LOS ANGELES - For nine months not a single driver among the hundreds of thousands of motorists who daily ply downtown Los Angeles' main freeway noticed that there was something odd about the large, green sign guiding them through the complex and confusing transition from the Harbor Freeway onto California's Interstate 5.
It was a fake. But such a clever fake that not even Caltrans, the people responsible for the signs, realized it was not one of their own, but a hand-painted replica.
Created by Los Angeles artist and frustrated commuter Richard Ankrom as a benevolent gesture to guide motorists and to show that art has a legitimate place in society, the meticulously painted sign, embossed with tiny reflective buttons, embarrassed transportation officials who learned of it only in a local newspaper column.
Especially because Ankrom installed it in broad daylight, dressed as a blue-collar worker in a hard hat and orange vest, and had friends videotape the entire process, according to a report published Thursday in the Los Angeles Times.
A spokesman for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) was not immediately available for comment.
For now, transportation officials will leave the sign where it is, and will not press charges against Ankrom, the Times reported. But they may replace the sign in a few months as part of a program to retrofit all freeway signs with new more reflective models.
The artist, who moonlights as a freelance sign maker, came up with the idea for the sign three years ago while often getting lost trying to locate the right exit ramp to I-5.
Rather than lodge a complaint with transportation officials he simply designed a sign guiding motorists north. "It needed to be done," he told the paper. "It's not like it was something that was intentionally wrong.
The artist added that he would prefer that Caltrans return his work if they decide not to use it.
