“At LA Commons, we have a saying: When culture leads, health and resilience follows,” said founder and executive director Karen Mack. “There’s an isolation crisis. Creating ways for people to connect more deeply to place is a powerful way to strengthen their connections. People feel better when they connect to other people, and arts and culture does that.”
“The Art of Belonging,” Exposition Park
Everyone has a story to tell, according to LA Commons, a nonprofit that helps diverse, generally low-income neighborhoods create dynamic works of public art that build community connection and empowerment.
“Our story is often reduced to the beach, Hollywood and Disneyland,” Mack said. “And there’s so much more to tell.” . . .
Kristen Carlson remembers Christmas and Halloween parties at The Brewery Artist Lofts. At least, she’s seen the photos: images of her as a 2-year-old in a bunny suit and assemblage artist John Schroeder as a bumblebee. It was the place she called home. It was also her family’s business since 1979, when Arnold Carlson and his sons bought the closed Pabst Blue Ribbon-Eastside Brewery property in Lincoln Heights.
Photo by: Steve Lucero
“I was born in 1983, a year after the creation of The Brewery Artist Lofts complex,” said Carlson, who is now the president and CEO of The Brewery Artist Lofts. “My mom’s whole pregnancy with me was climbing staircases and doing whatever across the property, so it’s been in my veins since day one.”
For more than 40 years, the 17-acre campus with 23 buildings, often called the world’s largest art complex, has hosted a twice-yearly Artwalk. The Fall 2026 Brewery Artwalk takes place on Nov. 7-8, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with one big change: Visitors 18 and older are asked to pay a $5 ticket fee, good for both days. Admission is free for kids 17 and under and residents of 90031, 90033 and 90023 with identification.
It is the night before Art for LA’s State of the Arts Summit at the San Gabriel Mission, and it is raining, which is rare in Los Angeles. It has Arts for LA CEO Gustavo Herrera a little concerned, but not enough to dampen his excitement about gathering together 400-plus attendees representing 250 arts and culture organizations: creative workers, independent artists, philanthropic and government leaders and community-based organizations that use arts as a vehicle for change.
Arts for LA is also celebrating its 20th anniversary — two decades of organizing artists and cultural groups across the county.
“Our community is stronger together,” said Herrera. “Bringing the community together has been a core function of Arts for LA for many years. It’s where our creative community in Los Angeles comes together to take stock on what’s happening in our field and to build power. . . .
Tina Koyama’s culture means a great deal to her. It is why she has made it her life’s work to revitalize traditional Japanese craft by establishing POJ Studio in Japan and the United States, specifically in California. As part of her brand’s mission, POJ Studio is launching its fall series of kintsugi workshops at Sonia Boyajian’s Studio in Los Angeles, adding to its ongoing workshops at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center (JACCC) in Little Tokyo and Intertrend in Long Beach.
It was Koyama’s mother who first exposed her to traditional crafts and kintsugi, the practice of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer and gold, making the cracks part of the object rather than hiding them.
“When I founded POJ Studio, I didn’t yet know what I wanted to sell,” said Koyama, who is based in Kyoto. “Then kintsugi came back to me. I kept seeing it in U.S. design media, where it was trending, yet there was very little education about what it truly was, how it connected to the traditional craft industry or the fact that the urushi lacquer industry, built on a natural material made from tree sap, was in steep decline.” . . .
For 40-something years, Robert Berman has been hosting live art auctions. It’s his main focus these days after a successful career as a primary art dealer. He loves the element of surprise, like when, in 2015, a work by Raymond Pettibon, the cover for Sonic Youth’s 1990 album “Goo” that was estimated at $20,000-$30,000, sold for $180,000.
“That particular drawing, because it’s on the cover of his books and on albums, is probably worth double or triple what the buyer paid for it back then,” said Berman, who runs Santa Monica Auctions out of his gallery. “That’s the fun for the auction house, and it’s the fun for the collectors also.”
Robert Berman Gallery’s fall auction will be held on Oct. 18 at noon at Bergamot Station Arts Center. Live, online, absentee and phone bidding are all available. . . .
A community art table sits in the center of Limitless, Help Group’s gallery and community art space that opened on Sept. 3 just two doors down from the newly reopened The Tasting Kitchen on Abbot Kinney. Original artwork created by neurodivergent students hangs on the walls, and in the the front corner, tote bags, water bottles and a few pieces of clothing adorned with art are for sale. Everything at Limitless is for sale, and a portion of the proceeds goes to support Help Group’s artists and arts programs.
