Press

Press From the Past: Wall Street Journal

L.A. River Runs Through It

By ARNIE COOPER

Pasadena, Calif.

In Paris it’s the Seine. In New York it’s the Hudson. And here in the Los Angeles Basin it’s, well, a concrete channel unceremoniously called the Los Angeles River.

But joke all you want. The 51-mile creation of the Army Corps of Engineers may not be most Angelenos’ prime destination for a Sunday stroll—heck, it might not even be flowing—but as Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez, one of the artists in the Pasadena Museum of California Art’s current exhibition, insists: “This is our river; this is our community and our history, so it’s more than just water down a concrete gateway.”

“The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River,” inspired by Ulysses L. Zemanova’s 2005 book of the same name, offers visitors (whose main contact with the river is likely through their windshields) a detailed look at the waterway’s flora, fauna and cultural identity as seen through the eyes of 25 or so local artists. There’s sculpture, photography, pen and ink, watercolor, oils, mixed media and, as you’d expect, a preponderance of graffiti—some of which dates back to hobo etchings from 1914.

No wonder the show’s curators, Christopher Brand, Evan Skrederstu and Steve Martinez, are all graffiti artists in their 30s who’ve logged many hours in the city’s circulatory system. The same is true for 60-year-old Mr. Bojórquez.

A self-proclaimed hippie (“I was not a gang member, but my neighbors were,” he writes in the book), Mr. Bojórquez grew up in Highland Park, using the river to escape the violence and ugliness of the streets above. “The river was always a positive place to go. Surprisingly, it was beautiful down there,” Mr. Bojórquez says. “Late at night when you’re doing graffiti with the river’s sound, the freeways and with a full moon, you could look down at all the broken bottles and see a diamond-studded highway.”

No doubt, for all the insults hurled against what is frequently just a trickle of fluorescent green algae, the river—to those who actually spend time in it—is, says Mr. Skrederstu, “a weird little escape from the city. You’re still in the middle of L.A., but sometimes it gets super quiet.”

Once a free-flowing alluvial river, El Río de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Ángeles de Porciúncula—so named by Gaspar de Portolà during his 1769 expedition of Alta California—was originally the main nutrition and water source for the Gabrielino Indians. With its stands of oak trees, small fish and mammals, the tributary helped sustain the 50 or so villages near its banks in what’s now the San Fernando Valley and Glendale.

After the Spanish arrived, the river continued as the region’s main water supply, though its path was unpredictable. Floods in the 1800s diverted its course to its current location, running from Canoga Park due south just east of the city before spilling out into San Pedro Bay. But it was a catastrophic flood in 1938 that led to the Army Corps’ project to pave its banks with concrete. The 20-year undertaking used three million barrels of concrete, inadvertently creating the city’s largest graffiti canvas.

“The point of the show,” Mr. Brand says, “is to re-create our river experiences for someone who’s never seen it. Every time we’ve been to the river, we’d come across little things that the average person might find absolutely disgusting but to us were things of true beauty.”

Consider his bizarre but highly crafted (as yet untitled) sculpture that is intended to serve as the introduction to the show. Resembling a snail adorned with baroque flourishes, algae-covered barnacles, and a single, real-looking eye peering out from a peephole at a copy of the Ulysses Guide, the creature is both ugly and beautiful. “He’s the vessel,” Mr. Brand says, “for the viewer to get involved in what you’re about to see.”

“Involved” is the key, for the curators’ main goal is not just to re-create the river (achieved with video footage of flowing water, live plants and a soundscape of all the ambient noise) but also to inspire residents of Tinseltown to actually check it out.

But if descending into the bowels of Los Angeles is not your thing, you’ll definitely want to gaze at “River/Tropical,” an oil-on-board painting done by Mr. Skrederstu. The 13-by-42-inch portrait/landscape contains many of the channel’s elements both real and imagined. Though the concrete banks, the aging hippie/bum surrounded by pigeons, an old transistor radio, and a cooking pot nearby are sights you might come across, not so the azure water, gorilla (or is it a mammoth?) and way in the distance a few moai—the stone carvings from Easter Island in Chile. Just to the work’s left is Messrs. Skrederstu and Martinez’s big 78-by-72-inch acrylic “Survivors of the Massacre (48),” featuring a realistic-looking, battered stuffed animal with a grasshopper sitting on its head.

Those craving something more sedate might prefer “Ol’ School Calvera Peacock,” a 2007 ink-on-paper image lyrically sketched by Jack “From-Way-Back” Rudy. For the scientist, there’s an enlarged pill bug, created by Dennis Kunkel, known for his scanning electron micrographs.

No doubt, for many of these artists, the river’s influence extends far beyond its banks. Featured in the show is an 18-foot-wide panel that has accompanied Messrs. Brand, Skrederstu and Martinez all over the world. One can’t help being drawn to its depiction of the Aztec deity, Tlaloc, which Mr. Brand says represents falling water or rain. “Tlaloc needs to be involved in this exhibit, because without that bit of water, the river and L.A. wouldn’t be here.”

So what happens if their concrete canvas gets removed or made blank once again? A nonprofit group, Friends of Los Angeles River (FoLAR), has been working since 1986 to restore the waterway to a more natural state, without much progress. But the Army Corps, thanks to $800,000 in stimulus funds, has many gallons of beige paint at the ready.

Still, like all graffiti artists accustomed to seeing their work erased, Mr. Brand is unfazed. “Everything is temporary; the river is always changing, constantly in flux,” he said. “That’s one of the points we’re making.”

Note: © The Wall Street Journal & Arnie Cooper.  Read the original article here.

Press From the Past: L.A. Times, May 9, 2010

Art and the L.A. River

An exhibition in Pasadena examines works inspired by and created in the concrete trough.

