University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Fostering vital places: public art and the revitalization of the Los Angeles River

(USC Thesis Other)

Fostering vital places: public art and the revitalization of the Los Angeles River

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

FOSTERING VITAL PLACES:
PUBLIC ART AND THE REVITALIZATION OF THE LOS ANGELES RIVER

by

Elizabeth Gelbard Dinerstein

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC, ROSKI SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF PUBLIC ART STUDIES

May 2008

Copyright 2008 Elizabeth Gelbard Dinerstein

ii
Dedication

This thesis is dedicated to the Los Angeles River, and the city that houses it.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ii

Abstract iv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Humans and the Los Angeles River 4
A Cultural Geography of the River 9

Chapter 2: Contemporary Development and the Los Angeles River 12
The Current Los Angeles River Revitalization Trend 13
Problems Associated With Los Angeles River Redevelopment 15

Chapter 3: Vital Public Places 18

Chapter 4: Public Art and Vital Places 22
Great Heron Gate 22
Tate Thames Dig 28
Not A Cornfield 34

Conclusion 41

Bibliography 47

iv

Abstract

The dynamic between the Los Angeles River and the humans living at its
banks has changed much over time. While the river gave life to the city and
determined its configuration for its first hundred years, by the 20
th
Century, Los
Angeles had outgrown its river and concretized it. However, over the past decade,
the LA River has slowly become the subject of attention and the necessary factors
for a change in its conditions are mustering along its banks. In this circumstance of
change it is important that the development process cultivates vital places. In this
regard, I assert that public art has a powerful role to play in facilitating and
supporting the generation of vital public space. In support of this claim, I analyze
three public art projects, each undertaken along a river, and interrogate whether or
not they functioned to create and maintain a vital public space.

1

INTRODUCTION

“Public art and the diverse forms of art that escape the confining walls of the
museum act on space and on the society of the city in many different ways that
people can recognize and share. They make people ‘feel together,’ which is the
beginning of sharing community.”
1

-Manuel Castells

Like most Los Angeles residents, it was a long time before I realized that the
city had a river running through it. Although I grew up just blocks away from its
passage through the San Fernando Valley, it always appeared to me like some
enlarged gutter, dried up and trash-filled. To find a ‘real’ river my family took road
trips to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon or to the Merced River in Yosemite
National Park. It was only when my father wrote a letter in the Op-Ed section of the
Los Angeles Times in response to then-Assemblyman Richard Katz’s 1989 proposal
to turn the L.A. River into a “roadway for car pools between North Hollywood and
downtown”
2
that I started to discover the River. My dad felt that turning the Los
Angeles River into a freeway would be criminal. Traffic problems aside, he believed
that converting a river, albeit a concretized one, into a thoroughfare for automobiles
was a reprehensible idea. When my dad talked about it at the dinner table I
immediately agreed with him, thankfully so did then-Mayor Bradley, and Katz’s
proposal was subsequently buried.

1
Manuel Castells, “Another City is Possible,” in Not A Cornfield: History/Site/Document,
ed. Janet Owen Driggs (Los Angeles: Not A Cornfield, LLC, 2007), 93.
2
Richard Katz, “What’s So Silly about a Bargain Freeway,” Los Angeles Times, September
8, 1989, sec. C.

2
After a period of living outside of Los Angeles and traveling to cities like
Portland, Oregon; Boulder, Colorado; and Chicago, Illinois; places that built their
identity upon their local river, I returned to L.A. and began to reconsider the City’s
relationship to its river. Around the same time I embarked on my graduate studies
in the field of public art. This awakened me to the notion of community, which
Manuel Castells speaks to in the quote above, and I started to discover the ability of
public art to initiate conversations among the public and with their environment.
Slowly, these two strains of interest, the Los Angeles River and various public art
practices, met.
I am not the only Los Angeles resident who is reevaluating my connection to
the L.A. River. Poised at this moment the relationship between the Los Angeles
River and the all of the humans who live at its banks is changing. As city
organizations are in the process of developing numerous sites along the river, so
those pieces of river-adjacent prime real estate will soon undergo great change. In
this circumstance of change and transformation it is important to understand what
our relationship to the L.A. River once was, in order to shape how it will be in the
future.
This thesis begins with an examination of the historical trajectory of the Los
Angeles Rive: through which I hope to shed light on the ways in which the River has
been historically derided and de-vitalized. I then identify the characteristics of a
vital public space. In this regard, I assert that public art has a powerful role to play
in facilitating and supporting the generation of vital public space. Working within
this framework I then analyze three public art projects, undertaken along rivers, and

3
interrogate whether or not they functioned to create and maintain vital public spaces.
Finally, I conclude with recommendations for the various approaches that public art
can employ to ensure that vital public spaces will be created along the Los Angeles
River.

4

CHAPTER ONE:
HUMANS AND THE LOS ANGELES RIVER

The Los Angeles River is an urban territory that flows through a complicated
city. In Los Angeles’ fast-expanding metropolis, the river appears, disappears and
reappears, serving as a curious reminder of the history and natural habitat of the area.
Yet even more so, it functions as a constant blemish on the city’s face, an example of
nature mistreated and misunderstood.
As Mike Davis explains in Ecology of Fear: “Los Angeles, sited in an
alluvial plain at the foot of a rugged, rapidly eroding mountain range, has the worst
flood and debris problems of any major city in the Northern Hemisphere.”
3
In order
to protect the growing metropolis against these problems, the erratic river was
encased in concrete during the 1930s and 40s. The encasement occurred despite an
early 1930 report by well-respected landscaping and planning firms Olmstead
Brothers and Harland Bartholomew and Associates
4
which proposed a park-rich city
development with a free flowing L.A. River at its heart; and despite the fact, as
Davis points out, that “it was cheaper to keep property away from floodplains
through hazard zoning than to keep floods away from property through vast public
works.”
5

3
Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 69.

4
Greg Hise & William Francis Deverell, Eden by design: the 1930 Olmsted Bartholomew
plan for the Los Angeles region (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 5.
5
Mike Davis, Ecology of Fear (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 69.

5
Historically, the Los Angeles River has been a wandering bed, occasionally
prone to the flooding that Davis speaks about. Three centuries ago, in its natural
state, the river oscillated between being a gentle stream most of the year, and a
turbulent and unpredictable river during rainy winter months. Because of this
pattern, the river’s channels were quite poorly defined and its course was erratic.
Most usually however, the river’s flow carried it from present-day Encino, through
the San Fernando Valley and along the base of the Santa Monica Mountains where it
bent east near Griffith Park, and moved through the Glendale Narrows (a gap
marking the San Fernando Valley’s only outlet to the sea) to join with the Arroyo
Seco. From this point on it proceeded in an undecided fashion, flowing either
through parts of present-day Commerce, or variously through Compton, Long Beach,
Ballona Creek, or San Pedro Bay.
Along sections of its course, the Los Angeles River fed a strong riparian
habitat: “Its overflow filled vast marshlands that were home to myriad waterfowl
and small animals. Steelhead trout spawned in the river, and grizzly bear roamed its
shores in search of food.”
6
Because of the abundance of life and water, the river was
a focus of settlement for the Gabrielino Indians
7
; who arrived in Southern California
over 1,000 years ago and are “considered to have been one of the most culturally
advanced and prosperous Indian groups in the Southwest.”
8
Given that proximity to
fresh water is an absolute necessity for human life and development, it seems likely

6
Blake Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 2.
7
Spanish missionaries named the Native Americans “Gabrielino” after the Mission San
Gabriel. The Gabrielino are actually made up of a number of smaller groups. Though it is disputed
whether the Gabrielino had a name for themselves, some researchers claim that some factions called
themselves Tong-va, and name now used in some scholarship on the subject.
8
Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River, 28.

6
that such sophistication and prosperity was due, at least in part, to their healthy
relationship with the river and their resourcefulness in their use of the natural
environment.
Downtown Los Angeles owes its geographic location to the settlement of the
Gabrielino. Originally, around 1200 C.E., they selected their dwelling sites along the
river because it was such an abundant source of water. However, according to Blake
Gumprecht in his book The Los Angeles River: It’s Life, Death, And Possible
Rebirth, after several flooding episodes, they preferred to settle on higher ground
around 1400 C.E.
9

Once Spanish explorers, led by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, set foot in Southern
California in 1542, they found, as the Gabrielino knew well, that the River and its
surrounding lands were not only ripe with opportunities for settlement and
prosperity, they also, because of the River’s propensity to flood, simultaneously
posed a serious threat to human life and settlement.
At the time however, the attractive possibilities provided by nature seemed to
outweigh the potential for disaster. On one of the first expeditions into the area for
example, Father Juan Crespi, a Spanish missionary now best known for his detailed
and glowing journal accounts of the region, wrote of the river: “to my mind this spot
can be given the preference in everything, in soil, water, and trees, for the purpose of
becoming in time a very large plenteous mission.”
10
Later, in 1781, when Governor
Felipe de Neve sent Captain Fernando Rivera to the area to establish a settlement,

9
Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River, 29.
10
Juan Crespi, A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Spanish
Expedition into California, 1769-1770 (San Diego: San Diego State University Press, 2001), 48.

