Civic Arts

A new park gets ready to make a splash [updated]

The giant color-coded flow chart and to-do list have come down in the front room of Dawn McDivitt’s La Crescenta home. Her husband’s delighted.

As for all the folks about to have their parking, commuting and coffee-drinking patterns altered by the new Civic Park that McDivitt is planning, let’s just say they may not be singing such a happy tune. When McDivitt’s poster boards come down, that means the heavy machines are about to get to work on a 12-acre park in the heart of the Civic Center.

For downtown employees, patrons of the Music Center, people on jury duty and anyone else who lives, drives or walks in the area, this promises to be a summer to remember.

The $56 million park project is scheduled to come before the Board of Supervisors on June 29. If approved by supervisors and the joint powers authority overseeing the project, construction is expected to get underway in mid-July. That will trigger a series of logistical changes that, at least during the initial weeks, will upend many rituals of daily life in the Civic Center ecosystem.

So McDivitt—a capital projects manager in the county’s Chief Executive Office who’s been heading up the park building effort for the last couple of years—is on a one-woman communications crusade.

“Even if I’m having lunch with a friend who works at the courts, I can say, ‘Do you know about the Civic Park project?’ “ McDivitt says. “People have said to me, ‘Your [business] cards are all over the county.’ “

Which is fine with McDivitt, who’s eager to spread the word about a park that is intended to “remake an often overlooked public space into a spectacular community gathering space that will provide an iconic park for Los Angeles,” according to a February 16 letter to supervisors about the project.

The park will extend from the Music Center to City Hall. Building it means turning what is now the County Mall into a construction zone that will be largely off-limits for the next two years. When finished in June, 2012, the park will provide a long-awaited “sense of place” downtown—not to mention vistas stretching from Grand Avenue straight to City Hall, thanks to the relocation of some county parking ramps.

The park, to be built on the County Mall and the Criminal Courts building parking lot, will have four distinct levels featuring amenities ranging from a community terrace area showcasing plants from around the world to a restored historic Arthur J. Will Memorial fountain, complete with a new wade-able membrane pool. There also will be a performance lawn, a grand event lawn, ADA-accessible walkways, an area for chess players and even a dog run. Sixteen media jacks will make it possible to present, say, an opera on a big screen at the event lawn, or a concert heard by 18,000 people throughout the site.

In preparation for breaking ground on the park, which initially was conceived as part of the now-stalled Grand Avenue Project, McDivitt is holding weekly construction meetings with the builder, developer and representatives of nearby buildings, including the Music Center, where “South Pacific” is playing this summer at the Ahmanson and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” will be at the Mark Taper Forum. Perhaps the biggest initial impact on Music Center employees will be the loss of their paid monthly parking spots; 300 will be relocating to new spaces during construction.

The Music Center’s chief operating officer, Howard Sherman, says construction-related inconveniences are no big deal.

“It’s a great thing for the Music Center to have this iconic park in our backyard,” he says. “It’s a minor pain for what we’ll be getting.”

McDivitt also has met with representatives of the Colburn School and the Los Angeles Unified School District, whose arts high school is on Grand Avenue, near the park site. And she holds monthly meetings with the parking and building managers of all the structures near the planned park. Through them, she hopes to spread the word about coming changes that will affect their workers.

At the downtown Criminal and Superior courthouses, which flank the new park site, the reality of life in a construction zone is sinking in.

“In both facilities, it’s going to be a significant disruption and inconvenience for everybody, judges and employees,” says Allan Parachini, Superior Court public information officer.

He notes that the Civic Park eventually will be a “great resource” for downtown. But he ticks off a list of difficulties that must be overcome—or tolerated—first. For starters, there will be noise, particularly in judges’ chambers, which will be closer to construction areas than the courtrooms. (McDivitt, who’s held a series of meetings with judges, says heavy duty demolition work will take place on weekends.) With one of the Superior Court’s entrances closed during construction, people entering the courthouse will likely experience more delays at security screening points at the remaining entrances. And the traditional Grand Avenue space for news conferences will be off-limits, as will the parking lot behind the Criminal Courts building where media satellite trucks have descended en masse during big trials.

“The only good part: we do note with gratitude that access to Starbucks will continue,” Parachini says

This Starbucks isn’t just any java joint. Although it’s tucked away and invisible from the street, this is the place that caffeinates much of the downtown bureaucracy, buoys armies of weary jurors and gives lawyers a place to park their overstuffed briefcases.

