From A to B

Into the future

2011-07-27T01:00:00.001-07:00

Though San Marino and South Pasadena do not seem a bit different from before, York Boulevard in Highland Park has changed dramatically since the first seeding in 2007. New businesses line the streets. A newly striped half-of-a-bikelane and our famous local bike corral are a civilizing influence. 16 street trees were planted last spring and more will be planted next winter. Huizar's New York initiative has the community discussing ways to improve the pedestrian streetscape. Farmer Dave's guerilla garden continues to thrive and looks better every year. We are expecting an expensive French restaurant to open a stone's throw away.... and in a few scattered Highland Park locations, poppies' nodding orange heads have become part of the York Boulevard streetscape from winter til spring.

The poppies that remain in South Pasadena are less conspicuous. But every day I drive to work I pass by a small dry median scattered with tiny poppies no more than 4" tall. Even now, in the heat of late July, when poppies elsewhere have long finished their cycle, the plants on this inhospitable median manage to bloom. Most cars whizzing by probably do not notice these tiny spots of orange, a fraction of the height of ordinary poppies. They have endured in this hostile spot for three years, despite an active weed maintenance schedule.

But there additional is good news from afar. I was very happy to hear of this anonymous report of poppies in Los Feliz.

Farmer Dave's Garden

2010-03-09T07:57:00.000-08:00

Everything is still growing

2010-03-09T07:48:00.000-08:00

I love rainy season. That’s the growing season in Southern California. Poppies sown three winters ago have been blooming for almost a month it seems, on York Boulevard, and parts of South Pasadena, but not always where you’d expect.

Most of the poppies that remain are in window boxes and areas with high reflected heat (sidewalk cracks) on the north side (South facing side) of the street. In areas where they’ve survived with no input from myself or other gardeners, introduced annuals such as sowthistle and mallow, may eventually squeeze them out. But it’s hard to say. In some areas where they’ve always been outnumbered by fast-growing grasses, they’ve held their ground.

In the regularly maintained planter boxes of the Foursquare Church “The Rock” on York, the gardener has accepted them and now weeds around them.

At York Boulevard Post Office, my favorite location, someone beat me to installing a complete landscape. They came in and took out every piece of the red apple succulent that once covered those planters. They laid down a thick layer of mulch and planted a variety of fun drought tolerant things: lavender, rosemary, pelargonium, perovskia, aloe, and native salvia. This gardener laid down a calling card in the form of a big rock painted with this address: farmerdavesgardens.webs.com.

Dave is regularly maintaining the plot, and is allowing some of the poppies and cornflower that have reseeded last year to remain in the garden. It looks great and I couldn’t help but to smile at all the colors and textures when I went to buy stamps this morning. The stamps I bought said “C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E”… I will think of our lovely York Boulevard “community garden” when I use those stamps.

In the slide show above (on the right hand side bar) are a couple pictures of the York Boulevard local government branch "community garden" from 2007. Since 2003, it had been nothing but one rhaphiolepis and red apple succulent. I learned the latter had been originally planted by a postoffice worker just to improve the neglected space. In 2006, I approached the postoffice with a proposal to install a native design by Orchid Black, and other permaculture- inspired furniture. Though we got a positive response, we could not get final official approval. In 2007 some friends helped clear out modest patches of the succulent for an experimental seeding in poppies. Spring 2008 was the peak of the planting which I called “Everything is Still Alive”, and poppies bloomed for blocks in any open dirt space where residents and business owners allowed them to bloom. In 2009, I stopped the input of labor except for sprinkling in a diverse mix of wildflower seed at the postoffice and across the street to add color—all things which would bloom profusely with no input but what the sky offers: Cornflowers, clarkia, tidytips. Later that year, Farmer Dave took out the succulents and rhaphiolepis and is now promoting it as a permaculture design. This is going to be it’s best spring ever!

When I started planting poppies in 2007, just about everyone I talked to on York encouraged me, but also warned me that the flowers would likely be stolen, stepped on, or otherwise vandalized. To the contrary, the calling card stone Dave installed looks as good as on day one. And the vulnerable newly planted shrubs are gaining strength during the rainy season.

I’ve added a cutting of Dave’s zonal pelargonium to the Pelargonium Exchange project. This is a garden for sharing pelargonium cuttings and their stories. It doesn’t have a permanent home in Los Angeles yet, but as Robert likes to quote from the Karate Kid, “Buddha will provide.”

