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Art On the Road: Imagined Fronts – The Great War and Global Media at LACMA

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” – Quote attributed to Leon Trotsky but actually coined by Fanny Hurst in 1941 while addressing a rally in Cleveland, Ohio.

“First time I wore thermal underwear and a down vest to work in April,” said the museum guard standing outside Michael Heizer’s Levitated Mass—a 456-foot-long concrete slot constructed on LACMA’s campus, topped by a 340-ton granite megalith. I had not expected such detailed response to my friendly “It’s cold, isn’t it?” directed at the shivering man.

Two views of Michael Heizer Levitated Mass (2012)

Glorious blue sky and sunshine were deceptive. It was cold and extremely windy when I started my visit to LACMA, exploring the grounds first, evading palm fronds flying through the air. Crazy weather, with a few of Ai WeiWei’s zodiac creatures ignoring it all and the lamps standing like frozen tin soldiers..

The shivering, alas, did not end once inside. Not due to the temperature, though, since it was quite toasty in the Resnick Pavilion. Rather, it was induced by the realization that we simply have not learned the lessons from the past – or, alternatively, have learned them all too well: media manipulation plays a significant role in preparing people for war, luring them into support for war efforts, and pulling the wool over their eyes with regards to the consequences of war. Pretending that we can know war by imagining it, is, of course, one way to sell it to the public. We might make very different decisions if we lived through the actual experience which is never matched by the most vivid imagination based on media representations. Watershed events like World War I that changed the course of history, are these days remembered as statistics – if they are remembered at all. 20 million deaths, 21 million wounded, in the span of four years (military personell and civilians combined.) Hard to intuit the nightmare that was, when only thinking about numbers.

“Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media,” offers some 200 exhibits chosen by Timothy O. Benson, curator of the museum’s Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies. Posters, books, rotogravure graphics, prints and excerpts from films combine to show the extent to which the public’s perception of World War I was shaped in ways beneficial to war efforts by state and private media. Inexplicably, one of the very few paintings on display was chosen to head the exhibition announcement and subsequent reviews, of which there are remarkably few. (You would think in our own time of war, the atrocities in Ukraine and Gaza, an exhibition about the interaction between media and war would be of heightened interest.)

Félix Edouard Vallotton Verdun (1917)

Maybe there is a pragmatic explanation for the choice, after all: Félix Edouard Vallotton’s Verdun (1917) spares you the reality of the slaughter that was unfolding across a full year in the French trenches (where my own grandfather fought.) It immediately lifts the gaze from the bilging smoke and fires to a bright blue horizon, as if there’s hope, something more likely to draw exhibition visitors than horror, I presume. A much more remarkable painting, Gino Severino’s Armored Train in Action (1915) is also reviewed with regularity. Based on a press photograph of an armored train, the museum signage tells us the painting is: “a celebration of a mechanized war, typifying the Italian Futurists’ extolment of the dynamics of energy and destruction.” What is conveniently left out is Severino’s eventual full-fledged support of Mussolini’s fascism.

Gino Severino Armored Train in Action (1915)

The exhibition wanders across four sections, roughly focusing on war propaganda (Mobilizing the Masses,) battle field representations (Imagining the Battlefield,) exhibits introducing the number of international forces involved (Facilitating the Global War,) and a few instances of the attempts to integrate the damage that was wrought between 1914 and 1918 (Containing the Aftermath.) Nestled in between are a few displays of those who made art or comments opposed to the war.

Overall the organization worked for me, but I found the fact that multiple movie screens, mounted up high and continuously rolling cuts of both documentary movies and propaganda films, incredibly distracting. Some of them were, as good propaganda tends to be, almost hypnotic. A German businessman encounters a woman who sells him a magic potion that will reveal “the truth” if poured on paper, before she vanishes into thin air. What appears on the previously blank page: a tank threatening armed Germans, persuading the business guy, visibly moved, to invest immediately in war bonds, so he contributes his bit as well….

The posters on display are probably familiar to many of us. Neither witty nor subtle, they capitalize on installing fear or indignation, or appeal to your compassion.

The photography section gets more interesting. There are a few memorable photographs documenting the war efforts, and the pride in new technology.

Clockwise: William Ivor Castle Canadian Troops ging over the top – James Francis Hurley Death the Reaper (ca 1918 )and Over the Top – (ca 1918.)

For me, the truly gripping parts of this exhibition were the lithographs and drawings. They can be roughly divided into those that educate, often by means of satire or inclusions of script, and those that speak to our emotions, depicting experiential suffering in hopes that it comes across.

George Grosz The Voice of the People (1927. (Money paid for the following propaganda: Hurray, Hurray!! every shot a Russian, down with Serbia, God punish England, and every Bayonet a Frenchman.)

Georg Scholz Newspaper Carriers (1922).

Otto Dix The Cardplayers (1920)

Käthe Kollwitz The Widow (1922) and The Survivors: War against War (1924)

Both trigger empathetic imagination, something that could provide a fertile ground to change views on war, realizing its futility and injustice.

Willie Jäckel Memento (1915)

“Memento 1914/15,” a blistering portfolio of 10 lithographs by Willy Jaeckel, made in 1915 when he joined the Berlin Secession to oppose artistic suppression by bellicose Kaiser Wilhelm II. (Jaeckel was just 27.) Inspired by Goya’s “The Disasters of War,” it features a reclining severed head on the cover page — the “sleep of reason” made permanent, its unleashed monsters manifold in subsequent sheets. (Ref.)

Of course, the very same mechanism, as used by propaganda posters, helps to sell war.

In some ways, this makes the exhibition thought-provoking: how easily can our imagination, needed to approximate a close representation of the war experience, be manipulated? How do propaganda posters, retouched photographs, censored prints affect our imagination? It is not just the official propaganda machine by governments, military and states, however sophisticated. It is also the art that tries to elicit compassionate imagination that played a role mostly in anti-war directions – and managed to be distributed, for the first time, in large quantities, made accessible through the modern printing presses.

ERNST FRIEDRICH WAR AGAINST WAR (1924)

The show is timely. The use of both, image manipulation for propagandistic purposes, and the employment of censorship to prohibit artists from eliciting sympathetic imagination that helps to support just causes, is ubiquitous across the world right now. Just a few days ago, the NYT reported about the chilling effects of the Gaza war on artistic expression and censorship in Germany. NPR reported on the use of misleading videos (old or from video games) flooding the social media to escalate tensions between Palestinian and Israeli supporters, just a few days after the horrific Hamas attacks. Pro-Israel sources claim “Pallywood Propaganda,” accusing Palestinians of staging or faking their suffering.

El Dschihad, no. 25, January 25, 1916, in German prison camp created for muslim soldiers – Raoul Dufy The Allies, (c. 1915) – Lucien Jonas African Army and Colonial Troops’ Day, (1917)

Our increasing awareness of AI’s power in creating deep fakes leads us to discount the veracity of purported eyewitness accounts, sent via videos out of the war zones, with few means of assessing what is real and what is false. That uncertainty, in turn, can lead to a general disavowal of visual reports, a lack of trust that opens doors to political manipulations by those who claim they, and they alone, can guide us to “the truth.”

Art is related to conflict in so many ways – during wars, art is looted as a trophy, art is destroyed as a way of demoralizing opponents, it is used, as mentioned before, as a tool of propaganda in order to generate both psychological and material support for the war effort. Can art that opposes war, as expressed in writing, visual representations, music, really make a difference in our day and age, given our distrust, our being overwhelmed, our dire need to avoid being flooded and wanting to distance ourselves from war imagery? When war defeats the imagination, can art rekindle it? Can it cut through hate, anger, resentment, violence and destruction, change minds? The debate is ongoing.

Sergio Canevari The Russian Peace (1918)

I have no definitive answer. This exhibition’s imagery most meaningful to me, a pacifist, namely the depictions of suffering and the satirical stabs at those who financially gain from war, will likely not speak to those eager to go to war, just like racist propaganda posters embraced by them do nothing for me. Maybe our ideological or political divisions prevent us to think through art that does not confirm our preexisting beliefs. To that extent, art will not be able to produce change, given the strength of our biases. (I have written about this at length recently, as you might remember.)

Pierre Albert-Birot Final study for The War (1916)

However, if I consider what happens when I share the art that appeals to me with other people who are open to it, it surely creates a sense of solidarity and feeling of belonging to that group. Maybe it guides you to find your kind, to strengthen a movement, to empower you to speak up for shared values. If controversial art models courage, it might spark you to be brave and resist, as well. Not a small feat.

Johannes Baader Dada-Dio-Drama (1920)

Right now we look from afar at wars in Ukraine, in Gaza, in Tigray, in Sudan, Syria, in Lebanon, with more on the horizon, should Iran, China, Russia, North Korea, the U.S. or Nato advance to increasing military action. We might not be interested in war, but war will be interested in us. And at that moment we will need allies to resist its pull, some of whom, just maybe, can be found through a shared appreciation of the relevant art as well as shared forms and intensities of imagination, allowing us to keep a critical perspective and fight manipulation.

Am I optimistic about this? Not really.

Hopeful? You bet.

