Tracking Our 'Burgeoning' Arts Scene

I have been so very pleased by the news that there is a recent and new and burgeoning art scene in Highland Park.  

Who knew?

Now, I've had friends over the years from Mount Washington to Pasadena who've had studios and who make art. However, acquaintances do not a scene make.

Have you checked out Second Saturday?  Thanks to the coordinating efforts of the NELAart Organization, for the last five years we've been able to wander about looking at various studios, galleries and shops in the area on the second Saturday of the month. Five years ago, there were too many to really see in one night.

Since 1992, the Arroyo Arts Collective has organized the Discovery Tour. This year over 100 artists' studios and galleries in Northeast Los  Angeles were open for our exploration and enjoyment. I guess 18 years can just squeeze by as burgeoning.

In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, the anti-war organization Another Mother for Peace (AMP) had a famous logo. Do you remember the yellow sunflower accompanied by the words, "War Is Not Healthy for Children and Other Living Things?" It was created by Highland Park artist and print-maker Lorraine Schneider. How reassuring it is to know that iconic pieces created more than 40 years ago are considered part of a "burgeoning" arts scene. Sort of makes me feel like a kid again.

While it was open, I really loved the Southwest Museum, but then, the museum was only opened in 1914.

As you near the South Pas frontier on Monterey Road, you might notice an historical marker for the Hodel Residence and Tea House. Built in 1921, it is a Russian-Japanese-Swiss Chalet designed for George and Esther Hodel and their musical prodigy son, George Jr., by prominent Russian architect Alexander Zelenko. It was a hang out for many classical musicians, artists and exiled Russians of the time, including Sergei Rachmaninov.

The Judson Studios, makers of amazing fine glass, have only been in the area since 1893. I've seen their stained glass work at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The pieces communicate more than you think stained glass ever could. Judson Studios are still creating and installing beautiful glasswork everywhere from here to Dubai. All of it made right here in Highland Park.

William Lees Judson who built his studio on Avenue 66 south of York Blvd in 1893, along with some distinguished local architects who designed and built homes on Avenue 66 north of York, and Clyde Browne who built his Abbey San Encino on Arroyo Glen, are credited with forming the Southern California Arts and Crafts Movement.  

Then there are the Painters' Club and the California Art Club. The Painters' Club, organized in 1906,  disbanded a couple of years later, and some of its previous members reorganized themselves as the California Art Club in 1909. They had a small gallery in the art store of Ford, Smith, & Little Co., at  313 North Broadway. This club is still in existence today.

You will find El Alisal on Ave 43, also known as the Lummis House. Built by Charles Fletcher Lummis with his own hands between 1889 and 1910 from large rocks and telephone poles purchased from the Santa Fe Railroad, arroyo river rocks taken right out of the arroyo and other found materials. He popularized the arroyo rock-work style you still see all over the area.

Lummis was the first city editor of the Los Angeles Times and a real character.

He did a legendary amount of entertaining, through parties he called "noises," for local artists, actors and visiting writers, dignitaries and celebrities. Will Rogers, Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, Charles Russell and Carl Sandburg all came to visit at El Alisal for those parties/salons. Some even helped him build his house.

The parties often included a Spanish/Mexican/native American dinner, Spanish dancers, as well as music by a resident Andalusian troubadour. 

One cool detail about this house is that the fireplace  was carved by Gutzon Borglum, the creator of Mount Rushmore.

In those years, Highland Park was considered to be the first "art colony" of Los Angeles.

So I guess the presence of art and artists in our area is new; only about 120 years old or so.

Then there are the movies and books and music created in the arroyo, but more about that later.

Look here in the future for more about our past. I'll explore stuff that's not here anymore, or places how they used to be, or how a street or a corner or a building came to look as it does.

It takes a lot of people to record history, even more to make it. Let me know if you have additional details about the history of our corner of the world.