Caroline Gallacher, the Pankrateon @ Sierra Metro 2011

Phyllida Barlow

Michael Delucia

Sun Valley: Los Angeles

I have been visiting Los Angeles for the past 6 weeks and the biggest cultural shock for me has been the little evidence of any providence of shelters/hostels for the homeless, with every homeless person i have seen living out of a shopping trolley.  In observing these cultural differences , I was also drawn to the objects carried about by the homeless, since they have no ‘safe’ base to store their possessions most are driven to walking about the streets with their ‘mobile homes’ - shopping carts filled and adorned with an array of colourful plastics.  Some arranged with precise ordering, others more chaotic. Each offering a clear indication of their ‘owner’.

I do find this fascinating, how people are innately expressive in their relationship with materials.  How a person ties one material onto another or arranges in order of size, colour, etc all these decisions become part of an unconscious expressive activity, a language and its all around us.  

I am ultimately drawn to the city streets to look for these interactions as people tend to decorate and arrange less there and people engage with materials in a more functional and immediate way. Which to me gives the relics of these interactions more creative potency.

Urban parks can be vibrant mixing grounds and places for expression, or isolating spaces of oppression. Their success or failure depends on both their physical design and the networks of community members who use and support them. New York City is often celebrated for its distinct neighborhoods, but traditional civic organizations do not always reflect current neighborhood demographics, and input processes for park planning are often not designed with immigrant communities in mind.

http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/10/the-immigrants-and-parks-collaborative/