“Sadness” may be the best one-word summation of Elliott Smith’s life, death and career, but the Punk Rock Marthas have given Smith’s memory a turn of optimism.
In honor of the 9th anniversary of Smith’s death on Oct. 21, the Punk Rock Marthas ““ a group of high school students led by English teacher Anji Williams ““ restored and reinvented the Smith memorial wall, at 4334 West Sunset Blvd., in a way that not only memorializes the artist, but also benefits the organization Free Arts for Abused Children.
The Elliott Smith mural, located in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, was first featured on the cover of Smith’s album, “Figure 8,” released in 2000, the last album he would release before his death. After Smith’s apparent suicide in 2003, the “Figure 8″ mural became a memorial to the artist, as fans covered the wall with lyrics and messages and left candles at the base to show their love for a singer-songwriter who revolutionized popular music in the ’90s with a guitar and poetry.
The mural was originally painted with bright red, black and white curves in a never ending spiral. Smith said that he chose the mural for the cover of “Figure 8,” because he liked the idea of a self-contained, endless pursuit of perfection.
“But I have a problem with perfection. I don’t think perfection is very artful,” Smith said. “But there’s something I liked about the image of a skater going in this endless twisted circle that doesn’t have any real endpoint. So the object is not to stop or arrive anywhere; it’s just to make this thing as beautiful as they can.”
For all the messages of love and memory that became part of the wall, so did graffiti unrelated to Smith that begin to intrude on the mural.
“When you take art out of schools, you have this rise of tagging,” Williams said. “When people started breaking out the Sharpies and writing messages (on the wall), taggers started tagging on it. They don’t know the difference between writing on a wall and writing on a wall.”
At the close of the summer, the mural was hit badly once again with graffiti. Williams, always looking for new projects around the community for her organization, said she saw the restoration of the wall as a great start-of-the-school-year project that would benefit not only the community, but also serve to solve the tagging problem.
“We can paint this wall and guard it,” Williams said. “But people are going to write on it. And once they write on it, it’s going to get tagged on. So I started giving it thought about being temporary.”
While the mural had gone through many cycles of being repainted only to be tagged again, the Punk Rock Marthas wanted to try a different tactic that they felt would better memorialize Smith’s life and artwork, while giving them the chance to raise money benefiting Free Arts for Abused Children, a beneficiary of Elliott Smith’s estate.
The new temporary mural that was put together on Oct. 20 features the classic “Figure 8″ design of red, black and white swirls, this time temporarily done with painted tar paper.
“Everything became very symbolic as to what was going to go where,” Williams said.
The group decorated the sections of the wall painted red with die-cut star flowers, each star flower including every lyric from every song from every album of Smith’s work. The black elements of the wall were adorned with symbols of his life and his heartache, Williams said.
It holds maps of Portland and Los Angeles, where Smith lived, photos of bands he liked, sheet music he collected and, most notably, 1,000 paper cranes. The paper cranes were used as a symbol of Smith’s death by a knife stab through the heart, which led to the display of the mural as a traditional Japanese wailing wall. Lastly, the white was used to preserve fan messages written on the wall through the years.
“We were able to put a lot more meaning behind it, and a lot more thought into it. And really make it something for the charity event that we hosted that benefited Free Arts for Abused Children,” Williams said.
To commemorate the completion of the project and the anniversary of Smith’s death, the Punk Rock Marthas held a benefit concert in collaboration with Malo restaurant next door, and a silent auction on Oct. 21, raising money for Free Arts for Abused Children, an organization working to give vulnerable children an outlet of creative self-expression.
“Ever since I’ve been in education, I’ve always had kids that have the need to be more involved,” Williams said. “We definitely have a lot of kids that have a stronger attachment to the world that they really didn’t have before. They also have a genuine, better self-esteem.”
The coverage and recognition of the Elliott Smith wall, Williams said, will not dramatically affect any future work of the Punk Rock Marthas. The group, which visits St. Francis Center every month to assist in feeding the homeless, works with Project Angel Food to bring meals to those with life-threatening illnesses, and organizes coat drives and change drives during the holidays, is not slowing down anytime soon.
The publicity from the Smith project, Williams said, can only help the group, by drawing attention to the impact that a service organization has on its community.
In the words of Elliott Smith, himself:
“It would be better to play it and mean it, than to just walk through it.”