It seems that the saga of the "Surfing Madonna" is continuing to make waves in the San Diego suburb of Encinatas, long after a gaggle of mysterious street artists dressed as construction workers installed the unauthorized mosaic under a railroad bridge down the street from Moonlight Beach on April 22. Now, the city has hired a team of conservationists to remove the guerrilla artwork, which depicts Our Lady of Guadalupe hanging five. But it's proving to be not so simple to take down this piece of piously tubular street art: the mural has accrued a devoted local following, and conservators are left scratching their heads, having found that the piece is masterfully affixed to the wall. "This thing is perfectly done," Jesse Taylor, one of the conservators from the L.A.-based Sculpture Conservation Studio told Sign on San Diego. "It looks like they put in an extra structure to make sure it couldn't be removed." Encinitas is paying three conservators $2,000 in tax money to study how to tackle the take-down of the patron saint of the Americas. The Virgin is portrayed on the rogue 10-foot-square artwork riding a surfboard on the nose of which appears a portrait of St. Juan Diego, the indigenous American saint who is said to have seen the Virgin on a hillside in Mexico in 1531. The words "Save the Ocean" run down the left side of the mosaic.
Having been told that the unsanctioned piece was installed by experts, who did not just glue tiles onto the concrete wall with epoxy (as was originally reported), but bolted the work to the overpass, Encinitas Councilman (and former cartoonist) Jerome Stocks expressed his concerns. "That just furthers my argument that a big part of this particular piece of guerrilla art was to put the establishment or the administration in a difficult place," Stocks told Sign on San Diego. The councilman has expressed his concern that religious iconography on public property will invite lawsuits and imply that the city condones graffiti.
Meanwhile, however, fans of the surfing saint have rallied together, leaving flowers and votive candles at the base of the mosaic, according to the AP, and swelling the ranks of a Facebook page aimed at telling the city "it is NOT ok to destroy something so beautiful." In fact, far more people actually seem to be looking for ways to save the work than for ways to eradicate it. Local businesspeople are offering to display the salvaged mosaic on their property, and an AP report states that the Encinitas City Council is looking to relocate the work to a place where the public can continue to view it.
This is, of course, a community that rallies around even those public art displays that they only love to hate. The "Cardiff Kook" for instance, another surf-themed work in the neighboring town of Cardiff-By-The-Sea, is a bronze sculpture by Matthew Antichevich, the actual title of which is "Magic Carpet Ride." This three-year-old commissioned work, which cost some $120,000 to create and install, is frequently mocked by surf aficionados for the awkwardness of the pose, but has cultivated loving fans who dress up the "kook" — recently he has been costumed to look like Oprah (in honor of the final show), Osama bin Laden, and Vincent van Gogh.
Perhaps it's no wonder then, that locals are so staunch in their support of the "Surfing Madonna." According to Sign on San Diego, one incensed driver even stopped his semi-truck at a green light and hopped out, screaming at the conservation team, "What's wrong with you, don't do it! Get away from there, get out!" The North County Times reports that one of the conservators responding to this passionate intervention by shaking his head and quietly muttering, "We would like to, believe me."
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