But it’s located in the County Mall construction zone between Superior Court and the Hall of Administration. So workers at the hall soon will encounter an 8-foot high barricade separating them from their quickest route to Starbucks—a barrier that may prove irritating to those in need of a fast coffee fix. For them, McDivitt has worked out a subterranean route that goes through the lower level of the Hall of Administration parking lot and up to the mall via escalator.

Eventually, the café will relocate to a new, bigger building in the park near the fountain. Putting the store out of commission was not really an option since Starbucks’ contract with the county runs through 2012.

For the public at large, there’s a bigger potential headache looming.

When construction starts, a rerouting of traffic into and out of the Hall of Administration garage by way of the Music Center will send more vehicles southbound on Hill Street and Grand Avenue toward the busy Metro station at 1st and Hill. With lots of pedestrians flocking to the station, traffic could back up.

“That’s what I’m worried about,” McDivitt says. To help ease backups, McDivitt is working with the city Department of Transportation on timing of the traffic signals and, possibly, on prohibiting turns from Hill onto 1st during peak hours.

It seems apt that McDivitt, 52, an L.A. native and lifelong outdoorswoman who loves to fish, drew this particular assignment. She certainly has no fear of challenges; she and her husband are planning to build a fishing lodge/bed and breakfast on land they own in tiny Bamfield, Canada, on Vancouver Island.

McDivitt’s boss, Jan Takata, says she has a “rare combination” of qualities that made her right for the job—lots of experience handling high-profile, complex projects and an understanding of finance. An added plus was that she was already working on the Grand Avenue Plan, of which the park is an offshoot.

“She’s terrific,” Takata says.

So far, McDivitt has been too busy to imagine exactly how she—a 20-year county employee—might take advantage of a new urban park that soon will take shape right outside her doorstep.

“I haven’t even thought of that,” she says. “I just want to get the shovel in the ground.”

To that end, she’s had to occupy herself mostly with what might go wrong—from traffic concerns to possible water issues in the garage.

“Part of my job is to anticipate,” she says. “For me, it’s, ‘What’s the worst case scenario?’ I’ve got to think of those things so we can prepare for it.”

For all her attention to detail, though, McDivitt doesn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea about the proliferation of poster board at her home during the project’s early days.

“It only took over the front room,” she says. “Just one wall.”

Posted 6-04-10

Updated 7/8/10: A groundbreaking for the project is scheduled for Thursday, July 15. The public is welcome; the invitation is here.

Helping veterans, one berry at a time

Strawberry Flag is a living work of art. It’s also a social experiment, an adventure in aquaponic gardening, a village green, a place to ride a power-generating exercise bike, to silkscreen a T-shirt, to sample a raw food lunch—or to simply sit in a tent, sipping tea while nibbling an old-fashioned biscuit with hand-crafted jam.

Most powerfully of all, it’s a place where human beings are finding that great sustenance comes in small berries.

“To get to dig in the ground for me is a pleasure. To be close to the ground—to me, that’s close to God,” says Bobby Shelton, 75, an Army veteran who served in the Korean War and now is seeing action on the front lines of Strawberry Flag.

The experimental art installation on the grounds of the Veterans Administration campus in West Los Angeles is the brainchild of artist Lauren Bon, who, together with Dr. Jonathan Sherin of the VA, saw the possibility of creating a grand and evolving work on the site. The project is being funded by the Annenberg Foundation, by way of Bon’s Metabolic Studio.

Nestled on an all-but-forgotten quad on the VA grounds, the flag is made up of seven “stripes” of strawberries. The berries were rescued from an abandoned field in Rosemead and are now growing in pots set into white piping. Recycled and filtered L.A. River water pumps through the pipes, powered by a row of stationary bikes hooked up to batteries. At the top of the installation, light pours through cut-out stars onto a blue field, creating a restful shaded area.

Shelton’s specialty is tending to the ailing plants in the strawberry nursery. He’s got a life-giving touch; a thriving vegetable garden near the strawberries is a point of pride.

“It’s a wonderful project,” says Shelton, who takes the bus from his home near Inglewood to work at the flag six days a week. “I’ll be riding back and forth, telling people about it.”

Shelton does his job as part of the VA’s “compensated work therapy” program. So does Mel Williams, 59, an Air Force veteran who’s in charge of the onsite “vermiculture”—the process of using worms and their waste to create a compost tea that helps plants grow.

Williams has a two-hour commute to work each way from San Pedro, but you won’t hear any complaints.

“I love this,” he says. “I’m being enriched with a lot of things here. I wake up and look forward to it…It gives me time to ponder what’s next.”

