Tag: venice

Just a follow-on to my recent mention of SPARC.  Knowing that I had worked with SPARC intermittently through the 70s and 80s, I made a quick search of the 10,846 negatives so far (as of yesterday) uncovered for the 1974-1999 period to look for likely relevant keyword matches. Less than half of those have any keywords at all, but I did locate a few SPARC-related items after a few minutes to supplement that previous post.

Here, we see some images of a couple of artists I worked closely with, a few research photos of potential public art sites on freeway walls (an ongoing quest was to find and negotiate for public art spaces around LA), and other miscellany. I probably have some more stuff from the SPARC period on my photoblog (that may not be of general interest, however).

Whew! I could just about write a book about this photo and the memories it triggers.

This is the old Venice City Police Station and Jail, located at — I won’t forget this address — 685 Venice Boulevard. I don’t recall the first time I ever saw it, but by the time I had taken this photo it had been vacated by the City of Los Angeles, and was mostly being, and continued to be, rented out for film productions (it even shows up in the Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall). Here as the “Dull City Jail” it was apparently decked out with temporary, fictitious signage for one such instance.

A couple of years after I made the above photo, the place was acquired by three artists and filmmakers (Judy, Donna and Christina) who founded SPARC in that place.

 SPARC — the Social and Public Art Resource Center — was soon to become my workplace, even my live-in studio residence for a time, and would be the venue for some utterly remarkable adventures and acquaintances (not the least of whom were the co-founders, particularly the amazing Judy Baca with whom I worked closely and often as her administrative “right-hand man” and advisor) over a good number of years. Don’t even ask, don’t get me started on stories of feminist politics, art world machinations, city government escapades, legal and extra-legal exploits, art projects undertaken against all odds and much, much more that arose from those experiences.

Here’s a link to SPARC’s website. And here’s a February 2016 Google Street View image of the SPARC site.

And, finally, the SPARC building as shown in “Annie Hall”:

More Venice

Living in Venice for several years in the 70s afforded much opportunity to come in contact with many of the artists who gave the place some of its flavor. Among these would be the Mother Art collective (one of whose co-founders, Laura, went on to team up with my brother Dennis). Here are some miscellaneous photos of local artists and other scenes from 1977, previously unseen, that I blundered upon yesterday in my archives of unprocessed negatives. Following that, a trailer from Mother Art’s acclaimed video.

And, here’s the Mother Art video trailer: