COLLECTIVE SOUL

-

     After a beef link sandwich and macaroni and cheese at Cassie’s, I drove west.

Juan organizes the artists and coordinates the project.

     Around and through the Art’s District, I turned down the lane alongside the tracks.  I could see the artists were at work, and I slowed down and asked if I could shoot some photos.  ‘Yeah, cool,’ the man said.  Four or five artists were working on the wall.  In September I’d shot a few photos and posted them as Industrial Chic http://indian-hill.blogspot.com/2010/09/industrial-chic.html.  

     After I pulled over and stopped, I checked with another man and asked if it was okay to shoot. 

     ‘You into shooting graffiti?’ the guy said.

     ‘I’m into art.  I don’t call this graffiti.’  I explained that I’d been here before and had talked to another man after posting Industrial Chic. 

Stigma

     Stigma works as a tattoo artist, at his home, and at a studio in Hollywood.  In school, he says ‘Every class was art.  English, math, science.  It was all art.’  Now he’s got an entire wall to work on, with eight other artists. 

     Juan organizes the project and coordinates who works on the wall.  'We’ll be working here probably a little bit this week,’ Juan explains, ‘and on into at least next weekend.’  In addition to Juan and Stigma, two others are working today.  They have step ladders and cardboard boxes crammed full of paint cans.  Sometimes, Juan says, people drive by and yell things about graffiti.  ‘Tag somewhere else,’ he says they say.  Obscenities get thrown around, he says, but they ignore it.  They have permission from the owner of the wall and the Pomona Police officers watch out for them.

     Stigma is working on a stretch of wall roughly eight feet high and twelve feet long.  ‘I’ve had the idea for a few years.  It stays in my head and I work on it in my mind.  Sometimes I sketch out something on paper.’  I ask him if the scale of the work is especially challenging, compared to working with tattoo art, on human skin.  ‘I can change it on the wall if I don’t like something or need to change a detail.  Can’t do that with tattoos.’

     These artists don’t get a lot of visitors to their open air installation, on the south side of the tracks.  It doesn’t seem to bother them.  We agreed to keep in touch.  I said I wanted to do another series when the wall is progressing, and when it’s done.

     Juan navigates the bureaucracy and politics of city hall to make sure they don’t get shut down, and the other influences of the neighborhood. 

     ‘No carefully placed campaign donations?’ I asked.

     ‘We’re low-pro, bro,’ Juan said.  Low profile, the way they work with the landowner and the city.     

The art, however, is of the highest profile.

Comments

Timecheck said…
Nice piece of photo-journalism
August 25, 2011 at 9:17 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AMERICAN MOTORS RIDES AGAIN

-
Image
            A GUY NAMED VERN   says hello when I sit down at the counter at Corky’s Café and Bakery in Upland, over on Mountain Ave. Vern knows everybody there and wants me to know. Waitresses, the manager, he calls them all by name. He’s bored but he doesn’t know it, pretending he’s all up on who’s the oldest server, going to school with the manager who he says he used to peek at through the fence in junior high. She winces, moves on. Athletic Director at some high school, he takes his grandchildren to school and it’s all so wonderful he gets up every day in a great mood.             “It’s all in your mind,” Vern says. “You make up your mind every day to be happy, and it’s just that simple.”             LATER I'M DRIVING   over by the Montclair plaza and stop in for a small car show. It’s the American Motors confab, bunch of guys showing off their AMXs, the old Rambler motors turned into American Motors before being bought out by Chrysler, for the Jeep brand, Jay Baker
Read more

Musso and Frank Grill

-
Image
           Let’s call him Mario.  He’s the bartender at this classic on Hollywood Boulevard, between Highland and Las Palmas.  You’ve been there.  The Maitre ‘d, Manuel, had ushered me into the empty bar around 11:45 AM, and while outside the sun blazed with mid-spring spring heat, inside seemed frozen in time.       Mario was setting up the bar and had bottles of wine, some opened, some uncorked, cork trays full of highball glasses, wine glasses, Pilsner glasses, tumblers, large jars of green olives, stainless steel containers of white onions—the little kind used in gimlets or martinis if you like them that way—slices of lemon peel, lime, candied cherries, all across the bar, so much that the waiter who came by shoved clear a corner so I could sit.  Mario brought me a Heineken and a glass dripping with shaved ice.  Billie Holliday singing ‘It Had To Be You’, notes hanging around the wallpaper of hunting scenes, geese and duck blinds high above the bar, surrounding the room. Mario sa
Read more

HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

-
Image
I walked Hollywood Boulevard taking photos of tourists and landmarks;  the classic Hollywood restaurant  Musso and Frank, the huge Ninja Turtle statues that draw in folks in front of the Hollywood Highland Center escalator where people can do a selfie with the turtles then whisk themselves up the escalator and do some shopping.      The sun was bright and warm, the tourists dressed in shorts, tank tops, and the more exotic dress of high class hookers strolling with patrons along the sidewalk of stars.     A young sales crew approaches me for a star tour bus ride, handing me a brochure and asking where I’m from. I engage them and ask some questions about the one sales rep that seemed most engaging.     “Business is slowing down from the summer,” he says. He’s got dark skin, bright white teeth, buzz cut hair. “We show you star homes. From a distance. The house where Michael Jackson died, Stephen Spielberg’s house.”     The buses run up and down Hollywood Boulevard
Read more