The foundation of a former carport notched into a Highland Park hillside has become a memorial and art piece dedicated to Mike Kelley, the internationally known conceptual artist who was found dead last week in his South Pasadena home after apparently committing suicide. During the 1990s, Kelley emerged on the Los Angeles art scene while working in a Highland Park studio at the corner of Figueroa Street and Annan Way, a short walk from the memorial now taking shape on the western tip of Tipton Way next to an empty lot. Here, Kelley’s admirers have been bringing candles, crocheted pieces and stuffed animals - items that frequently appeared in his early work – and scrawling messages on the white walls in response to a posting on Facebook. The memorial is based on two of Kelley’s artworks “More Love hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid” and “The Wages of Sin.”
* Update: The unofficial memorial site was created by a Highland Park man who had known Kelley for several years and wanted a place for Kelley’s close friends and others to express their sorrow and admiration. An hour after the title of the memorial piece was painted on the concrete wall, people began to bringing afghan blankets and other items for the shrine, said the Highland Park resident, who wanted to remain anonymous. He said:
I was aware that when a friend passes, especially someone as admired as Mike, it can really help to have a place to go to, something to do and a place to deposit the pain and to honor him. I also believe that ritual is very important, and that grieving can include a creative process.
Click on the link below for more details about the memorial.
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View Flipping Highland Park in a larger map
Homes for sale or in in escrow shown in blue; red markers indicate homes sold during the previous year.
Photo from Redfin
Home flippers have been busy buying and selling homes across Highland Park for sometime now, but some corners of the neighborhood are attracting more attention than others. Take for example Burwood and Strickland avenues east of Figueroa Street, where in the past year six homes within about a block of each other have all shown the signs of being bought and sold by investors (typically, house flippers buy, fix and sell a property within a year). Three of the homes, shown in red in the above map, sold within the past year while three (shown in blue) are currently on the market or in escrow. The newest fixed up flip to hit the market – an 858-square-foot bungalow at 6217 Burwood (pictured) – went up for sale this past week at an asking price of $419,000 – that is nearly $180,000 more than what the house sold for in November, according to Redfin. If this Highland Park block gets flipped out, where will investors head next?
The NELAart Micro-Grant Program continues February 26, 2012, at Anatomy Fitness 5215 York Blvd in Highland Park. Tickets go on sale at The Glass Studio 5052 York Blvd. LA 90042 on Feb. 10. Tickets for the January event sold out in 5 days.
The NELAart micro-grant events are based on similar programs all around the world, moving arts funding away from a top-down model to one where the community engages in funding the arts with direct, personal contact between donors and artists. Anyone can be an art patron.
Artists submit proposals to NELAart. A rotating panel chooses four proposals to present at the event. At the event there will be food, and conversation, and after the presentations, the audience choice is given the micro-grant of the admission dollars.
For further information or how to apply, write: nelaartmicrogrant@gmail.com
Bulletin Board is a place where Eastsiders can post announcements, milestones & messages.
Richard & Lisa Duardo | Photo by Martha Benedict
Several of the artists who were involved in a pioneering Chicano art movement in Highland Park during the 1970s attended Saturday night’s opening reception of Resurrected Histories: Voices from the Chicano Arts Collectives of Highland Park. With their hair now streaked with gray, the artists, friends and family members were part of an over-flow crowd that jammed Avenue 50 Studio in Highland Park to view the vintage photos, posters and artwork generated during that era. In the photo above, artist Richard Duardo, who founded Centro de Arte Publico, and his sister, Lisa Duardo, stand in front of a photo (bottom image) taken of them during the 1970s when Centro de Arte was one of three Highland Park artist collectives that turned the neighborhood into a center for young Chicano artists. Click on the link below for other photos from last night’s art opening.
