New Room to Grow for Inner-City Arts

Inner-City Arts, a downtown nonprofit group that gives art classes to 4,300 children from four local elementary schools, has found a new home.

Director Bob Bates has had to run his program for disadvantaged children out of temporary trailers at the 9th Street School since environmental considerations forced him out of his former studio in 1991. But thanks to a $600,000 seed grant from the Mark Taper Foundation, and subsequent grants of $100,000 each from the Ahmanson and Weingart foundations, the organization has bought a new home at 720 Kohler St. and plans to move into the space in the fall, at the start of the new school year.

“We’ll be able to immediately double our scope,” said Rega Petlin, Inner-City Arts’ development director. She said the organization plans to increase its offerings from three to six classes each day and enlarge its latchkey program, which now serves 30 children.

Petlin noted that the organization still has a long way to go before concluding its $2.5-million capital campaign to pay for the building’s renovations and to start an endowment, but plans are marching forward, thanks to the three foundation grants and a $500,000 loan guaranteed by the organization’s board members.

Groundbreaking for renovations on the space, which used to be an auto body shop, took place Thursday. The 8,000-square-foot building is being redesigned by architect Michael Maltzan of Frank O. Gehry and Associates, who is also project designer for the planned Walt Disney Concert Hall.

A committee that includes director Peter Sellars, choreographer Sarah Elgart and local visual artists Matthew Thomas, Gina Lamb, Yolanda Gonzalez and Richard Gerrish is already planning the new curriculum.

BIRTHDAY: Noted ceramic artist Beatrice Wood is scheduled to celebrate her 100th birthday a few days early with the opening of “Beatrice Wood at 100: Drawings From a Fertile Life,” on Feb. 26 at La Brea Avenue’s Couturier Gallery. Wood’s birthday (which is actually March 3) will also be celebrated with nearby openings March 6 of Wood’s recent ceramic works at Garth Clark Gallery and photographs of Wood from 1973-93 by Marlene Wallace at Ovsey Gallery.

EXHIBITIONS: Assemblage artist Elena Mary Siff focuses on opportunities for the developmentally disabled in “Speaking Thunder,” an interactive installation at Santa Monica Place through April 15. The work--one of four special exhibitions created through the mall’s artist-in-residence program--branches out from Siff’s similar installation last year at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The work includes a storefront art studio and a community resource center for the disabled.

“A Short Course in Art,” a nine-hole miniature golf course created by Southern California artists, including George Herms, Gilbert (Magu) Lujan, Anthony Ausgang, John White and John O’Brien, is available for play at South Coast Plaza through Feb. 28. A fund-raiser for the Laguna Art Museum, the course charges $3 a game for adults and $1.50 for children under 12.

PUBLIC ART: “L.A. Angel,” an 85-foot neon-and-metal sculpture by L.A. artist Lili Lakich, was unveiled earlier this month at California Plaza (on Olive Street between 4th Street and Kosckiuszko Way). Lakich founded the city’s Museum of Neon Art, whose director, Mary Carter, has organized a temporary exhibition at Cal Plaza’s Watercourt to accompany the unveiling. Twenty works of neon and kinetic art by Lakich, Candice Gawne, Jim Jenkins, David Svenson, Eric Zimmerman and others are on view through March 31.

Artist Gayle Gale worked with pupils at Los Feliz Elementary School to complete “We Are the Unity in Our Comm unity ,” a new mural on the school’s playground. The mural, funded through the city’s L.A. Arts Recovery Program, was dedicated Thursday.

Also dedicated recently was Craig Cree Stone’s “The Lobby of the Floating Ceilings,” a public art project at Long Beach’s Krinsky Building, 140 Pine Ave. The work, commissioned as part of the Long Beach Public Art Program, is described by the artist as “actually a full-scale sculpture that also functions as a lobby.” Its columns and mirrors are arranged to create the illusion of the ceiling being partially lifted off its foundation.

PUBLISHING: Los Angeles-based A.R.T. Press has established “Emerging Works in Print,” a new program supporting publication projects by Los Angeles artists that would not be commercially published because of content, use of materials or lack of commercial viability.

The program offers printing discounts, distribution assistance, cash support for writers’ and artists’ fees, and marketing and publicity assistance for experimental text and visual art presentation, as well as “new forms” of documentary, fiction, poetry and essays. The program encourages proposals on social and cultural issues “relating to Southern California’s shifting urban conditions.” Information: (213) 936-3039.

EVENTS: As part of its Black History Month programs, Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts will screen four videos offering international perspectives on the black experience, Thursday at 7:30 p.m. The program features Alile Sharon Larkin’s “Dreadlocks and the Three Bears,” Maria Raquel Bozzi’s “Palenque: Un Canto,” April Claytor’s “Bloom” and Marie Kellier’s “Minstrels.” Admission is free, but reservations are required. Information: (818) 792-5101.

Seven recent CalArts graduates who deal with text and image will present their writings at 8:30 p.m. Friday at Venice’s Beyond Baroque. The readings, called “Honey Cakes for Cerberus,” are in conjunction with “Hobgoblins at the Feast,” an exhibition by some of the same CalArts graduates, at Beyond Baroque’s gallery through March 31. Admission is $6. Information: (310) 822-3006.

The 33rd annual Hillcrest Festival of Fine Arts, featuring exhibitions and demonstrations by more than 200 Southland artists, takes place Feb. 26-28 at 2000 West Road in La Habra Heights. The festival runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Information: (310) 947-3755.

DEADLINES: Feb. 26 is the entry deadline for “DownArt,” a juried exhibition of work by artists living or working downtown, planned for June 1-29 in a converted gallery space on Hope Street. The exhibition is part of a multicultural celebration planned for the dedication of the $3-million Grand Hope Park, a project of the Community Redevelopment Agency featuring artworks by Lita Albuquerque, Gwynn Murrill, Carl Stone, Lawrence Halprin, Raul Guerrero, Kate Braverman and Wanda Coleman. Information: (213) 623-4263.

March 15 is the application deadline for 1993 LACE Artists’ Projects Grants, a planned six to eight awards of $2,500 to $5,000 to individual artists or collaborating groups whose work “explores or extends” artistic or cultural traditions and boundaries. Several workshops have been scheduled to help applicants. Information: (213) 624-5650.

LACE is also calling for entries for “Countdown to the Next Millennium,” the organization’s third annual “open show,” focusing this year on the city’s current condition and how it has been affected by the aftermath of the April riots, economic woes and issues of transportation, urban design, immigration and the environment. Artists may submit one work each, and the first 300 works received will be displayed in the non-juried exhibition. Work must be hand-delivered on April 3 between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Videos will also be accepted and must be postmarked by March 31. Information: (213) 624-5650.