The Art of Commuting : Sculptor’s Abstract Works Will Greet Drivers Along Hollywood Freeway

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, as the old adage has it, but on the Hollywood Freeway, Lars Hawkes’ vision of beauty will be in the face of the commuter.

Hawkes--who welds abstract sculptures in his spare time at the Pacoima machine shop where he works--has won Caltrans approval, under a program that offers roadside space to artists, to erect the first permanent freeway art display in the San Fernando Valley.

Three of his 12-foot high, one-ton sculptures are scheduled to be placed along the freeway at Sherman Way in North Hollywood on Aug. 20.

They are rounded and angular, spiraling and spiky, fluid and blocky. One balances an undulating yellow squiggle, another is topped by a spiky black clump reminiscent of a punk haircut and the third looks vaguely like a giant gear wearing a cowboy hat.

Motorists who get stuck beside them frequently had better like primary colors.

Bright primary colors.

The yellow squiggle reminds friends of Bullwinkle the cartoon moose, the 51-year-old, part-time artist said Thursday. Another evokes images of the Statue of Liberty’s torch, he said, but the works are untitled and have no message.

“I think of them as kind of great big toy shapes,” he said. “But I tell people to use their imaginations.”

Once they are up, Hawkes may become the only resident of Los Angeles who will actually be delighted to hear the dread words: traffic jam.

“If things slow down, then at least lots of people can see the sculptures,” he said. “I spent a lot of time picking this location,” between the Sherman Way off-ramp and on-ramps because the art will be seen by northbound and southbound motorists, he said.

Hawkes’ works will be part of a Caltrans art program that has put about 50 murals and three sculptures along freeways in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

The program was most active before the 1984 Olympics, when Caltrans oversaw the creation of 21 freeway murals, including the one depicting marathon runners along the San Diego Freeway in Inglewood, and placed sculptures along downtown stretches of the Hollywood and Harbor freeways.

Caltrans receives an average of 40 to 50 requests annually for information and applications from artists who want to install art along freeways, said Irma Lopez, a Caltrans administrator who helps artists secure the needed permits. But, she said, Caltrans tries not to get tangled in the debate over the merit of the works.

“It’s such a subjective type of thing,” she said of art. “I might love it and you might hate it, or vice versa.”

Hawkes, a relatively unknown artist, worked for two years on the sculptures in the back of the Pacoima shop where he works building machinery that makes molds for fiberglass products such as bathtubs.

He welded the sculptures from steel he bought at his own expense and is expected to pay about $2,000 to rent the trucks and cranes needed to install them next to the freeway.

This is his second installment of what Hawkes calls “drive-by art.” He has also displayed 10 large abstract cement sculptures on private land next to a road leading into Sequoia National Park, he said.

Hawkes does not worry that his Hollywood Freeway sculptures will be so engrossing that motorists will collide while trying to get a look at them. “I think people are used to looking at other things while they drive,” he said, “so I don’t see a problem.”