7
Rivera chose a point near the river about nine miles southwest of Mission San
Gabriel. The pueblo was christened El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los
Angeles del Río de Porciúncula.
11
By 1820, almost fifty years after its founding in
1781, the pueblo had increased from approximately 44 settlers to about 650
residents, and it was the largest civilian community in Spanish California.
12

Speaking again to the River’s life-sustaining capacity however, the growth of
the Pueblo was initiated and sustained by the digging of an irrigation ditch, or Zanja
Madre (“mother ditch” in Spanish), which diverted water from the Los Angeles
River to the colonial settlement and its farm. As the city’s population grew, so the
Zanja Madre was expanded to become a complex irrigation system. Eventually the
Zanja system made the area one of the nation’s richest agricultural regions, so much
so that the Pueblo attained self-sufficiency in1786, when the Spanish government
discontinued its financial support.
13

By the time California was acquired by the United States under the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and gold was found in the waters of the American River
in Northern California that same year, an increasing number of Americans were
visiting and settling in Los Angeles. Consequently, by late 1848 the Pueblo’s
population had doubled to over 1,500 residents. The increasing number of citizens
led to an increasing demand for water, and thus the zanja system assumed greater

11
The Los Angeles River was originally named the Porciúncula River. The Spanish named it
in homage to the Porciúncula Chapel (now in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli) near Assisi,
Italy, which was restored by St. Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century to become the center of the
Franciscan order. The current name, Los Angeles, was formalized when the city was incorporated on
April 4, 1850.
12
Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River, 29.
13
Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River, 44.

8
importance, so much so that by 1870 there had been eight zanjas dug in Los
Angeles.
14

After the California Gold Rush and the completion of a transcontinental
railroad between the East Coast and Los Angeles in 1876, the city quickly grew from
a sleepy agricultural center that specialized in growing corn, beans, grapes, and
oranges to a regional trading and transportation hub. As a result of the City’s growth
from 1,500 to around 4,500 residents by 1858, the Los Angeles River and its
irrigation system could no longer provide the quantity of water that was needed to
fill city demand.
15

By 1886, when William Mulholland became Superintendent of the private
Los Angeles City Water Company that would eventually become the L.A.
Department of Water and Power, water resources were over-extended. The needs of
the exploding population resulted in a water crisis of large proportions. The solution
was found in the waters of the Owens River, located on the eastern side of the Sierra
Nevada range in the Owens Valley. Once secured through a variety of controversial
land deals, the additional water supply enabled Los Angeles to grow and, by the
1890’s, to become the most important city in Southern California.
As a result of the alternative water source however, the Los Angeles River
eventually dwindled into irrelevance and, by the 21
st
century, into virtual obscurity.
Furthering the plight of the river, catastrophic floods occurred in 1914, 1934, and
1938, when the rushing waters wrought millions of dollars of destruction, wiped out
much of the earlier flood protections, and killed 85 people. In combination, the

14
Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River, 61.
15
Gumprecht, The Los Angeles River, 64.

9
River’s decreasing significance as a water source and its increasingly devastating
flood impact over a twenty-year period prompted the creation of a comprehensive
flood control system and eventually led to the concretization of the channel by the
United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Once a dwelling site of the Gabrielino Indians, then a place colonized by
Spanish explorers and Mexican settlers recruited by Spain, next a source of water for
an expanse of orange groves, and eventually a concretized flood control channel
through which treated sewage and run-off water flow, the Los Angeles River has
seen many iterations. First relied upon, then feared and controlled, and eventually,
when it is not being considered as a potential freeway, almost forgotten, the
relationship between the Los Angeles River and the inhabitants on its banks has
changed significantly over time.

A Cultural Geography of the Los Angeles River
In addition to a dynamic of dependence, fear, and control, the relationship
between Angelenos and their River has been further complicated by density and
diversification, which have resulted in an increasingly complex, multi-layered, and
divided cultural geography. In the San Fernando Valley for example, the banks of
the River edge the backyards of suburban homes. According to the 2000 United
States Census, approximately 78% of the residents in sections along the Los Angeles
River in Encino, Sherman Oaks, and Studio City are described as “white.”
16
This
demographic had a median household income of $48,000.

16
U.S. Census Bureau, Census Data. 2000.

10
In contrast, as the River moves past Griffith Park, so the channel runs
alongside the 134 and 5 freeways. At the base of Mount Washington, in Elysian
Park, Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, and through East LA, the region is 94%
Hispanic, with a median household income of $31,000. Furthermore, 53% of the
residents in these areas are either recently naturalized or non-U.S. citizens. Today’s
immigrant populations are crowded into neighborhoods once occupied by earlier
immigrants. Particularly striking in this regard are the mostly Mexican and Central-
American communities of Boyle Heights, who live in an area that once contained a
large population of Jewish and Russian immigrants who have subsequently moved
further west towards Fairfax Village, Westwood, and other parts of West Los
Angeles.
In his book, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies, Reyner
Banham makes this assessment: “the point about this giant city, which has grown
almost simultaneously all over, is that all its parts are equal and equally accessible
from all other points at once.”
17
While this statement may be somewhat true when
speaking of Los Angeles’s physical geography, the statistics I have cited indicate that
there is a large degree of inequality when it comes to the racial and economic
geography of the region. As an additional indicator of difference, while the
predominantly white San Fernando Valley enjoys a park acreage ratio of 32-126 park
acres per 1,000 residents, in sections of primarily Hispanic East Los Angeles there
are only 1.2-4.8 acres per 1,000 residents.
18
It can be seen therefore that the

17
Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (Berkeley: The
University of California Press, 2001), 32.

18
Sister, C., and others, Green Visions Plan (Los Angeles: USC, 2007), 34.

11
concretization of the River functioned to cut-off east-lying communities from the
more affluent sections of West Los Angeles. It is fair to say therefore that the River
acts along parts of its course as a line between poverty and prosperity.
When the Los Angeles Pueblo was founded in 1781, the River, the Santa
Monica Mountains, and the Pacific shore formed a landscape that was largely
unmarked by human desire. Today though, large swaths of freeways punctuate the
terrain, and a concrete scar that was once a river, now crusted at its edges by industry
and commerce, marks the landscape. While the river gave life to the city and
determined its configuration for its first hundred years, by the early 20
th
Century, the
city had outgrown its river and found a more abundant and reliable water source.
Furthermore, in order to control the erratic and intermittently damaging river, the
Army Corps of Engineers had encased it in a concrete straightjacket. The Los
Angeles River is no longer a natural organic body, but a human construct that
demarcates geographical, social, and economic divisions of the city.

12

CHAPTER TWO:
CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENT AND THE LOS ANGELES RIVER

From the 1970s on, the trend toward revitalizing urban rivers and their banks
has become increasingly prevalent. This tendency was stimulated on the one hand
by a shift in the U.S. economic base from industrial manufacturing to service,
communications, and technology industries, which left many previously bustling
riverbanks increasingly derelict and often highly polluted; and on the other by a
growing public awareness of, and interest in, environmental issues.
As the industrial sector was engaging in the environmentally unsound
practice of abandoning its new “waste” – the now uneconomical plants, sites, tools,
and stockpiled products – so the grassroots environmental movement of the 1960s
and 70s began to take shape. The publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in
1962 for example, the first color photos of the Earth taken from space in 1969, the
initiation of events such as Earth Day in 1970, and the formation of the Green Party
in the early 1980s were all indicators of the growing interest in the environment.
Another factor that contributed to the urban river revitalization trend was a
movement in the field of urban planning towards “new urbanism.” The goal of the
movement was to reform real estate development and encourage diversity of housing
options, walkability, and transit-oriented design, all of which “should be framed by
architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and

13
building practice.”
19
The movement gained momentum from the efforts of such
figures as urbanist critic Jane Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great
American Cities (1961); architect and urban theorist Leon Krier; and historian and
literary critic Lewis Mumford, who wrote The City in History (1961.) Together
these influential moments, thoughts, and actions influenced many urban cities to turn
to their neglected rivers. After years of industrial use and abuse consequently, urban
rivers became perceived as sites for potential mixed-use development opportunities
that were intended to create vibrant urban communities.

