J. Michael Walker examines the intersection of the holy and the city of Los Angeles

Back at the turn of the century, in days before we relied on MapQuest, painter J. Michael Walker was thumbing through his faithful Thomas Guide, looking for something elusive -- a particular street that started with S.

His eyes fell on a column of street names that began with “Saint,” “San,” “Santa” or “Santo” and he had an epiphany: He’d happened upon “all the saints of the City of the Angels.” That moment launched him on what he calls a “metaphorical road trip,” searching for the “soul of the city” and documenting it in art.

A $6,500 city grant in 2000 (which commissioned bus shelter paintings) got him started, but it would take eight years and more than 100 paintings for Walker to meet his goal -- to visit those “saints,” see how past and present intersect within the city’s busy grid, and to reflect how often contemporary life on the street somehow reflects, or seems to comment on, the story or quest of its namesake saint.

The fruits of Walker’s work will be on display starting Friday at the Autry National Center Museum of the American West and in a book, “All the Saints of the City of the Angels” (published by Heyday). Although much of the work is a mediation on L.A.’s past, the ghosts that pass over this land, Walker talks about some of the sites he visited where the present and past meet seamlessly.