May 09, 2010 | By Liesl Bradner, Special to the Los Angeles Times

One of Chaz Bojórquez’s fondest childhood memories is of climbing down into the L.A. River basin around Highland Park, running and sliding in 2 inches of water enclosed in a moss-covered tunnel — his “Tom Sawyer swimming pool,” as he called it.

For many Angelenos the L.A. River is just another concrete surface viewed from their car windows. A waterless paved gorge filled with graffiti, grit and vagrants but also a sentimental symbol of the city’s cinematic history that provided a convenient location for movies such as “Terminator 2,” “Grease” and “Transformers.”

For Bojórquez and other L.A. artists, it was a place for childhood adventures, an escape from the city and inspiration for creating art. A collection of work inspired by the waterway has been captured at “The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River” at the Pasadena Museum of California Art through July 4.

Reflective of Los Angeles, the exhibition is a vibrant, cross section of more than 25 pieces of watercolors, charcoal drawings, sculpture, Masonite elements, draft designs, acrylics, spray paint, photography and even an “oil on cockroach.”

The art includes a peacock sketch by tattoo artist Jack Rudy, Dennis Kunkel’s microscopic images of a pill bug and Evan Skrederstu’s oil painting “River Tropical,” an island fantasy of a hammocked hippie relaxing along the shore.

Bojórquez, considered one of L.A.’s first graffiti artists and the oldest in show at 61, briefly attended Chouinard Art Institute (now known as CalArts). His work has been featured at the Smithsonian and LACMA. “I found my cultural identity in the river,” said Bojórquez, who first discovered its beauty and nature walking in the middle of the night to hide from the police. “The broken bottles sparkling in the light of the moon and the sound of the water and speeding cars was very romantic,” Bojórquez recalled.

In the early 20th century, floods wreaked havoc on the city, so in 1938 the Army Corps of Engineers began paving over the river. Detractors believed the transformation created a different kind of havoc as a playground for gangs, delinquents and the homeless.

For research, Steve Martinez and fellow artists and curators Skrederstu and Christopher D. Brand hiked the 51 miles of the river bed, which stretches from Canoga Park through downtown and ends in Long Beach. Except for a few run-ins with seedy survivalists and coyotes, they encountered exotic fauna, insects, reptiles and egrets.

The endless white space provided a huge canvas for anyone enticed to venture into the depths and express their creativity. “There were some beautiful murals down there from 15 to 20 years ago we were able to capture before they painted them over,” said Martinez, referring to a project by the city to rid the river walls and embankments of gang tags.

The exhibition, based on a book of the same name, re-creates the experience of being in the river with trash, plants, exposed concrete, birds’ nests and green muck integrated along the gallery floor, ceiling and corners with a piped-in soundscape of running water, traffic and birds.

“Survivors of the Massacre” is an acrylic painting by Martinez and Skrederstu of a teddy bear and plastic elephant found at the bottom of the river. Bags of worn-out stuffed animals had been tossed over a wall resulting in a calamitous explosion of stuffing and fur. Also discovered on the trek were hobo etchings that dated as far back as 1914. Said Martinez, “It’s a natural thing for a person to say ‘I existed in this world’ and leave their mark.”

Note: Text © L.A. Times & Liesl Bradner.  The original article can be found here.

Press From the Past: L.A. Times, 18 May 2006

Wait, don’t squish it; it may be art

WITH THE KIDS

May 18, 2006 | Brenda Rees

For artists, everything has potential to be a canvas. Freeway walls can become murals, sidewalks make great chalk easels and even cars have been known to get artified with clever use of paint and blingy ornamentation.

But bugs? Big creepy-crawly bugs?

Why not, say local insect-loving artists Chris Brand and Evan Skrederstu, who for three years have been transforming the backs of dead roaches, spiders and mantises into miniature decorative masterpieces. Think of them as the Picasso and Cezanne of the bug painting world — a rather small kingdom, to be sure.

Brand and Skrederstu will be showing off their painted bug creations at this year’s Bug Fair taking place Saturday and Sunday at the Natural History Museum.

Included will be a walking leaf adorned with delicate chrysanthemums, a weevil exotically trimmed with the Taj Mahal and a portrait of a somewhat stunned Alfred Hitchcock painted on the back of a large beetle.

“So many people think we use a magnifier when we paint, but we don’t,” says Skrederstu, a scenic painter who got the idea for bug painting when he and Brand — a tattoo artist — were painting a mural near downtown and accidentally sprayed a little bug blue.

“We said, ‘Hey, we’ve painted just about everything we could, why not bugs?’ ” explains Skrederstu, who with Brand has always collected and enjoyed insects.

“I love the mechanics of bugs — they are structurally and biologically beautiful,” says Brand, whose latest work is a portrait of Rodney Dangerfield on a large Australian roach. “Bugs, like Rodney, need all the respect they can get.”

Note: Text © The Los Angeles Times & Brenda Rees.  The original article can be found here.

Press From the Past: Public Works @ LALA Gallery

From LALA Gallery Press Release: “We are thrilled to announce the opening of our second show, PUBLIC WORKS, on Friday, August 3, at 7:00 pm.

This groundbreaking two-part exhibit, a collaboration with LA Freewalls and MacDonald Media to benefit Art Share LA, features murals by renowned contemporary artists in one of public media’s most controversial spaces – the billboard. Contributing artists include How & Nosm, Insa, Push, Revok, Risk, Ron English, Seen, Shepard Fairey, Trustocorp, WCA Crew, Uglar, and Zes.

The first part of the exhibit will feature the murals up-close-and-personal at LALA Gallery from August 3 to 17. The murals will then be on display on billboards throughout Los Angeles on a rotating basis during the next year.”

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