The Current Los Angeles River Revitalization Trend
Despite a general lack of public awareness regarding the Los Angeles River,
the trend toward urban river revitalization did not evade the notice and action of
some Los Angeles residents. In 1985, for example, Los Angeles Times writer Dick
Roraback crafted an eleven-part series in the paper tracing his haphazard journey up
the river.
20
Then, in 1986, artist and poet Lewis MacAdams formed Friends of the
Los Angeles River (FoLAR); a non-profit organization that persists today. FoLAR’s
mission is to restore the natural habitat and historic heritage of the Los Angeles
River through education and activism.
Since the rise of interest in the Los Angeles River of the mid-1980s, the river
has seen its share of modest interventions meant to drum up more support and
awareness for the concrete scar. For instance, FoLAR throws an annual “La Gran

19
Congress for the New Urbanism, Charter of the New Urbanism (New York, McGraw-Hill
Publishers, 1999), 56.
20
Dick Roraback, “Up a Lazy River, Seeking the Source,” Los Angeles Times, October 20,
1985, Sec. C.

14
Limpieza” (The Great Clean-up) to remove trash from the river (the first occurring in
1989,) organizations like the Los Angeles County Bike Coalition has held a yearly
River Ride since 2000, and the Arroyo Arts Collective, a grassroots arts organization
in Northeast Los Angeles, sponsored a weekend-long art installation along a two-mile
stretch of the River in 2000 and 2002.
After almost eighteen years of grassroots activism had stimulated increasing
public concern about the state of the Los Angeles River, in 2002, under the
leadership of Councilmember Ed Reyes, the Los Angeles City Council established
the Ad Hoc Committee on the Los Angeles River. The Committee’s mission is to
arrange and manage river projects and preside over the various stakeholders along
the River. A crucial objective considering the number of interested parties involved
in decision-making along the River, including, among others, The City of Los
Angeles, Los Angeles County, The US Army Corps of Engineers, and the many
cities through which the River flows.
In 2005 the Ad Hoc Committee commissioned The Los Angeles River
Revitalization Master Plan (LARRMP) from Tetra Tech, an environmental and
engineering consultancy. The proposed plan, which was approved in 2007, consists
of 239 projects that are intended to renew the river and its surrounding communities.
These projects define renewal as “greening the neighborhoods, capturing community
opportunities, and creating value.”
21
They include efforts to generate parks and open
space, pedestrian and bicycle trails, bridges, enhanced connector streets, and channel
modifications, in addition to ecological restoration, and revitalized riverfront

21
Ad Hoc L.A. River Committee, Meeting Notes October 30
th
, 2007.
http://lacity.org/councilcmte/lariver/jointpowersa/lariverjointpowersa278349160_11202007.pdf

15
communities. The proposed implementation plan is to administer the governmental,
philanthropic, and entrepreneurial components of the LARRMP through three
organizations: the River Authority, the River Foundation, and the Revitalization
Corporation respectively.

Problems Associated With Los Angeles River Redevelopment
While the LARRMP seems to be a positive step towards repairing Los
Angeles’ relationship to its river, many planners, critics, cultural historians, and
concerned citizens see the prevailing view of the urban riverfront as a blank canvas
for redevelopment and economic growth as highly problematic. In particular, while
the economic rewards of redevelopment are attractive to property owners, the pitfalls
of its effects can be hard to ignore. Critics cite increases in rent as a specific impact
of those rewards that frequently displaces lower-income communities. According to
the Downtown Business Improvement District for example, property prices in
Downtown Los Angeles have risen 168% on one-bedroom condominiums and 275%
on larger condos since 2000. As a result, renters who could not afford to buy a unit
were forced out and left to find housing elsewhere. Typically they moved further
east to such Los Angeles County cities as El Monte, Chino, and West Covina.
22

Despite the efforts of such bodies as the Community Redevelopment Agency
(CRA), a public partner with the City of Los Angeles that is charged with the task of
“revitalizing, refurbishing, and renewing economically underserved areas of Los

22
Cara Mia Dimassa, “Living Gets Loftier in Downtown LA,” Los Angeles Times,
November 22, 2007, Sec. B.

16
Angeles,”
23
the problems posed by redevelopment are quite real. According to the
Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing, about 12,800 new affordable
apartments have been built since 2001. During the same period, more than 11,000
rent-controlled apartments in the city were demolished or converted into
condominiums. So while the city added about 300,000 residents, it gained only
1,800 affordable apartments.
24
Although the CRA requires that that many of these
developments include an affordable housing component, considerable art
contributions, local job hire, and follow green design guidelines, among other
requirements, the statistics concerning lack of affordable housing strongly suggest
that the measures the CRA has mandated are not yet working well enough to counter
this reality.
Such potential impacts of river revitalization complicate the already complex
context of the LARRMP. One relevant example of the additional complexity
concerns a proposal within the Master Plan to rezone river-adjacent land, in order to
replace factories and warehouses with more residential developments. Many local
business leaders and civic representatives fear that such a loss of business would lead
to a loss of local jobs. Ad Hoc Committee member and Councilman Tom LaBonge,
for instance, said of revitalization efforts along the river that: “[he is] reluctant to
lose industry in his district, so close to downtown.”
25

23
Community Redevelopment Agency, “Who We Are,” http://www.crala.net/internet-
site/About/who_we_are.cfm.
24
Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing, http://www.scanph.org.
25
Steve Hymon, "LA will take its river to a new level,” Los Angeles Times, February 2,
2007, sec. B.

17
As economic bases change, so the ways in which the Los Angeles River and
its banks are being both used and perceived has also changed. At this moment in
time, the L.A. River is the subject of considerable attention and the necessary factors
for a change in its conditions – political will, public interest, commercial investment
and speculation – are mustering along its banks. As the Ad Hoc Committee prepares
to implement the Los Angeles River Revitalization Master Plan, with its proposals to
revitalize the river, the following question becomes pressing: What might
revitalization comprise? Most particularly, what are the qualities and attributes of a
revitalized and vital public space and what role might public art play in that
revitalization?

18

CHAPTER THREE:
VITAL PUBLIC PLACES

In considering the concept of revitalization it is first useful to break down the
word, and then go about building it back up. ‘Vitalize’ is defined in the Oxford
English Dictionary as: “to endow with vitality,” or animate. To go further, vitality is
“the peculiarity distinguishing the living from the non-living, or the capacity to live
and develop.” ‘Vital’ is the Latin word for ‘life.’ It can also mean “of the utmost
importance,” which has developed from the Latin meaning.
26
Consequently, in the
context of the Los Angeles River, re-vitalization suggests both a revivification of the
river in social and ecological terms, and a shift in its status from being a largely
dismissed and almost punished site through the Twentieth century, to being re-
established as the primary artery and life source that it was before the concrete was
poured.
In the simplest terms, vitality is the power that gives continuance of life, and
is present in all living things. It is a word used to describe good health, energy, and
aliveness. However, defining vitality more minutely can prove problematic due to
the expansive and varied historical scholarship on the subject. For instance, a quick
search for ‘vitality’ on the online encyclopedia project Wikipedia directs you to both
French philosopher Henri Bergson and the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates.
The range suggested by these two thinkers is great, for Bergson perceived vitality as

26
Oxford English Dictionary, 11
th
ed., s.v. “Vitality.”

19
the driving force of life and in the form of “élan vital,” the impetus for evolution and
creativity. While Hippocrates identified one’s ‘vitals’ as the humors (black bile,
yellow bile, phlegm, and blood.)
The breadth of meaning suggested by these two search results begins to shed
some light on the spectrum of popular and academic interpretations of the word
‘vitality,’ and in particular on the rage of mystical and material perspectives that the
word can induce. However, in considering the relationship between ‘revitalization,’
‘vitality,’ urban public places in general, and the Los Angeles River in particular, it
is important to identify a middle ground in the spectrum.
A vital public place is one that lives and breathes because it has a soul.

By
which I do not mean the concept of ‘soul’ that a number of religions share, which
proposes an immortal essence that is present yet unique in every living being and
which is separated from the body at death. Rather, when I write ‘soul’ I mean
something that is essentially human; something that brims in those spaces where
people communicate, commune, and live alongside one another; something that is
built upon not only layers of material, but also on layers of happenings, events,
exploits, and interactions. As I am using the word, soul is the humanity of a place.
“An active of essential part,” “a moving spirit” that comprises the immaterial layers
of experience that give depth and understanding, not only to people, but also to
places and things.
27
It is an immaterial essence, the essence of a palimpsest of
encounters, and a powerful force in determining the character of a place.

