Results tagged “publicart”

Oops. After a Pasadena code enforcement officer visited a store with a large city-funded mural on one of its walls, apparent miscommunication led to the new mural to be pained over by the owners. Artist Christian Alderete said it felt like a kick in the face, but suspects the action wasn't with malcontent and would paint it again. Code enforcement has asked the business for various fixes, including repainting a wall.

Our favorite recent piece of guerilla public art--that giant fork placed, well, at a fork in the road--will be the site of a food drive this weekend, says the LA Times. Benefitting the Union Station Homeless Services, volunteers will collect nonperishable food at the fork, located at Pasadena and St. John avenues, both days this weekend, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The sculpture was a birthday present/prank for Bob Stane, founder of the Ice House comedy club and current owner of the Coffee Gallery Backstage in Altadena. Stane always thought it would be funny if someone did that and his wish was granted by his friends. Now people want to see the piece be a permanent part of the city's public art collection.

lad in Caltrans uniforms a few nights ago, a group of people installed a 12-foot wooden carved fork where Pasadena Avenueu splits at, well, a fork in the road, with St. John Avenue (see a map here). Who did this awesome piece of art and why? "It turns out the fork is an elaborate - and expensive - birthday prank in honor of the 75th birthday of Bob Stane, founder of the Ice House comedy club, who now owns the Coffee Gallery Backstage in Altadena," reports the Pasadena Star News. And the group would like to see it stay there permanently, but that will be up to the Caltrans, which owns the small parcel of land and the city.

      

Earlier this month the Wende Musuem installed 8 segments of the Berlin Wall in front of LACMA on Wilshire Blvd. This marks the longest stretch of the wall currently standing outside of Berlin. On November 8th, the 20th anniversary of the wall's falling will be commemorated via an event put on by the Wall Project, and more panels will be added to fully block Wilshire Blvd. Following an evening of activities and entertainment, at midnight the wall will be toppled, marking the anniversary, which will be broadcast live on German television.

The new abstract public art at the Police Administration Building in downtown is garnering some nice discussion and attention, as all good art should. Artist Peter Shelton tells blogdowntown that the six "beasts of burden" should have viewers making up their own stories as to what they are.

If there was a weekend where you wanted to check out art, this is it. No, it's not a coordinated event or festival, it's just good timing. This happens every year as the art season is very much like back to school. Everyone has been gone for a month or two so it just happens that all the fall shows open the same time. "This weekend people are driving cross town to see as much as possible," explained Bettina Korek, Founder of ForYourArt, which lists the best of best for the weekend on its website.

      

Tonight is the official unveiling of Peter Shire's latest public work of art. Over in the NoHo Arts Distrct, a gateway on Lankershim has been erected at Huston will welcome people to the neighborhood just like the arch in Chinatown and The Wave on Wilshire at the LA-Santa Monica border. LAist wrote about this project last week and readers in the comments section have not been thrilled. A ceremony is scheduled for tonight at 7 p.m.

This year marks the 30th anniversary since the NoHo Arts District began to change from scary, dirty and dangerous to the still-blossoming arts and theatre neighborhood. Part of the neighborhood's redevelopment are three public art projects including a gateway arch that will be revealed next week by prolific public artist Peter Shire, who may be known for his work at the Wilshire/Vermont Subway Station, Union Station, Elysian Park, LACMA, West Hollywood and various other places around town.

Last week during the 9th annual Americans for the Arts convention the Public Art Year in Review panel revealed their 40 picks for the best public art works in the United States from 2008, which includes projects from 32 cities in 15 states. Five of those works are right here in the Los Angeles area:

Mr. Brainwash is at it again at his usual spot on La Brea at San Vicente. This time celebrating along with the rest of Los Angeles. "It might be an understatement to say Mr Brainwash polarizes opinion," wrote the unnamed blogger at unurth, a street art blog. "While some people love his work, and he sells prints and originals at blazing speed, others criticize him for lacking originality and being overly commercial. I like a lot of his work, but to me this piece doesn’t make it any easier to defend him."

Dennis Hathaway, the activist behind BanBillboardBlight.org, saw this guerilla looking public art and snapped a photo to share with us. It's on North Madison Avenue, just east of Los Angeles City College and Vermont Avenue. Anyone know the story behind this?

     

Remember that public art work that was installed for the California Biennial in Culver City last week? Street maintenance crews accidently took it away yesterday thinking it was construction materials left on the sidewalk after someone called to complain. Luckily, it wasn't thrown in the trash as they're reinstalling it this afternoon.

