Recent BTW Young & Sick is perhaps better known for his visual art than for his music, having illustrated album covers for the likes of Foster The People, Maroon 5, and Robin Thicke. His greatest artistic coup so far was painting a giant mural of his artwork for Foster The People’s Supermodel in L.A. as depicted above and documented here:

Last Friday The Los Angeles Times passed on a statement from Foster The People’s Mark Foster that the mural was scheduled to be painted over, just six months after it went up, because permits the band thought they were granted had been retroactively denied. Explained the report, “Foster’s new statement didn’t detail what led to the denial of permits, but the city’s regulations on murals require that they cannot be advertisements, and there’s been discussion in the community since it went up over whether the mural constitutes an ad for the Supermodel album or is a legitimate piece of art.”

A fan named Johanna Maria launched a petition to save the mural, which attracted 12,000 signatures. As The Hollywood Reporter points out, Mayor Eric Garcetti stepped in Sunday to prevent the mural’s erasure. Explains THR, “The band invited fans to the downtown Los Angeles site for a celebration yesterday, where they were given limited-edition, screen-printed posters of the mural and interviewed by a film crew there to document their thoughts on the mural, art, their history with L.A., music, and community.” Cool stuff, even if the mural is celebrating an intensely mediocre album.