The mission of the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture is to advance arts, culture, and creativity throughout LA County. We fulfill our mission by providing services and support in areas including grants and technical assistance for nonprofit organizations; professional development opportunities; commissioning civic artworks and managing the County’s civic art collection; implementing countywide arts education initiatives; research and evaluation; career pathways in the creative economy; free community programs; and cross sector creative strategies that address civic issues. This work is framed by the County’s Cultural Equity and Inclusion Initiative and a longstanding commitment to fostering access to the arts.
These large-scale murals celebrate the lost murals by Helen Lundeburg painted in Patriotic Hall during the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1942. The Lundeburg murals depicted "The Preamble to the Constitution," "Free Assembly " and "Free Ballot." While Twitchell is known for his photorealist style, he approached this project as if he and Lundeberg were an artist team. The spirit of both Lundeberg's content as well as style is strongly represented in the finished artwork. The artwork, titled We the People, Out of Many, One has personal resonance for Twitchell, himself a Vietnam veteran. Honoring the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and service members’ commitment to preserving democracy, Twitchell used veterans, representing every U.S. tour of duty, as models for nearly all of the 36 figures in the murals. This project is Twitchell’s first public art commission by a governmental agency in his over 30 year career.
Dedicated in 1926, the 10-story Bob Hope Patriotic Hall was built as a memorial to veterans who sacrificed their lives in the Civil War, Spanish American War and World War I. Designed by Allied Architects, a consortium of 33 Los Angeles architects, the building is a historic icon on the Los Angeles skyline, situated downtown just south of the 10 freeway. It received a Certificate of Honor from the California chapter of the American Institute of Architects and is on the State’s Register of Historical Resources.
About the Artist:
Kent Twitchell was born in 1942 and grew up in Michigan. After serving as an Air Force illustrator in the 1960s, he moved to Los Angeles and attended East Los Angeles College. He received his B.A. from California State University, Los Angeles and later, his M.F.A. from Otis College of Art and Design. While pursuing education, Twitchell began to build his legacy as a large-scale muralist painting in a photorealist style. In 1971 and 1972, he completed some of his first public murals in Los Angeles, including the Strother Martin Monument and the Bride and Groom murals. He views his artwork as monuments to American cultural heroes.
