Multitude of angels spread spirit of good will across city

Linden Waddell of Silver Lake recalled the day 16 years ago when she saw someone placing a pink angel on her walkway.

“What’s this?” Waddell asked.

“Angel delivery,” the visitor said before scampering off.

Waddell didn’t know it at the time, but she had just received one of 4,687 plaster cherubs -- 10 in every square mile of the city -- that were deposited free of charge in Los Angeles by artist Jill D’Agnenica and her merry band of friends.

The angel infestation began April 29, 1993, on the first anniversary of the L.A. riots, and D’Agnenica hoped that the 12-inch sitting figures would “symbolically link Los Angeles” and “appeal to the 7-year-old inside the guts of adults, even if for just a moment.”

The project evolved into a sort of psychological experiment, testing how people felt about strangers bearing angels.

The figures were left on street corners, at bus stops, on waterfronts and in front of buildings, including St. Michael and All Angels Church in Studio City, where the pastor greeted them with smiles.

Another happy recipient was a homeless woman on Sunset Boulevard who took three for her shopping cart and said she would sell them.

Not so enthusiastic was a passer-by in the San Fernando Valley “who thought they were bombs,” D’Agnenica recalled.

Meanwhile, Kip Rudd said on the artist’s website that he raced up to a car to hand off an angel to a departing Little Leaguer and “I heard his mother say, ‘Close the door, quick.’ I thrust the angel into the car through an open window. He looked thrilled. It amused me that this absurd sight worried the woman so much -- a man brandishing an angel in a threatening manner.”

D’Agnenica conceived the project after buying an angel for $15 in a craft shop. “No matter where I put it in my studio, it made me feel happy,” she said.

Later, driving west on the 10 Freeway, she saw the skyline of the city and realized that angels “belonged all over the city. And what could be more perfect for the City of Angels?”

The cost of producing the creatures from casts in her studio was more than $20,000, covered in part by grants and by donations from customers in her parents’ restaurant. The angels were numbered, and their deposit sites were recorded in a ledger and photographed.

It was a good thing she made up her mind from the start that she didn’t care what happened to the cherubs themselves.

Angels left outside a Valley restaurant flew into a Dumpster -- not on their own, but at the direction of the owner.

Along the Venice canals, “we saw some kids kicking them in the water,” D’Agnenica said. “As far as I know, they’re still on the bottom.”

Other reactions were more positive.

In Watts, the crew gave an angel to a boy who ran off and came back with friends, who also wanted angels.

In downtown Los Angeles, a woman told the crew, “I have an after-dinner mint green Cadillac that the angels would look great on.”

And so they did.

A young man with gang tattoos in Boyle Heights agreed to take an angel. When D’Agnenica asked him his address, the number of his house -- 1443 -- matched the number of the angel.

“For a moment we had connected,” she said.

After the January 1994 Northridge earthquake, one crew member rode his skateboard to the edge of the damaged 118 Freeway and left an angel.

“My aunt phoned later and said, ‘One of your angels is on CNN,’ ” D’Agnenica recalled.

“The newscast ended with the words, ‘Hope also rises,’ and the camera zoomed in on the angel.”

The last of the angel drop-offs were made in November 1994.

What later surprised D’Agnenica was the way her project inspired others.

For instance, teacher Kate Pitner had children at Highlands Elementary School in Saugus make their own.

Afterward, she wrote on D’Agnenica’s website, “shiny pink angels traveled to relatives and friends in the hospital, to people recovering from cancer, were placed on the graves of loved ones, delivered to police and fire stations to say thank you, given to volunteers at an animal rescue center, sent abroad to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

As for D’Agnenica’s 15-year-old angels, the whereabouts of thousands of them are unknown -- although there have been a few recent sightings.

Waddell, the Silver Lake woman who saw one deposited on her walkway, keeps the angel on a window ledge.

“Since then, my husband and I have added two great kids, a large dog and have a wonderful home life,” she said. “Is it because of the angel? Who knows?”

Ilana Nash still loves her angel -- what’s left of it. Its head broke off when it fell from a shelf, but as Nash said, “Even the headless have something to contribute.”

Winifred Brewer’s vine-covered angel sits in her garden, but she recently noticed that it was different in design from the ones D’Agnenica created.

“Maybe we have a fraudulent angel,” Brewer theorized.

In L.A., apparently, even angels can be objects of intrigue.

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