For the Pelargonium Project, see:

myriadsmallthings.org/pelarg.html

Summertime

2009-07-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

While I'll continue to post updates about the poppies of York and Monterey Roads on this blog, you can also read more about the project at:

myriadsmallthings.org/everythingisstillalive.html

Year Two and the Multi-Continental Wildflower mix

2009-05-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

I've not made regular trips to look after the poppies this year. I wanted to see how the poppies would do on their own. Could they hold their own against the weeds? Might anyone else in the neighborhood intervene on their behalf?

Poppy season on York began earlier than last year. Generally speaking, it went from January to April. The most floriferous sites this year included the empty lot on Nolden, and the flower boxes at Childs' and the Church, where the orange of the poppies perfectly echoed the color of the boxes of oranges set out daily in front of the corner grocery store.

In just a couple spots the show this year was greater than last year. But lack of weeding made a big difference almost everywhere. Weed competition reduced the vigor and visibility of the blooms.

Other than a couple strays, poppy season on York is over, former spots of brilliant orange superseded by a monotone shag of dried grasses. Several former poppy sites have been concreted over or razed for other purposes. The fresh bare dirt just screams for replanting.

In South Pasadena, there were quite a few poppies in March and April. For a brief week or so there was a pretty good show on two South Pasadena traffic islands. Poppies appeared out of a crack in the asphalt on a major intersection. The other traffic island had no blooms last year. But miraculously, there appeared an even sprinkling of tiny tiny orange poppies on the island this second year, even amongst dense growth of grasses and erodium.

Chemical spraying reduced what had been a dramatic show of orange in front of South Pasadena Nature Park last year to only a very light show this year.

Ironically, chemical spraying often does nothing to decrease the number of weeds, because the people who spray typically are not paying attention to the lifecycle of plants. Since they often spray after the weeds have already dispersed their seeds, there will be just as many new weeds next year.

As for our elite estate community of San Marino- the street maintenance people in that neighborhood are skillful and thorough! There was not a single repeat bloom in that neighborhood.

---

A couple people, not from the immediate neighborhood, offered to help water the poppies. This made me think of how in our culture we are taught from very early on to associate the image of the watering can with the tending of plants and the idea of caring for living things.

Yet it's not water that the poppies really need-- they are happy to subsist on rain alone. Extra irrigation merely helps them get bigger and extends their bloom time. What they really need is protection from weed competition.

If not the watering can, what kind of image could symbolize the tending of plants that were actually designed to grow in our environment? If not for our interventions (the importing of livestock, building of houses, roads and lawns), such plants might still be prevalent in our city.

---

This year, in a couple choice locations on York Boulevard, I sprinkled a wildflower seed mix, hoping for slow waves of color as spring progresses, in true old-California style. Both these locations benefit from some extra watering, the first because of Nanette, who keeps the street beautiful, and in the other location, because of the occasional watering of people I've not met yet.

The only mix at Home Depot was labeled "Southwest Desert Wildflower Mix and was predominantly composed of California natives. I did get a nice sprinkling of yellow tidytips and blue phacelia, even a pink clarkia or two to complement the poppies. But unexpectedly I also got flowers that were not native to California or even to the US.

Unbeknownst to me when I grabbed the packet in the store, the mix included all sorts of other things which the Stover Seed company considers suitable to the climate of the Southwest. Exceedingly prolific in this mix were blue cornflowers and red flax, both European wildflowers. Another Old World favorite, the red poppy, papaver rhoeas, is about to bloom on York!

The mix also includes Dimorphotheca sinuata, an African daisy. I fear African daisies are becoming a California native pretender in my neighborhood. On a hill south of Eagle Rock, which has benefited from native plant restoration efforts, someone has sown African daisies for the last several years. The first year, the bold colors and markings of the flowers left no doubt as to their identity as African flowers. They were colorful in a cheery way, but added a touch of free-way to what I wanted to think of as a "natural" area. This year, climbing up the hill to the same spot, I was surprised to see what appeared to be a whole field of poppies where there had not been poppies before. Upon closer inspection, I discovered only a field of African pretenders in the exact orange hue. A cruel joke!

The combination of colors and forms in this multicultural Southwestern Desert mix don't have the same charm as native wildflowers. Next year I'll drive the ten extra miles to get a wildflower mix from Theodore Payne Foundation, instead of Home Depot.

