COLA grant art has a variety of flavors

Fruits of the city of Los Angeles' experiment in funding make up an exhibition of works that is all over the place.

By Hugh Hart
Special to The Times

May 22, 2006

What happens when you pay artists $10,000 each and invite them to spend it however they please?

Ten years ago, local officials found out when the city of Los Angeles' Department of Cultural Affairs began handing out so-called COLA grants to individual creative types. The only strings attached: In exchange for the money, each recipient would have to produce work the city could present in a public venue.

The latest fruits of this annual experiment in nonbureaucratic arts funding are on view in "C.O.L.A. 2006," an exhibition running through June 11 at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. It features art by this year's 15 COLA fellows in conjunction with a 10th anniversary retrospective highlighting drawings, paintings, photography, sculpture and mixed-media works from 60 previous grant recipients.

Joe Smoke, grants program director for the Departmentof Cultural Affairs, says, "From the very beginning, we let artists know that the program is wide open, even though they wouldbe producing new work for the city."

In contrast to funding models that require artists to affiliate their projects with educational or community groups, Smoke explains, "the artists don't submit a budget, they don't tell us how they'd use the funds. Many of them buy equipment, others travel so they can do research or take time off — it runs the gamut."

As do the artworks themselves.

Hirokazu Kosaka dominates the gallery entrance with "Charcoal Pit," a 16-foot-square platform piled with burned wood chips gathered from Los Angeles construction sites. Painter Margaret Garcia wields her brush to dramatic effect with a grouping of richly hued oil portraits. CalArts professor Jeffery Keedy's series "Ornamental Morphologies" transforms geometric graphic design elements into intricately detailed digital prints.

Elsewhere, melodrama from an earlier era unspools inside Janie Geiser's chamber of deconstructed cinema, "The Spider's Wheels." Inspired by heroines of the silent-movie era, the video installation projects clips from "The Perils of Pauline" against a perforated-aluminum suitcase-shaped contraption equipped with a pulley that lifts a panel into the air, then drops it with a startling clang every few minutes.

"As an experimental filmmaker," Geiser says, "I work with found footage, and I've always had an interest in early films. When I found this great loop of this woman crawling through a tunnel, that was a very powerful image for me. It's about women and their place in society, going forward, going backward, although that's kind of a simplification. I was interested in the power of these images to evoke a wide range of emotions."

For the extravagantly titled "Dream wars in the LA memesphere: From kelp forest to slat flats, the secret life of mematars revealed: Claudzilla and Carman in love," performance and installation artist Claudia Bucher cobbled together a cherry red race-car-like vehicle from recycled materials, using plastic water bottles to form monster tires. The piece commands attention as stand-alone sculpture and gains additional dimension when Bucher dons goggles and steps into the cockpit dressed as scuba-diving action hero Claudzilla.

Videographer Sam Easterson captures a down-to-earth P.O.V. in "Bird Cams," using video footage "shot" by a duck, a chick, a pheasant, a falcon, a partridge and a turkey that were all outfitted with tiny helmet-mounted cameras.

Organizers are loath to identify any thematic trends signaled by the show, although Municipal Art Gallery curator Scott Canty says, "With this exhibit, I think we've seen more technology in the works than in previous years. For example, it was very unusual to have a mechanical installation piece like Janie Geiser's. We have five or six pieces of video work this year, so that's a little different than in years past."

Besides working with gallery director Mark Steven Greenfield on the 2006 show, Canty assembled the gallery's "12 by 12" collection, focusing on previous COLA artists. Most of their works are presented in 12-inch-square frames.

"The artwork was specifically designed to be in a 12-by-12-inch frame so it would then be easier to travel to venues," Canty says. "We're in the process of trying to take this show to various destinations."

Smoke says, "We need to let the larger art world know that in Los Angeles, we value these diverse artists as treasures of our city. But we don't want people to think there's some sort of Los Angeles aesthetic or some tight set of issues that artists here are working with.

"Hopefully, when people walk away, they're not disappointed that there isn't some overwhelming statement being made. The program really is about honoring each individual artist. There has to be room for an artist to do something that is unrelated to what everyone else is doing."

'C.O.L.A. 2006'

Where: Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays, until 8 p.m. June 2

Ends: June 11

Price: $5; seniors and students, $3; children under 12 with adults, free. (No admission prices June 2.)

Contact: (323) 644-6269