From swimming pools to court houses, art is thriving on the walls and in the buildings of Los Angeles County-owned facilities. Our growing Civic Art collection includes works that have been donated to the county, commissioned under the auspices of the Board of Supervisors and various county departments and pilot projects managed by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. The collection also includes artworks created since the 2005 launch of a new Civic Art Program, requiring that 1% of the design and construction costs on new county capital projects be set aside in a Civic Art fund. Here’s a sample from across the county.

For months, Venice Arts teamed with ten youths between the ages of 13 and 18 to document their lives through photography in the downtown Garment District. The photographers–recruited at St. Francis Center, a service agency for the homeless and near homeless–are primarily the children of garment workers and day laborers, living in some of Los Angeles’ most impoverished neighborhoods. Amid the hype over downtown’s revitalization, the voices of such young people are rarely heard. This project tells pieces of their stories. (Venice Arts receives funding from the Third District and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission).

Photos of Hollywood Farmers’ Market by Tali Stolzenberg-Myers

Inspectors with Los Angeles County’s street vending compliance program encounter a stomach-churning array of unsafe food preparation practices as they work with law enforcement to conduct regular raids across the region. These photos provided by the Department of Public Health offer a glimpse of what the inspectors come across, from illicit hot dog carts and unlicensed taquerias to raw meat and seemingly innocent fruit being stored at unhealthily warm temperatures. As the county moves forward with a proposal to issue letter grades to law-abiding mobile food vendors, its war on the outlaws continues unabated.

If you think of fall color as a strictly New England phenomenon, you haven’t visited the county’s Virginia Robinson Gardens in Beverly Hills. These photos, with radiant persimmon trees providing much of the autumnal mood, showcase some of what can be found in the Italian Terrace section of the garden as the weather gets cooler. Garden superintendent Tim Lindsay, who took the photos, notes that all the plants are drought-tolerant. “I try to capture it every year,” he said. “It just seems to get better.” Visitors require reservations for the garden’s guided tours, which are offered Tuesday through Friday. Admission prices and other information is here.

Posted 11/3/10

Southern California may specialize in the colorful and unexpected, but here’s something that even locals can appreciate as a novelty: From Topanga to Pomona, the hills and streets have turned scarlet and gold with fall foliage. And if the 2010 colors seem unusually vivid, botanists say, it’s not your imagination.

This year’s cooler-than-usual summer and fall, coupled with milder-than-usual Santa Anas, apparently have created the ideal conditions for a New England-style autumn in L.A.

“In the 12 years I’ve been here, this is the best I’ve seen,” said Frank McDonough, botanical information consultant at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden. “I’m like a surfer on a big wave day.”

Some trees, he said, were changing color for the first time since he’d come to the arboretum.

“Look at that one!” he enthused, strolling with a visitor this week through stands of bright red Chinese Pistache and golden Ginkgo biloba. “Look at that one! Look at that one!”

(For a photo gallery and video tour of the arboretum, see below.)

Deciduous trees in Southern California tend to change colors later and with less visual drama than in cooler climates, but they do exist here, and do change. Poplars brighten the fall in places like Canyon Country and Acton. Crepe myrtles deck backyards in the San Fernando Valley; Liquidambars blaze along boulevards in Westwood and San Marino. Sycamores bring autumn gold to warm inland suburbs and rustic canyons.

But most autumns are too warm and windy for the leaves’ true colors to fully emerge before they dry up and get blown away by the desert winds, says McDonough. Leaves turn because of complex chemical changes triggered as temperatures drop and days shorten. Time plays a big part in the transition.

The bright autumn colors are actually what remain when dwindling sunlight and cooler weather signal the onset of winter, and the green chlorophyll in a leaf starts to dissipate as it stops producing food.

As the leaf’s green-ness ebbs, previously hidden orange and yellow pigments surface. Meanwhile, a red and sometimes blue pigment known as anthocyanin can be generated as cold night air chills the leaf, trapping sugars manufactured in warmer daylight. The result is the emergence of the season’s hallmark golden, copper, crimson and burgundy leaves.

