Streetsblog Los Angeles

Last week, I was given the opportunity to take a guided tour of the Orange Line Extension’s bike path and public art installation.  For both the Expo Line and the Orange Line Extension, Metro commissioned a team of L.A. County artists to personalize the stations by creating public art projects to reflect the community.  Los Angeles Times architecture critic Chris Hawthorne mocked the stations as “aggressively banal,” but Streetsblog South L.A.’s Sahra Sulaiman writes about how community groups are working to make the art even more accesible to those passing through.

With Sahra’s article fresh in my mind, I was wondering how the art could improve a station.  After all, there’s even less customization one can do with a bus stop, even a full Bus Rapid Transit stop and station, than you can with Expo Line stations.

Metro commissioned twenty five pieces of art at four new stations and the new platform at Canoga Station.  Each station had it’s own artist who created two pieces of elliptical art on the pavement and either three or four art panels that were in place of wind screens.  The exception is Chatsworth Station which only has two panels and one ellipse . The number of panels varied based on whether or not the panels faced the public.  In some cases, the back of the panel faces a wall.

Over one hundred and fifty artists submitted proposals based in part on community profile create by a local art advisory panel and other community leaders.  The profile described the local culture, heritage and in some cases artistic styles of the area surrounding the station.  For Metro, the community involvement in creating the guide was critical so each station provides not just some eye-pleasing art but some context on what kind of community one is entering as they step off the bus.  Because the street adjacent to the Orange Line Extension is commercial, with freight yards, strip malls and even a strip club facing the stations; it’s the art that provides the real introduction to the Station area.

In an effort to use this program to advance artists’ careers, Metro did not require that the artists have experience with either panel art or the glass mosaics that were on the station.  Artists were allowed to work in their preferred medium and specialists helped fit the original art into the mediums at the station.

Our review of each station is after the jump.  But even if you don’t ride the Orange Line on bus or bike, you can still visit the art.  You can arrange a tour for a group of 15 or more through the all-volunteer Metro Art Docent Council by calling 213-922-2738.  Don’t have 14 friends interested in a tour?  Metro is co-organizing with Valley College an exhibition about the Orange Line art.  Titled, Translations: Artists of the Metro Orange Line, it will run from early October to early December. The exhibition will take place at Valley College’s Art Gallery.  We will have more details as they become available.  But for now, on to the art!

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Have you ever stood in front of a piece of public art and thought your experience would be all the awesomer if you had some context for the work? Or maybe you passed by a public artwork every day and it didn’t register with you until someone engaged you on questions of its value and meaning?

With those questions in mind, members of the Ride South L.A. team (Francois Bar, Tafarai Bayne, George Villanueva, and Benjamin Stokes), Ben Caldwell (of the Kaos Network in Leimert Park), and I thought it might be interesting to see how people were experiencing some of the work at the new stops along the Expo Line.

We decided to make a site-specific recording that offered an insider’s perspective on the art and the artist. We figured that once the recording was completed, we could then leave strategically-placed stickers with a brief blurb about the project and a phone number at the site for people to call. Callers would not only be able to hear the recording, but they would also have the option to record their own impressions of and responses to the work.

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Maybe you saw them.

From April 12 through May 3, there were thirty pianos installed along high-traffic pedestrian corridors in Los Angeles County.  From the bustle of Union Station, to the charm of the Pasadena Playhouse District, to the iconic Santa Monica Pier, thirty pianos, designed and decorated by local artists and community organizations, sat right on the streets for everyone to play as they say fit.  The “Play Me I’m Yours” public art exhibit has toured the world since 2008.  It came to L.A. these past weeks in celebration of acclaimed conductor and pianist Jeffrey Kahane’s 15th anniversary as Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra music director.  You can see the location of all the pianos on this map.

But where most saw an interesting piece of public art, or a chance to entertain the masses by tickling the ivory, one Streetsblogger saw a challenge.   During the three week exhibit, Elson Trinidad traveled to all thirty pianos and performed.  Sometimes he took requests.  Sometimes he came with some songs in mind.  Sometimes, there were puppets.