27
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10
th
ed., s.v. “Soul.”

20
Urban planners and theorists Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp provide
useful clarification in regard to the notion of a vital site. For them, “place is
associated with real events, with myths, with history and memories.”
28
Following on
from their notion of place, a vital site is a space suffused with situations that unfold
and layer over one another to create an environment with an eventful past. It is a
location that is the opposite of a territory devoid of life, or as French anthropologist
Marc Auge would term it: a ‘non-place.’
Supplementing Hajer and Reijndorp, Auge’s concepts of ‘place’ and ‘non-
place’ further elucidate my categorization ‘vital site,’ and its opposite: a de-vitalized,
un-vital, or soulless space. Auge states, “If a place can be defined as relational,
historical, and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as
relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place.”
29
While
Auge’s term is intended to refer to places of transience (i.e. airports or lobbies) it is
useful in relation to an exploration of vitality in relation to public spaces, for it draws
out the differences between certain types of space and their ability to facilitate or
inhibit human interaction.
In addition to defining a vital place as one that nurtures the soul, is layered
with human history, and facilitates rich human experiences, there are also some very
practical characteristics of a vital space that cannot be overlooked. These are the
physical elements of a site, which considerably determine how humans interact in
any given space. The safety of a place, for example: its lighting, visibility, and its

28
Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, In Search of New Public Domain (Rotterdam: NAi
Publishers, 2002), 33.
29
Marc Auge, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (New York:
Verso, 1995), 77.

21
proximity to pedestrian streets, walkways, and crosswalks, largely determine the
user-groups that a space attracts, and how those users relate to one another. In turn,
the groups who predominately use a space, whether they be teenagers, homeless
individuals, or the elderly, will also determine who might avoid such a space. A
vital place is one that is inviting to all, not because it is faultless but because it is
relatively clean and its users take pride in it, has public transit nearby, provides some
kind of seating and shade, and is designed to a human scale. Such conditions and
elements as these can ensure that a place has humans not only moving through it, but
also at rest, staying there and adding to what I have described as “the soul” of the
site.
In summary, a vital place is a space that facilitates and accommodates human
interactions and is therefore furnished with a rich narrative. It is a site brimming
with life, layered with human stories (be they banal or extraordinary.) Such vital
public spaces are animated by the people in them, the interface that occurs in their
territory, both between humans and the matter of the environment around them,
charges them with life. It is a location of human possibilities, both positive and
negative, a zone of generative frictions.

22

CHAPTER FOUR:
PUBLIC ART AND VITAL PLACES

Public art is frequently perceived and utilized as a tool for creating vital
spaces. Appreciating this, the authors of the Los Angeles River Revitalization
Master Plan have included the following in their recommendations:
“The identity and awareness of the River within the community at large can
be enhanced by a program to encourage, support, and maintain art that
enhances the beauty and diversity of meaning and interpretations the River
inspires in people. The revitalization effort will benefit if an arts program is
established to coordinate how art is commissioned, funded, and managed to
improve upon and to guide the eclectic artistic activities of diverse
communities.”
30

The examples that I will now consider, which occur both along the Los
Angeles River and along other rivers, provide some insight into the ways public art
can contribute to revitalization efforts, by generating vital public places. These case
studies are not offered as definitive methods by which to revitalize riverside sites,
rather, they are intended to suggest both the project characteristics that function to
support the creation of vital spaces, as well as those that fail to do so.

Great Heron Gate
Located in Rattlesnake Park, a small pocket park along the Los Angeles
River and near Fletcher Drive in Silverlake, the Great Heron Gate is a wrought steel

30
Los Angeles Department of Public Works, Los Angeles River Revitalization Mater Plan,
April 2007, Sec. 5, 36.

23
artwork, meant to welcome visitors to that stretch of the river. The gate was
contracted by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA,) an
agency of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy who manages and administers
some open space and parkland throughout Los Angeles County.
The MRCA funded the artwork and offered the Friends of the Los Angeles
River the opportunity to create the Los Angeles River’s first welcome gate along one
of the only un-concretized stretches of the river. This was an attempt to make the
entrance points for the river more friendly and accessible. Before the gate was
installed, nearly every entrance point along the Los Angeles River was barricaded off
from the public with chain-link fences and warning signs that kept the public out.
The MRCA decided against holding an open-call for artists to submit their
qualifications for the job of designing a welcome gate and instead directly
commissioned FoLAR to create the gate with a budget of $20,000. Brett Goldstone,
a Los Angeles-based sculptor and friend of FoLAR founder Lewis MacAdams, was
subsequently invited to create the gate.
A few months after they were completed in 1999, Mayor Richard Riordan
inaugurated the gates at the Earth Day Celebration kickoff for FoLAR’s 10
th
Annual
La Gran Limpieza L.A. River clean up. At the dedication, Harry Stone, the head of
Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, announced that the County, for the
first time ever, would pursue the possibility of removing concrete from the L.A.

24
River.
31
This announcement was well suited to the environmental theme of the day
and seemed to presage the revitalization to come.
Taking cues from the native animal life of the area, Goldstone worked with
steel to depict the great blue heron and the ecosystem of the river as it moves from
the mountains through Los Angeles. The scenery depicted on the red-painted gate is
filled with willow trees on the left that mark the mountainous upper Tujunga Wash,
and skyscrapers on the right, which depict downtown Los Angeles. The transition on
the gate as the visitor’s eye travels from left to right, mountains to urban landscape,
nature to man, is meant to echo the movement and passage of the Los Angeles River.
Furthermore, while portraying the natural course of the river, the relationship
between humans and nature is highlighted. The contrast that Goldstone is
intentionally drawing out might have been an attempt to problematize this
relationship and force visitors to consider their own connection to the Los Angeles
River. By provoking that interface between people and their environment, Great
Heron Gate does indeed add vitality to the site. Most particularly it adds vitality of
the kind I have previously defined as brimming with interactions between humans
and the environment around them, a zone charged with generative frictions.
In the middle of both gate panels, Goldstone has placed two symmetrical
herons that face each other, their beaks touching at the point of ingression. The two
herons appear to be wading in the waters of the Los Angeles River, and at their feet
are cattails, an egret, a frog, and various other reminders of the River’s natural
habitat. The great heron is the largest bird seen in the soft-bottom (un-concretized)

31
The proposed site would be the Tujunga Wash, in the San Fernando Valley between
Victory and Vanowen Boulevards.

25
sections of the Los Angeles River and it is the acting symbol of the natural life of the
River for environmental and activist organizations like FoLAR. In this regard, the
gate serves to visibalize the environmental narrative of the River.
On occasion, the gate is used as a meeting place for various river events. In
conjunction with the Sierra Club (one of the nation’s oldest and most influential
environmental organization) FoLAR has hosted a “Down by the River” walking series
for a number of years, and typically uses Goldstone’s Gate as the meeting point and
highlight on the tour. In addition to raising funds (participants pay a nominal fee to
join the tour,) the series also acts to draw awareness to the river. (One October tour
drew more than 200 participants.)
32
In this way, the gate is an emblem of possibilities
and a hopeful sign of more revitalization to come.
By serving as a physical marker that confirms to passersby that this is a site
where people are welcome, Great Heron Gate goes some way toward initiating its
riverbank site as a vital public space. In particular, in contrast to the chain-link fence
that surrounds nearby riverbank land, Great Heron Gate is an intentional decorative
artwork that acts as both a landmark of sorts, and as a symbol of the efforts on the part
of both non-profit organizations and government agencies to make the space accessible
to the public and enliven the site. In this way, Goldstone’s Gate is a tangible object
that reveals the layers of recent history regarding the crusade for revitalization of the
Los Angeles River. Erected as a result of meetings, discussions, and efforts on the

32
Gottlieb, Robert, Andrea Azuma, Brooke Gaw, Amanda Shaffer, Re-Envisioning the Los
Angeles River: A Program of Community and Ecological Revitalization, A Report on the 40 Forums,
Events, Activities and Projects held during 1999-2000. (Occidental: Urban and Environmental Policy
Institute, Occidental College, 2001), 9.

