Hollywood Mural in Odessa tagged and vandalized

ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) - The Hollywood Mural in Odessa has been an attraction and iconic landmark in Odessa for years. Recently it was found tagged and vandalized.

One of the original artists of the mural, Joe Cobarobio, stated his disappointment saying, “Somebody would have such disrespect for something that’s been up 30 years now since we’ve painted this, and I felt kind of like you know, I have to come out here and rectify the situation.”

Cobarobio plans on returning to the site and fixing the mural.

Odessa arts executive Randy Ham is also disappointed but is optimistic about the communities reaction to the situation saying, “If there’s a silver lining I guess, is the amount of community support we’ve had in less than 24 hours of people reaching out to offer assistance and we had already planned on having a public art cleaning day later this month so we’ll roll this into the activities of having our volunteers clean and maintain the public art collection we have now.”

Odessa will have an art cleaning event on June 17 to help preserve all murals Downtown.

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