Otto Schubert Watercolor, pen. and pencil on postcards he sent to his future wife. Off to War, November 18, 1915, Fire, Explosion, December 1, 1915 Evening Mood at the Front, January 24, 1916 Argonne, French Prisoners, April 1, 1916 Hot Day at the Front, April 7, 1916

Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media

December 3, 2023–July 7, 2024

Resnick Pavilion

Los Angeles County 
Museum of Art

5905 Wilshire Blvd. 
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Edward Kienholz The Portable War Memorial (1968-70)


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Desert Beauty

· Exploring Anza-Borrego Desert State Park ·

“Certain desert areas have a distinctive and subtle charm, in part dependent on spaciousness, solitude, and escape from the evidence of human control and manipulation of the earth, a charm of constantly growing value as the rest of the earth becomes more completely dominated by man’s activities. This quality is a very vulnerable one …. Nowhere else are casual thoughtless human changes in the landscape so irreparable, and nowhere else is it so important to control and completely protect wide areas.”

– Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr in a 1928 survey for the California State Park Commission.

And here I thought almost 5 hours in the car to get from Los Angeles to Borrego Springs, CA, was a long stretch. Take the amount of time – decades and decades – it took to establish the nation’s second largest state park, the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, and the drive was but a blink of an eye. Beginning in 1927, a group of visionaries tried to protect several desert areas for future generations, alert to the destruction of natural habitats by encroaching civilization that parceled up open spaces. Fierce opposition by many interested in economic development stretched out the process across years and years. For once, those concerned with environmental and ecological preservation, prevailed. Since 1974, some 585,930 acres (237,120 ha) of the Colorado Desert, located in San Diego County, are now protected. (For a riveting account of the history of the fight to create this marvel, go here.)

The desert lies along the western margin of the Salton Trough. This major topographic depression with the Salton Sink having elevations of 200 ft (61 m) below sea level, forms the northernmost end of an active rift valley and a geological continental plate boundary (Lots of earthquakes with high magnitudes, every 5 years or so.) (Ref.) 

Imagine a large bowl of badlands, surrounded by mountains, with the Vallecito Mountains to the south and the highest Santa Rosa Mountains to the north. The badlands, ancient lake basins, are the result of both, erosion and sediment deposition over 5 million years. what you are seeing is literally what the Colorado river excavated from the Grand Canyon. The eroded and pretty much plant-less areas make it easy to see the dipping layers of siltstone and sandstone. They are filled with fossils, and populated by big horn sheep, neither of which I glimpsed during my visit. What I did see was breathtaking beauty of wide open land, cloudy sunrise, and the tail end of the wildflower bloom, providing endless delight to the searching eye.

No wonder that eco-tourism flourishes here at this time of year: the population of Borrego Springs, where I stayed, increases by about 580% in peak wildflower superbloom season, an increase from around 3400 long term residents to around 200,000 tourists. According to the government’s park survey, 932 plant taxa belonging to 387 genera in 98 different families documented within the park. The plant family Asteraceae (sunflower) is most abundant with 135 taxa identified. Rodents, hares, rabbits, fox, coyote, mountain lion, bighorn sheep as well as many species of snakes make up the fauna.

The region was home to two Native American groups, the Kumeyaay and the Cahuilla for thousands of years, semi-sedentary residents of certain favored locations or base camps. From there they would travel to outlying areas seasonally to harvest food resources and to avoid inclement weather, like winter snows. Leave it to the forces that be to name the park instead for sheep (Borrego) and a colonizing explorer, military officer and politician, 18th century Juan Bautista de Anza.

The progressive vision to protect open spaces was not matched by progressive visions in other domains either: when César Chávez came to Borrego Springs to support local workers who wanted the National Farm Workers Association as their union in 1966, they tried to chase him out of Borrego Springs by not allowing lodging or camping in the usual spaces. He and the union organizers eventually camped at Borrego Palm Canyon Campground, the start of my hike last week, with a lone supervising ranger defending their rights against the town folks who loathed the idea of unionizing workers. 

The hike, starting at 7 am with an otherworldly light bathing the landscape, went up to the palm canyon, at my speed taking about 4 hours there and back.

That left a spare hour to visit some additional strange sights, before the threatening rain storm set in. (It dropped over 2 inches in 24 hours for the L.A. region.) In reversal to my earlier complaints about the length of time, these 5 hours felt way too short!

The clouds formed an appropriately dramatic background for an unexpected piece of art, a humongous, corrugated steel sea serpent crawling through the desert. I could not but marvel at the strangeness of the sight and, truth be told, at the skill of the designed and steel welded creation by sculptor Ricardo Breceda. However, there was something odd about plopping some 130 creatures in to the landscape, with people and cars crawling around them like ants, with few of the sculptures true to this natural environment. I mean, elephants and camels? Dinosaurs and tigers? The whole thing was the idea of Dennis Avery, the late land owner of Galleta Meadows Estates in Borrego Springs, adding free standing art to his property and, I guess, attracting tourists this way. and if that’s what draws people to the region, exposing them to the barren beauty of the desert for most of the year, more power to them!

Music reflects John Luther Adam’s view of the desert. Quails and sky reflect mine.

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Songs from the Congo

· Black Artists of Oregon/Africa Fashion at Portland Art Museum ·

““I am black; I am in total fusion with the world, in sympathetic affinity with the earth, losing my id in the heart of the cosmos — and the white man, however intelligent he may be, is incapable of understanding Louis Armstrong or songs from the Congo.”

– Franz Fanon Black Skin White Masks, 1952

Last week I visited Africa Fashion and Black Artists of Oregon at the Portland Art Museum, downstairs and upstairs in the main building, respectively. Downstairs was empty, upstairs was jumping, middle of a weekday, for a show that has been open since September. I started my rounds on top and my eye was immediately caught by a group of young women motionless, except for their heads.

What were they staring at? Bent over, studying, then four heads lifting in unison, looking at each other, then bending again, back and forth, like a silent dance. Once the young women left, I walked over to see for myself and found this:

damali ayo Rent a Negro.com (2003) You can listen to the artist explain the evolution of this work here.

What reaction would an interactive piece like this, riffing on the commodification and objectification of Black labor, elicit in high school students who are most likely not (yet) too familiar with conceptual art? One of the first satirical pieces of internet art, damali ayo‘s Rent-a-Negro is an ingenious take on the system that has progressed from purchasing and owning the Black body to leasing it (although prison labor needs to be considered a form of slavery, if you ask me,) to using token Blacks to satisfy demands for “diversity.” How would it be processed by the Black high-schoolers in contrast to those like me, old White folk? Rage and revulsion by those whose ancestors were subjected to exploitation and oppression, ongoing even? Shame and sorrow by those whose forbears might have wielded the whip and ran the auctions, with patterns of discrimination not a thing of the past?

Julian V.L. Gaines Painfully Positive (2021)

Ray Eaglin Maid in USA (1990)

Fanon’s insight that someone like me will not be able to understand certain forms of art as they would be by those from whom it originates, popped up in my head with urgency. And this leads to one of the elephants in the room that needs to get aired: how does a White woman review exhibitions of Black art with the depth and understanding they deserve, while aware that the racial, potentially distorting, lens cannot be abandoned? It is naive, bordering on ignorant, to assume that art can be seen, understood, felt in some neutral fashion, when our implicit stereotypes guide our interpretations, and when our lack of knowledge specific to the history of a community affects our comprehension.

Tammy Jo Wilson She became the Seed (2021)

Al Goldsby Looking West (ca. 1970)

Furthermore, any reviewer aware of their implicit biases and wishing to be an ally to those who are burdened with historical or ongoing discrimination, will walk on eggshells. You want to avoid harsh criticism, or piling onto stereotypes, or being overly deferential, despite all of that being already a form of unequal treatment, born from awareness of culture constructed around race. You so want to avoid putting your foot in your mouth and appear arrogant.

Or racist.

Thelma Johnson Streat Monster the Whale (1940)

Mark Little Despondent (1991)

Isaka Shamsud- Din Land of the Empire Builder (2019)

I vividly remember a lecture I gave about the psychology of racism on invitation by PAM in the context of a Carrie Mae Weems exhibition over a decade ago. I talked about the Implicit Associations Test – IAT –  the psychological measure that confirms how many of us hold stereotypical assumptions associated with racism. It is a test that looks at the strength of associations between concepts and even the most liberal takers have gasped at their scores.  Mind you, it does not mean you are a racist; it just tells us that we have all learned associations between concepts that involve stereotypes associated with Blacks. Some in the audience erupted in anger, astute, educated, intelligent docents among them. That could not be true! They fought against racism all their lives! I clearly failed in getting the point across: there is a difference between consciously acting on your stereotypes and unconsciously being affected by them. But even the latter was denied by these well-meaning citizens.

Jason Hill Lion King (2019)

In any case, one can have read brilliant work like Franz Fanon’s about the Black psyche in a White world, racial differences, revolutionary struggle and the effects of colonialism until the cows come home, it will not ease the task of reviewing exhibitions like the one currently on view. Not that that has kept me from doing so, most recently with Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems in Dialogue at the Getty and Red Thread/Green Earth which showed work of several members of the Abioto family at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts.

But it has made me aware of how much I already censor in my head, how worried I am about the reception of my takes, and the damage they could do, how my approach to work are colored by the political context, something that would not happen if I just walked into any old show of a collection of artists, race unknown.