Bon, who lives in Topanga Canyon, said she was moved to create Strawberry Flag after the election of Barack Obama created an “imperative for the rest of us to rise to the occasion.”

“It makes sense to redefine what it means to be a patriot,” she says, “by growing a strawberry flag in the midst of under purposed buildings in the center of historic West Los Angeles.”

The artist, granddaughter of Walter Annenberg and a trustee of the Annenberg Foundation, is known for other works including Not A Cornfield near Chinatown in downtown L.A., in which she transformed an “industrial brownfield” into a cornfield. She’s also currently at work on a film project about the Owens Valley called “Silver and Water.”

Her land-use agreement with the VA ends in September. But she hopes to see some kind of continuing presence on the site that will keep the spirit of Strawberry Flag alive after she leaves.

Since it started last June, the project has grown quickly and organically.

There’s a Strawberry Flag Internet radio station, with programs put together in the gleaming Airstream trailer (also reclaimed and recycled) that serves as an on-site office. (A neon sign on the side of the trailer reads: GRAB A MOP.) A monthly newspaper, the Strawberry Gazette, is about to come out with its fourth issue. Strawberry Flag’s YouTube channel features a video chronicle of the project’s evolution.

The nearby VA buildings are being touched by the project’s vitality, too.

“It was a very different place when we came here last year,” says Rochelle Fabb, the project manager. “It was like a cemetery.”

One of the buildings now houses the project’s light-filled and inviting kitchen space. It’s where vets like Ruth Harris, Gregory Gauthier and Julio Espino work with newly-hired chef Gabriella Salamon, a raw food and healthy eating specialist, to learn the ins and outs of working with food grown on the site.

On Tuesdays, the kitchen serves up a healthy lunch after a “boot camp” workout on the stationary bikes. Wednesday afternoons are devoted to “jam sessions”—turning the strawberries and other fruits into preserves that are now proudly arrayed on shelves in the kitchen. Tea is served weekdays at 3 p.m., with a special High Tea offered once a month. (The next one is scheduled for 4 p.m. on June 10. Check Strawberry Flag’s Facebook page to RSVP.)

In another nearby building, Larry Flaherty and Ray Rodgers preside over the print studio. Lining the table are vibrant silkscreen patterns that were transferred to T-shirts during a workshop. The studio also offers sessions in print-making and landscape painting to veterans, many of them first-time artists.

“I thought it was magic when I saw what they could do with colors,” Flaherty says.

Rodgers points to their program’s “therapeutic value.” “I personally have gained people skills,” he says.

While Strawberry Flag is intended primarily for vets, it’s also open to the public, who are welcome to take part in any of the activities. (A map is here.)

On Monday, a Memorial Day drum circle is scheduled at the site from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. to remember those who have served.

“If you have a drum, bring it,” Fabb says. If not, “we’ll have plenty of things here to bang.”

Sherin, the chief of mental health at the West Los Angeles VA campus who helped come up with the concept with “fellow Topangan” Bon, sees in Strawberry Flag a powerful metaphor for the veterans under his care.

“Strawberry plants provided a service. They were pulled out of the ground, retrieved and brought to this healing ground…The whole time this is happening, the veterans are doing the exact same thing—literally. Tending to [the strawberries] is quite a therapeutic experience.”

He, too, hopes that Strawberry Flag can live on in some form.

“”Innovative projects that engage the vets and involve a VA-community partnership are absolutely the wave of the future,” Sherin says. “I feel that our facility can capitalize on the innovative model, the raw energy at the ground level, and can continue along these lines with a project that continues many of these things in an enduring manner.”

For now, the flag is an attraction—and a curiosity—for many of those making their way around the sprawling VA grounds. And for those who work there, it’s an ongoing passion and commitment to a rich circle of interconnected lives.

“It’s about the strawberries,” says Williams, as he tends the worms that nourish the crop that makes the jam they serve to his fellow veterans at teatime. “We have to keep the strawberries healthy.”

Posted 5/27/10

A bold new look for summer

The Santa Monica beach skies were grey but L.A.’s iconic lifeguard towers were anything but.

And the cadre of casual beachgoers who happened upon the just-unveiled towers—newly painted in wild, psychedelic hues—got an eyeful Wednesday morning.

If their early reviews are any indication, the towers’ summer makeover has the makings of an international crowd-pleaser.

“It’s beautiful!” said Yves Bollotte, a visitor from Paris, directing his Gallic enthusiasm at one of the three towers on view near the Santa Monica Pier.

