Heads up! Fine art is on a billboard near you this month in LA

When you’re driving or walking in L.A. this month, make sure to look up every once in a while.

There’s a good chance you could catch some public art on billboards, thanks to The Billboard Creative, a nonprofit that worked with 30 artists this year.

On Hollywood Boulevard, right up the street from the Home State restaurant is a piece from L.A. artist Francisco Palomares.

Flanked by a predictably risqué Los Angeles Apparel ad and a Disney billboard depicting Mickey Mouse, you’ll find a vibrant bouquet of orange marigolds, placed in a purple Fabuloso bottle.

'Fabuloso' by Francisco Palomares

(

The Billboard Creative

)

But this billboard isn’t trying to sell you cleaning products. It’s a reproduction of an oil painting, one of a series by Palomares called "Homage to My Mothers."

“I think Fabuloso is the colors and the smells that I would smell in my household. I think if the purple juxtaposed to the orange, it was the color palette that I would see in my mom’s home, in her interior designing,” the artist told LAist.

Palomares, who teaches art just up the hill at Barnsdall park, said some people tell him that this art makes them feel seen.

“And it’s what I love, that this painting is personal, it tells my story, but it’s a similar story to many first-generation Mexican-American immigrants, or kids from immigrant families,” Palomares said.

The piece is dedicated to mothers, like Palomares’ mom, who cleaned homes and taught him work ethic and how to be an entrepreneur.

“I want to talk about my everyday, just like Van Gogh, Degas, Velasquez were talking about their contemporaries. These are my contemporaries. Domestic workers, blue collar workers. People that are working with their hands. That are behind the scenes and that improve our lives,” Palomares said.

'Naty' by LA-based YoYo Lander.

(

The Billboard Creative

)

LA as 'billboard town'

Adam Santelli, The Billboard Creative’s founding director, started this labor of love over a decade ago, when the economy wasn’t doing great and companies were struggling to sell ad space.

“I mean, L.A. is the billboard town. We have more billboards here than any other place in the country... My relationship with billboards is fraught... It’s not an easy project. Every year by the time it’s done, I’m like ‘I’m never doing this again,’” Santelli said.

But it’s the artists who keep him coming back every year.

“It’s too hard to be an artist if you’re not making millions of dollars to show your work. And every opportunity that we have as a community to show off artists’ work is an important thing,” he said.

Santelli said he works with outdoor advertising companies to secure the blank slates, which could normally go for up to $8,000 a month.

For Palomares, whose paintings have shown at the Cheech Center and the Armory Center, having his work plastered high above Hollywood Boulevard is like coming full circle.

'Clown Cult Picnic' by Tara O'Gorman

(

The Billboard Creative

)

He remembers riding on the 101 Freeway with his mom as a kid, and being inspired by Frank Romero’s mural depicting families traveling to the 1984 Olympics, before it was painted over.

Palomares said billboards document our cultural environment.

“So I think being on a billboard, having my art on a billboard is exactly what inspired me in the first place when I was a kid," Palomares said. "My gallery was the walls of LA, [it] was the murals. And so seeing fine art, seeing paintings in a billboard is a continuation of that in a different platform."

The Billboard Creative put together a map so you can find all the pieces in L.A.

Like most other billboards, these pieces won’t be up forever. You can catch them from downtown to West Hollywood until the end of May.