Highland Park residents need not go to a museum to view Los Angeles' most valuable cultural artifacts, as Saturday's Folk Art Everywhere walking tour proved that the neighborhood is itself a living gallery exhibit.
During Saturday's Folk Art Everywhere tour through Highland Park, which is a project of the Los Angeles based Craft and Folk Art Museum, a group of about 30 people made stops at public art installations, business murals, historic businesses and artists' gathering spaces.
The stops included the , on Arroyo Glen, and , which tour goers learned was the first home of the University of Southern California's art school.
Leading the tour was Maryam Hosseinzadeh, a local arts historian who provided background on several public pieces around the neighborhood, including the Millard Sheets mural that adorns the front of and the free standing "Libraries Educate, Governments Make Cutbacks" mural by Luis Becerra behind the.
Also making appearances on the tour were a pair of artists responsible for some of Highland Park's most notable public murals. Rodolfo Kardona, the artist behind the mural at , spoke about how he attempts to marry his surrealistic influences with his commercial artwork and showed several examples of other works he had recently completed.
Raul Paulino Baltazar, who painted the business mural at on 6103 N. Figueroa, talked about his years of political activism in Highland Park and how his advocacy for civil rights influenced his work.
"We spawned a lot of muralism in this community," Baltazar said. "A lot of us started tapping into our indigenous roots, and going into ceremony. Others went more into politics. There was a lot of activism--it was a really important time."