    

Now here's some public art meant for you to interact with. As of last Friday, smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk on the northeast corner of Washington Boulevard & Marcasel Avenue in Culver City sits Los Angeles sculptor Jedediah Caesar's "Gleaners Stone." It's part of the California Biennial and LAXART's Public Art Initiatives which questions, as they put it, "the current contexts for the exhibition of art in the public realm." Culver City is not just art friendly, but pedestrian friendly as well. It's Caesar's hope that this project relates to its surrounding urban environs by engaging the public in whichever way they see fit. It's on view through the end of Spring.

       

Venice artist, designer and activist Greg Beauchamp has been going around Venice and Santa Monica putting mini flag poles into dog poo that say "McCain" and a phrase under it such as "Healthcare Reform" or "Campaign Tactics." It sounds weird, but he's found his public art experiment to be enjoyable.

"The neighborhood surrounding the Watts Towers presents a stark contrast to the well-maintained aesthetics of this national monument, and currently the residents have limited means to capitalize socially or economically on this cultural currency," reads a pamphlet about the Watts House Project, which self-describes themselves as an an artist-driven urban revitalization project that hopes to be a catalyst for solutions and change in the community.

LA Goldrush is an international exchange of Graffiti artists from Italy visiting Los Angeles this week. Now in it's second year, organizers Raptuz (Milan) and Man One/Crewest Gallery (Los Angeles) have created a series of events throughout the city, one that many witnessed on Winston St. at the Downtown Art Walk on Thursday.

It's hard to imagine someone surreptitiously making off with something that's 7 feet tall and made of bronze, but it seems that's what has happened in a park located in the Mid-City neighborhood of Carthay Circle.

In 2004, artist Peter Schulberg learned that literally tons of advertising billboards were being dumped into landfills every month. His solution to dealing with all this waste was rather novel: recycle those billboards into art. On Saturday night, the newest exhibition of these pieces is unveiled at Eco-LogicalART. Fifteen local artists have created pieces that will eventually be mounted as billboards across the city.

Welcome Home LA, a group of students from the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, recently hit Skid Row using performance/public/street art to draw attention to the Downtown neighborhood and its issues. "We want to utilize public art and the reproduction and documentation of public art to bring attention to marginalized urban space," the Welcome Home LA website explains. "These images, which allude to homes, human presence, security and comfort, will be juxtaposed with...

Who knew that for nearly a decade, newly appointed Poet Laureate Charles Simic’s work has been on display in the unlikeliest of places in Downtown Los Angeles?

So, you remember when the City had an issue knowing who the mayor of LA was back in November? Well, it appears there are still remnants of the Jim Hahn term of office on the LA City Website. As if the other issues affecting the Mayor's office aren't enough, now Villariagosa has a website that still has images of his predecessor (literally) floating around. As you can see in this screenshot, behind the "ONE" is...

Photo by LAist Editor-at-Large Carolyn Kellogg via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

While you were praying to your assorted gods, the City of Santa Monica was giving back to the community. Yesterday Santa Monica cut the tape at Euclid Park on the 1500 block of Euclid Street between Colorado Avenue and Broadway. Designed by the team of Rios Clementi Hale Studios and artist Abbie Baron, the park is the result of an extensive community design process that included a survey, several community meetings, two Recreation &...

- According to the LA Times, people who live next to trains and subways do not use them. - Eek! "From July 1 of 2006 to June 30 of this year, only 3.21 inches of rain fell in downtown Los Angeles — the lowest precipitation level since records started being kept in the 1880s." - After 80 mph driving and weaving on the Hollywood Freeway in March, actress Vivica A. Fox (Kill Bill, Independence Day)...

New York City has won the honor for America’s Top Arts Destinations in AmericanStyle Magazine for the past three years. This year, let's change that. Vote Los Angeles because... 1. Musicals really aren't that great anyway. Small 20-seat theatres rock. 2. Barnsdall Art Park. 3. We don't destroy our murals. Wait, shit, that's us. 4. Festivals, festivals, festivals. 5. Green Umbrella Series. 6. Public Art everywhere. 7. Street Art. 8. Otis, Art Center, CalArts....

MONDAY

The Architecture and Design Museum continues to showcase Los Angeles’s finest with "34 Los Angeles Architects." The exhibition opens tomorrow with a reception at 7:00 PM, 8560 W. Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood (exhibition remains on view through February 22, 2005). According to the A + D Museum, the exhibition contains "a wide representation of an open-ended view of modernist architecture in the fertile architectural ground of Los Angeles – a cutting edge 21st Century City." Participants include local firms whose impact is beginning to register beyond Los Angeles, such as Koning Eizenberg Architecture, Lorcan O’Herlihy, Michael Maltzan, Neil M. Denari, and Marmol Radziner. O’Herlihy created a diamond-shaped "tower" within which the presentations are installed. Hmm, it sounds like you gotta see it to understand how this scheme works.

Artists should check out this PDF if they want to get on the remaining opportunities for new contributions.