“It’s groovy,” said Joyce Attal, CEO of a New York City marketing firm, who’d just finished jogging. “It’s bringing the hippie days back to the beach.”

“I think the towers are spiffy, if that’s still a word,” said Mary Loucks, a teacher from Kern County who was keeping a close eye on her soaked but happy field trip class of second-graders.

“I like the color and pizzazz,” added homeless advocate Ron Hooks, of not-so-far-off Marina del Rey, as he stood astride a blue bike on the boardwalk chatting with a homeless man with a football who called himself R.U. Faster.

By summer’s end, hundreds of thousands of beachgoers are expected to see the towers, part of a giant “Summer of Color” public-art project that by early June will bestow a temporary new look on all 156 L.A. County lifeguard towers, from Palos Verdes to Malibu.

When the project is complete, towers along a 31-mile stretch will sprout colorful flowers, figures and abstracts. Even the ramps and pilings are getting the Day-Glo treatment for the project, which will be on display until October.

The $1.5 million privately-funded effort is the brainchild of Bernie and Ed Massey, founders of the L.A.-based non-profit arts and education group called Portraits of Hope. Their organization brings together thousands of hospital patients, school children and disabled people to collaborate on brightly painted public art. Earlier targets for the colorful treatment: a Beverly Hills oil well, New York taxicabs and even a blimp.

At Wednesday’s unveiling, in which grey plastic sheeting was stripped off the three towers for a slo-mo “reveal,” lifeguard officials said they were initially skeptical of the color explosion about to overpower their towers’ traditional Holland blue.

“We are a conservative bunch, and we weren’t totally sold on this project at first,” Mike Frazer, chief of the county’s lifeguards, admitted to the crowd.

Frank Bird, a director with the lifeguards’ union, said skeptics became converts by helping out with the painting sessions at the project’s Marina del Rey headquarters with students from the Braille Institute and from a Compton middle school at which many students had never seen the ocean before the trip. “Our guys are really on board now,” Bird said.

At the ceremony on the sands, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky thanked his wife, Barbara, for persuading him to get the project rolling with the county because of her admiration for the Masseys’ work. Her lobbying paid off; Yaroslavsky’s office helped smooth the way with county agencies with jurisdiction at the beach, including the Beaches and Harbors Department and the Lifeguard Service.

The giant projects are a form of art therapy. Kids learn that their efforts can make a difference when they see their finished artwork displayed in very public places. About 8,000 volunteer artists, mostly children, took part in painting over 2,000 pre-cut plastic-coated panels in recent months that are now being bolted to the sides and roof of the lifeguard towers. (See our earlier story here.)

“These projects are all about kid power,” Bernie Massey said at the ceremony.

The art therapy concept appealed to French tourist Bollotte.
“It is therapy for us, too,” he noted.

Lindsay Hannah, a visiting artist from British Columbia who was swinging on the tall swing set at the beach playground near the tower, felt the same way. “I absolutely agree that art is therapeutic,” says Hannah. “It’s fantastic.”

Posted 5-19-2010

Patriot with a No. 5 paintbrush

Kent Twitchell casts a huge shadow in the Los Angeles public art world—literally.

For decades, his multi-story portraits of artists, movie stars and musicians have helped define a quintessentially L.A. cityscape as big as all outdoors.

Now he’s headed someplace new—indoors—with a task ahead of him that looms as large as ever: bringing back to life the essence of murals that vanished decades ago in the Bob Hope Patriotic Hall.

The scenes, created by Chicago-born artist Helen Lundeberg, mysteriously disappeared sometime in the ‘70s—stripped off the walls and destroyed or spirited away to points unknown.

Now the landmark 1926 building, once the county’s Hall of Records, is getting a $45.4 million renovation. As part of the project, Twitchell has come onboard to recreate and reimagine the three murals that once dominated the lobby of the building, now home to the county’s Department of Military and Veterans Affairs.

In an interview this week at his downtown studio, Twitchell discussed for the first time how he plans to approach the job. He says he intends to respect the vision Lundeberg created in 1942, while drawing on his own unique sense of aesthetics, with influences ranging from Mt. Rushmore and the Statue of Liberty to Norman Rockwell and the famous faces of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

“I happen to be a patriot,” he says. “Here’s a chance for me to be doing something I really believe in.”