Rogue blooms

2009-01-22T22:49:00.000-08:00

It's summer now. Or fall. I mean middle of winter, but the temperature during the day is hot enough for summer clothes. Perpetual spring, or a harbinger of summer? For about a month, poppies have been blooming as if it were April on two separate lots on the corner of York and Nolden, holding their orange heads up high over neat expanses of closely clipped grass. Who would have thought that California poppies and lawns could be so compatible? Could it be possible that a judiciously timed mowing might have induced bloom for poppies interspersed with lawn grasses? Subject to further research, from the York Boulevard Poppy Lab.

It's been over a year since the first poppies were sown, and I've chosen to tend the poppies only minimally this year, if at all. Let the poppies tell us themselves where they are meant to grow.

Summertime

2008-07-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

It's hot and dry. The spring flowers are long gone. The poppies were showy for several months. At first, their floating orange petals held up on lush green foliage. Toward the beginning of June, several heat spells later (and no more rain), the orange still blazingly bright, but the foliage darker, browner, wiry.

Where seedheads were allowed to mature and disperse, there will be seeds waiting for the next winter rains...

In May, as the Childs box had peaked, I went by with a pair of trimmers and cut the plants close to the ground.

In the next weeks, a heat wave arrived. The window box began to flower anew, but in a more sedate and mature sort of way.

As I sat at my desk, occasionally, I was startled by small black pellets raining down on me. Living in an old house is constant work. Things are constantly falling apart, paint peeling, water dripping, bugs eating.... I asked my family whether they knew what was falling from the ceiling. We saw no leaks, no chipping paint, no wierd bugs...

Then it occurred to me that the small black pellets were simply poppy seeds--seedheads I had saved from the Childs window box were literally exploding as the temperature rose. The curved shape that the seedheads twist into as they dry turns each one into a coiled up spring. When it's just dry enough, the spring shoots tens of little black pellets bouncing off the walls with incredible energy. They would make the sound of tens of little pins dropped to the ground-- but more exuberant.

I packaged up some of these seeds, and distributed them at the Farmlab talk.

"These seeds are from first generation urban poppies grown in the planter of Child's Moving Company on York Boulevard. According to Judith Larner Lowry, chronicler of native plant gardening, one botanist counted 70 different subspecies of California poppies existing in the wild. At one time, it's possible that there were even more subspecies than that: each type adapted to locally specific conditions of water, soil, etc.

"Right now, we can only guess at what the subspecies that grew near your own neighborhood was like. Plant these seeds, and allow the poppies to reseed year after year. Before you move on, pass on the love of wildflowers to a trusted neighborhood to look after the plot. Make sure that before they pass on, they find another neighborhood to tend the plot. In several hundred years, maybe a new locally specific subspecies might start to develop... one perfectly adapted to the urban soil and cultural milieu you have chosen for it..."

Wildflower hotline: May News

2008-05-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

HIGHLAND PARK REPORT

It's been two and a half months since the last drop of rain, and two months since the first blooms appeared in South facing window boxes on York Boulevard in Highland Park. The window boxes that provided non-stop cascades of blooms for so long are getting dry and asking to be trimmed down.

In many unirrigated places where I did not see poppy foliage even a month ago, there are now flowers in full bloom. The largest of these sites include the traffic island at the Southeast corner of Figueroa and York (most notably the traffic island off to the side of Jack in the Box, where they sell Christmas trees) and at the front edge of a large vacant lot in South Pasadena, directly across from the Nature Park. Most of the dramatic field of poppies at the entrance of the Nature Park has been razed. Graciously, however, the weed removal folks left a few sizable clumps of flowers.

Poppies are still looking great by the tattoo parlor and weaving store: this is to Nana's credit. Nana from the weaving store splashes them as she hoses down the street.

REPORT FROM SOUTH PASADENA

Oak woodland is just one of the main plant communities that once made up this region. South Pasadena might now seem to be an entirely new "plant community". This new plant community is made up of craftsman bungalows, sprinklers, ivy, shrubs and green lawns. Yet, I wonder, Does an oak woodland ever really stop being an oak woodland? How much of this first plant community would come back if humans stopped the weekly watering and trimming of lawns, ivy, and hedges?

While cutting back ivy in South Pasadena to make room for poppies more than six months ago, I uncovered a lone native oak sapling. Though this seemed reason for optimism, it was surrounded by four or five saplings of the ubiquitous exotic, Mexican Fan Palm, which is extremely difficult to eradicate.