26
part of MCRA and FoLAR, the Great Heron Gate is evidence of the work of many
individuals and their interest in the River.
The question arises however of whether Goldstone’s gate supports and
maintains a vital space. As defined in this thesis a vital space is one that, among other
qualities, brims with humans interacting and encountering one another. However,
when I recently visited the gate I found no people, and even the riparian habitat that
the gate seeks to evoke is absent. This may be due to the fact that the Great Heron
Gate does not lead to a desirable location. On the other side of the artwork all one
finds is a poorly maintained and meager attempt at a park. The concrete path is
broken in places, the shrubs are littered with beer cans and potato chip bags, and the
fauna is not kept up. Furthermore, in order to even see Goldstone’s artwork, the
arms of the gate must be shut, thereby defeating the purpose of the gate as a
welcoming feature to the River.
Consequently, though the gate was commissioned as an attempt to encourage
and welcome visitors to the Los Angeles River, the banks and green space found at
that site are relatively devoid of human, plant, and animal life. Furthermore, the
Gate is often locked, and so the actual entrance to the pocket park is through a small
opening off to the side. It seems likely that if the gate led to a well-maintained
public space – a nature reserve, verdant pocket park, or a community garden, for
example – then people would be drawn to the site and the characteristics of vitality
would accrue. However, until the site is used in this or similar ways, the space will
remain relatively devoid of vitality.

27
It is possible that Goldstone’s work could be judged as successful in relation
to the development of vital public space based on some of the standards that are
currently in operation in the field of public art. The material it is constructed out of
is able, for example, to withstand the elements, while the gate was conceived,
fabricated, and installed within its budgetary limits. However, the $20,000 fee did
not provide for long-term maintenance for the gate.
Although Great Heron Gate is on land owned by the Santa Monica
Mountains Conservancy, the organization does not have a policy in place to maintain
their public art beyond a sign posted at the site stating: “No defacing or destroying
property.”
33
Based on my observations of ‘life’ at and around the Gate, it seems
apparent that, despite the best intentions, to be effective in stimulating vitality a work
of public art requires on-going support and maintenance. It is not enough to
commission a work of public art if that work is going to be abandoned and poorly
maintained. In order to benefit from the capacity of the Gate to foster some of the
physical characteristics of a vital public space, the MCRA, FoLAR, and the Santa
Monica Mountains Conservancy should have considered a number of factors,
including the up-keep of Goldstone’s artwork and the uses to which its surrounding
landscape is put.
In its permanence, rather than leveraging a vital space along the neglected
Los Angeles River, the Gate and its desolate park have become an appendage to the
dilapidated riverbanks. No more significant to local communities and L.A. citizens
now that it has been there for almost 10 years than the chain-link fence that it

33
LA Mountains, General Park Rules.

28
replaced. However, this circumstance could be remedied once the LARRMP is
carried out. Should there be a compelling reason to pass through Great Heron Gate
into the riverside park beyond, then perhaps the larger potential impact of the gate as
a welcome gesture and environmental narrator will be felt. As FoLAR founder
Lewis MacAdams explained to me in an e-mail: “Brett's gate was a crucial step in
the revitalization process, the first human construct built to welcome people to the
river.”
34
So, perhaps it is possible that the Great Heron Gate is simply waiting for
the rest of the River to catch up with the revitalization process. As it is however the
Gate currently stands as an example of a lone public art object’s inability to single-
handedly mitigate systematic inadequacies, and of the great need for both wider
systemic change and ongoing commitment to maintaining, and possibly even
programming, a site in the cause of revitalization.

Tate Thames Dig
Executed before the unveiling of the new Tate Modern in the summer of
1999, Mark Dion's Tate Thames Dig played a role in the resuscitation of this section
of the river. The project rotated around the central theme of exhuming history. Tate
Modern invited Dion to be part of their pre-opening programming, so his work was a
result of a direct curatorial mission. As Robert Williams, an artist and participant in
the Dig, states: "the aim was to explore London's rich cultural and industrial history

34
Lewis MacAdams, e-mail message to author, February 12, 2008.

29
through its material remains, the artifacts discovered within the mud and gravel of its
beaches."
35

In the first part of a multi-phased work, Dion chose two adjacent riverfront
sites for his work, Milbank and Bankside (the former being the site of the old Tate
Museum, and the latter the site of the future Tate Modern.) Before the digging began
Tate Modern contacted various local organizations – secondary schools, after-school
programs, and senior centers for examples – and advertised the project in the press to
inform the larger community about the project and invite them to join in on it.
Having selected his site, informed the public and gathered teams of interested
participants, Dion set about excavating the shores of the Thames at Milbank and
Bankside. In this period, Dion and his "crew" – 5 artist's assistants and around 20
local volunteers and school-age children resulting from Tate Modern’s outreach
efforts – clad in clothing appropriate for an archaeological dig excavation, dug up
and collected objects buried in the banks of the river.
Dion and his team carried out the dig by employing the established
archeological practice of "fieldwalking," which allows for “broad-brush” evaluation
and involved the systematic recovery of finds from the surface of the soil. All
searching activity was conducted between pre-established boundaries,
36
digging was
allowed only to a depth of six inches, and a random collection of everyday objects,
animal bones, crack pipes, shells of river crustaceans, and beer bottles was
recovered. Ecologists well versed in the River Thames and its ecology, along with

35
Robert Williams, Mark Dion Archaeology (London: Black Dog Publishing, 1999), 83.
36
Permission was granted by the Port of London Authority for these activities to take place.

30
historians, archaeologists, and even the Thames River Police, supervised the
gathering process.
The detritus that Dion and his crew found formed a previously untold history
of the two sites and each piece was treated with great care. Tents were raised on the
river-facing lawn of Tate Modern to create a field center where each piece was
cleaned, dusted, analyzed, identified, and classified. The Museum of London’s
archaeologist oversaw this careful process and, in order to assume their own role,
Dion’s whole crew changed from their excavation-wear to lab coats, and became
rigorous researchers consumed with scientific inquiry and methodology.
During the final phase of the project, the objects were displayed in Tate
Modern:
“The exhibition organized these objects according to location in a large
mahogany cabinet, alongside photographs of the beachcombers and tidal flow
charts, classifying them loosely according to type (such as bones, glassware,
pottery, metal objects), in seemingly unhistorical and largely unexplained
arrangements: antique items were shown alongside contemporary items,
ephemera and detritus were next to objects of value."
37

This cabinet of curiosities was on display in the museum from 1999 to 2005 and
offered an interesting and sometimes peculiar (findings ranged from a shard of a
human tibia to a message in a bottle) take on the history of London and its river.
While there are many issues that Dion’s work addresses, including the nature
of scientific methodology, the perceived objectivity of museum displays, and the
question of who is permitted to function as an interpreter of the histories of science
and culture, the concern here is to consider whether or not Tate Thames Dig brought
vitality into the sites of Milbank and Bankside.

37
Williams, Mark Dion Archaeology, 90.

31
On a very basic level, Tate Thames Dig succeeded in creating a vital place by
encouraging human activity in a largely unvisited area. The project supported
vitality because it brought people down to the Thames River. During the summer of
1999, Tate Modern and Mark Dion hosted over 15 dig-related events.
38
These events
were quite varied; one walking tour was entitled “The Wildlife of the Thames” while
a later lecture was on “The History of London’s Riverside Entertainment.” These
events attracted thousands to Milbank and Bankside, and tempted a wide audience of
ages and racial diversities.
39
If a vital space is one that brims with people, then
Dion’s artwork cultivated just that.
As geographer Michael Dear puts it: “Between memory and history lies the
city, where the past is stored in buildings, ruins, parks, and street corners.”
40

Through the artistic practice of faux-archeology, taxonomy, classification and
display, Tate Thames Dig built up a history of its two sites. As Dear sees it, such
narrative history is an essential component to understanding a place. Dion’s project
unearthed the past of London’s riverbanks and thereby allowed people to see their
things and themselves. Most importantly, the project’s local participants, citizens of
London, unearthed their own pasts and, in doing so, dredged up the soul of the
Milbank and Bankside sites, and infused them with vitality.
Since an effort was made to invite volunteers from the local community, the
work encouraged a multitude of viewpoints. Dion was not the sole excavator,
instead he invited many people to act as collectors, and allowed each to uncover their

38
Williams, Mark Dion Archaeology, Appendix 3.
39
Williams, Mark Dion Archaeology, 92.
40
Michael Dear, “Eye Of The Beholder,” in Not A Cornfield: History/Site/Document, ed.
Janet Owen Driggs (Los Angeles: Not A Cornfield, LLC, 2007), 37.