Twitchell, who enlisted in the military right out of high school and went on to become an Air Force illustrator stationed in London, has an idea about the people he’ll depict in his Patriotic Hall scenes. He proposes making every figure in the murals a veteran—from character actor William Sanderson (“Newhart,” “Deadwood,” “True Blood”) to Twitchell’s octogenarian Uncle Paul. He’s also poring over WWII-era books of Hollywood luminaries to discover which ones might qualify for a cameo appearance in one of the murals. “Clark Gable flew suicide missions as a fighter pilot,” he says.

Twitchell muses about the juxtaposition of faces he envisions for the murals—“a superstar, a character actor, someone you don’t know.”

“I want to make it uniquely Los Angeles,” he says. “These are our people. That is Los Angeles.”

Patriotic Hall, seen by millions zipping through the intersection of the 110 and 10 freeways, is set to reopen in mid-2012. It seems particularly well-suited for a Twitchell project—and not just because it’s located just a short stroll from the artist’s current studio.

Like one of Twitchell’s outsize portraits, the building “becomes part of your L.A. urban landscape psyche,” says Letitia Ivins of the county’s Civic Art program, who is serving as project manager for the Patriots Hall work.

She said the committee that selected Twitchell from a field of about 30 other applicants was moved by his track record, personality and obvious passion for the project.

“His sincerity simply won over the committee,” she says. “He is in love with this project and wants to leave a legacy not only for his heirs but also for Los Angeles.”

His final proposal for the $285,000 mural project is still under wraps until the contract is signed, but Twitchell says he expects to follow the original composition of Lundeberg’s works, “Preamble to the Constitution,” “Free Assembly” and “Free Ballot.” Each of the approximately 20-feet-by-12-feet murals—viewable now only in old photos—was hand painted in oils, with funding from the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, which was winding down after the country’s entry into World War II.

“When I found these things online, I thought: why should I do something different?” Twitchell says. “Especially when her work was so unceremoniously and capriciously taken away.”

And that’s something Twitchell can relate to.

A number of his own works have been obliterated over the years, including the six-story high “Ed Ruscha Monument,” which was painted over by work crews in 2006. A $1.1 million settlement—partly paid by the federal government, which owned the building on Hill Street—was hailed as a victory for artists’ rights.

Twitchell describes himself as a reluctant litigant.

“It was almost like if I didn’t, public art would have taken a hit,” he says. “I was put in a corner. I had to fight.”

Gone, too, is “Freeway Lady,” the grandmother draped with a colorful afghan, though Twitchell plans to repaint and install her on the campus of L.A. Valley College after the Patriotic Hall work is completed. He’s also finishing up a painting of John F. Kennedy for an upcoming show at the Vincent Price Gallery at East L.A. College, where Twitchell was a student, along with Cal State L.A. and what is now the Otis College of Art and Design. The JFK portrait is an offshoot of a Berlin Wall installation that Twitchell created for the Wende Museum of the Cold War.

“I love public art, and have ever since the hippie days in London,” says Twitchell, 67. “L.A. just seemed like the perfect place for it in the ‘60s.”

Twitchell’s Flickr photostream provides a vivid look at his work, past and present. (Amazingly, given the scale of his pieces, his tool of choice for applying acrylic emulsion is generally a No. 5 or No. 6 watercolor brush.)

Twitchell, who moved to L.A. in 1966 after a stopover in Atlanta following his London tour of duty, currently lives in Hollywood. He bemoans the incivility of modern-day street life in the city, and doubts he could have created the same body of work if he was starting out today. City restrictions on building signage are an understandable response to visual pollution, he says—“L.A.’s starting to look like ‘Blade Runner,’ ”—but they also make large scale outdoor art a virtual impossibility.

Then there are the taggers—gang-affiliated and wannabes—who routinely disfigure public artwork.

“Doing things outside is enemy territory now,” he says. “It’s foolhardy.”

He laments “the destruction of so many pieces that I put my heart and soul in,” and says: “What they’re doing is by definition barbaric. It takes months to create and minutes to destroy.”

Working indoors on the Patriotic Hall project will provide a lasting refuge for his art. He said he has shied away from government commissions in the past—“I’ve always refused to compete with other artists”—but decided that this one was worth going for.

“It just seemed like this was a chance,” he says, “to do a very, very unique piece.”

The show will go on for arts interns [updated]

The county’s on-again, off-again summer arts internship program is on again.

And not a moment too soon for local arts organizations scrambling to fill spots that have been in limbo since a proposal to fund the program out of county reserves first went before the Board of Supervisors on March 2.

Since then, members of the board have suggested tapping the civic arts program for funding, debated loaning the arts commission money for this summer’s internships, and sharply questioned whether the commission had done enough to raise money from outside sources or had fully explored drawing on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare funding to give jobless single mothers a chance to take part.