Meanwhile, in a nearby San Marino botanical garden, every single hedge seems to have an exuberant oak sapling shooting out of it. When the hardworking gardener removes them, shoots simply sprout up elsewhere. The work is never-ending. Up above, oblivious to this struggle, the mighty oaks continue to do their slow seasonal work of dropping acorns. The scrubjays continue their work as well: distributing, stashing, and forgetting those same acorns. (Judith Larner Lowry talks about the process of collaborating with local wildlife in designing her garden, in the book, The Landscaping Ideas of Jays. Go read this book!)

Breaking news from the world of plants: in South Pasadena and San Marino, the oaks are trying to gain back the landscape! They just need a little help. Clear the ivy. Pull out the Mexican Fan Palms. Don't cut the oaks down. Marc Herbst has urged us to tune into plants for the news. It's true. Keep your eyes and ears open.

Wildflower hotline: Urban wildflower tour scheduled

2008-03-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday April 6, 10:30 am

In the California tradition of "going flowering" in the spring, please join us for an urban flora tour through Highland Park, South Pasadena, and San Marino. We will look at places poppies are blooming, and places they were removed. We can gossip about wildflowers and weeds, as we compare the public spaces of these diverse communities.

Starting point:

parking lot of York Boulevard Post Office

5132 York Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA 90042

The tour should last just over an hour. We'll start out with a bit of walking, so remember to wear comfortable shoes.

Wildflower hotline: The poppies are talking

2008-03-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

The poppies are talking to us. Their petals open wide as the day begins. They curl tightly shut as the day ends. Contrary to what people say, California poppies make great (but delicate) cut flowers, and will continue to open and shut even when indoors. Mark time with the poppies.

Warm weather has brought out more flowers. Most of the South-facing sites planted in Highland Park are now blooming (on the North side of the street). A couple full-sun sites on the South side (North-facing) are blooming as well.

Good spots for urban poppy viewing are the North side of York between 55 and Nolden, and the entrance to South Pasadena Nature Park, just east of the 110. I've been told these poppies will become larger and more floriferous over the years, if they are allowed to remain in place, like the jaw-dropping poppies on the Southbound entrance of the 110 at York, which are growing out of cement cracks.
Not all the sites I tended are blooming. This artists' studio below was one of the first sites prepared and planted. Despite that many seeds germinated, and that it was one of the sites were I spent the most weeding hours, including reseeding and even transplanting from other sites, no poppies grew. I wonder if this local bird can tell us why? He was having a great time pecking at the ground.

As I was checking on the flowers, I met this group of girls, who were making themselves comfortable on this incredibly well manicured landscape in front of Super A. (A landscape which was too well maintained for poppy growth).
I complimented them on making good use of a very nice lawn in a neighborhood where the nearest park is.... Hey, come to think of it, there is no nearby park.

A couple locations in South Pasadena are blooming, though the majority of sites will bloom much later, if they survive at all. Generally, the sun in this area is filtered through the many non-native sycamores lining the street. (Hot and dry York Boulevard, in contrast, is planted with the sparsely canopied native sycamores, which were once an indicator of intermittent water sources, but are now used as an abuse-tolerant street tree.)

This ivy-covered yard was the very first site planted. This is one of the few instances where there is clear communication between the very kind property owners and their gardener. Though it's in full sun and is well-tended by the gardener, only a few flowers are showing. So far.

The large plot which promised to become my most impressive show of poppies in South Pasadena was mowed in February, due to a communication mishap with the gardener. Will the poppies recover?

When I first sought permission to plant most of these sites, almost half a year ago, countless property owners told me, in the very same words, "Don't worry. No one will weed out the poppy shoots. The gardener is too lazy. He doesn't do a thing!" In fact, in most of these sites, I had to reseed the poppies when the "lazy gardeners" turned out actually to be very on top of things. It is surprising how common it is to have so little communication between property owners and their "help"-- this happened in both Highland Park and South Pasadena.

This super wonderful property owner arranged the rocks like this just for the poppies.

For an even bigger show, involving California poppies among myriad compatriot California plants, look around the corner on Milan Avenue!

Next time: A report from a local governmental branch, which is gradually morphing into a guerilla community garden; and words from an underground oak woodland.

Wildflower Hotline: Stray blooms

2008-03-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

The first stray blooms appeared about ten days ago in Highland Park, appropriately, in a cactus planter outside an artists' studio. This week more locations are showing poppy action--Child's moving company, The Rock Church-- all south facing sites on York Boulevard in Highland Park.

In the several weeks since the last rains, the weather has warmed up dramatically. Though it's been relatively dry, the poppies have been growing exponentially faster than before. Unfortunately it's not just the poppies growing. Dave Pisley told me today, that in his own garden, weeds have been appearing by the "thousand-fold." Gotta get out and put in some more weeding hours this weekend...

Alone together

2008-02-21T22:12:00.000-08:00

Commuting is the most communal and solitary thing I do on a daily basis. I get up in the morning and secretly hope to myself that everyone will have decided to stay home that day. Yet I am always predictably crushed to see you on the road.
OK, I am not always crushed...I guess there are some great moments you and I have out there. Like the time when we cooperated and you let me cut in front of you so I could merge onto the 110 South from the 5 freeway during rush hour? Or when you try to communicate with me by honking your horn (are my lights off?), waving your fist out of your car window (??), or pulling up beside me to look me straight in the eye (Oh).

One of my favorite moments is when we hear an ambulance siren far off and we decide to pull over together and let the ambulance go by. I love waiting with you alone in my car on the side of the street.
Most of the time, though, I want to just be able to ignore you-get out of my way, just move faster, why are you turning left right NOW?, fuck, asshole, you almost hit me!!!

Why, when I start my engine, do all of you out there suddenly become my competition, my pest, my co-dependent and sometimes, my savior?

South Pasadena Wildflower Update

2008-02-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

This is one of the sites that was planted earliest, and where the poppies had been doing well. The owner is supportive of the poppies, but it's not clear how well the gardener understands the project. It looks like the poppies have been mowed! They are surviving, but shorter.... I'll need to call to find out what happened.....

Highland Park Wildflower Update

2008-02-10T19:43:00.001-08:00

The poppies are utterly on their own now. I only pitch in with a little weeding every once in a while.

Next week, look out for the South Pasadena Wildflower Update.

Elana's trip to Ecology Auto Wrecking

2008-02-09T12:06:00.001-08:00

From my trip to the car grave-yard. Can't believe how sad I felt, thinking that my car would eventually end up at one of these places.

January Rains

2008-01-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

It's been two months since the first seeds were sown.

Some poppy shoots took off immediately, unimpeded by hard soil, harsh exposure, lack of care, weeds. In the easiest sites, the sprouts are lush and green, vegetal looking. I haven't touched them since they germinated, except to thin them out. In plots of the densest ground, the sprouts are lean and tiny by comparison, often bluish-green. Sprouts that germinated under the shade of larger weeds are pale, long, and stringy.

I've lost a couple plots of well-developed plants to diligent (but invisible!) maintenance people. I've also gained a couple plots just in time for this recent deluge. Several plots have been razed and then replanted. (Some of the folks who allowed me to plant were not aware of how diligent their gardeners can be. I also learned that the people who maintain the parkways are not necessarily in communication with the formal "owner"...)

People ask; "Why are you doing this?" Are you from the city?" "Then, who is paying you to do this?" "Oh, I see, it's a hobby! Your own yard must be very neat!"

The skeptical nod politely when I explain how to recognize the poppy shoots, how the first hair-like leaves pave the way for larger lacy poppy leaves.

The first month, watching for new shoots was exhilarating. After a day of tending the shoots, my subconscious would blossom with kaleidoscopic lacy foliage all night long.

In a couple of the largest Highland Park plots, however, the rains brought waves of weeds as well as poppies. First, there was the filaree. After I'd labored to save some poppies from filaree, mustard suddenly appeared, denser in some cases than the filaree had been! I attempt to battle the mustard, but cannot fight the oxalis, which also appeared with no warning. The poppies' delicate shoots and their roots are so easily damaged by weeding. Now all night long, images of tiny poppy shoots overwhelmed by the steroidal growth of hefty annuals flash through my mind.

Yesterday, I was astonished to come across this scene, which I sketched above, which reminded me of huge trees, fallen from storms or winds, which begin to grow again, with new main trunks ascending skyward from the downed trunk. The entire scene was not more than an inch and a half high. I'm drawing from memory here, so the forms of the leaf of the sprout might not be botanically accurate...

shadowy impressions on sunset

2008-01-07T20:31:00.000-08:00

For my atob, I will be making a series of pinhole images, each exposure lasting the entire length of my commute, both from a to b and returning from b to a. Though taken regularly along generally the same route, these long exposure pinhole images will change as the time of day, amount of traffic, season, sun location, speed, and unexpected route changes alter what the light sensitive paper records.

I began the experiments this week, setting up the pinhole camera in the back window of my car. The darkroom is not yet ready, so the irregularly cut paper negatives (done with scissors in the closet!) have jammed a bit in the 4x5 holders. Today the camera slid, then flipped, as I took the big curve down Sunset heading up to Westwood. Though I'm interested to see those results, I have remedied this erratic variable with two strong strips of velcro. It has made my own commute more interesting certainly, as I study the drivers behind me, wondering if they imagine me a tool of the surveillance environment; if they know split-second traces of their faces, headlights, hood reflections will reappear in some form in chinatown. Tomorrow I will process the first four tests and hope the rain allowed for an initial phase of shadowy impressions on sunset.

Everything is still alive

2007-12-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

In Highland Park, many of the plots I am tending are no bigger than a tree well, or a crack in the cement. It is incredible how much trash can accumulate on these sidewalk plots even during the course of a day. Imagine what the streets might look like if many of the business owners weren't clearing this trash every single day. "I do this every day because I love Highland Park," the owner of the Party Goods store told me.

To weed the plots, I push aside old cups, bottles, packaging, dried doggie doo. Reaching deep into the soil to pull up filaree roots without breaking them, I fear the occasional shard of broken glass buried within.

At the same time, reaching into the soil is always a turning point. Is the soil moist and rich? Is it the kind that appears hard as concrete, but which is just sandy granules packed tight? The initial repulsion fades. Instead, I wonder about the soil's capacity for holding moisture, or nourishing plants. Has it nurtured plants in the recent past? Is there sign of recent chemical use?

I have heard inklings that parts of York Boulevard once were, and other parts were crossed by intermittent streams. I would guess that the wide range of soil types I encounter gives some clues about where water used to run.

These are speculations. But I do know that each plot of soil holds a trace of many events in the past. Where it came from (if moved from elsewhere), what got mixed with it, what water washed into it, things that grew in it.

In the same cumulative way, everything about our everyday environment is mutable. It is something that has to be recreated every day by us in a thousand seemingly uneventful decisions. The choice between driving by and ignoring, OR deciding to slow down. The choice between thinking "it's just that way" OR thinking "It's that way because I allow it to be that way."

Today, I bumped into Jeffrey Chapman, who told me about different native plants which he had seen relatively recently, growing on untended lots in the vicinity of the sites I've been tending. Shooting stars (flowers), Nassella pulchra, White sage.... not your usual urban "weeds". I could not believe that native perennial grasses existed until recently on a hill in my own neighborhood. I knew that the original plant ecosystems were decimated early on by the grazing of livestock brought by Europeans. But evidently the contemporary urban environment, even with all the weedy annual grasses introduced by the Europeans, doesn't have to be seen as the polar opposite of a "natural" ecosystem/environment.

A seed of a shooting star flower might still find a patch of untended dirt in Highland Park a promising place to grow.

Thousands of little poppy sprouts are now coming up in Highland Park and South Pasadena. Each of these seedlings appears as four delicate hair-like leaves, so slender one can hardly see them, except where they have been seeded too densely. In places where twenty or fifty seeds rolled into the same depression and simultaneously germinated, the sprouts collectively have so much upward lifting power that they push weighty chunks of bark or clods of dirt to float off the ground!

Some of these sprouts have another gargantuan task: mustering energy to push their roots through dirt that is a hard as a rock.

Ironically, the biggest threat to the poppy sprouts is now gardeners. In their habit of neatening things up, they might tear out any unfamiliar plants.

I'm now making up a flyer to spread the word, that at least for the span of this project (through the spring), that poppies are desirable. They are not a "weed." They are among the things that would have grown here, before any of us arrived. And also to spread the word, incidentally, that everything is still alive.

A to B / LA to TJ

2007-12-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

Having to commute between the US and Mexico in an almost daily basis seemed normal when Bulbo had a studio in Tijuana, Mexico and a space in San Diego. Until our commuting habits were dramatically altered once we relocated to Los Angeles.

Since the summer of 2007, our lives have been changing at a fast pace, and commuting has been an important subject in adapting to our new environment. Not only do we share a car and carpool but we also use bicycles as our second option of transportation.

