business and in our lives.

The artists—Saber, Retna, Os Gemos, Revok, Jason—asked me if they could paint my wall. I like their work. So does most of the rest of the world. People come from all over to photograph it and be photographed there.

The old Jewish neighborhood on Fairfax, from Beverly to Melrose, is a wonderful mix of the all night NY deli – Cantors, the very friendly Ball Beauty Supply for starlets of all ages, to the new boys on the block – Will Rise Studio for tattoo and body art which brings clients from as far away as Japan. We are vital, current; we are the most throbbing edge of America.

About the Art-Mural “crime” and city attorney Trutanich, I’ve heard a lot of complaints through the blogs and elsewhere that he doesn’t know his astrodome from a hole in the ground, that he is invading the homes of LA artists, threatening them, because he doesn’t know the difference between graffiti as art and violence to property, like scarifying my tenants windows. 

I know the difference. I am a property owner, landlord and artist. We get mad at government, because they are blockheads, but government must be looked upon as good from our ever watchful expectation of them. We must educate them as to what we are that makes us so good and makes So Cal the cutting edge to the world of innovation, dynamic art and life.

Always remember, Money follows the creative artist, not the other way around.  Better yet, artists don’t have to accumulate the financial feces of so much greed.  Our souls are not empty. Our lives are too exhilarating, being able to create something out of nothing. We are, truly the free ones.

Carry on, my dear. There is much hope.

(Send this out on the blogs and the news, wherever it helps)

Ms. Newmar will be making an appearance at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard this evening. Meet this legendary on-screen bad girl/off-screen outstanding citizen!

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