Great Outdoors Orange County/Long Beach Chapter
presents
An
Urban Walk/Ride in Downtown Los Angeles
Contact: Frederick Brown E-mail: fredincal346@gmail.com Phone: 562-754-1838
This event will be led by Frederick Brown who is a trained volunteer Los Angeles Metro Arts Council Docent.
The estimated time for this outing is two to four hours, depending on how much time participants spend at each of the sites.
Wear comfortable walking shoes and clothing, and bring a liter of water.
We will meet up at the Little Tokyo Station at the corner of Central Avenue and 1stStreet in Los Angeles at 10 AM. Click here for map. For those who are driving, parking lots are nearby which you can find on Google Maps. For those taking Metro, you can board the A line as far east as Azusa Pacific University Station, and as far South as downtown Long Beach. You may also board the E Line as far west as Santa Monica and as far east as Atlantic Avenue in East Los Angeles.
For those who would like to ride the A line for the Willow Station in Long Beach, meet the trip leader Frederick at the entrance to the station at 8:35 AM.
All those going on the tour must have a valid TAP card to enter the station. If someone does not have a TAP card, they can be purchased at the station for $2.00 plus fare. Because we will be getting on and off trains, a Day Pass probably makes the most sense.
We will begin our tour at the street level with Harmony by Clare Rojas. The art is sandwiched between panes of glass and celebrates the interaction of nature and urban life.
Down on the platform, Audrey W Chan’s work it titled Will Power Allegory, which shows how marginalized people in Los Angeles who have been displaced. The 168 foot long panels are porcelain enamel on steel. The top part of the work shows people who live in the area, and the bottom part shows a parade of smaller people.
Next we will travel to Historic Broadway Station. On the platform level, we will photographer Clarence Williams work titled Migrations. This piece shows people who have moved to Los Angeles for various reasons, such as escaping from Hurricane Katrina and Armenia. Each photograph is accompanied by a Haiku.
Moving upstairs to the Mezzanine, we find Mark Steven Greenfield’s Red Car Requiem, a spectacular glass mosaic which stretches 148 feet. The work took 6 years to paint and then fabricate.
Moving up through the station, we will come to Ralph Gilbert’s series of light panels which are titled Performance on the Streets of L.A. The light panels are a movable work that stay in one location for 6 months to a year, and then are moved to another location on the Metro Rails System.
Moving to the street level we will see Andrea Bowers’ double sided text work on glass. The title of the work is: “The People United (‘El pueblo unido jamás será vencido,’ Sergio Ortega and Quilapayun; ‘Brown Beret 13 Point Political Program,’ La Causa).” The idea for the work came from its location near the old Los Angeles Times building, City Hall and the court houses.
When the group has finished with the Historic Broadway Station, we will travel to the Grand Avenue Arts Station. On the platform and on the concourse, we will be able to see Mungo Thomson’s Negative Space, which he created using 7,398 pictures of the Andromeda Galaxy from the Hubble Telescope.
Also, on the concourse level is another set of light boxes done by Samira Yamin which is titled All is Flux. The pictures show water flowing over still water.
As we round the corner of the concourse toward the elevators, we are confronted by Pearl C. Hsiung’s monumental “High Prismatic,” a glass mosaic artwork that soars 61 feet to the top of the elevator well with more than 1 million mosaic tiles. (This is the deepest station in the Metro system.)
Taking the elevators to street level Ann Hamilton’s Over and Under work shows through the 2 story glass entry pavilion. The hand drawn lines look like a fabric, or are representative of the grid that makes up an urban center.
After finishing at the Grand Arts Avenue station, people are free to return home or stay for a lunch at the food court at the Marketplace, 300 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles.
Contact: Frederick Brown E-mail: fredincal346@gmail.com Phone: 562-754-1838
