Delayed Flights

The idea is to turn Los Angeles into a City of Angels--literally. “A Community of Angels,” a massive citywide public art project, has begun to populate high-traffic areas of Los Angeles with 6-foot, 4-inch angels--some sitting, some standing, some flying--decorated by artists, schoolkids, designers and more, all in the name of charity.

Some 400 angels were supposed to be stationed by April 1--and some started to spread their wings around town in late February. But due to rain, red tape, tardy artists, cash-flow problems and the logistics of carting the 500-pound artworks (a 100-pound angel on a 400-pound base), “Community of Angels” is taking flight more slowly than project organizers had hoped.

Ten days into March, only about 30 decorated sculptures have been placed, and event organizers have scaled back their goal to 250 angels. Project director Cal Winslow, a vice president of the Greater Los Angeles office of the Volunteers of America, has set Thursday as the deadline to sponsor an angel, which should ensure that the works spend at least 30 days on view before they are taken down May 1.

A joint effort of Volunteers of America and Catholic Big Brothers, in association with the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Volunteer Bureau of the Office of the Mayor, “A Community of Angels” will culminate in a May 17 auction hosted by Sotheby’s at the Los Angeles Music Center; additional angels will be auctioned later, online.

Organizers hope the auctions will raise between $800,000 and $1 million for youth programs. The project was officially launched in October, when a sample angel, 16-year-old artist Alexandra Nechita’s “The Eyes of Light,” was unveiled downtown at California Plaza Watercourt. Other, high-profile participants include artist Hiro Yamagata, Rose Parade float designer Raul Rodriguez (whose “Angel of Life” is in place at Macguire Gardens downtown) and 73-year-old Pierre Matisse, the grandson of the great French artist.

Still, Winslow said many artists have been slow to complete their angels, particularly those involving mosaics or other complicated processes. ‘We didn’t kick this off until October, and that’s a pretty fast track for some artists,” Winslow said. “And it was hard to explain, hard for a lot of people to visualize--they’d say, what do ‘big angels’ look like?”

Angel sponsorship options range from $1,500 to $50,000. So far no one has signed on for a $50,000 sponsorship, though there have been a few at the $25,000 level, Winslow said. The $1,500 sponsorship is offered only to nonprofit organizations, but that doesn’t cover the $1,000 artists honorarium, the $1,200 cost of the unadorned angel, designed by artist Tony Sheets, plus administrative costs. Many of the sponsors who have signed up are at the $1,500 level, which is creating cash-flow problems and concern over how much money will be left in the end for charity.

The angels project was modeled after Chicago’s highly successful 1999 “Cows on Parade” show featuring life-size fiberglass cows. In that effort, local businesses banded together to sponsor artists and fund 320 whimsically decorated fiberglass cows--including “Chi-COW-go,” “Cowligator” and “COW-ch,” designed for sitting--in public spaces, mainly along the business corridor of Michigan Avenue. Chicago’s art cows, inspired by a similar herd grazing the streets of Zurich, Switzerland, are credited with attracting some 2 million extra visitors to the city, as well as beefing up the local economy with $200 million in tourist spending. Auctioned off after a four-month street exhibition, the cows netted $3.5 million for charity, well beyond organizers’ wildest dreams of $250,000 (the original idea of the cow auction was not to raise money, but simply to get rid of them).

Among the reasons for Chicago’s success, said Nathan Mason, curator of special projects for the Chicago Public Art program of the city’s cultural affairs department, was that member businesses of the Greater North Michigan Avenue Assn. guaranteed $100,000 to the project before it was launched, which leveraged a matching grant from the state’s department of tourism, giving the project a firm financial base. The city helped by allowing the cows to be placed on city land.

And, noted Mason, the concentration of cows along Michigan Avenue gave the cows concentrated visibility, difficult to achieve in sprawling Los Angeles.

“We’d need thousands of angels to cover this community,” Winslow acknowledged.

Project organizers are trying to place at least 80 angels downtown and provide walking tours from project headquarters at the Wilshire Grand Hotel. Small angel groupings are cropping up in widespread areas, including Westwood, Santa Monica and Alhambra.

A Challenge to Place Angels

Placing the angels has been one of the project’s biggest challenges. Project leaders have scrambled to acquire appropriate permits to place the statues in Pershing Square, Elysian Park and other city-owned spaces, but Winslow said for the most part they’ve opted for private-property locations, such as corporate plazas, to avoid the red tape, and have not placed any angels along city streets. “In Chicago, the city was much more proactive,” he said.

The Chicago cows spawned a fiberglass phenomenon that has resulted in pigs, lizards and other creatures and objects appearing in urban areas throughout the country and as far away as Toronto, which hosted an art moose invasion. From June 10-Oct. 1, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, will present “Overalls All Over: An American Gothic Happening”--providing the opportunity to spoof the stern-faced farm couple of Iowa artist Grant Wood’s well-known painting.

Not to be outdone, Chicago will host a fiberglass living room furniture display this summer titled “Suite Home Chicago”--and in April will round up a representative sample from the various fiberglass projects around the country, for “Sears and MiniMoves Presents City Critters at the Lincoln Park Zoo.” The show will run until October--and will include an angel from the Los Angeles Community of Angels.

Despite the problems, Winslow hopes to make “A Community of Angels” an annual event--in the summer next time, to avoid the rain--and is encouraged by the public response to the angels. And, he added, “We’ve had more than 1 million hits on our Web site [https://www.acommunityofangels.com]. People go back every day, to see which new angels have come up.”