Although Help Group chose to showcase works by neurodivergent students across its schools, the 85-year-old LA-based nonprofit is also dedicated to serving individuals with learning differences, ADHD and mental health challenges. “We help individuals and families build resilience, create hope, and unlock their limitless potential,” states its website.
Next to each painting inside Limitless is a statement from the artist about what art means to them, what this exhibition means to them or the significance of their painting. Guests will learn about who they are and their struggles in life. . . .
As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine nears its fifth year, it often takes a backseat to other pressing issues of the day. British-born, Kyiv-based photographer Mark Neville has been documenting the war since 2022, and he hopes to change that with his new exhibition and fundraising project, “Postcode Ukraine: Diary of a Volunteer.” His breathtaking, gut-wrenching images put the country’s people and crisis front and center and will be on view at Westwood Contemporary, The Wende Museum’s pop-up gallery, through Sept. 30.
‘Yalta’, Kyiv June 2023 (c) Mark Neville
While the exhibition presents Ukraine under siege, its main focus is on everyday acts of resilience, care and solidarity. Neville’s quote greets visitors on the front wall of the exhibition: “The longer I spend in Ukraine, the more I realize that war is not only measured by what it destroys. It is also measured by what people refuse to surrender.”
“It’s not just about being on the front line,” Neville said. “It’s about what it does to you psychologically. I want people to connect with these ordinary people. They will see versions of themselves in this exhibition. I think the audience will fall in love with these people, just as I have.”One of the photographs, “Artem, 13 years old, at home in Cherkasy region” June 2024, is of a 13-year-old boy who found a bullet in his garden and decided to turn it into a keychain. He went to his shed, got an ax and sawed into the bullet. It exploded, and he lost three fingers and his eyesight in one eye. . . .
Some people were born to make a certain something at a specific time in a particular place. This is true of Ian Joseph Jackson and his mural, “La Ola de Ka-yama” (“The Wave of Ka-yama”), which resides on a wall inside Edgemar Restaurant + Lounge in Santa Monica’s Frank Gehry-designed Edgemar complex.
The mural depicts mountain lion P-22 of the Santa Monica Mountains, whose story inspired conversations about the local Gabrieleño/Tongva Indigenous people and environmental issues related to native ecosystems, land stewardship and urban development. P-22’s death was the catalyst for building the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing over the U.S. 101 Hollywood/Ventura Freeway, which will link the Santa Monica Mountains to the Simi Hills and protect wildlife, flora and fauna. The 210-foot crossing is set to be the largest in the world when it opens on Dec. 2, 2026.
When Jackson first started painting, he did not intend to illustrate P-22. The wall where his mural lives is about 12 feet tall, and up until that point, he had only worked on 4- to 5-foot canvases. He asked: What was this wall seeking to express in this place at this time — when LA was going through a transformation, when he was going through a transformation? . . .
This past May, Paper Work’s booth at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair at the ArtCenter College of Design had a rather large presence. The art and publications company was one of the advertising sponsors of the fair, and one of its featured photographers, Estevan Oriol, who directed and appeared in the 2020 Netflix documentary “LA Originals,” about his and Mister Cartoon’s creative lives, was awarded a Certificate of Recognition by the city of Los Angeles at City Hall that same weekend.
“We had a massive art display of the photography of all the artists that we published that year,” explained Paper Work founder Michael Krim, “and it was like the big elephant in the room.”
By Krim’s design, Paper Work presents artists with a multidisciplinary platform to express their vision in both tangible and event-/gallery-curated formats. . . .
Lenny Gerard knows firsthand about disability. He had been volunteering as an art teacher at the Braille Institute for a few years when he had a freak accident that paralyzed him from the neck down. Once he recovered just enough, he had an epiphany to leave the corporate world and devote himself full time to being an artist and educator. This month, 30 of his student artists ages 18 to 82 will show 50 of their artworks in a group exhibition titled “Through My Eyes.”
“I had my accident three years ago, and I had three surgeries,” explained Gerard. “I had to relearn how to walk after each one. But I would go to the Braille Institute on a walker because I love it so much. I went back as soon as I could — the first thing I wanted to do was go back.”
Gerard teaches Abstract Expressionism, a class he developed, and printmaking to the blind and visually impaired. His goal for the exhibition was to highlight their voices rather than their disabilities. He has even pioneered a technique for his students: They put raised objects in the printing press to emboss paper, so students can feel what they’ve done. . . .