After the jump is Trinidad’s thoughts on the exhibit and why he felt challenged to run the gauntlet.  Some of the best videos of his street performances will be spread out throughout his commentary.  If you want to hear Elson perform live, his next perfomance just happens to be at the l.A. Streetsblog fundraiser this Friday at the L.A. Eco-Village. Read more…

Although the pilgrimage route along Crenshaw Blvd. was short—0.8 miles, to be exact, it was rich in meaning.

The mission was the dedication of Patrick Henry Johnson’s 40×40 ft. mural, Elixir, to the community.

Led by the artist, approximately 25 “pilgrims” made their way from Starbucks towards the group of supporters and artists already waiting at the base of the resplendent African American woman he had painted, just as the day was coming to a close.

The colors generated by the setting sun mirrored those depicting her as a transcendent body, rising to occupy her rightful place in the heavens as her own, self-contained universe.

Johnson had decided to make the event a pilgrimage, he said to the supporters crowded around him in front of the work, because of his desire to bring the community together “in a collective agreement to make the mural sacred.” Although Johnson had done the entire painting himself, an effort requiring just under 3 full months of work, he acknowledged he couldn’t have done it without the support of the community. When he needed funds to rent a lift so he could reach the top of the wall, he said, friends came together to contribute the $270 that allowed him to finish the piece.

Friends and community members also lent moral support for him while he was painting, with one even calling to make sure he was ok when she heard him screaming and crying in front of the wall from across the boulevard. His screaming wasn’t madness, he explained to us. “On the second to last day [of painting], I had this incredible surge of energy…I discovered the reason I had to do the painting myself…I couldn’t have had another artist on the painting because of the love that I have for the subject matter.” And because, he realized, he needed to let her go. Read more…

Metropolis II, a kinetic sculpture of a futuristic city by artist Chris Burden that will soon start operating for view by the public, raises some interesting questions about the role of cars in cities.

I saw the sculpture, with its elevated roads wrapping around skyscrapers and other structure, sitting still when I visited the museum over the winter break. It might be worth checking it out in action to see 1100 toy cars and 14 train sets whiz and wind their way through the buildings. Metropolis II is a cool contraption and interesting piece of art, like a matchbox car track, erector set, and lego city mashed together and pumped up to gigantic size.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t want to burden such a nifty assemblage with political or planning baggage. But the sculpture’s prominent position in a major museum is drawing lots of attention to the work and the possible future it represents.  The artist’s comments about Metropolis II place it in line with some earlier visions of a vertical, car-dominated Los Angeles that had real influence on the shape of the city today. And I think what Peter Plagens wrote about art critics engaging in urbanism when he reviewed Raynar Banham’s influential book Los Angeles: the architecture of four ecologies, still applies:

” if he wanted to run out and paint pictures of the Roller derby or the Stones it’d be O.K. because it’d be innocuous …  But when you get into architecture it’s big casino, real people’s real lives … and here we go with another strangling round of MacDonald’s, freeways, and confectioners’ culture palaces.” Read more…

Yesterday, KCET announced a new draft ordinane that would finally clarify the legal status of murals painted on private property.  In an odd twist, the capital of the street art movement classifies murals as “outdoor advertising” and bans them in all but the most special cases.  This leads to odd stories such as the poor Valley Village homeowner who was fined by the city for encouraging students to decorate the fence in front of her house as violating advertising codes or other building owners being fined for allowing vandals to graffiti their property.

The new ordinance would allow “original art murals” through a time/place/manner permit on private property.  For existing murals, a “vintage art murals” permitting system would allow for their preservation.   The full text of the draft ordinance is available here.

But where the real controversy is going to come is defining what is, or isn’t, a mural.  Even among Streetsblog readers, who tend to have a more liberal view for what should and shouldn’t be allowed, a quarter of respondents believed that the painted fence in Valley Village was more blight than benefit.

The ordinance defines murals as “public access to original works of art” and “community participation in the creation of original works of art.”  In other words, to qualify the painting (not vinyl or other special effect) must be asthetically pleasing, non-commercial, and a benefit to the community.  Polar bears drinking Coca-Cola?  Not a mural.  This?  A mural. Read more…

Fantasmas de Los Angeles by Patrick Miller from Out the Window on Vimeo.

“Out the Window“ is back on the bus.  Until the end of November, Transit TV is donating two minutes of every hour to Freewaves’ Out the Window series featuring local film makers and artists short videos about what they love about Los Angeles.