Once settled in the city of Los Angeles, we slowly discovered ourselves as part of a network of more people from Tijuana who have also moved to the area. A small community with whom we share experiences, many of them about commuting between both cities.

Bulbo´s proposal for A to B consists of creating a video exploring the lives of people from Tijuana who relocated to Los Angeles. Addressing the reasons and implications of commuting between both cities and how it affects their lives.

The video is thought of as a result of the relationship bulbo has with the people who might be involved, but also about creating the environment to speak about these issues while recording the experience. The final work will be a 4 to 5 minute piece ready for broadcast on the Internet or Television.

2007-12-09T11:21:00.000-08:00

Travelogues are made for the purpose of documenting a journey, a desire for adventure, pleasure and knowledge. Its open narrative form involves an autobiographical element combining life, performance and representation.

For some time I have been interested in incorporating ideas related to travelogue and ethnography in my work. For A to B I plan to investigate the mobile space of the commute in Los Angeles by exploring three routes (river, railroad, freeway), solitary and collective modes of transportation (walk, train, car) from my house in Altadena (mountain) to Long Beach (river mouth). Although the routes have the same beginning and end point, for the most part they run parallel to each other. They are: Walk (Arroyo Seco-LA River); train (256 Metro bus-Gold Line-Blue Line); car (I-710 Long Beach Freeway).

I will use a video camera to document my journey(s); a search for events, people, sights and the empty melancholy of the city itself. As in early travelogues, the video will consist of long shots with no camera movements and formal compositions. Through traveling I will confront myself as artist, tourist, ethnographer and wanderer. From “foot-slogging” to modern modes of transportation, the travelogue will present a look at the physical and social landscape inquiring about how the route and the experience of the route changes depending on the mode of travel. It will also reflect on how LA has developed and changed over time and how our way of moving through space has changed.

In addition to the video, I plan to print a map suggesting a series of points of interest to be distributed to FOCA visitors and in the commuters’ routes. Similar to a travel guide, the map will contain historical and cultural information gathered during my research as well as personal stories or insights collected during the trip. Besides mapping the space of the commute, the project will also intervene in it by encouraging new ways of looking at the space of the commute and experiencing the city.

Ultimately the project will provide a portrait of Los Angeles reflecting on issues of stasis and motion, physical and mental movements, self and other, the familiar and the new, geography and social inequality, all of which are embedded in the commute and in the different routes we take on a daily basis.

Vincent Ramos

2007-12-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

As the only native of Los Angeles in the exhibition and with a family history in the city dating back to the 1920's, I became interested my family's various work-related commutes over a prolonged period of time. I have been, for the past few months, investigating this idea by conducting interviews with select members of my family about their commuting history and in cases of deceased relatives, constructing their commutes through their personal papers and the recollections of others. The project deals with the attainment and erasure of memory as it relates to larger social, cultural and political issues inherent within the city's history, especially those related to the working class Chicano experience. Collectively, the different commute memories of all the participants will create a much larger non-linear narrative that, because of its inability to travel smoothly from A to B, will function like a drive where the ultimate goal is to get lost.

The interviews will be displayed along with related objects from all the participants, as well as select items culled from the artists'various collections of paper ephemera (i.e. vintage maps, photographs, musical soundtracks, and overall traces of evidence related to Twentieth Century Los Angeles history.

2007-12-05T20:51:00.000-08:00

During my commute, I am constantly listening to the news, talking on the phone, signing along with music, swearing at the people in front of me. The ever-changing variety of sounds marks the time-span of my commute and the car itself becomes a pod of sound experience that carries me from here to there. More recently the sound space of my commute has been occupied by thoughts of the war in Iraq. I often listen to the radio and think about the connection between driving and Middle Eastern politics.
For the “A to B” exhibition I will be focusing on sound as a key element of commuting. I will produce an audio map of sounds and stories from the daily commutes of 10-15 participants in Los Angeles and Iraq. The aim of the audio map is to relate the everyday experiences of these two politically connected spaces; the car saturated and oil infatuated freeways of Los Angeles and the demanding, unstable and mundane roads of Iraq. These two spaces are deeply tied and have an intimate, almost familial, dependency and complexity.

The audio map will be produced as an unlimited edition on a multi-track 29 minute CD (the average length of a commute in Los Angeles). Visitors to the FOCA gallery will be encouraged to listen to the CD in the gallery and take a CD with them for their own commute. The sound map will also be available as a MP3 on the internet. Thus the audio map, containing the transitory spaces of Los Angeles and Iraq, will extend even further into the commuting spaces of gallery and its audiences.