“It’s a process that takes a while and requires cooler temperatures,” says McDonough. “But a lot of times here in Southern California, because we have such hot fall weather, that process doesn’t go very gracefully.”

This year has been different. First, an upper level trough off the coast gave Southern California one of the coldest summers since the National Weather Service began keeping records in the 1940s. Then, after a little September warmth, the soil and air were cooled again by a series of rainstorms.

“October was extremely wet,” notes Jim Ashby, service climatologist at the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno, NV. “Rainfall was 433% of normal at the Los Angeles [International] Airport in Los Angeles, and 254% of normal downtown.”

Then, after a brief heat wave in early November, the mercury again began dropping, with nighttime lows by the end of the month in the low- to mid-40s — coincidentally the perfect temperature for anthocyanin creation.

“It’s definitely been a different weather pattern,” says National Weather Service meteorologist Curt Kaplan.

And what better time to put on your walking shoes and enjoy it than now, in these final days of fall?

A fall day at the Arboretum. Photos by Zev’s Web Staff

 
A video tour of the Arboretum

Click here to view the embedded video.

Upload your Southern California autumn pictures on Zev’s website by clicking here.

Posted 12/9/10

Since coming to town as the new principal of the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, George Simpson hears one question constantly.

“People ask me all the time, ‘Is your school like ‘Fame’?” says Simpson, who joined LACHSA in 2008. “It’s exactly like ‘Fame,’ only 10 times more intense…We have kids spontaneously bursting into song in the hallways.”

Now picture that intensity spread across a quarter-century.

As Los Angeles County’s “arts high” turns 25 this year, you get the feeling that this is one silver anniversary that’s going platinum.

Since September, 1985, when it opened on the Cal State L.A. campus, LACHSA has been launching the careers of young artists in music, theater, dance and the visual arts while garnering support from some of the biggest names around.

Placido Domingo’s grandson was a LACHSA student. Other alums include singer Josh Groban, Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, actress Jenna Elfman, Corbin Bleu of “High School Musical” fame and Anthony Anderson (“Law & Order.”) One of Frank Gehry’s sons went there and another currently is on the faculty. (Just to keep it all in the family, graduations are sometimes held at the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall.) The headliner for the first graduation in 1987? Barry Manilow.

And when you start talking about past galas to benefit the school, you’re getting into the celebrity stratosphere—with honorees including Henry Mancini and French fashion great Hubert de Givenchy, and performers ranging from Julie Andrews to Luciano Pavarotti.

The 25th anniversary celebration being put on by the Arts High Foundation on April 17 is no exception, with appearances slated by artists including Natalie Cole, opera legend Marilyn Horne, Bob Newhart and Manilow, along with video tributes from luminaries such as Domingo, Quincy Jones, Janet Jackson and Cher. Tickets for the fundraiser—whose honorees include Manilow and Ginny Mancini—range from $2,500 for VIP seating to $50 for LACHSA students and staff.

But the mission is, as the saying goes, priceless. The high school’s foundation says it needs to “stand strong in the gulf of a broken arts education system—a rupture that has allowed arts education in other communities to be virtually eliminated, and one that has even threatened LACHSA by key areas of its programs being reduced by up to 20%.”

Despite perennial funding challenges, the school now has on the drawing board a new building—to provide academic classrooms, a new “black box” theater and an outside amphitheater—that would be the first space on the Cal State campus dedicated exclusively to LACHSA.

At the same time, the 600-student school, which also offers programs in film and television, is experiencing a surge in applications. This year, a record 760 applicants auditioned for 175 slots. In all, 3,300 hundred students have come through during the past 25 years.

Early champions include the late Caroline Ahmanson and Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who helped LACHSA navigate initial difficulties over where to locate the campus. LACHSA’s foundation has long played a key role in providing a tuition-free, conservatory-style arts education to some of the most talented public school students around.

Click through the gallery below and see if you can discover the next Matthew Rushing (Class of ‘91, now an Alvin Ailey dancer/choreographer) or Kehinde Wiley (Class of ‘95, whose paintings have been displayed at the National Portrait Gallery.)

And then post your own LACHSA pictures on our website.