Ralph Chessé The Black Women Work (1921)

Bobby Fouther Study in Black (2023)

***

The current exhibition was curated by Intisar Abioto after years of research into the spectrum of Black artists in Oregon, some famous, some locally known, some hidden in the embrace of their community. She put together a remarkable show, and her line of thinking as well as the expanse of the art is fully explained in a in-depth review by my ArtsWatch colleague Laurel Reed Pavic, who talked to the curator and listened to her podcasts about the exhibition. (You can listen to the podcasts yourself – they range from general introduction to a number of interviews with individual participating artists.)

My first association to the upstairs show was the contrast to what is exhibited downstairs, African Fashion. Previously shown at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, the latter was hailed as a vital and necessary exhibition by eminent art critics. It felt to me, however, like one of those luxury fruit baskets filled with luscious and exotic goods, wrapped in cellophane with a glittery bow – something that often does not live up to its visual promise when you are actually starting to peel the fruit.

Contrast that with the show upstairs: like a farm-to-table box dropped off at your doorstep, stuffed to the brim, packed to overflowing, with produce you sometimes don’t even recognize, but all locally grown and, most importantly, invariably, truly nourishing.

Katherine Pennington Busstop II (2023)

Latoya Lovely Neon Woman (2019)

Packed is the operative word here, 69 artists and over 200 objects, sorted into categories like “expanse, gathering, collective liberating, inheritance, collective presence, and definitions. The art is competing for space, focus, time and attention, with those limited resources not meeting demand. I assume it was a conscious curatorial decision. If you have, finally, a public space willing to open up to a neglected or even excluded collective of artists (collective in the sense of a shared history rather than a shared goal,) you might as well grab the opportunity and allow every one in the community a shot. This is particularly true when you don’t know what the future holds and which opportunities emerge in times where the racial justice backlash is raising its ugly head ever more prominently. Yet you do early-career artists, no matter how promising, no favor when placing them among the hard hitters.

Henry Frison African Prince (1976-79) with details

Alternatively, the inclusion of so many art works might have been a conscious attempt to demonstrate the diversity that is offered by a community long segregated from traditional art venues, never mind neighborhoods. It might be an attempt to shift what psychologists call the outgroup homogeneity bias, our tendency to assume that attitudes, values, personality traits, and other characteristics are more alike for outgroup members than ingroup members. “They are all the same! Know one, you know them all!” As a result, outgroup members are at risk of being seen as interchangeable or expendable, and they are more likely to be stereotyped. This perception of sameness holds true regardless of whether the outgroup is another race, religion, nationality, and so on.

That bias certainly affects what we expect (particularly, when our expectations are driven by other cognitive biases as well.) Our unconscious expectation of less diversity in the creative expressions of the art were certainly put in doubt with the plethora of work put up by Abioto. In confirmation of the bias – and thus the value of her curatorial decisions – I certainly caught myself regularly looking for a common thread of political statements, however indirect, commenting on the experience of being Black in Oregon, a notoriously racist state.

MOsley WOtta Baba was a Black Sheep (2023)

The history can be found here in detail. Simply put, Oregon had not one but three separate Black exclusion laws anchored in the Oregon Constitution and it took until 2001 to scrap the last bit of discriminatory language from the records.

We are one of the nation’s whitest states, and had at some point the highest Ku Klux Klan membership numbers nationally. Of our 4.2 million Oregon residents only about 6% are Black, and many of these have been displaced within the state over and over again, making room for construction projects and/or gentrification of neighborhoods. Nonetheless, Black leadership and organizations providing support for education, including the arts, are resilient and effective. (A recently updated essay by S. Renee Mitchell provides a thorough introduction to these achievements. Another informative article about Black pioneers can be found here.)

Arvie Smith Strange Fruit (1992) Detail below

Much of the art reflects the history, referencing the pain and injustice of lived as well as inherited experience. But there were also pieces that simply depicted beauty, documented landscape, revered what is. No message necessary or intended. It is a conversation I would love to have about all art, at this moment in time, how our ability and willingness to make art outside the need to bear witness, or instruct, or frighten, or alert to social change needed, is obstructed by multiple internal and external forces – but that has to wait for another time.

Sadé DuBoise Collective Mourn (2023) with detail

For this exhibition there was more art on display than could possibly be processed during a single visit. But all of it was nourishing, even in passing, as I tried to express in my initial description – food for thought, yes, as well as a feast for the eyes.

Natalie Ball Mapping Coyote Black, June 12 and 13, 1987 (2015)

Natalie Ball Mapping Coyote Black , June 12 and 13, 1872 (2015) (Artist new to me, enchanted by the work.)

I felt at times as if I was, if not an invited, surely a tolerated guest at a family reunion – meeting of long lost friends and relatives, happy to run into each other, artists introducing each other. It was a vivid, social experience during a time where I am still socially isolated due to the pandemic, even if I was standing double-masked at the margins, observing so many people truly engaging with art, potentially new to them. Twice (!) I was asked to take photographs of people who had met at the museum by chance and talked to each other in front of this or that piece.

I left the museum more hopeful than after any of the recent shows I’ve been reviewing (and the last year included some real winners!). The vibrancy of the work on the walls and the liveliness, even giddiness of the social interactions of many visiting generations all conveyed a sense of resilience and optimism that somehow rubbed off onto me. I might not get the songs of the Congo, but I do have an inkling, provided by this exhibition, of what local Black art stands for: a community that refuses to let go of history, no matter how painful. A community that believes in a more just tomorrow as well, forever willing to fight for it, no matter how hard that is made by the rest of us. A community standing its ground, with art that reflects that strength.

Ralph Chessé Family Portrait (1944)

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From Grapes to Gentrification: L.A.’s Art District.

Walk with me. A slow amble under a hot November sun through strangely empty streets in central L.A. on a Saturday morning, with visual input galore.

Where are all the people? This was around 11.am.

Frequent stops for photographing – not enough, as it turned out, or not always focused enough.

As is my wont, I went into a neighborhood without having read up on it, always hoping to have a fresh eye. More educated now, I wish I’d had added stops for this or that landmark, oh well. Still captured the essence, I think.

A lonely tagger.

I had chosen L.A.’s art district for my outing because it is generally advertised as a haven for graffiti, and it did not disappoint. Its history, now that I have read up on it, is generally more interesting than most of the murals, however. More distressing as well. Much of the graffiti is simply tame.

The area was actually the center of California’s wine industry in the 19th century, L.A. then known as the City of Vines. Not only were the vineyards located on land taken from the indigenous Chumash, Tongva, and Tataviam tribes, but tribal labor was used to build the business in systems not unlike slavery. When native Americans came to the mission and were lured in baptism it brought with it a bidding contract that they could not leave. They were forced into indentured labor, including winemaking, and lived in subpar conditions that introduced and spread European diseases. When the mission systems were secularized, their land was given to white settlers instead.

The Earth Crew mural, a community mural from the 1980s, renovated 5 years ago.

Displaced, they roamed the area and many of them turned to alcohol to drown their sorrows, which led to horrid consequences.

(Ref.) 

Eventually the vineyards gave way to the citrus industry, which was later destroyed by treatment-resistant parasites. During its heyday, it needed a shipping network, provided by the railroad that arrived in 1876. First Southern Pacific, then the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad and finally the Union Pacific. By 1905, Los Angeles had become the western terminus for three major transcontinental railroads. All three railroads built depots, transportation buildings, warehouses, and rail yards in and around the Arts District. Many cheap hotels providing single rooms for the workers followed. Some of the photographed buildings capture the old architectural structure.

By WW II the rail system was replaced by the trucking industry, with the industrial nature of the area permanently ensconced until the 1960s or 70s, when artists moved into many warehouse now vacant, because smaller businesses had been absorbed or displaced. The alleys had also become too small for ever increasing truck sizes. By all reports the urban environment was decaying and dingy, but increasingly dedicated to art- making and -living spaces, once the City of Los Angeles passed the Artist in Residence ordinance in 1981, which allowed artists to legally live and work in industrial areas of downtown Los Angeles.

Looked to me like the little scooters were longingly staring at the mega truck…

Some 50 years later, gentrification rules the neighborhood. There is enormous loss of inexpensive lofts to developers who have converted some former loft and studio buildings into condos. 

New high-rises change the character of the neighborhood.

The district is still one of the most filmed locations ever, with as many as 800 filming days a year. The movie industry knows a good thing when it sees it. Chic bars and restaurants around many corners. Weed dispensaries everywhere.

Privately run and decorated dog parks as well – probably a good thing, for dogs and neighborhood alike.

Some landmarks remain, but are also undergoing changes, something that was true through the centuries for the American Hotel. That building and its occupants alone is a living testament to the changing times – a fascinating, detailed summary (with a link to a documentary movie) can be found here. It was the first hotel that was legally open to Black people, with a bar that was shut down in 1914, when it became obvious that Whites and Blacks mingled and partied together.

Ownership changed hands, and was Japanese, as were most of the guests, until they were brought into the camps after Pearl Harbor. A Mexican immigrant bought and operated hotel, bar and market in the mid 80s, and the artists moved in, using the exterior for murals as well. Here are the current ones:

 “La Abuelita/Má’sání” (2015)(Portrait of a Navajo weaver by El Mac. The geometric pattern above Abuelita was painted by Augustine Kofie and the lower left portion was painted by Joseph Montalvo AKA Nuke One of the UTI Crew.

