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Friday, June 2, 2000
'Friendly' barrier may be in works to protect Selena statue from graffiti
By Sara Lee Fernandez
Caller-Times
At least once a week, City Park and Recreation employees have to clean up and paint over graffiti and messages of love and grief left behind at the statue of entertainer Selena Quintanilla-Perez.
"It's a longstanding maintenance issue," said City Park and Recreation Director Tony Cisneros. "It's unfortunate that it's not immune to graffiti."
Cisneros and Marine Director Peter Davidson addressed the problem to the Water/Shore Advisory Committee during a monthly meeting Thursday. The board voted to allow Cisneros to contact the Quintanilla family and Dusty Durrill and seek their input about possible solutions to prevent further damage to the memorial and to gain their support.
The Devary Durrill Foundation, named for Durrill's daughter, paid for the memorial, which stands at the entrance of the Peoples Street T-Head.
One of the ideas suggested to the committee was to surround the statue with a galvanized steel cage to stop people from carving on the bronze statue and writing on a ceramic flower that is part of the memorial.
Cisneros said two employees have to paint over most of the accompanying mirador sometimes as often as three times a week. There are initials carved into the statue, Davidson said.
Several committee members said they didn't like the cage idea because they felt it would rust and quickly become unsightly.
"We need to be getting strong input from the family and other parties," Dr. Joseph Horvat, a committee member, said during the meeting.
Contacted after the meeting, Durrill said he's already been working on the problem.
"I have some designs in the computer already," Durrill said. "But I'm going to present it to (the Quintanillas) before anyone else. It's a different type of problem than a lot of people realize. It's emotional for visitors and a problem for the caretaker."
Durrill said it would be tough to protect the memorial and still keep it visitor-friendly.
"It's an emotional message center that we are unable to deal with," he said. "I think we can have a friendly barrier to keep people from climbing up on the statue and hopefully keep them from writing on it. The memorial is one of the city's major attractions, and we've got to keep it looking nice. We have to keep it friendly, but we've got to block it some way for the easy graffiti and that's a challenge."
He said the continued writing on the memorial has been of great concern to Selena's family. Her father, Abraham Quintanilla, was out of town and unavailable for comment.
Selena, a Grammy-winning Tejano singer, was fatally shot in 1995 by the president of her fan club.
Staff writer Sara Lee Fernandez can be reached at 886-3767 or by e-mail at fernandezs@caller.com
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