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Photos by Martha Benedict
Highland Park residents on Tuesday night celebrated the restoration of another historic sign above Figueroa Street. The neon and opal glass Manning’s Coffee Store sign was relighted as part of a program to restore some of the vintage signage, including the green and white Highland Theatre sign, which was restored last year. Nicole Possert with the Highland Park Heritage Trust provided a bit more history on Manning’s and it’s now restored sign:
Manning’s Coffee was the precursor to today’s Starbucks. With a large west coast operation from 1908 – 1984, there were 20 Manning’s locations throughout the City. In 1936, Manning’s opened a Highland Park location in a newly constructed building yet moved this rooftop sign, constructed in 1933, from their location in Hollywood that was expanding and being renovated.
The rooftop sign has sat dark for decades after Manning’s closed but was never removed. This sign is the only Manning’s signs left standing in the City. In the 1990s, the sign was vandalized and most of the opal glass letters were stolen. Through a wonderful coincidence and the network and dedication of historic commercial sign advocates, like the Museum of Neon Art, the original opal glass letters were recovered and brought back to Highland Park. Amazingly, all 22 original glass letters will be cleaned and reinstalled in the original sign.
Inspired by the historic sign restoration, La Cazuelas restaurant, which now occupies the Manning’s storefront, had its neon, star-shaped sign redone in time for Tuesday’s relighting by the same team that worked on the Manning’s sign.
Related Story:
- Manning’s Coffee sign shines again. Patch
Police in Highland Park tonight are searching for a man with a gun near Avenue 50 and Monte Vista Street. Sgt. Wayne Guillary with the Northeast Division said the search began at about 9:30 p.m. after a gang member with a gun ran away from officers. A K-9 unit in addition to a police helicopter have been deployed during the search as officers seal off the area. Guillary said no shooting has taken place.
Photo from TheMLS/Redfin
The new year has just begun but this newly listed Highland Park home on Hub Street looks like it has been painted with Easter in mind, with a combination of bright-blue siding, yellow window frames and gray trim (pink probably would have been a bit much). The blue and yellow color scheme on the 1920 bungalow is a break with the sage green or putty colors favored by most Northeast house flippers. The colors might be different but the investors who purchased the thee-bedroom house are following a tried-and-true flipper formula by seeking a steep mark up in a relatively short period of time. After being sold for $260,000 last August, the approximately 1,200-square-foot home is now up for sale at $489,500, according to Redfin.
Photo from Tech MLS/Redfin
One of Highland Park’s tiniest streets – a barely block-long lane called Pickwick – is home to some of the neighborhood’s priciest real estate. A four-bedroom, Spanish-style Pickwick Street home on 1.6-acres sold in 2009 for $820,000, according to Redfin. It is the only single-family home in the 90042 Zip Code to have sold for more than $800,000 in the past three years, said Redfin. But now another Pickwick Street home owner is seeking to break that price barrier with an asking price of $899,000.
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Photo by Martha Benedict
The main classroom at La Casita Verde preschool at the base of Mount Washington is so noisy that sound levels exceed federal standards, preventing the school from qualifying for Head Start funds. The school, as The Eastsider reported back in September, raised funds to conduct a $5,000 acoustical analysis to study the problem. With that done, the school now needs to raise as much as$30,000 to make structural changes to cut down on the noise reverberating across the high-ceiling room, said Pat Griffith, chair of the Mount Washington Preschools, which operates La Casita Verde. “We do know we will not be able to reduce the noise sufficiently with a simple fix,” Griffith said in an email. “We think it will be a false ceiling to meet the Head Start criteria.”
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The towering volcano and the colorful birds and flowers that once covered a Highland Park bungalow are now gone, covered under a layer of gold paint. The images – inspired by the Nicaraguan homeland of the former occupants – were painted on the Marmion Way home less than a year ago as part of a $10,000 U.S.-Mexico art and community project. But, as The Eastsider reported in November, the house had been vandalized and left vacant after the property fell into foreclosure and is now up for sale.
The home’s sale price was cut on Tuesday to $185,000 from $189,000. This morning, Highland Park resident C. Waterton walked by the home and noticed the mural was gone in addition to other changes.
I walked by the controversial Marmion Way Mural/Animal Desertion House this morning and voila! The future of the mural is apparent. I live close by and pass regularly on my way to the Gold Line – also the shanty town shacks in the back have been torn down.
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