White paws below on the other side of the building.

A pioneering social activist, Joel Bloom, opened a General store on the ground level in 1995 and fought for years against the forces of gentrification before he died in 2007. It looks like 16 years later that battle is still ongoing.

Lots of buildings are shuttered and For Lease signs everywhere – prices waiting for investors, I suppose.

Part of the attraction of the Art District is/was the music, always at the cutting edge before commercial appropriation. The only music related mural I found, though, commemorated murdered rap artist Nipsey Hussle, shot in front of his store in 2019 in a gang dispute. He was a rising musical talent and also revered as someone giving back to his community and trying to revitalize the neighborhood.

Mural by Mister Alex, Biganti26, Hufr – Hussle and Motivate (title of a track)

And memorialization of Kobe and his daughter is found here as well, as so frequently across this city that still mourns the loss, the sun providing a kind of halo.

Not much political art that I came across, maybe that needs to be explored in different neighborhoods.

But there was plenty of reference to comics and a certain affinity for portraits.

My eye, of course, was over and over caught by the saturation of the colors, even those in the pastel range. The light here is so different from up north, and it affects everything.

.

Yup, a lot of visual load. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Music today is by L.A. music ensemble Wild Up, playing a rousing piece by Julius Eastman.

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Bold Bandits and Breathtaking Boulders

As hide-outs go, you could do worse. Particularly when you have attempted to escape prison four times, sentenced for stealing horses, and finally succeed, in 1862, with ten men dead in the process. When you are a poet at heart, you’re surely sensitive to the indescribable beauty of your surrounds.

Who and what am I talking about? Tiburcio Vasquez, son of a founding family of San Francisco, born in Monterey, and drawn to Southern California in the wake of the gold rush. He wrote poetry, he operated a gambling saloon, and eventually he robbed stage coaches when he wasn’t seducing everyone with a skirt on, married or not, apparently quite generous with the spoils of his thefts to those in his crew and needy people in the region.

Eventually he was caught, after multiple feuds and shoot-outs, hanged in 1875 after spending time in San Quentin. He might or might not have been the Robin Hood-like figure who Zorro was modeled after, but he was the one from which the otherworldly landscape neighboring the small town of Aqua Dulce derived its name.

The strange formation of sandstone is a park today, some 45 minutes north of L.A. off Highway 14. You drive through the Sierra Pelona into Santa Clarita valley, then through Aqua Dulce, a small town advertising the high school Fall Festival,

and then reach Vasquez Rocks where the Pacific Crest Trail intersects with multiple other hiking loops, all opening to awe inspiring vistas.

The rocks were formed by runoff from higher mountains, dirt, sand, plant remnants and so on, layer after layer for millions of years – 25 million, I believe – compressed by the weight of each additional layer, compacted into sandstone. Underneath it all runs the Elkhorn Fault which was actively shifting tectonic plates, thus elevating the rocks into angles as steep as 40 – 50 degrees (and pushing some of them up to 4 miles underground, in equally angular formations, it is believed.)

The main rock formations within the 932 acres of the park can be divided into those that are hard and brittle, called hog back ridges and others that are soft and round, full of holes (often occupied by owls!), eroded across time. There are also grinding holes to be found in these rocks, signs of the presence of the Tataviams (originally linked to the Shoshone) who inhabited the region for some 1300 years, from 450 BC until the 1800s.

When the Spanish missionaries arrived and founded the Mission San Fernando Rey de España some 20 miles away, a lot of them were brought in, converted, and forced to labor for their colonial masters. Within a few generations their language was lost. Today, the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians instruct us about their history and heritage and are working towards official recognition by the federal government.

There was much archeological evidence that informed about the Tataviams’ lives as gatherers, hunters and traders, including pictographs. Near the nature center where you enter the park, you can see exact replicas of many of them, all in one place. The original pictographs are in a section of the park that is closed to the public so they will not be destroyed. The originals have been there since 450 AD.

When I visited, the area was dry, suffused with light, filled with shrubbery that tenaciously clung to rocks, and a shining color palette from the greens and reds of the lichen to the orange glow of some of the boulders.

It was also relatively empty, not too many people hiking mid-day, but some climbing the formations, which provided perfect scale for the photographer.

At other times the landscape was booming with people: it has been used as a backdrop for Hollywood films since the 1920s, when it was still private land, leased to the film industry. Below is the list from Wikipedia, and that does not even include a far longer one for TV shows….

It was a perfect day. And here is locally sourced music….

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Art On the Road: Made in L.A. 2023

· The Act of Living at the Hammer ·

“At its outset in the mid-1960s, the historic preservation movement contributed to the racial splintering of the nation’s urban fabric. It denied the freeway’s entry into communities deemed historic while granting its passage through communities judged differently. It empowered some communities in their fight against the freeway while putting others at a disadvantage. In the disproportionate number of black communities that bore the brunt of urban highway construction, the preservation strategy had no chance, leaving displaced residents with a meager set of resources to recuperate their connection to the past. This is why we need to pay attention to murals, festivals, autobiographies, oral histories, and archival efforts. In the high-stakes struggles over the fate of the American city, these were the “weapons of the weak,” the tools invented by displaced communities to fight the forced erasures of their past.” 
― Eric Avila, The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City

WHEN YOU ARE NEW to a city, like I am to Los Angeles, one way of exploration is to hit the history books. I had described my early mapping of the city onto Mike Davis’ City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles in April here, while reviewing an exhibition from the LACMA archives, Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany.

This time, I brought Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism by Ehrhard Bahr, thinking I might follow in the footsteps of my exiled Landsmen during the 1940s, artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazi persecution. The book’s introduction contains the following description: “Los Angeles has occupied a space in the American imagination between innocence and corruption, unspoiled nature and ruthless real-estate development, naïveté and hucksterism, enthusiasm and shameless exploitation.”

I don’t know about the American imagination, but those of us who devoured Berthold Brecht’s California poetry 20 years later as German teenagers obsessed with America were undoubtedly influenced by his assessment:

Contemplating Hell

Contemplating Hell, as I once heard it, 
My brother Shelley found it to be a place 
Much like the city of London. I, 
Who do not live in London, but in Los Angeles, 
Find, contemplating Hell, that it 
Must be even more like Los Angeles. 

Also in Hell, 
I do not doubt it, there exist these opulent gardens 
With flowers as large as trees, wilting, of course, 
Very quickly, if they are not watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets 
With great leaps of fruit, which nonetheless 

Possess neither scent nor taste. And endless trains of autos, 
Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than 
Foolish thoughts, shimmering vehicles, in which 
Rosy people, coming from nowhere, go nowhere. 
And houses, designed for happiness, standing empty, 
Even when inhabited. 

Even the houses in Hell are not all ugly. 
But concern about being thrown into the street 
Consumes the inhabitants of the villas no less 
Than the inhabitants of the barracks.

Bertolt Brecht Nachdenkend über die Hölle, 1941, translated by Henry Erik Butler

Mural and Paintings by Devin Reynolds on the walls of the Hammer lobby. Contains references to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, displacement from a beautiful home acting as a red thread through the histories of many Angelenos.

Many decades later I wholeheartedly disagree with Brecht’s description – I find L.A. vibrant and fascinating – though not his political analysis. He knew class divisions and precarity when he saw it. By all reports, he clung to negative emotions as a motor driving his writing. But his ability to pick up on what makes this city thriving, underneath capitalistic excess or popular culture driven by interests to keep racial segregation intact, might have been curbed by what was then and still is not easily visible to the outsider. At least that is my speculation after chancing on Eric Avila’s The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City, from which I cited at the very start of these contemplations.

Knowing the history of a place is essential to understanding its character. Who rose to the top and who was pushed to the bottom will define the nature of both the lay-out, the (d)evolution of neighborhoods and the way power hierarchies are distributed. My hometown of Hamburg, Germany, for example, needs to be read in the context of its merchant marine and membership in the Hanseatic League, its intermittent warfare with Scandinavian neighbors, and its destruction under Allied firebombing during World War II.

Left: Marcel Alcalá Right: Emmanuel Louisnord Desir

There are ways of learning about the past of a city and her people that are not found simply by looking in all the traditional places. Clearly, mainstream historians have little incentive to document attempts towards self-empowerment or organized resistance by those not among the ruling classes. Facts about the past are instead often woven into the fabric of experienced daily life, painted on neighborhood walls (I had written about Pacoima, for example, here,) told during story time in corner libraries, experienced during Saturday’s soccer matches at the local park, found during celebrations of special days for different nationalities. Not just the past, I’d add, but the present, as it resurrects what was to be extinguished. Not exactly easily accessible to a foreigner like Brecht, struggling with the language, not particularly mobile, traumatized by persecution and exile, and facing the fact that there are 88 cities, approximately 140 unincorporated areas, and communities within the City of Los Angeles.