32
own interpretation of the history of the sites. Such shared authorship encouraged a
sense of investment in the two spaces for those who participated. This type of regard
for, or sense of investment in, a public space is, I suggest, a primary requirement for
fostering and maintaining vitality at a public site. For with personal interest comes
personal responsibility, and that dynamic can play a large part in providing the long-
term engagement necessary to sustain vitality.
Despite is temporary nature, Dion’s cabinet, on display at Tate Modern for
six years, effectively functioned to keep the momentum and interest in Tate Thames
Dig going long after the dig itself came to an end. This allowed visitors who were
unable to experience the early phases of the artwork to still enjoy its results.
However, as the cabinet is no longer on display the connections between the site of
Dion’s work, its resulting artifacts, and the larger artifact of the cabinet, are not
available for public access and interpretation. Though Tate Modern does use the
project as an educational tool through the “Learn Online” section of its website, the
impact of the artwork is consequently now limited by its existence buried deep
within the web pages of an institutional setting.
While Dion’s project did operate to uncover the layers of material history at
the two dig sites, I feel that the work could have gone much further to invigorate the
sites. While there were the many dig-related events that I mentioned earlier, these
were all staged by Tate Modern. In this ‘top-down’ approach the public was
informed on subjects that the institution deemed interesting. Had there been
grassroots events – such as informal gatherings or solicitations of oral histories from
local residents – the project could have uncovered not only the material history of the

33
places, but also the history of the people connected to those materials. This would
have brought more of the layering and accumulation of human stories to the surface,
which I earlier defined as such an important element of a vital public space.
Viewing Tate Thames Dig in light of the physical characteristics of a vital
place, the work succeeded during its intervention and installation by making Milbank
and Bankside full of people and safer due to the increased activity in the areas.
However, once the work was completed, the two sites lost these characteristics. The
field center was a bustling hive of activity during the project, but when the project
ended it was then broken down and removed. Since the only artwork produced was
the cabinet of curiosities, and only then placed within Tate Modern’s galleries and
eventually sold, Milbank and Bankside were returned to their original forms without
anything to show for their participation in the artistic process.
Tate Thames Dig was an engaging ephemeral work of public art done by a
well-respected artist and commissioned by an important museum. Evaluated in light
of my criteria, the project succeeded in generating vitality by suffusing the sites with
people interacting with each other and their environment in a safe and people-
friendly space. In this way, there were many aspects of Tate Thames Dig that
worked well – it attracted people to the River by inviting people to participate in the
dig and through the public programming Tate Modern hosted, and it uncovered the
soul of the two dig sites by unearthing the layers of history buried beneath them.
However, this vitality was fleeting and the project eventually left the sites of
Milbank and Bankside much as Dion had originally found them. Therefore the
project did not go far enough to set up a structure to sustain the vitality that it

34
conjured. In conclusion therefore, while the artwork was unable to maintain vitality
beyond the lifetime of the project, it did contribute to the patina of memory that will
continue to accumulate along the shores of the Thames River.

Not a Cornfield
Like Dion’s project Not a Cornfield was an ephemeral art installation that
drew upon the history of its site. The “Cornfield” has long been part of the social
imaginary for those living around the 32-acre strip of land near Downtown Los
Angeles. Though it is disputed whether the decommissioned rail yard was actually
ever the site of corn production, by the late 1990s it was a forlorn industrial plot
adjacent to the river. Despite its neglected appearance, the site was actually a
contentious zone, deemed both a City Historical Monument and a polluted
brownfield.
Before Bon began her work on the site, the 32-acre strip of land near
Downtown Los Angeles was a forsaken industrial plot. As early as 1870 the land
known as “the Cornfield” was used by Southern Pacific Railroad Company as a
depot and became known as the “River Station Depot” for its proximity to the River.
However, throughout the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, the Cornfield became
increasingly industrial due, in part, to Southern Pacific using the depot as a
maintenance and freight facility. With the development of the Pasadena Freeway
and Interstate 5, coupled with the completion of the Men’s Central Jail and various
housing projects nearby, the land became ever more industrial and dilapidated. By

35
the 1980’s Southern Pacific removed most of the rail tracks lining the Cornfield and
through the 1990’s talks to sell the land take place.
In 1994 a developer (Majestic Reality) entered into an agreement with
Southern Pacific Rail Road (the landowners) to buy the land of the Cornfield and
build warehouses on it. Soon after, community groups and environmentalists banded
together to form the Chinatown Yards Alliance to stop the developers and bring an
end to the agreement. With the aid of the Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC,) the Center for Law in the Public Interest (CLIPI,) FoLAR, and a collection
of other organizations, the Chinatown Yards Alliance challenged Majestic Reality on
the grounds “that it violated the California Environmental Quality Act, the California
Planning and Zoning Law, and the LA City Municipal Code.”
41
This legal action
garnered enough opposition to the development that Majestic eventually sold the
land to the Trust for Public Land who then sold the Cornfield to California State
Parks.
Artist Lauren Bon became involved with the Alliance’s crusade for the
Cornfield early on. Yet it was through her connections to the Annenberg Foundation
(of which she is a trustee) that she was actually approached to provide funding to
turn the site into a park. Realizing that State Parks would face a complicated,
expensive, and lengthy process to open the park, Bon dreamed of the site awash in
growing corn and blue light and, with the financial backing of the Annenberg
Foundation, proposed to do a temporary art project that would engage with the
confused history of the site, and literally plant a cornfield.

41
Janet Owen Driggs, “A Timeline For The Site and Its Environs,” in Not A Cornfield:
History/Site/Document, ed. Janet Owen Driggs (Los Angeles: Not A Cornfield, LLC, 2007), 178.

36
As with Dion’s Tate Thames Dig, Not a Cornfield was a multi-phase project.
The five phases are named for the predominating color of each phase. Cleaning the
soil, for example, marked the initial “Brown Phase,” and prepared the soil for what
would, in turn, become the “Green Phase,” during which the cornstalks grew. This
continued into the “Gold Phase” when the corn was harvested. Next, the “Blue
Phase,” which was an intentional period of meditation and calm for the cornfield,
when blue lights were installed to realize the dream Bon had about the site. Finally,
the “Clear Phase” in which the land was literally cleared out to make way for the
California State Parks to reclaim the space and create a new park.
Bon began with an intention to “[transform] a wasteland into a viable public
space.”
42
This goal was achieved, in part, because the project tackled the history of
the site. It is debated how the moniker “Cornfield” was ever bestowed on this parcel
of land. While some historians trace the name to the original Native American tribes
who settled along this section of the Los Angeles River, others dispute that
suggestion by arguing that the Gabrielenos were not even crop-growing peoples.
Still others claim that the name stems from a period in the late 1800’s and early
1900’s when Southern Pacific Rail Road had a train yard on the land: “For, as urban
legend has it, during this period corn was transported to a local mill for processing,
and its kernels regularly fell from the incoming trains to sprout wild plants beside the
tracks.”
43
While much of the historical record on the name “the Cornfield” is vague,

42
Lauren Bon, “Artists Must Create On The Same Scale That Society Has The Capacity To
Destroy,” in Not A Cornfield: History/Site/Document, ed. Janet Owen Driggs (Los Angeles: Not A
Cornfield, LLC, 2007), 93.
43
Janet Owen Driggs, “A Cornfield And Not A Cornfield,” in Not A Cornfield:
History/Site/Document, ed. Janet Owen Driggs (Los Angeles: Not A Cornfield, LLC, 2007), 19.

37
Bon’s artwork faced those contradictions through its title Not a Cornfield. By
returning the Cornfield to its origins or perhaps by simply realizing the myth of the
name, the work paid homage to the complexity of the space.
Moreover, the title describes the project itself. While Bon’s work did
produce, in actuality, a cornfield, the effect that the artwork had on the surrounding
community made it much more than that. Over 120 events- including, among many
others, Friday night salons, open-mic evenings, Sunday Interpretive Tours, drum
circles, planting sessions, volunteer harvesting, and film screenings – brought over
30,000 visitors to a once neglected plot of land.
44
These events and the people they
drew transformed the plot into a dynamic social space.
45
Furthermore, these events
were not only planned in a ‘top-down’ fashion like with Tate Thames Dig. Instead,
many were originated, planned, staffed, and implemented by members of local
communities. For example it was a driver of a Metro Gold Line train who, having
seen the project grow as he drove his train past the Cornfield, originally suggested
and staged the drum circle; while a poetry event in support of AIDs sufferers was
proposed by a first-time visitor to one of the project’s salons. By responding to both
top-down and grassroots-up authority, Not a Cornfield fostered the kind of human
interaction and engagement that is so crucial to my definition of a vital public space.
Through their content as well as their form, Not a Cornfield’s open forums
and public gatherings enabled individuals and community groups to begin a dialog
about land use, public art practices, public space, and the interpretation of history.

44
Sam Edsill, “A Cornfield Grows in L.A.,” Mental Contagion,
http://www.mentalcontagion.com/issue85/causeandeffect.php.
45
Driggs, “A Cornfield And Not A Cornfield,” 20.

