intersections

Downtown Art Walk

The second Thursday of every month in Los Angeles is the Downtown Art Walk. It officially runs from noon to 9:00 pm, but my sense is that it doesn't really get started until after dark.

Yesterday was my first experience of the Art Walk and I didn't get to do much, but I did stop by the Crewest Gallery where there were a couple dozen graffiti artists painting on boards and canvases. Photos after the jump.

Meeting with Councilmember Tom LaBonge

There were ten people in our group that visited with Councilmember Tom LaBonge today in his City Hall office - 8 members of the church, Joe Hari, our LA Voice organizer and Man One, our artist. It was a good meeting and we really enjoyed the conversation about the Crossroads @ HOLLYWOOD mural project. We showed he and his staff the draft sketch and Mr. LaBonge made some constructive comments and suggestions.

We also learned a little bit about the process we would have to go through to get our mural approved (not an easy process either). We now need to think about what our next steps will be. I was really proud of our group who has worked so hard on this project. Here's a soundbyte from Alburn Binkley's opening comments:

"The Crossroads Mural project is our latest "gift" that we wish to present to the community around us.  Sitting as a welcome sign to the City Council District 4, the Crossroads Mural will greet residents and visitors alike to a district whose commercial and social growth reflects our own."

Art in LA: last night at the Getty

Last night a few of us were at the Getty Center for a panel discussion about Art in LA in the past decade (1997-2007). The main reason we were there is because Man One, the artist we've hired to do our mural at the church, was one of five panelists (moderated by Patt Morrison in the bright orange on the right). The prior day a different group of us were at the Arts & Parks committee of City Council to give public comment to the committee about the problem the city is facing with murals. I don't have time to go into all that here, but sufice it to say, the City, in combating legal and illegal super-graphics and billboards that multiply like rabbits, has made it impossible (legally impossible) to get fine art murals on private property approved. Things have ground to a standstill, so we're involving ourselves in this political process to urge a rapid resolution to this process.

However, while we were at the event at the Getty, some other things were said about art in Los Angeles that got me to thinking about missional church. So, stay tuned for the next post, Missional Museums.

Crossroads @ HOLLYWOOD mural update...and more

Yesterday we had our second community input workshop. It wasn't as well attended as the first one - maybe 15 people. Man One was on hand with the first draft of the design. We don't have images to show online just yet of the design, but I can tell you that it is impressive. This guy is one amazing artist.

We've added a new page to the Crossroads @ HOLLYWOOD blog. It's an FAQ written by the team that is leading this project. It's well worded and I think really points out the missional quality of what we're doing here. Be sure to check it out. And subscribe to the RSS feed for the Crossroads @ HOLLYWOOD blog for all the updates we post there.

In other related news...

LA vs. WAR
There is an art exhibit happening this week called LA vs. War. You can read more about it here. Man One and the Crewest Gallery will be taking part in this.

It's this Thursday, April 10 through Sunday, April 13 downtown at...

The Firehouse
710 S. Santa Fe Avenue
Los Angeles CA 90021

    All ages are welcome and admission is free. See also myspace.com/lavswar

The Arts in Los Angeles
On Thursday, April 17, Man One will be part of a conversation at the Getty Center entitled "The Arts in Los Angeles, 1997-2007", moderated by Patt Morrison of the LA Times and KPCC. This event is also free but reservations are required (click here). Parking is something like $7.

Listening to Our Community

This Saturday afternoon our church is doing something truly wonderful. As I previously reported, we received a $10,000 grant from the Office of Community Beautification (part of the City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works). This grant is to produce an art mural on the enormous and unattractive wall of our church that faces the freeway (and attracts taggers).

So, this Saturday afternoon we are hosting a Community Input Workshop which will bring together various parts of our neighborhood. After gathering around tables and discussing the nature and character of our neighborhood with the artist, we will gather around tables for food. After the food, one of our church members, Melinda Rice, is putting on a concert of classical and modern music (she is a professional violinist and my daughter's violin teacher).

You can read the press release we sent out last week, here.