The board voted 3-0 to approve a motion by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, seconded by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, to spend $250,000 in county reserves to make a go of this summer’s paid internship program. Also voting in favor of the motion was Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich. Supervisor Don Knabe abstained, and Chair Gloria Molina—the board’s most ardent advocate of the TANF option—voted “no, with attitude.”

After the vote, the arts commission started spreading the word to intern-seeking organizations. Some had been calling anxiously in recent weeks to inquire about the program’s future.

“Fantastic!” said Elise Dewsberry, artistic director of the Academy for New Musical Theatre in North Hollywood, when she learned of the board’s vote to keep the program afloat for another summer. Dewsberry said last summer’s intern was a whiz at social networking and showed the organization how to create inexpensive, effective advertising campaigns on Facebook.

“We got a lot of people clicking through to our website,” she said.

The Virginia Avenue Project, which runs an after-school arts program for students in Santa Monica and Los Angeles schools, also has been hoping to land another intern this summer.

“I wouldn’t have the job I have now without the opportunity to show the organization how we would work together,” said Simon Hanna, a former summer arts intern who is now Virginia Avenue’s director of development. “I think it’s a stellar program.”

The stripped-down internship program will put 75 college undergrads to work this summer, down from about 120 the year before. The program’s funding–$500,000 last year–was cut in half, with concessions and contributions required from participating arts organizations. In the end, the money came from the county’s “provisional financing uses” account, the same funding source proposed when the matter first came before the board.

“We’re going to implement this as if it was shot from a cannon,” Laura Zucker, executive director of the Arts Commission, said after the meeting. “We’re all grappling with what the budget’s going to look like for next year. I greatly appreciate the board’s providing the support to continue, even in this reduced form.”

Posted 3/23/10

Updated 3/25/10:

Nonprofit arts organizations interested in taking part in this summer’s internship program have until April 7 to apply. Complete information is here.

Updated 4/28/2010:

There’s still time to apply for a summer arts internship. College students can find out about available positions and get program information here.

Arts internships still up in the air

The curtain could come down on L.A. County’s long-running arts internship program this summer, after the Board of Supervisors, wary of an impending fiscal crunch, voted Tuesday to move consideration of the program’s fate into upcoming budget deliberations unless money can be found to support it in the county’s civic art program.

Because of the short timetable for placing interns in summer arts jobs, supporters say that moving the program into budget talks for next fiscal year would effectively kill it.

Supervisors asked the Chief Executive Officer to report back next week on the possibility of using money to fund this year’s internships from the county’s Civic Art Program, which allocates 1% of the budget of new capital projects for the installation of art in and around them.

The CEO had recommended that the board adopt a stripped-down version of the program that would have put 75 college undergrads to work this summer. The program’s funding–$500,000 last year–was to have been cut in half, with concessions and contributions required from participating arts organizations.

But coming up with $250,000 from county reserves was too much for the board majority in the current economic climate.

“It’s going to be a very tough year for us,” board chair Gloria Molina said. “We’re going to be facing some unbelievable challenges.”

She, like other supervisors, praised the internship program. But she suggested that the arts commission and the organizations that employ arts interns needed to do more to tap into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare funding to fill their positions this summer.

Molina said the TANF recipients include single mothers getting back into the work force, with children depending on their paychecks. “They might not be the bright young college interns,” Molina said. “They are needy families…who need some help.”

She said the TANF program has created 4,566 temporary subsidized jobs in the private and public sector–more than 1,100 of them in Los Angeles County workforce, from the parks department to the Registrar-Recorder.

“I do hope that the arts community will step up and take advantage of this wonderful program,” Molina said.

Searching for compromise, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky briefly suggested that the county put up $125,000 for this summer’s program, with another $125,000 coming from TANF. Then Supervisor Don Knabe offered a motion to investigate using funding from the civic arts program, and, if that proves impossible, including the program in the overall budget debate. That motion passed 3-2, with Supervisors Yaroslavsky and Mark Ridley-Thomas voting against it.

In its 10 years of existence, more than 1,100 college undergrads have taken part in the summer arts internship program. Many of the participants are pursuing studies they hope will lead to careers in the arts. Some end up being hired by the organizations for which they interned.

In the Hall of Administration lobby after the vote, supporters of the internship program, many wearing red-and-white stickers reading “Art Feeds LA,” said they were disappointed and puzzled.