Jibz Cameron Cops, Coyotes, Cars, Crows (2023) Watercolor, Correction Fluid and Graphite on Paper

We, on the other hand, are lucky enough to find quite a bit of it all in one place, a weave that is compact as well as sprawling, screaming as well as whispering, consciously representing or intuitively describing, like L.A. itself. It’s made possible by curators who brought a cross section of yet undiscovered stories into an exhibition that in many aspect mirrors the city it drew from.

At least that is how I experienced the Hammer’s current exhibition Made in L.A. 2023: The Act of Living, an iteration of its biennial attempt to showcase new talent, unknown or underrepresented artists, providing access to what is likely hidden to most of us from different cultural enclaves. Guest curator Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez, who joined the Hammer museum full-time in June, and Ashton Cooper, Luce Curatorial Fellow, have assembled some 250 works of 39 locally based artists, challenging us to confront our stereotypes and navigate an abundance of thought-provoking art. I come back to what I had written about our own Portland’s current art extravaganza, Converge 45: perceptive curation is a mystery to me, like herding cats, but when it succeeds it is a gift to the community (never mind an intellectual feat.)

Their guiding principles can be found in their statement above.

***

AT RISK OF FALLING for surface rather than structural characteristics, here is an analogy I can’t resist: as L.A.’s neighborhoods differ along multiple dimensions, so does the chosen art in this show. By size, by spacing, by density, by degrees of familiarity. Just as I like some neighborhoods more than others, some leaving me cold, some moving me to the core, some eluding my comprehension, some dull, some riveting, some evoking scorn, and others longing or admiration, so it is for much of the work on display. What registered most deeply was the fact that many of the exhibits taught me something I would not have otherwise known, and how much, sometimes viscerally, texture ran as a common theme through the galleries. Texture, indifferent to past, present or future, is, of course, a stand-out characteristic of Southern California’s nature for this Northerner, with its unusual mix of desert and tropical plants, all ridges, grains, thorns, spines and spikes, peeling bark, twisted fronds, and leathery surfaces.

Kinetic sculpture by Maria Maea “Lē Gata Fa’avavau (Infinity Forever)” (2023) including parts of palm trees, car parts and feathers.

Really, I think there are few materials known to man not included in this biennial. Natural materials like wood, bones, wool, cotton, pearls, wax, mica, graphite, dirt, salt, limestone, copper, leather, feathers, palm fronds, sea shells, corn, corn or other plant based substances. Fabricated materials like acrylic, plastics, paper, forged metal, glass, lead alloys – you name it, it was affixed or served as a constituent even in the context of more traditional forms of painting. Some assemblages consisted of more material detail than you could possibly take in at a single visit. Videos were (blissfully) few and far in-between, although demonstrations of octogenarian Pippa Garner triggered some giddiness.

What follows are some photographs to relate the overall variety of art on display, not necessarily work that I liked, but work that speaks to the range of cultural production, the focus on texture, as well as entryways into histories new to me. I will then turn to my absolute favorites, both artists I had never heard of. In one case, apparently, the same was true for the curators, who only met the young painter upon recommendations of other studios.

Beautiful weavings by Melissa Cody, Scaling the Caverns (2023) at center, detail below

Sensuous configurations of leather, painting- or quilt-like, by Esteban Ramón Pérez,

Esteban Ramón Pérez Cloud Serpent Tierra del Fuego) (2023) Leather, rooster-tail feathers, urethane, acrylic, nylon, jute wood.

Disquieting collages by King Seung Lee,

Kang Seung Lee Untitled (Chairs) (2023) Graphite, antique 24-k gold thread, same, pearls, 24-k gold leaf, sealing wax, brass nails on goat skin parchment, walnut frame.

(Aside: what it is with chairs that can so easily register as ominous? Look at Tadashi Kawamata‘s currently exhibited at Liaigre’s building in Paris: Nest at Liagre. Or is it just me?)

Photo creditL Sylvie Becquet

From the younger set:

Michael Alvarez 2 Foos and a Double Rainbow (2019) Oil, Spray Paint, Graphite and Collage on Panel

A reminder for those of us who vicariously experienced the AIDs epidemic as young adults when living in NYC, with friends dying:

Joey Terrill works, the selection depicting formative memories and daily experience in queer communities.

The Munch-inspired scream on steroids below attracted a lot of attention, justified, in my opinion, only if you looked more closely on the backside of the sculpture that provided a narrative worth the attention grabbing. The sculpture was co-created by numerous Native Americans.


Ishi Glinsky Inertia – Warn the Animals (2023)

Runner-up to the works below that inspired me most, was this assemblage using a silk parachute. Talk about texture!

Erica Mahinay Lunar Tryst (2023) and Details. Acrylic, raw pigment and aluminum leaf on half-silk parachute, lead, ostrich feathers.

And here are Kyle Kilty’s paintings, as vibrant, patterned, and hibiscus-colored as L.A. itself, capturing the imagination with abstractions that turn representational upon closer inspection – just about the same process the traveler experiences when getting to know and learning to navigate this moloch of a city.

For some reason I was reminded of Paul Klee, had he lived in another century, under the California sun and caved to demands for size. (The Phillips had an informative exhibition on Klee’s lasting influence on other American painters, some years ago.)

Kyle Kilty It could be, Frankly (2022) Acrylic, mica flake and oil on canvas.

Kyle Kilty It Could Get the Railroad (2022) Acrylic, oil, and graphite on canvas


Kyle Kilty Arranging (2019) Acrylic, oil, and gold leaf on canvas

And here, finally, is the essence of story telling about the facets of this city here and now, its hidden treasures and traditions, the diasporic nature of its people due to displacement from their home countries and/or the grid of highways, literally embedded in the substance of L.A. county itself: the soil collected from its various neighborhoods, mixed with salt, rain, limestone and masa. Jackie Amézquita’s 144 slabs are testament to the unwritten history of the many unseen people who constitute the lifeblood of L.A., the embedded drawings representing typical sights during quotidian encounters.

Jackie Amézquita El suelo que nos alimenta (2023) Soil, masa (corn dough), salt, rain, limestone, and copper

Here you can see her at work and hear her explanations of the artwork. It is terrific on so many levels.

***

THERE IS CHANGE AFOOT at the Hammer. This week we learned of the planned retirement of long-time director Ann Philbin, with a search for a replacement underway. It will be difficult to fill those shoes. Hopefully, the core of her focus will endure, a commitment to contemporary art with a focus on emerging artists and social justice. The 2023 biennial certainly can serve as a model: reconsidering the past in the sense that it paves the way for grasping a more equitable future, but then moving on, creating our own utopias.

Started today with an incisive German voice. Might as well end with another one. If you replace the words “(social) revolutions” with “art,” and “19th” with “21st” century, the museum might eventually follow this model:

“The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content.”

Karl Marx The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852

Mirrored in installation by Guadalupe Rosales.

———————————————

Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living

OCT 1 – DEC 31, 2023

HAMMER MUSEUM
Free for good
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
90024

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Call for a Commons: New Directions at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum

“History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” – David McCullough, American historian (1933- 2022)

***

I’m curious: how many of you have ever visited the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum in Stevenson, WA? A mere 50 minutes from Portland, the drive there takes you through beautiful scenery and ends up at a multiple-acres piece of land adjacent to Skamania Lodge, alongside a small lake dotted with islands and views of the Columbia and the mountains as backdrop. A compact, modern building made of glass and concrete overlooks the property, with some rather large wood carvings and a collection of historical tools and machinery outside, and multiple exhibitions dedicated to the history of the region displayed on the inside.

I had never known the museum existed, much less visited there, until recent changes at the institution brought it onto my radar. That might have simply been my ignorance – wouldn’t be the first time – or it might have had to do with lack of outreach or appealing programming. That is in the process of changing now, under a new executive director, Louise Palermo, who is very much engaged in putting this hidden jewel onto the map beyond its familiar supporters and viewership of long-time residents of the Gorge. (And a heads-up: a new website, reflecting changes, is in the process of being installed and will be up in a few days. Information about location, opening hours and directions have, of course, not changed.)

The building houses numerous collections across two floors, conveying the history of the land and the people, from First Nations to modern settlement, forestry and industrialization of the region. A small theatre shows documentary films, some exploring the geology of the Gorge. There are a few quilts exhibited, and there is an unexpected, one might say quirky, collection of thousands upon thousands of rosaries, spiking my curiosity how some of these, donated by famous people – Lawrence Welk, Al Smith, the first Catholic to run for the office of president in 1928, one donated in memory of Robert Kennedy, who had left it in a small church in Bavaria; and one donated in memory of Dag Hammerskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953-1961, and one donated by President John F. Kennedy – ended up in cupboards in the Gorge.

You enter the museum through two rooms of exhibits describing the ways of life and fates of the tribal populations of the region.

Much needs to be done, I suggest, to bring this collection and particularly the explanatory signage up to date. Some of the language obscures the consequences of settler colonialism. Pretty much the rest of the museum is teaching us about how the settlers lived and thrived and changed the land, including the rationale for building dams and their fateful consequences.

The Grand Gallery focusses on the way wood was harvested and processed from the surrounding forests down to the mills, much to the delight of visiting school classes who get to see moving and noisy machinery, once you lure them away from the stuffed mountain lion overseeing it all,

or unexpected signs of Big Foot in the corners.

