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His Way and the Highway


By Kristin Friedrich
Published: Tuesday, August 19, 2003 12:33 PM PDT
Guerrilla Artist Installs a Freeway Sign, and Nobody Notices

In the last nine months, millions of drivers cruising north on the 110 Harbor Freeway have utilized a multi-colored, badge-shaped sign to help them transition to the northbound Interstate 5 freeway. The sign is unremarkable until you consider one factor: It's not supposed to be there, and it wasn't installed by a Caltrans employee.

The freeway sign instead was erected by a Downtown artist, partly because he thought the area needed more signage, partly because he thought it would make a compelling art project. And he did it all in broad daylight, one morning last August.

Now, after nine months with not a single public official noticing, Richard Ankrom is coming clean.


"I remember getting lost in the '80s on that part of the freeway," Ankrom, 46, says. "And when I moved Downtown 10 years later, I figured out why."

Confident that other drivers had the same problem, Ankrom, who also works as a sign maker, decided to address matters in his studio at the Brewery Art Complex. He researched the size and color specs of standard freeway signage, then purchased the appropriate aluminum which he shaped and treated. He brought paint swatches to roadside signs so he could best determine colors, then mixed his reds and blues to match. He even added a patina (a trick gleaned from his occasional work on movie and TV sets) so that his creations wouldn't look glaringly new.

Ankrom chose the Third Street bridge for his functional/guerrilla art project because it was accessible from the street, it was close to the 5 freeway, and because that's the point where he usually got confused.

His biggest challenge was obtaining the button-shaped reflectors for the route shield. Reflector tape is used these days, but Ankrom wanted his sign to match those already in place on the Third Street sign.

It took him three months to track down the reflectors. Then he was ready to go.

Move in, Rubber Ducky


Ankrom first planned to dress in black and install his sign at night. Then, he reconsidered. "If what I'm doing is truly correct and righteous, I should do it in broad daylight," he surmised. He went to Home Depot instead, and bought a hardhat and reflective vest.

On a quiet, gray Sunday morning last August, Ankrom parked his truck -- decorated with an "Aesthetic De Construction" placard -- on Third Street. With a bogus work order on hand in case anyone confronted him, he approached his chosen overpass. A handful of friends (including photographer Gary Leonard) were stationed nearby to chronicle the event with pictures and videotape. They communicated via walkie-talkie.

The signal "Move in, Rubber Ducky!" meant the coast was clear.

Ankrom climbed a ladder, scampered over the razor wire and was traversing the sign's catwalk in seconds. Only a pull-up handrail separated him from the speeding traffic two stories below.

"I was nervous," Ankrom admits, "But I knew I had to seem calm and collected, just Johnny Lunchbucket putting up a sign."

Ankrom affixed the word "North" and an "Interstate 5" route shield without a single misstep. He scampered back over the wire and into his truck, then he and his compatriots went to breakfast. The entire installation took 20 minutes.

Ankrom has assembled the footage his friends shot into a 10-minute video, which he screens for visitors to his loft during Brewery Art Walks (it can also be viewed online at www.netbroadcaster.com/movies/ documentary/documentary.html). He has submitted the short to several film festivals, and is waiting to hear about a Chung King Road gallery show in Chinatown in coming months.

Although friends have alerted him to other places with confusing signage, Ankrom isn't interested in a repeat performance. And now that his work has endured for the better part of a year, he's ready for the secret to get out.

"I am a little disappointed that the colors are slightly off," he says, noting that the sign has faded a bit. "But all in all, it seemed like everything really came together on this one."





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