“The films are meant to be shown on the bus,” explains Heidi Zeller with Freewaves.   “People who may live in the Valley and commute to South L.A.  might pass through 20 different neighborhoods but they never get off the bus to experience them.  Out the Window’s goal is to encourage them to get off the bus and into these neighborhoods.”

When Out the Window was running on Transit TV  this Spring, the series focused on student films about their unique communities.  Often times these films focused on how to make the communities safer and healthier.  This time, the focus is a little different. Each day, a new video will be featured highlighting a different place, event or community in Los Angeles.  The series runs from the start of October until the end of November.  When Out the Window.

If you don’t ride the bus, but want to see today’s film, and all the ones that have come before it, visit the Out the Window website.

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Last month, tragedy struck during the monthly Art Walk in Downtown Los Angeles when a dangerous driver jumped a curb, crashed into a parking meter and killed a seven week old infant.  The tragedy shocked not just the Downtown and Art Walk communities, but the entire city.  Advocates pointed out that when you have a situation where vehicular traffic is mixed with thirty thousand pedestrians in such a short space as the core of Art Walk, between 3rd and 7th on Spring Street.

Responding the to safety issues highlighted by the crash, Council Members Jan Perry and Jose Huizar appointed a task force to look at safety issues.  Immediately following the crash, Art Walk participants, and some gallery owners, called for the streets to be completely closed off to car traffic during the walk.  However, that option wasn’t seriously considered for this month’s walk.  Instead, the task force focused on removing food trucks from the core of the event in an effort to spread out, and even thin out, the walking crowd.

Yesterday the task force and the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council , already pushed food trucks, already cornered into private lots, out of the core of Art Walk and on to the periphery to the north and south and parallel streets such as Broadway.  The presence of food trucks had nothing to do with the crash that killed the young infant, and if these private lots are used for their original purpose it could make the driver v pedestrian conflict even worse.  However, last month’s tragedy is being used as an excuse to do something many Downtown denizens have wanted for a long time, begin to push back against the festival that temporarily takes over their neighborhood.

This isn’t an art blog, it’s a transportation and street life blog, so let’s avoid debate about the true meaning of Art Walk and focus instead on how to make a major Downtown event work for the people that want to attend, and everyone else.

There are three interests here, and the reason that Art Walk patrons are on the losing end of the debate thus far is that the other two interests are both more entrenched and in this instance are allied. Read more…

Back in February, we wrote about the battle to save hundreds of stone sculptures constructed by John Nielsen along the lower part of Ballona Creek in the Marina area. Yesterday, a reader asked what happened to the statues, so I wrote to Bobbi Gold of Ballona Creek Renaissance to see what happened. She writes:

Ballona Creek Renaissance began the process of applying for a permit for Mr. Nielsen to continue his work…. Nielson was awarded a grant to perform a similar activity in Scandinavia and left in May for an undetermined amount of time. During his absence, his sculptures have either fallen down from natural causes or been knocked down by people. I was there by the lower part of the channel today, and I saw a few attempts to balance rocks by other people who clearly don’t have Mr. Neilsen’s skill. We hope he can return to L.A. soon.

One of the quiet debates that I hear in Los Angeles is whether or not our city is ugly.  Some argue that the design of our streets has taken the natural beauty of Los Angeles and made it ugly.  While there is some truth in this, I find there are so many beautiful streets and communities to more and balance out some of the ugliness in other areas.

Entering the debate is Jeremy Oberstein, known to some of you as a former contributor to LAist and current staffer to Councilman Krekorian, but he’s also the creator of Los Angeles Alleys: The Book and Los Angeles Alleys: The Blog.  The Book is twenty pages of beautiful shots of some of Los Angeles’ alleys and covers all corners of the city.  If you’re interested in buying the book, you can at the above link, or can actually view the book in its entirety.  Buying the book isn’t just a statement that you think Los Angeles is a beautiful place, but it also supports local artists and will doubtless be the most interesting coffee-table book you’ll ever own.

The beauty of our streets may be up for debate, but apparently you can find some real gems in our alleys.

For more images, click here to see the entire book, or view three more favorite alley pictures after the jump. Read more…