To my delight as well; I had no clue about the complex processes involved and was fascinated by the traditional steam engine, the Corliss, providing power needed to run sawmills. Harvesting of fish is shown by juxtaposing mechanical methods, a fish wheel, and Native American techniques, represented by the model of a native dip netter, at a water feature. This alone would be an interesting starting point for a conversation about extraction and preservation, particular if there were youth programs that would seed not just a love of history but an understanding of each person’s possible role as a steward of the resources of the Gorge.

Louise Palermo instructing 3rd graders

There is also a gift shop that carries arts and craft by local providers in addition to the usual fare. A small gallery offers the opportunity for changing exhibitions, with the current one, Women Artists of the Gorge, being the reason for my recent visit of the place.

PhotoCredit: Kristie Strasen

***

“If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday then any leader can tell you anything.” – Howard Zinn, American historian (1924-2010)

I don’t know if these things existed in the U.S., but in my German childhood one of the highlights were the trips to the country fair or the green grocer were you could plunk down your 10 Pfennig and receive a tiny paper packet stuffed with miniature toys, colored puffed rice and small candies. It was called a Wundertüte, a “wonder packet,” full of surprises. (Of course it was also a way to assure that young kids got used to return customer – consumerism, given the inclusion of collectibles, cards or toys.)

The current exhibition Women Artists of the Gorge, brought the analogy to mind. Here is a collection of incredibly varied works hung in a small space, with many of them delectable and some eliciting, well, wonder. Shout out to Jen Smith, who artistically hung a show that ranged across so many dimensions, type of media included, paintings, prints, photography, collage, macrame and woven tapestries in this tight space. Shout out to the folks at the White Salmon Valley Community Library and the White Salmon Arts Council, Ruth Shafer and Kristi Strasen respectively, who had originally conceptualized an exhibition of regional women artists in honor of Women’s History month, from which a subset followed the invitation to show their work at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center. Shoutout to the staff who kept the daily visitors happy and helped with the pragmatics of mounting the exhibition. The loudest shout out of them all, of course, goes to the artists:

Julie Beeler, Jillian Brown, Janet Essley, Sally Gilchrist, Daiva Harris, Kristine Pollard, Autumn Quigley, Jacqueline Moreau, Cathleen Rehfeld, Ana Rugani, Jen Smith, Kristie Strasen, Cyndi Strid, Kelly Turso and Jodi Wright.

Their work teaches us history in different, more personalized ways, through love of place and depictions of its beauty up to warnings about environmental protection and the need for inclusion and conflict resolution.

I can obviously not review each and every one of the works, so know that my selections are based on personal interest or curiosity, and not at all linked to the quality of the work. As a photographer, I was drawn to one of the photographs on exhibit which anchored the entire show for me in its depiction of female family members capturing a moment of laughter and joy. For many decades, San Francisco-born Jacqueline Moreau‘s work has documented the lives of Native American peoples along the Columbia River, and their fight to secure the rights afforded to them by a provision in the 1855 (Confederate Tribes of Warm Springs) treaty. The intimacy of this photograph is evidence of how integrated a photographer can become with a subject if respect, empathy and shared values overcome outsider status, enabling new forms of community.

Jacqueline Moreau The Spino family (Mona, Geneva, Andrie, Joyce, and Delores.)

As someone who has worked on documentary film projects about the fossil fuel industry, I was moved by the portrait of an Alaskan native whose land, heritage and fate is intrinsically connected to the future of drilling and pipelines and the havoc they can wreak. Janet Essley, a muralist, teaching artist and activist for justice used dabbed motor oil on paper for the portraits in her series Endangered Species (2004), which features people across the world (Columbian, Indonesian and Tajikestani natives among them) whose lives are touched by oil extraction and production.

Janet Essley Alaska

Two depictions of wildlife caught my attention – Autumn Quigley‘s for the wit and thoughtfulness that went into the collage, which seamlessly combined spring’s trilliums and fall’s seed pods and fallen leaves, and Jen Smith‘s for the obvious concern how shared space can be made a reality for creatures that are still truly wild. Ever encroaching human construction is a true threat to habitats, at the same time that we are in such dire need to provide more housing for ever growing populations.

Autum Quigley Windfall

Jen Smith Queen of the High Country

Last but not least there were tapestries that impressed with motion (the strong Gorge winds, swaying the grasses and echoing the waves of the river, were palpable in the one depicted below,)

Jodi Wright Mount Adams

and coloration, the subtle and beautiful gradations of which could not be fully captured under the light conditions.

Kristie Strasen River Tryptich

(I got a better shot at the intricate color play when I visited Strasen in her studio to learn more about the origins of this communal exhibition that she originally co-mounted. Let me share the beauty.)

A set of pillowcases and a collection of small works done during pandemic isolation, defiantly exuberant.

Sometimes I learned interesting backstories that helped to appreciate a work even more. Driven by her passion for mycology, the science of mushrooms, Julie Beeler, together with some collaborators, created a Mushroom Color Atlas which “is a resource and reference for everyone curious about mushrooms and the beautiful and subtle colors derived from dyeing with mushrooms.” People around the world can use this on-line resource, learning and experimenting with it, being drawn into a growing interest for our natural environment. Beeler also teaches in person in various workshops around the nation and lectures at scientific conferences. The best part: not knowing ANY of this would make no difference for the appreciation of the sheer beauty of her pieces. Well, for this viewer, in any case.

Julie Beeler Fungi Bedrock

***

I photographed the show when it had been hung on the day before before opening night, and so worked in an empty room bereft of people. Yet a sense of community was palpable, since the accumulated works really seemed representative of so many different artists, stages of experience, cross section of interests. By all reports that experience of community was present in squares during the opening reception, with a lot of people attending, fortified by wine generously provided by Domaine Pouillon, and interested in getting to know each other.

In some ways that seems to me an important part of the mission this museum under new leadership could adopt: providing a commons, a platform where people with shared interests or concerns, for that matter, can meet, mingle, learn and exchange ideas. One of the definition of commons is “natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit.” Here it could simply be the offer of a cultural space, shared by the the many of us.

Artists play an important role in this endeavor. Knowing history is surely something that most people see as important. Yet we live in a time of increasing restrictions on teaching history, at all or in specific ways, depending on who you ask or in which state you live. Teaching the history of a place – here the Columbia Gorge – cannot come from a single source, however richly endowed with objects and artifacts to support a particular claim. It has to be provided with the help of different perspectives, and who better equipped than visual artists to relate something in non-didactic, vivid, personal ways that might register much more easily than dry facts or official story lines. I am not implying that the artists in this show intentionally set out to convey insights about history. But the accumulative power of much of the work suggests something about what it means to live in the Gorge, be exposed to both its beauty and its hurt, its past and its present, its nature and culture that needs stewardship and protection.

If the museum opens a commons, inviting and presenting diverse voices easily found in the rich tapestry of the Gorge population, during fun events or serious shows, it will establish its place on the map in no time, an invaluable resource for all of us.

WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE GORGE

June 17th – September 5th, 2023

Columbia Gorge
Interpretive Center Museum
990 SW Rock Creek Dr
Stevenson, WA 98648

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Glimpses of Highland Park, L.A.

Just a short walk, if you want to join, another one to bring home the immense variety of what L.A. has to offer, one neighborhood at a time. Highland Park has two dubious distinctions: for one it was the very first suburb of L.A. proper until 1895, when it was annexed after the community pleaded for incorporation, by all reports to assure increased police presence in a flourishing red light district. It took but two days after annexation, that the police chief and his posse came in and literally burned down all the brothels and gambling saloons. Maybe not a coincidence that L.A.’s Police Museum is located in this neighborhood. I did not inquire. Or set foot in it. Surprise.

Secondly, Highland Park has had the highest speed of gentrification of all small L.A. neighborhoods in recent years, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective and the size of your wallet.

Lots of stuff that is too hard to move or had to be sold, ends up in second hand stores that line the streets.

As does the stuff itself.

The neighborhood is situated between central L.A. and Pasadena alongside the Arroyo Secco. Much of its history is commemorated with sidewalk mosaics and information columns that display archival photographs and explanatory texts, quite informative.

Highland Park started to flourish with the arrival of the San Gabriel Valley Railroad which opened a station in 1885, followed by the Los Angeles and Pasadena Electric Railway that laid down the first interurban electric railway in Southern California in 1895, helping people to commute. Today you find suicide prevention signs at every crossing.

 Image courtesy of the Los Angeles Public Library

Occidental College, established by the Presbyterian Church, opened its campus in the early 1900s and has been serving generations ever since.

Image courtesy of the USC Digital Library

Many of the public buildings from the time have been preserved, but are no less exposed to change. A historic landmark, the nearly century-old Highland Theatre building on Figueroa Street, one of the two main drags through the area, was up for sale as of last August, since its 99 year lease, signed in 1924, will expire. It was the last of 4 theaters along this street to survive, including the historic Sunbeam Theatre. The facade will have to be preserved, but the function and lay-out inside is the new investors’ domain.

Some public buildings are well maintained, other establishments show the ravages of the economy. Here is the public library

and the municipal water building.

The minute you venture off the main thoroughfares you find small, well maintained bungalows and funky gardens or wall paintings. But also signs of distress.

Lots of color to be found on the major streets as well, tempered by the presence of police in front of swank new shops and restaurants, though absent at the traditional stores.