38
During one of their many salons for example, Bon and social scientist Manuel
Castells discussed the need for community engagement and partnership.
46

Moderator Janet Owen Driggs clarified a point by Manuel saying: “If cities are to be
reclaimed for citizens, then urban planners, architects, artists, and concerned citizens
must form alliances that take a holistic approach to creating multiple meaningful
social spaces all around the metro landscape.”
47
Such a level of collaboration
between the various neighborhood groups, the Annenberg Foundation, California
State Parks, artist Lauren Bon, and the over 85 various participating organizations
was crucial to the success of the project and the revitalization of the Cornfield.
48
For
if a vital place is a site where people interact with each other and their environment
on many different levels, then by repurposing the Cornfield from a desolate
decommissioned railyard into a community resource, Not a Cornfield facilitated just
that.
From an art historical perspective, Bon’s project is compelling in that it
straddles ideas concerning the importance of the art object (evidenced in the
physicality of Not a Cornfield) and the validity of engaging with the community
around that object. The work consequently operated on many levels, each one of
them as legitimate as the others. Bon did not, for example, sacrifice the good of the
community for the good of the artwork, or forfeit her vision by surrendering to the
needs of the community. Because of both the temporary status of the project, and
Bon’s own status within the Annenberg Foundation, which enabled her to effectively

46
Manuel Castells and Lauren Bon, “Another City is Possible,” in Not A Cornfield:
History/Site/Document, ed. Janet Owen Driggs (Los Angeles: Not A Cornfield, LLC, 2007), 105
47
Castells and Bon, “Another City is Possible,” 106.
48
Edsill, “A Cornfield Grows in L.A.”

39
self-fund her work, Bon was allowed to realize her dream without engaging in more
than one or two bureaucratic meetings and community consultations. As a result,
while the freedom of this particular artist is not easily replicable, the success of Not a
Cornfield enabled the project to stand as an example. Most particularly, as an
example of the impact on vitality that can be achieved if artists are given greater self-
determination in realizing public project.
Similar to Tate Thames Dig, Not a Cornfield was a temporary project and
installation. However, what distinguishes it from Dion’s work is that through the
community-based events staged by Bon’s project, those more informal occurrences
that took place in the publicly accessibly space, and those events organized and run
by others the community groups were offered a venue to meet one another and
discuss their investments in the site within a casual setting; at the “Eye” of the
Cornfield, which became an amphitheater of sorts, usually furnished with a bonfire
at its center. This framework for dialog encouraged an organic level of social
interaction, fostering a vital place.
Not a Cornfield was an ephemeral project, and therefore its impact on vitality
of the space is consequently limited. However, while the artwork ended in May of
2006, shortly after Bon and her team, as a result of the project, created Farmlab, an
organization that investigates land use issues through artistic practices.
Significantly, Farmlab is headquartered in a building adjacent to the Not a Cornfield
site. Consequently, the ephemeral art project, which invited people to celebrate the
land, cultivate it, ponder it, and discuss it, is still living on through the aegis of
Farmlab. For example, the community groups associated with the project are able to

40
continue the conversations began by Not a Cornfield in the salons, lectures, art
projects, and exhibitions that Farmlab hosts.
By taking on a once barren site and infusing it with both environmental and
human life, Bon’s work brought vitality to the 32-acre plot of land called “the
Cornfield.” It provides an example of a project that was successful at creating
vitality despite the fact that it did not face a large amount of the now-standard initial
community consultation. However, it still managed to retain a large degree of
community engagement throughout the project.
Further, by working with community groups to engage the complex history
of the space, the project played a powerful role in drawing awareness to the land and
commandeering a movement of respect for it. Then, in an effort to sustain the
energy and interest of the temporary project, Farmlab was formed. As a result, the
artwork lives on, as does the vitality that it conjured. In this regard, Not a Cornfield
functioned to support and maintain the generation of a vital public space.

41

CONCLUSION

The trajectory that I have laid out regarding the history of our changing
relationship to the Los Angeles River is immensely important to the River’s future.
For in order to consider the direction that the development will go, it is important to
understand its past. As critic Norman Klein discusses in his book “The History of
Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory,” Los Angeles has a narrative
thread which seems to erase and neglect its past, to the detriment of the city. He
describes how:
“Developers selling the ‘belle-vue’ tend to overbuild flood plains and slide
areas; while master planners during the thirties had the L.A. River cemented
over. The sum effect has nearly eradicated what once were massive
underground lakes, very abundant aquifers. Water tables continue to drop
immensely. Innumerable species have disappeared.”
49

So, while the Master Plan undertakes a great effort to develop sites along the Los
Angeles River, it is crucial to make those changes with great care. It is essential to
recognize that Los Angeles, in the hasty fears of a water shortage and the power of
devastating floods, ended up a city with a concretized river.
The current period in the River’s history is a poignant one. It is critical that,
with the support of the LARRMP and the Ad Hoc Committee, vital places along the
River’s banks be created. Public art can aid in this process and the LARRMP
recommends and endorses its use along the Los Angeles River. Based on the
examples of Great Heron Gate, Thames River Dig, and Not a Cornfield there are

49
Norman Klein, The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles And The Erasure of Memory (New
York: Verso, 1997), 83.

42
some distinct qualities and characteristics that support the capacity of a work of
public art to foster vital places.
In general, there are logistical elements which can greatly contribute to a vital
public place. As I mentioned earlier, the physical elements of a site are an essential
factor in determining the user groups of a particular space. In order to stimulate and
sustain a vital place, the site must be relatively clean, safe, accessible, and
welcoming. If those components are in place, then people will be attracted to the
space and want to sit and stay in this space. In order to encourage that type of
activity, then the built environment – benches, trash receptacles, lighting, sidewalks,
and other hardscaping – must also be considered. Once these physical conditions are
in place, then people will typically fill the space.
In particular, based on my case studies, I recommend that, as we unlace the
river from its concrete corset, so we might also need to “unlace” the artists who are
being asked to intervene. Often, the policy in many Percent-for-Art city ordinances
calls for permanent artworks. While I do not want to suggest that temporary
artworks are free of conceptual problems or practical logistics, they are frequently an
effective means for bringing vitality into a place. Ephemeral artworks grab our
attention because they are so short-lived. They do not allow for the time to become
boring and battered, and can be more experimental since in their materials they do
not have to withstand environmental conditions for very long. Furthermore, because
of their temporary nature, artists have more freedom to investigate, in a sometimes
critical fashion, the politics, cultures, and environmental dynamics unfolding at a site
or within a city.

43
As evidenced by the examples of Dion and Bon, the temporary status of their
works allowed them to create projects that might otherwise have been deemed too
maintenance intensive. In comparison, Goldstone’s Great Heron Gate, which was a
steel artwork when it was first erected, has since become a lifeless barrier that
meagerly welcomes visitors to an un-cared for and unsafe site. The combined
conditions of its permanence, the lack of maintenance at the site, and the inability of
the work to solely conjure vitality, stripped the artwork of its energy. From this
example I deduce that the Los Angeles River might benefit from hosting more
temporary installations and interventions. As projects like Tate Thames Dig and Not
a Cornfield drew thousands of people to their respective sites, so such temporary
installations and interventions along the River would draw many more people to its
banks. In this way, an audience base could grow from the existing one begun that
has been nurtured by such organizations as FoLAR, to further infuse the River with
vitality.
Another recommendation I would like to suggest is that the artist selection
process for public art along the river be expanded to include a curatorial model. In
many Percent-for-Art ordinances, the policy frequently stipulates that artists must be
selected through an “open call,” whereby the artists submit their proposals to a panel,
whose members are most usually selected from a database run by the public art
administrative body concerned. It is unfortunately often the case that art which is
commissioned via such a committee process is so filtered and compromised in order
to meet everyone’s needs that the end result is uninteresting and uninspired. This
results in what Co-Director of the public art organization Artangel James Lingwood

44
calls “confectionary consensus.”
50
By which he means art that becomes so palatable
to such a wide range of people that it is frictionless and banal. While I don’t think
that such committee processes invariably result in lackluster projects, the success of
Dion and Bon’s projects strongly suggest that the articulation of a single voice and
vision with primacy over the artistic process can result in powerful projects that have
beneficial impact on the quality of vitality in public space.
Although the notion of a curator within many government Percent-for-Art
programs is frequently rejected by city officials and even taxpayers for removing the
‘public’ in public art (since it does not allow for public process despite the fact that
the funding is often from public dollars), a curated work offers a counterbalance to
art created by a committee of public officials. I suggest therefore the establishment
of an arts program to “coordinate how art is commissioned, funded, and managed”
51

along the River, that has a policy to invite curators from arts institutions and non-
profit arts organizations to insert temporary public art projects at sites along the
riverbanks. In this way, some of the best local and international artists can be invited
to work at the banks of the Los Angeles River, thereby leveraging the quality of the
works concerned. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the projects I have
examined suggest that the artwork that is installed along the Los Angeles River
would benefit from having a public programming aspect to it. By this I do not mean
to suggest that the programming needs to be administered by some public art

50
Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art
(Berkley: University of California Press, 2004), 19.

