viewfromaloft

Final Days for Public to Comment on Mural Ordinance Draft

Street artist Esteban Irwin completes his L.A. Freewall at 7th and Mateo in the downtown Los Angeles Arts District. Curated by JetSetGraffiti I Photo by Ed Fuentes

 

The list of the remaining Mural Ordinance Draft meetings include informal comunity groups and structured panels in a gallery or academic setting. On Monday, it was confirmed the final panel will be held in the Arts District and feature street artists Shepard Fairey and Saber. The deadline to comment on the mural ordinance is Wednesday, February 8th.

 

 

Thursday, January 26 Bringing Into Conversation: Restoring Memory in the Public Sphere Mural Art panel presentation with Norma Montoya, Carlos Callejos, Joseph "Nuke" Montalvo, Tanner Blackman, Lisbeth Espinosa. Moderated by Jimmy Centeno. Vincent Price Art Museum East Los Angeles College / 1301 Cesar E Chavez (Monterey Park) Thursday, January 26 / 5pm to 7pm Vincent Price Art Museum is located at the southeast corner of the campus, at Cesar E Chavez Ave and Collegian Ave

Monday, January 30 Reading and Discussion of the New Mural Ordinance for Los Angeles With Tanner Blackman. Hosted by the East Side Riders and UPPA Monday, January 30 / 6:30pm to 8:30pm Watts Labor Community Action Center / 109 S. Central (Watts) 

 

 Tuesday, January 31st Mural Ordinance Update: Introduction by Dr Manuel Aguilar-Moreno, Art History Professor CSULA. With Tanner Blackman, City Of Los Angeles; Isabel Rojas-Williams, Executive Director Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles; Muralists Frank Romero and Ismael Cazarez;  Adam “Codak” Smith, Street Artist; and David Diaz, Director of Urban Planning CSULA. Tuesday, January 31 / 6:10 pm / California State University, Los Angeles  5151 State University Drive / Room FA223, Art Building

 

Saturday February 4th

Q & A @ Lab Art's first of the Conversation series: "Legal Walls: With Tanner Blackman, LA City Planning Department; Jonthan Paul, Street Artist; Lydia Emily Archibald, Street Artist and Activist; Daniel Lahoda, LA Freewalls Project and LALA Gallery Owner

Saturday, February 4th / 7 to 9pm

LAB ART / 217 S. La Brea Ave (Mid-City)

Monday, February 6th

Reading and Discussion of the New Mural Ordinance

With Tanner Blackman. Hosted by Tia Chucha and UPPA.

Monday, February 6th / 6pm to 9pm 

Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural and Bookstore / 13197-A Gladstone Ave (Sylmar)

 

Tuesday, February 7th 

LA Mural Ordinance Community Discussion:

With Shepard Fairey and Saber; Tanner Blackman, Daniel Lahoda, Offices of District 9 and District 14.

Tuesday February 7th / 7 pm

LALA Gallery / 1335 Willow Street (Arts District)
 
Enter on Santa Fe, next to Villain’s Tavern

The Long Goodbye

 

 After a quick visit to the city I had a long affair with, she saw me off at the station. Her winter wardrobe was bathed in a somber disappearing light. I took one more look, took a shot, then boarded the train.

All that mural-talk made 2011 an interesting year

I joined the year-end editorial crowd with a list of Los Angeles mural stories, which is now posted at KCET's Departures. Some of the stories are ongoing and not going away soon, which should make 2012 just as interesting a year.

There have been a number of people thanking me for covering the state of the art, but thanks should also go to KCET's Juan Devis and Zach Behrens for giving mural coverage a bright green light.

A Year-End List:  [view]

Previous mural posts at KCET Departures: [view]

LAist has their take on the list: [view]

LA Weekly goes the street art angle: [view]

From December 8, a visit to KCRW and Which Way LA? to talk about  "Reviving LA's Iconic Mural Movement"  [listen]

Pictured: Tanner Blackman, City Planner and Mural Ordinance Code Breaker, in the Arts District October 2011

Neighborhood Buzz About Café Metropol Closing At End of Year

Viewfromaloft is breaking radio silence to pass on the news that there is buzz about Café Metropol is closing its doors at the end of the year.

A quick call this AM confirms Dec. 30 is the last day for the coffee bistro, according to a staffer.

The Arts District mainstay, a stylish Euro-esque bistro that brought civilization to the neighborhood since 1998, may reopen as a self-serve cafe. No time is set for that.

Photo by Monk Turner

vfal

viewfromaloft end card / traction and hewitt with vfal mark

Downtown Vid Pick: One more for the road. A ride through 1940s Downtown Los Angeles.

 

Stock Hollywood footage (1940) Director unknown

To prevent my mug from being on top of this front page, here is a noirish Downtown Vid Pick.

Consider it one more for the road.

Rick Prelinger, founder of Prelinger Archives, finds that old Hollywood stock footage, like this clip of 1940s era Los Angeles, is evidence of a lost city.   "As you know, the present wipes out the past faster in Los Angeles than perhaps anywhere else, and the everyday landscape of the past can often be very difficult to imagine. This is especially true in high-value areas like downtown, where massive redevelopment leveled the Chavez Ravine and Bunker Hill areas," he says, according to The Atlantic.  Prelinger goes on to say:

Here's an outtake from an unknown feature film (specifically, a "process plate" intended for rear projection behind characters driving in a car). If it was ever used, it was seen fuzzy and out of focus. Today, however, it's amazing documentation of a lost neighborhood. Watch the signs, the spectators and passersby, and the streetscapes, and marvel how historical images can carry evidentiary value that no one ever imagined they would. 

The Atlantic adds that this HD transfer of a 35mm nitrate negative is a crisp document of Los Angeles with "shiny cars, palm trees, and depression-era shop fronts."

If you have a small extra photo of yourself, cut it out and place it on your monitor where the driver would be and take a ride past Bunker Hill, Pershing Square, and the Central Library.

Goodbye for now, and thank you

As a graphic artist, the words from a painter have stayed with me.  "The piece is never done. It just stops at an interesting place." That is where this blog is; an interesting place.

I'm taking an extended and indefinite leave from viewfromaloft, leaving the day-to-day Downtown Los Angeles observations and cultural notes to others.

While close friends already know, and as some readers here and at blogdowntown have speculated, I haven't been Downtown for a while. I've been covering the city remotely.

As a contributor at KCET's blogs, I will still be writing about Downtown and Los Angeles, along with the Inland Empire and High Desert.

There will be some tinkering behind the scenes around here. I've been working on a personal portfolio with this multi-blog platform, and will update viewfromaloft's blogroll in time. Maybe I will finally add a post about my own mural work.

For now, just let me say it has been a pleasure to help build community through here and elsewhere. Thanks for reading.

At Chop Suey Cafe / Photo by Rush Valera

Twitter: @viewfromaloft

Taste of Italy 2011 to be held October 1

It's like family coming to the house with enough hot dishes to stuff everyone

The Third Annual Taste of Italy Los Angeles will be held at El Pueblo October 1. Dubbed as "a cultural-gastronomic event," the collaboration with the Italian American Museum and Italy-America Chamber of Commerce West will serve up over fifty of the region’s best restaurants, wineries, and fine food and beverage purveyors, and tickets are expected to sell out.

The early line-up to sample Italian fare includes menu items from  Toscanova, Locanda Del Lago, Marino Restaurant, Il Fornaio, Pastina, Caffe Roma, Da Pasquale, Il Grano, Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, Il Moro and La Bottega di Marino.

Downtown Vid Pick: 'A Visit to American Cities' Los Angeles, 1917

"A Visit to American Cities" features Los Angeles circa 1917, as  produced by the Ford Motor Company. In a previous post of this clip, it was identified as a travelogue. This slightly longer version reveals it was part of an educational series, and stored in the Ford Library. It is a safe guess that Ford hoped it encouraged touring the US by automobile.

"Art of Miguel Covarrubias" opens at the California African Museum

 


 Another thing to like about J. Michael Walker's "City of Mind," now on display at the UCLA Hammer Museum, is that continues a vibrant illustrative map legacy from the Latin American avant garde movement. Miguel Covarrubias, a contemporary of Los Tres Grandes' Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, managed to deftly straddle fine and commercial art, including a series of mural size maps that defined people and place. Covarrubias is the subject of a new exhibition at the California African American Museum. Maria Lopez files a preview of the exhibition.