“It’s a little bit head-scratching,” said Cynthia Campoy-Brophy of The HeArt Project, which provides arts education for teens in continuation high schools. “We know there’s a budget crisis, but this is such a win-win project that leverages such great benefits for the entire community.”

Danielle Brazell, executive director of the nonprofit organization Arts for L.A., which mobilized former and potential interns to speak out in favor of the program, said floating the notion of using TANF for arts internships “is really positioning apples and oranges.” The CEO report to the board had said that the TANF option was not an ideal fit for the arts internship program because of limitations it placed on which students could take part, and complications involving their compensation.

Immediately after the vote, Laura Zucker, executive director of the County Arts Commission, said she needed more time to reflect on the board’s decision before commenting. “OK, to be continued,” she told the group in the lobby.

Reached later, she said, “I think that we need to weigh the options that the board put forward.”

Posted 3/2/10

Encore for summer arts interns… maybe

Here’s what Lisa Dring got out of her arts internship at Circle X Theatre last summer: The chance to produce a reading of a work called “punkplay.” Some grant-writing experience. An associate producer’s credit on the one-man show “Violators Will Be Violated.”

Here’s what else she got: a job.

Dring was one of more than 120 paid interns who worked in Los Angeles arts and cultural institutions last summer, part of a long-running county program that has been targeted for closure due to budget constraints.

Now it looks as if the program—cut from this year’s budget—could get a one-year reprieve.

Under a plan being presented to the Board of Supervisors on March 2, a stripped-down version of the program would put 75 college undergrads to work this summer. The program’s funding would be cut in half—to $250,000, transferred from county reserves—and concessions and contributions would be required from participating arts organizations. The interns would be paid $3,500 for 10 weeks of fulltime work.

“It’s a good thing, and it’s important for the economy right now,” said Arts Commission executive director Laura Zucker. “It’s jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs…It’s saying ‘We’re not going to stop thinking about the future.’ The creative economy is at the center of Los Angeles’ economy.”

Arts for L.A., a nonprofit arts advocacy organization, is asking former interns and other supporters to write letters and attend Tuesday’s meeting to show their backing for the program.

“It was absolutely amazing. I cannot advocate enough for the program,” said Dring, 22, a recent USC grad who is now on staff at Circle X Theatre as communications director/development associate. She said that she was able to plunge into significant work—“I didn’t get anybody coffee or anything”—almost from the very start of the internship. “I got to do everything.”

“It really helps, no matter what profession someone is going into, to really see firsthand what it takes to create art in this town,” said Circle X’s artistic director, Tim Wright, who has been the company’s intern supervisor for the past 10 years. “I can’t say enough how much the L.A. County arts internship program has meant to us…I’d hate to see it go away.”

“We’ve had an incredible crop of really talented young people,” added Amina Sanchez, associate director of the program department at the Skirball Cultural Center. “They’ve enabled us to present our major summer programs. We can’t do without our interns.”

Laura Katz, a UCLA grad and an intern at the Skirball last summer, worked on its free Sunset Concerts series. She called it “a really great way to get a real work experience,” since it was a fulltime, paid position. Katz, who hopes one day to work as a film music supervisor, said she also enjoyed having contact with world musicians like Issa Bagayogo, from Mali, when they performed at the Skirball.

At Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in Sylmar, operations director Trini Rodriguez said it was a dream come true when Stacy Valdez became an intern in the nonprofit’s bookstore last summer. Here was someone who loved books, was in touch with the community and could work with software programs to create business analysis and inventory management reports. “We just had the best fit,” Rodriguez said—such a good fit that when a staff position came open, they offered the job to Valdez. “That’s a good thing—a very good thing actually,” said Valdez, 20, who in addition to working at the bookstore is a student at Mission College.

Zucker said that many of the program’s participants, like Dring and Valdez, stay involved with the arts institutions in some capacity after their internships are up. “A few,” she said, “have become the executive directors over time.”

A Chief Executive Office report recommending restoration of this summer’s program noted that the Arts Commission had previously explored whether it could tap into Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) welfare funding to keep the program afloat. It found too many limitations on student eligibility, and complications involving compensation, to make that a feasible option. The report said that the long-term objective should be for the Arts Commission to work with local colleges to create an internship-for-credit program.

Posted 2/25/10

An “iconic” park gets ready to bloom

Construction of a 12-acre park envisioned as a “spectacular community gathering space” in downtown Los Angeles is set to begin this spring, under an agreement adopted Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The Civic Park, part of the stalled Grand Avenue Project, would be built on county land running from the Music Center on Grand Avenue to City Hall on Spring Street. The $56 million project will be built on land leased by the county to the developer, The Related Companies. As part of the original agreement between the two parties, Related pre-paid some of the leasehold rent on the condition that the funds would be used to build the park and not for any other purposes. Once the park is finished, the county will have the option to purchase the property back for $1.