51
Los Angeles Department of Public Works, Los Angeles River Revitalization Mater Plan,
April 2007, 5-36.

45
authority. Instead what I want to suggest is that the artwork, and the space it is sited
it, foster so much vitality that the people filling and visiting the space take ownership
over the public programming in an organic way. This could be similar to what
happened at Not a Cornfield where spontaneous gatherings at Friday night bonfires
and drum circles became a regular occurrence during the project’s yearlong run.
This is a crucial moment in the history of the Los Angeles River. The
potency of public art that is created can help to usher in a vitality that the LARRMP
seeks to evoke. In this way, the art that is created can foster a soul, and a sense of
community. It can, as Manuel Castells said, “make people ‘feel together,’ which is
the beginning of sharing community.” In this vast desert metropolis, where houses
are built on stilts and freeways run through backyards, reclaiming the Los Angeles
River is of paramount importance.
Now is the moment in our city’s history where we seize this chance to
“revitalize” the river by removing it from its straightjacket. While the Los Angeles
River cannot be returned to its original erratic and dangerous form without
demolishing vast tracts of the City, it is possible to once again vitalize the
relationship between the L.A. River and its surrounding human populations. Public
art projects and processes have the capacity to aid in loosening the laces of its
concrete straightjacket and re-envisioning the River, not as the scar it is now, but as
the spine of the city.
Along its course there is the potential to draw out the soul and the history and
the encounters that have been unfolding along its banks since before Father Juan
Crespi first encountered the meandering bed. This can be organized through art and

46
the resulting grassroots efforts that ripple from the projects, fostering and
maintaining vitality through varying degrees of support. So, though it may no longer
be Angeleno’s only source of water, and the zanjas have long been forgotten, the
river can still feed us with vitality.

47

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ad Hoc Committee on the Los Angeles River. City of Los Angeles.
http://www.lacity.org/councilcmte/lariver.

Auge, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. New
York: Verso, 1995.

Banham, Reyner. Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Berkeley: The
University of California Press, 2001.

Cardenas, Jose. "Bureaucratic shoals slow river effort." Los Angeles Times, January
9, 2003, sec. B.
Congress for the New Urbanism. Charter of the New Urbanism. New York:
McGraw-Hill Publishers, 1999.
Corrin, Lisa Graziose, Miwon Kwon, Norman Bryson, and John Berger. Mark Dion.
London: Phaidon, 1997.

Crespi, Juan. A Description of Distant Roads: Original Journals of the First Spanish
Expedition into California1769-1770. San Diego: San Diego State University
Press, 2001.

Davis, Mike. Ecology of Fear. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.

Dimassa, Cara Mia. “Living Gets Loftier in Downtown LA.” Los Angeles Times,
November 22, 2007, sec. B.

Dion, Mark. Archaeology. London: Black Dog Publishing, 1999.

Driggs, Janet Owen, ed. Not A Cornfield: History/Site/Document. Los Angeles: Not
A Cornfield, LLC, 2007.

Edsill, Sam. “A Cornfield Grows in L.A.” Mental Contagion.
http://www.mentalcontagion.com/issue85/causeandeffect.php.

Gottlieb, Robert, Andrea Azuma, Brooke Gaw, Amanda Shaffer. Re-Envisioning the
Los Angeles River: A Program of Community and Ecological Revitalization,
A Report on the 40 Forums, Events, Activities and Projects held during 1999
2000. Los Angeles: Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, Occidental
College, 2001.

48
Gumprecht, Blake. The Los Angeles River: Its Life, Death, and Possible Rebirth.
Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999.

Hajer, Maarten and Arnold Reijndorp. In Search of New Public Domain. Rotterdam:
NAi Publishers, 2002.

Hernandez, Daniel. “'Not a Cornfield' Idea Is Food for Thought.” Los Angeles Times,
September 12, 2005, sec. C.

Hise, Greg, and William Francis Deverell, Eden by design: the 1930 Olmsted
Bartholomew plan for the Los Angeles region. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2000.

Katz, Richard. “What’s So Silly about a Bargain Freeway.” Los Angeles Times,
September 8, 1989, sec. C.
Kester, Grant. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art.
Berkley: University of California Press, 2004.
Klein, Norman. The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles And The Erasure of
Memory. New York: Verso, 1997.

Linton, Joe. Down By The Los Angeles River: Friends of the Los Angeles River's
Official Guide. Berkeley: Wilderness Press, 2005.

Morrison, Patt. Río LA: Tales from the Los Angeles River. Los Angeles: Angel City
Press, 2001.

Roraback, Dick. “Up a Lazy River, Seeking the Source.” Los Angeles Times,
October 20, 1985, sec. C.

Sister, Chona, Jennifer Wolch, John P. Wilson, Alison Linder, Mona Seymour,
Jason, Byrne, Jennifer Swift. Green Visions Plan for the 21
st
Century: Parks
and Open Space Resources. Los Angeles: University of Southern California
GIS Research Laboratory and Center for Sustainable Cities, 2007.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The dynamic between the Los Angeles River and the humans living at its banks has changed much over time. While the river gave life to the city and determined its configuration for its first hundred years, by the 20th Century, Los Angeles had outgrown its river and concretized it. However, over the past decade, the LA River has slowly become the subject of attention and the necessary factors for a change in its conditions are mustering along its banks. In this circumstance of change it is important that the development process cultivates vital places. In this regard, I assert that public art has a powerful role to play in facilitating and supporting the generation of vital public space. In support of this claim, I analyze three public art projects, each undertaken along a river, and interrogate whether or not they functioned to create and maintain a vital public space.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Artistic intervention in the Los Angeles urban geography: the art practices of Charles Long, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn

PDF

Reconsideration of permanent percent for art works in the public sphere: a case study of public art commissioned by the community redevelopment agency of the city of Los Angeles

PDF

Collaborative art practice in the public sphere: The death of the artist?

PDF

Interpreting participatory art

PDF

Exploring best practices for building a university's public art collection

PDF

Art and time: temporary public art and contentious space

PDF

Biennial rising: Prospect.1 New Orleans and the post-disaster arts movement

PDF

Coastal public art: an innovative way to disseminate ocean science

PDF

Contemporary art and "post-black" identity politics

PDF

The multivalent platforms of alternative art publications as agents of authentic cultural change

PDF

Mejor vida/better life and day-to-day exchanges: Networks of social exchange in contemporary arts practice

PDF

Temporary or permanent? Considering time, memory and history in public art projects

PDF

Making art public: mobilizing public art through technology

PDF

Cultivating the arts in rural communities of the San Joaquin valley

PDF

"Necessity knows no law": artist-run spaces & the spatial politics of Tijuana's public domain

PDF

The kinesthetic citizen: Dance and critical art practices

PDF

In the art of revolution: integrating community arts into the existing development work of non-government organizations in Guatemala and El Salvador

PDF

Examining current U.S. public art trust fund programs for applications in Taiwan: visions for Taiwan 's new public art trust fund

PDF

Public art in Houston: administrative structure analysis and artist guidebook

PDF

Four women, four public art projects, four decades: exploring socially conscious public art and social change

Asset Metadata

Creator Dinerstein, Elizabeth Gelbard (author)

Core Title Fostering vital places: public art and the revitalization of the Los Angeles River

School School of Fine Arts

Degree Master of Public Art Studies

Degree Program Public Art Studies

Publication Date 04/15/2008

Defense Date 03/15/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Los Angeles River,OAI-PMH Harvest,public art,public space,Urban Planning

Place Name California (states), Los Angeles (counties), rivers: Los Angeles River (geographic subject), USA (countries)

Language English

Advisor Driggs, Janet Owen (committee chair), Decter, Joshua (committee member), Grey, Susan (committee member)

Creator Email lizdinerstein@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1116

Unique identifier UC1105791

Identifier etd-Dinerstein-20080415 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-51709 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1116 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Dinerstein-20080415.pdf

Dmrecord 51709

Document Type Thesis

Rights Dinerstein, Elizabeth Gelbard

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu