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Artist: Delgado, Roberto Lloyd

Date: 2007

Medium: Glazed porcelain tile

County Department: Internal Services

Artwork Site: East Los Angeles Civic Center

Supervisorial District: 1

Current Status: On view

About the Artwork: Roberto Delgado’s artwork for the East Los Angeles Civic Center has two parts – a series of ceramic tile and limestone pavers interspersed in the Center’s cement walkways and two ceramic tile murals attached to matching vertical columns at the Center’s Transit Plaza entrance facing 3rd Street. The two tile murals at the Transit Plaza entrance are affixed to a pair of facing columns. Each mural portrays a different a papalotl (“butterfly” in the Aztec Nahuatl language) which wraps around the columns. The bright colors of the designs were achieved by using stencils and airbrushing the glazes onto the tiles.

About the Artist: Roberto Delgado is a Los Angeles native, born and raised in the Koreatown area. After serving three years in the US Army in Vicenza, Italy, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and completed his BA and MFA at UCLA. He has received several fellowships, including two Fulbrights to conduct research in Mexico and to teach mural painting in Honduras. His public art commissions have steadily increased in the past few decades. Among his public projects are works for the LAPD’s North Valley Police Station, the Atlanta International Airport, the Heritage Square Station on MTA’s Gold Line, the Pico-Aliso Housing Projects in Boyle Heights, and the Federal Courthouse in Pocatello, Idaho.