The project “will remake an often overlooked public space into a spectacular community gathering space that will provide an iconic park for Los Angeles,” according to a Chief Executive Office letter to supervisors asking for authorization to move ahead.

Models of the planned park depict a sweeping expanse of trees and lawns, along with plaza and terrace spaces, a dramatic fountain and a striking view toward Los Angeles’ equally iconic 1928 City Hall.

“This could be the jewel for all downtown,” Russell Brown, president of the Downtown L.A. Neighborhood Council, told the board during public comments before the vote.

The board voted 4-1 to move ahead with the park. Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich objected, citing concerns about delays in the project and reservations about the county’s agreement with Related.

With their vote, the supervisors authorized CEO William T Fujioka to sign a “lease lease-back” document and other agreements with developers, and to begin discussions on programming, operations and maintenance of the park with the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County.

Construction is expected to take two years, concluding in the summer of 2012.

The park will have four distinct areas: fountain plaza, performance lawn, community terrace and event lawn.

The historic Arthur J. Will Memorial fountain will be restored, and, if funds permit, “multi-cultural botanic gardens” will be added in the community terrace area to showcase plants from more than 100 “biozones” around the globe—each representing a culture present in modern day Los Angeles.

The park also will include a children’s garden and an event staging area that can accommodate community markets.

“Programming for small to large events and festivals is a crucial cornerstone of the planning of the park,” the CEO’s letter said. It noted that the park must support a range of “formal” uses such as concerts, as well as informal activities like strolling, reading and picnicking.

The developer aims to turn the steep grade of the four-block site into an asset, using “generous amphitheater steps and planted terracing” to create ADA-accessible pedestrian ramps and seating spaces.

The project will require demolition and re-engineering of ramps into the County Mall garage from Grand Avenue, relocating ramps into the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, shifting the placement of flags now located in the Court of Flags, and demolishing a surface parking lot.

Civic Center coffee aficionados, take note: the project site will be largely off-limits during construction, except for emergencies, facility maintenance and “access to Starbucks.” The Starbucks stand eventually will be demolished and the cafe relocated to a new, one-story building on the fountain plaza level, along with ATM facilities, public restrooms and park support offices.

Posted 2/16/10

Beach forecast: Sunny, splash of color

Break out the Ray-Bans. Los Angeles County’s lifeguard towers are about to undergo a Technicolor summer explosion.

From May to September, county lifeguard towers from Palos Verdes to Venice to Malibu will bloom with bright images of golden fish, blue flowers and psychedelic patterns of green, yellow, purple and pink.

The public art display, “Summer of Color – Lifeguard Towers of Los Angeles,” is the brainchild of Bernie and Ed Massey, who run the non-profit arts and education group Portraits of Hope.

The artists applying the colorful acrylics: thousands of L.A. area children and adults from schools, shelters, hospitals, after-school programs and Scout groups. On a recent morning, young students from Palisades Elementary School pitched in, painting bright colors on some of the 1,800 pre-cut plastic panels that will be fastened to the towers this spring.

About 150 of the iconic towers will get the makeover. The project may be the most eye-catching display to hit the sand since “Baywatch.” But it’s not just a decorative addition to the beaches, which are visited by 45 million people annually. As part of the program, which is funded with private donations, students will also get an education in civic issues and problem-solving. There’s a broader social objective, too.

“We want people to recognize the power of collaboration,” says Bernie Massey. “Seeing all of the towers transformed will become a great unifying symbol for people all over Los Angeles County.”

Launched in 1995, Portraits of Hope started by wrapping the oil well on Olympic Boulevard near Beverly Hills High School with bright panels. Since then, they’ve brightened up New York City taxicabs with their trademark vibrantly colored graphics, as well as New Orleans schools, NASCAR racers, and even a blimp.

The Masseys are partnering on the project with L.A. County’s Beaches & Harbors Department, which donated temporary studio space in Marina del Rey, and the Lifeguard Division of the county Fire Department. The lifeguards had only one major demand.

No red paint.

That’s the color of the lifeguards’ signature jackets and swimsuits—and for safety’s sake, not a great color for a beachfront art installation.

If you’d like to help apply the rainbow of other colors the project will be using, drop Portraits of Hope an e-mail.

Posted 2-16-10

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