One of the interesting things to come out of this is a conversation about what our role is, as a church, in the neighborhood. Some cannot get over the fact that our mural will not be explicitly religious. Some are curious whether the artist is Christian. Here's what I wrote in the church bulletin this past week.

One of the questions you'll hear people around the Hollywood Church ask a lot is some version of, “"What is God up to in our neighborhood and how can we join Him?”" It a basic recognition that God is present in our neighborhoods. It is a question that changes our vision - the way we look at our community – and how we think about engaging with our community.

One of the goals at our church is to always be imagining ways in which we, as God's people, are sent. Too often the church default mode of operation is to think about how we can get people to come to us. This is the principle behind much of what is called “church growth.” What we are concerned with in Hollywood is how God is calling and sending us to be present in the neighborhoods “where he intends to go”.

One funny side story is that someone in my denominational office wanted to feature what we're doing and gleaned some info off our website. Here's part of what they published

The project's purpose is to add value to the community, foster conversations in the community about Adventist values and vision for the neighborhood.

We never said anything about fostering conversations about Adventist values and vision. He added that. It's just so far outside the norm for churches to foster conversations about the community's values that the only thing we can possibly imagine is fostering conversations about what we want to talk about.

Our real goal is to see if we can discern what God is doing among the people of our neighborhood.

Hollywood Church awarded a $10,000 grant

Our church got some great news this week. In mid-October we submitted a 32-page grant application to the City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works. Every year the city gives out approximately $800,000 in 90 or so grants for community beautification projects being spearheaded by neighborhood groups, businesses and others (click here to learn more about the Community Beautification Grant).

Our project, called Crossroads @ HOLLYWOOD, is a public art mural that will go on the west facing wall of our property that overlooks the freeway. You can see in the picture below that the wall is currently an eyesore and a magnet for graffiti.

The idea for this project came from one of my church members, has been discussed around the church for more than a year and grew to this point in the context of one of our Missional Action Teams. This particular MAT was charged with the challenge of understanding and designing an experiment around the question, "How can we imagine ourselves as God’s missionary people sent to be the presence of Christ amidst the people in our neighborhood?" So, yes, this mural will beautify our wall and be a deterrent to graffiti. But it's real purpose is to foster conversations in the community about who we are, what we value and who we are hoping to become, as a community.

Because we are being funded, in part, by the City of Los Angeles, the mural cannot be explicity religious. This is a plus for us and really challenges our MAT to consider what it would mean to enter our community as listeners, looking for signs of God's kingdom and then using our wall as a "canvas" to paint the hope that our community has for its future and its role in the life of the people who live and work here. Rather than using our wall as a "billboard" to market our brand of religion and blare our message at people as they go buy, our dream is for the art that will grace this wall to be a genuinely public creation and a reflection of our shared life.

In order to facilitate this, the team will be running a series of design input workshops with a special focus on getting input and involvement from our Community Partners as well as the wider community. The artist - ManOne - will then take all that input and design a mural which will eventually be approved by the Department of Cultural Affairs and be painted on our wall by May of this year!

To see a rendering of how the wall will look when it is complete, please visit the About page on the Crossroads @ HOLLYWOOD website.

Violence Solves Nothing

I saw this mural today as I was walking from the church to the Hollywood and Western Metro station. I took this quick picture with my cell phone. Of course, I love the message. I think this is relatively new or I've just never noticed it before. I don't walk on the south side of Hollywood Blvd. that often.

Urban Art and Community Action

Yesterday, thanks to Marcel, I had the privilege of touring the CINCO facility in Highland Park and meeting their amazing Executive Director, Martha Rivera. If you've never heard of CINCO please visit their website here and check out the amazing work their doing. This isn't exactly Hollywood, but there are a lot of things we could learn from this community program that could be implemented in Hollywood.

The urban art above has nothing to do with CINCO, but it was in the parking lot next to the building and I just loved it. We're considering something like this on our ugly freeway wall. What do you think?

Afterwards we had some amazing Salvadorian food down the road.