Someone chose aphorisms for public utility meters,

And murals commemorate the history of the place.

And sometimes color just pops up unintentionally….

Lots of eateries behind screens on the sidewalk, filled with young people enjoying lunch – the place is clearly vibrant, with traditional mini-malls sharing space with new upscale boutiques.

I must say, I will miss the diversity of it all when returning to PDX. Then again, it will be good to be home after such a long stretch. Just think of all the bird pictures you’ll be getting…..

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Altadena, CA Hikes.

Since it’s been a while, we’ll do two hikes instead of one today. Walk with me, if you are willing to brave potential flash floods or almost guaranteed heat stroke, if the warning signs of the CA governmental LA county parks website are to be trusted. We’ll do Altadena’s Eaton Canyon in the morning, and El Prieto in the afternoon. Bonus appearance by some daily wildlife sightings hopefully satisfies readers’ yearning for the obligatory nature shots…

Eaton Canyon is easily accessible, has plenty of amenities for picnic gatherings and the like at the park’s entrance and a parking lot that is so overcrowded on the weekends that everyone recommends to hike only during the week. Follow that recommendation and you’ll be rewarded by beautiful landscapes, including oak groves, a (currently) flowing stream, cacti oases, wildflowers and eventually chaparral dotted hills.

These hills are now green – a very unusual sight, I am told, related to the torrential rains coming down across the last months. The river that you have to cross to get to a longer portion of the trail could not be forded when I visited, unless willing to hop barefoot across slippery boulders and shores. I erred on the side of caution, and still had a nice walk on the southern side of the stream.

Here, and in so many other locations, birds and lizards can be found if you approach quietly.

***

An equally, if differently, beautiful walk yielded some fascinating history ( I learned much of it here.) Altadena’s “El Prieto” (meaning “the dark man”) was also known as Black Mountain for its resident, Robert Owens who had bought his own freedom from slavery and came to the free state in the early 1850s. According to the census, there were only 12 African Americans in Los Angeles at the time. Someone (eventually) more famous settled on this mountain in the late 1800s, Owen Brown, son of John Brown – yes, that John Brown – a white man whose attempt in 1859 to spark a slave rebellion at the Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia arsenal resulted in his hanging for the crime of inciting violent rejection of slavery.

Owen, the only Brown son to survive participation in the Harper’s Ferry raid, was a fugitive for 2 decades before he made it out West, where his sister had settled in Pasadena. He homesteaded on the mountain, now dedicated to his father’s name and legacy, and was buried on a plot of land that was part of the homestead, in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, after more than 2000 people, both black and white, had paid their respects during the funeral to this staunch believer in racial equality.

Photograph from the Altadena Historical Society/

His grave site in the Altadena Meadows attracted 1000s of visitors across the years, contemplating what the concrete headstone stood for. It read, “Owen Brown son of John Brown The Liberator, Died Jan. 9, 1889, Aged 64 yrs.”

Not everyone shared the admiration, however. Private landowners hated the intrusion and tried to keep people out with No Trespassing signs, eventually losing law suits to prohibit access. Early attempts to make the site a historical monument failed as well.

The gravestone went “missing,” twice as it turns out, rolled down the ravine by vandals or opponents of the preservation society. By sheer coincidence it was found the second time around, having been missing for a decade, during a 2012 hike by artist Ian White, son of Charles White, the Los Angeles painter who had only painted two portraits of White men, Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, among his vast portraiture oeuvre.

Shown at the Charles White Elementary School, L.A.

Things have improved since then. An (independent) dispute over land rights and zoning issues for a near-by gated community of pricey homes produced unlikely allies. The developer has become a supporter of the preservation efforts, helping the community to protect the grave and access to it, getting some of his needs filled in turn. All agree that no visitor center will ever be build for the grave site or parking provided for busloads of people. You have to find neighborhood parking and hike up, which will only happen if you are really determined. The historians involved in the process, USC historian Bill Deverell and Michelle Zack are “...planning to help develop curriculum and train teachers to integrate Brown’s story into the Civil War, its aftermath and westward expansion. Charles Thomas of Outward Bound Adventure plans to develop a lesson that includes discussion of slavery and the black wilderness experience, according to the project proposal.” (Ref.)

I was hot when hiking the short but steep trail uphill. Blooming Ceanothus dotted the hills with blue clouds, the sweet smell of wild sage suffused the air. The grave marker is re-installed, and someone had spread wildflower seeds. The view over the valley was unobstructed by clouds or smog, just beautiful. You could do worse for resting places! Well deserved by a man true to justice. May his memory be a blessing.

***

Music today by Pete Seeger, appropriate for the grave site of an abolitionist.

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Art on the Road: History captured in LACMA Prints.

When you travel, even for longer stretches of time, you have to make choices. So much to explore, to learn in Los Angeles, this behemoth of a city – there has to be some selectivity, since not all can be fit in. My own selections are usually based on two basic considerations: get familiar with the history of the place and, of course, seek out stuff that feeds my specific interests, art and politics, as you well know.

I lucked out last week with these endeavors in more ways than one. To understand the history of the greater Los Angeles area, I had read Mike Davis‘ City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles (1990) and slogged through his last book, Set the Night on Fire. L.A. in the Sixties (2020), published before his death in 2022 and co-authored with Jon Wiener. Both are seminal works about the urban history of the place and the powers that shaped it since its inception. Cultural critic, environmental historian and political activist Davis described the intersection of land development and legal or functional racial segregation in Southern California in ways quite accessible to uninformed readers like me, basing his account on interdisciplinary sources, including American history, environmental history, Marxist philosophy, political science, urban geography, architectural and cultural studies. Both books introduce the forms of resistance to segregation in housing and education, from peaceful demonstrations to riots to the engagement of artists and other intellectuals, side by side with famous civil rights fighters, political organizations, union representatives, the ACLU and uncountable numbers of students as young as high school freshmen.

88 cities, approximate 140 unincorporated areas, and communities within the City of Los Angeles.

The author introduces us to the political economy that shaped the urban sprawl, the landscape transformation, resulting in increasing inequality of living conditions and incarcerations rates, making it a dystopian place for those who fell off the wagon of the American Dream, or shall we say, were pushed off by the interest of those defending Fortress L.A. from any influx of non-White and/or poor populations. Land, seemingly endless land was the commodity, providing the base for residential neighborhoods, industry, strip malls and freeways. Richer neighborhoods, in fear of losing their exclusivity, the down-town commercial district’s business owners and realtor- and home owners’ organizations collaborated with investors, local and state politicians, and even Roman Catholic church leaders to make decisions about land-use that protected the interest of the monied classes and ended up with unimaginable sprawl.

Even though fair housing laws existed, racism won when Proposition 14 was adopted by an overwhelming majority of California voters in 1964, scorning equality and discriminating against “undesirable” homeowners and renters who were now easily excluded. The vote allowed prior law, the California Fair Housing Act of 1963, also known as the Rumford Act, to be voided, creating a state constitutional right for persons to refuse to sell, lease, or rent residential properties to other persons. (The Supreme Court declared the Proposition unconstitutional in 1967. The current legal status can be found here.) It was a pivotal moment that brought the efforts of many organizations and individuals fighting for civil rights to a screeching halt at the time.

Later decades saw more subtle ways of achieving the same goals of segregation: zoning laws and security measures kept the poor away from affluent districts. Relentless and cruel, often violent policing kept particularly Black citizens and other POC in their allotted places, both literally and metaphorically. Zoning was also causal for pushing the non-White and poor populations to the perimeters of the county, within or adjacent to more dangerous environments when it comes to pollution, water shortage and now fire danger given climate change-enhanced droughts. I am summarizing these aspects of Davis’ books because it was striking for me to see the described social stratification play out in real space during a drive to East Los Angeles College, a public Community College in Monterey Park, CA.

East Los Angeles College, Monterey Park, CA.

I started in the heart of Pasadena’s historical district, a place full of beautiful, gorgeously maintained and lovingly restored mansions, then drove through the picture book landscape of Pasadena’s craftsman bungalows. 15 minutes later you come through small townships that still have single-lot houses, but now run down and clearly showing signs of economic distress. Another 20 minutes along, and you are surrounded by low income housing apartments. I parked in a strip mall adjacent to the college and was immediately taken in by a striking building that stood out against the dilapidated background: the Vincent Price Art Museum. Part of a Performing and Fine Arts Center that opened in 2011, the museum holds a permanent, major collection of fine art, with substantive work initially donated by actor Vincent Price (he of Hollywood Horror Movie fame, among others, but also a true friend to the arts and the educational efforts required to bestow knowledge of art and art history onto future generations.) By now the museum holds over 9000 objects and has hosted more than 100 shows, singular for a community college, its exhibitions thoughtfully and smartly curated.

I came to see one of them that seemed particularly aligned with the museum’s expressed mission and issues close to my own heart concerned with cultural diversity and critical thinking:

“The mission of the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College is to serve as a unique educational resource for the diverse audiences of the college and the community through the exhibition, interpretation, collection, and preservation of works in all media of the visual arts. VPAM provides an environment to encounter a range of aesthetic expressions that illuminate the depth and diversity of artwork produced by people of the world, both contemporary and past. By presenting thoughtful, innovative and culturally diverse exhibitions and by organizing cross-disciplinary programs on issues of historical, social, and cultural relevance, VPAM seeks to promote knowledge, inspire creative thinking, and deepen an understanding of and appreciation for the visual arts.