(As I was researching this project I came across this photo by Hans Hemmert. The photo evokes the sense of the car as a space of isolation, mystery and performance.)

sowing seeds, giving thanks

2007-12-01T15:32:00.000-08:00

Everything is still alive involves planting native california poppies Eschscholzia californica on any patch of exposed earth along my commuting route, which cuts from Highland Park, via South Pasadena, to San Marino. Along this route, the landscape shifts from the sun-baked concrete and graffittied York Boulevard, to the well watered private lawns of South Pasadena and San Marino.

The first European settlers in California vividly described seasonal fields of wildflower color-before the land was subdivided and overbuilt. Sowing native poppy seed was a popular beautification strategy during the first half of the last century. But in contemporary urban space, the patterns revealed by the bursts of orange will indicate something about the character of each of these different neighborhoods.

On Thanksgiving, a group of us prepared ground and sowed seeds for the poppies in several locations in Highland Park, and on one lot in South Pasadena. The poppies were blessed with a group of five women (Jennifer Murphy, Orchid Black, Ann Kaneko, Donna Conwell, and myself), lots of tools, and water. Thank you, friends!

One of the poems I read at the planting, was read by Jeffrey Chapman at a guided wildflower walk at the Arroyo, about a year ago:

In the next century or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures.
We can meet there in peace
if we can make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together,
learn the flowers
go light

— Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

As we worked, some people stopped by. One of the most common comments I get when tending the plots in Highland Park is some variation of: "In the past we planted lovely flowers here, but some kids just tore the plants out. There are some very destructive people in this neighborhood." On this day, however, one man expressed thanks that we were doing something to take care of the site. He offered us a box of latex gloves to protect against the black widows on the ground. A young woman asked us for advice about growing poppies. In South Pasadena, some curious neighbors invited us to plant on their very gorgeous property, under the roses and well-trimmed hedges.

It's been about ten days since the first seed planting. I've been tending the plots every two days.

Yesterday, as I heard rain drops falling before dawn, I immediately prepared for more seed sowing. It was pitch dark and cold. Wunderground predicted an entire day and evening worth of rain, followed by several days of cool cloudy weather. This is a stunning development for anyone planning for wildflowers after two years of drought. The December rains are on time! I seeded a couple choice areas at daybreak, and another plot in the dark, after work. There might not be another opportunity so perfect for wildflower seeds this winter!

Thank you sky!

Potluck

2007-11-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

On November 18, 2007 the project group met up for a potluck lunch to discuss proposal ideas for A to B. Since late August 2007 ideas have been percolating away. Each artist spent about twenty minutes discussing their proposal, which was followed by feedback and general comments from the group.

Invitation

2007-11-22T20:55:00.001-08:00

In July 2007, I was invited to propose a project for the Fellows of Contemporary Art 'Curator Lab' series. For sometime I had been interested in working with artists to produce new work in response to the itinerant site of the commute. I was intrigued by the way that the commute from home to work, from A to B, has increasingly become a condition of urban life, as well as one of the primary modes by which we interface with and experience the city.

Marc Augé has argued that if point A (home) and Point B (work) are places, then the space between them is a non-place. If places can be identified as relational, historical and concerned with identity, spaces associated with transitory functions are thus paramount examples of non-place. Should we thus conceptualize the commute as being “out of place”? What is certainly true is that the environments of home and work seep into the space of the commute. The multitasking commuter is found putting on makeup, fielding calls from home and the office, drinking coffee, listening to the radio, reading the paper, eating, contemplating the work tasks of the day, planning and arranging family activities, and zoning out in Zen-like meditative repose. Is the space of the commute a threshold between two points of mooring, a space of passage through which the social body traverses as it transitions from the private self—associated with the home—to the public self—associated with the world of work? Or is it rather a mobile place that is employed by the commuter in order to fulfill a series of tasks and activities that the pressures of everyday life have rendered impossible to complete elsewhere? If one spends up to two hours a day commuting does the space of the commute become a place, albeit an itinerant one? In an effort to reconsider our relationship to a space we inhabit on a daily basis, I invited six Los Angeles based artists to produce new work that would map and intervene in the mobile site of the commute. The project group first met at the Fellows of Contemporary Art's space in Chinatown in August 2007. Subsequently, we reconvened for an informal working session to discuss our past work and interests in September 2007.