What Would You Say?: Activist Graphics from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents a selection of political prints from LACMA’s vast archives. The exhibition, which opened March 25th, is free of charge and the visitor gets gifted with a high-quality brochure, covering some of the art with prints and explanatory (bilingual English/Spanish) text that I found helpful.

Graphic art has traditionally been a vehicle for change, challenging as well as influencing political moments. Rather than just depicting, the combination of image and word can inform, comment, persuade or be used for propaganda. It has been a key player in protests against injustice and oppression; the fact that it can be easily, widely and cheaply created and distributed has made it a form that helps to connect to people and promote social change. In the late 19th century, the technology for lithographic printing advanced, and the new power-driven presses, practical techniques of photoengraving and mechanical typesetting devices helped the medium to progress. We have now added photo-typesetting, offset lithography, and silk screening to the repertoire. It has also often been a communal effort, linking artists and participants with shared goals and interest, helping to organize and to educate.

The graphics on the wall ranged from the mid 1960’s to the 2020s, covering the Black Panther’s fight against police brutality and for the empowerment of poor Black neighborhoods,

Left: Emory Douglas Untitled (Sin Titulo) 1970 – Right: Rupert Garcia Libertad para los prisoneros politicas! 1971

the issues of incarceration of innocent people and Latino activism,

Yolanda M. López Free Los Siete 1969

Jessica Sabogal Walls can’t keep out Greatness 2018

the struggle of women and immigrants for equality,

Clockwise from upper left: Yreina D. Cervantez La Voz de la Mujer 1982 – Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Women in Design: The next Decade 1975 – Yreina D. Cervantez Mujer de mucha enagua 1999 – Krista Sue Pussy Power Hat Pussy Hat Project 2016 – Ernesto Yerena Montejano and Ayse Gursoz We the Resilient 2017

and eventually the protests over the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and other Black people by police.

Jesus Barraza and Melanie Cervantes of Dignida Rebelled and Mazatl My Name is Trayvon Martin and my Life Matters. 2013

The most dominant topic, however, is expressed in posters and prints protesting war; surprisingly, I could find the issues of racial segregation and land development, so central to the history of L.A. and S.F., only peripherally – one poster about evictions, and one about the displacement of first native people and then a Mexican American community from Chavez Ravine, land appropriated to build the beloved L.A. Dodger stadium.

Favianna Rodriguez Community Control of the Land 2002 – Vote Ik We are still here 2017

The reality of racism, however, is captured by several of the works in ways that hit you hard.

Archie and Brad Boston For a Discriminating Design Organization 1966

David Lance Gaines Qui Tacet Consentit (Silence Gives Consent) 1969

The reality of the price of war, on the other hand, is brought home most strikingly in a print by one of the most famous of the artists in this exhibition, Sister Corita Kent, a member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) before she was driven out by Cardinal Francis McIntyre (as were later 90 percent of the order in L.A, some 150 IHM nuns kicked out. According to a report in the Times, the Cardinal, by the way, uttered these words when confronted with his stand on segregation: “…it is not a racial or moral issue. A reason for discrimination is that white parents have a right to protect their daughters…”)

Corita Kent manflowers 1969

Corita Kent’s early silk screenings used bright colors, modulating the style and objects of advertising as stand in for religious concepts. They were shown in galleries and museums across the country, the MET, MOMA and LACMA included. She later moved to political topics, with more muted colors, including the Watts Rebellion and, after multiple encounters with anti-war activist Dan Kerrigan, the Vietnam War. The poster here shows two blinded soldiers, using Peter Seeger’s song lines in despair. Man-power is broken into two words, drawing attention to the single man, all the individuals that made ups the military power, paying with their bodies or their lives.

Posters on video display. The last one above: Primo Angeli/Lars Speyer The Silent Majority 1969

***

I wondered, a few days later, if the choice of concentrating on so many war/peace posters in the VPAM exhibition was perhaps linked to the choices made in another, simultaneous exhibition of graphics from the LACMA archives: Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany.

This exhibition is also shown in a gallery incorporated within an educational setting, this time the Charles White Elementary School on Wilshire Blvd. It presents political imagery that grew out of the reaction to war and revolutionary movements, from Germany’s political developments starting in 1918, to Mexico’s 1930s formation of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (People’s Print Workshop) in Mexico City.

For me it packed an additional emotional punch – I have grown up with the art of Kollwitz, Grosz, Pechstein etc. in post-war Germany and the familiarity and reminiscence of what they meant then added a layer to taking the show in. To look at the warnings expressed by art in the 20s and 30s, to know that the world was dragged into the next war regardless, and to see all this while we are witnessing another contemporaneous war on European soil was unsettling. The unsparing depiction of oppression, violence and human suffering is also strikingly different from most of the American poster selection in the show discussed above.

Some of the graphics would benefit from explanations regarding the relevant language. Take Grosz’ Gesundbeter, for example, which has three titles in different languages (he used these inscriptions fully knowing that they were not translations but expressed different thoughts.) Crucially, though, the obscenity of the action becomes clear when you understand the acronym KV, central to the image. It stands for the German word Kriegs-Verwendungsfähig – literally usable for war or fit for action, applied by the Local Board, desperate for canon fodder, obviously even to corpses.

George Grosz Die Gesundbeter 1918

Here is another title – the German says sunshine and fresh air for the proletariat (a demand by labor unions and social activists for better housing and healthier working conditions,) depicting incarcerated people walking the prison yard.

George Grosz Licht und Luft dem Proletariat 1919

The parallels we see in the German and Mexican depictions originate both from shared experiences, but also an overlap of artists in each others’ spheres. Colonialism led to an entangled history in general, but during the 1930s many German artists associated with the Staatlichem Bauhaus Weimar emigrated to Mexico, welcomed by the government of Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (1934–1940) which built the most democratic state historically experienced in Mexico until the 1990s.

Clockwise from upper left: Alfredo Zalce En Tiempos de Don Porfirio 1945 – Alfredo Zalce La Soldadera 1947 – Käthe Kollwitz Losbruch 1943 – Leopoldo Mendéz Asesinati de Jesus R. Menendez en Cuba 1948 – Käthe Kollwitz Gedenkblatt für Karl Liebknecht 1919-20.

The Cárdenas government sponsored educational program for workers and peasants, led by the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR), an association of revolutionary writers and artists that grew out of the “cultural missions” charged with propagating the revolution’s objectives in murals, graphic art and theater productions. The Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) came out of this association, and was revitalized by the many migrants that came from Europe, other Latin American countries and the U.S., all adding their own cultural experiences, artistic styles, and preoccupations. In fact, Hannes Meyer, second Bauhaus director, was appointed as head of TGP in 1942.

Erasto Cortez Juarez, Jesus Escobedo, Leopoldo Mendez, Francisco Mora Calaveras aftodas con medias naylon 1947

Leopoldo Mendez En manos de la Gestapo 1942 – Constantin von Mitschke-Collande Freiheit 1919

Arturo Garcia Bustos La industrialización del país 1947

It is a stunning exhibition, offering diversity of depictions balanced by homogeneity of concerns. I was the only one there on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, except for a friendly guard, which was just as well given the tears that welled up. The reality of war, the repeat of history’s darkest moments seemingly unavoidable, some already here, some looming, the resurgence of fascistic ideas and methods seemed to pull the rug out from under the efforts of earlier artists to warn us of dangers and call for change.

Erich Modal Revolution 1920 – Max Pechstein An die Laterne 1919 – Unknown artist: So führt euch Spartakus. Brüder rettet die Revolution. 1919

And yet. There is reason to remain optimistic. Individual commitment to social change still exists. But not just that – in L.A. alone, there have been significant collective successes across the last years. In 2006, 500.000 people protested on Wilshire Blvd. demanding rights for undocumented immigrants, a march called by labor unions, endorsed by catholic Cardinal Roger Mahoney and Antonio Villaraigosa, the city’s first Latino mayor. In January 2017, 750.000 congregated downtown L.A. for the Women’s March. And in 2019, large coalitions of communities and classrooms, teachers and students joined in the successful teachers’ strike that focussed on overcrowded schools, educational disinvestment and drainage of resources to charter schools.

Leopoldo Mendez Retrato de Posada en su taller 1956

Elizabeth Cattle Sharecropper – 1952 – Alberto Beltran El problema agrario en América Latina 1948 – Käthe Kollwitz Poster excerpt

Max Pechstein Dont strangle the newborn freedom through disorder and fratricide, or your children will starve 1919.

Walking around the neighborhood after I left the exhibition, the occasional public or street art made it clear that activism is alive and well. A work in progress, standing on the shoulders of the many activist artists who came before. Grateful that decisive museal curation introduces and reminds us of the modernist vanguard.

What Would You Say?

  • Mar 25–Jun 24, 2023
  • Vincent Price Art Museum
    1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez
    Monterey Park, CA 9175

Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany.

  • Oct 29, 2022–Jul 22, 2023
  • Charles White Elementary School | 2401 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057
  • 1 – 4pm on Saturdays

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