August 7, 2015
The [Intern]al Perspective: Exploring the Arts District
One of the many murals located in the Arts District. This one is found on the side of the American Hotel.
On July 30th, 2015, Cornerstone played host to the second Learning Community event that is part of our Los Angeles County Arts Commission internship. If you don’t recall, our Learning Community Groups consist of interns from other performing arts venues that work in and around where your internship takes place and altogether we are supervised by a Learning Community Group Leader. Ours happens to be Ilia Lopez, the Director of Development here at Cornerstone Theater Company.
For this event, Ilia organized a tour of the Arts District for us through the organization Cartwheel Art, who specializes in offering tours to groups who wish to learn more about the history and future development of the Arts District, as well as getting to know the social scene of the area. The founder of Cartwheel Art, Cindy Schwarzstein, and co-host, Steve Grody served as our guides for the first leg of our tour. Beginning just around the corner from Cornerstone, the tour was introduced with a history lesson of the UTI Crew who play a huge role in the development of street art in Los Angeles. We had the opportunity to admire the art that was created by members of UTI and were taught how to identify artists’ work by Steve. From there, we then moved on to the studio of sculpture artist David Hollen where we were able to examine his work and hear what inspires him and how he goes about creating pieces.
Steve Grody & Cindy Schwarzstein talk about the history and development of the Arts District community.
David Hollen talks about his artwork and his personal journey of living in the Arts District.
After the first half of our tour, we returned to Cornerstone to enjoy lunch together, along with Cornerstone’s staff members. Our Associate Artistic Director Daniel Penilla gave a brief presentation on Cornerstone’s mission and work and allowed the interns to ask any questions they may have had about community-based work. This was followed by an engagement activity called Cultural Mapping. There were two parts to this exercise: the first was an exercise called Four Corners in which the moderator would present us with four different, but related traits and we would stick to that corresponding corner and discuss amongst ourselves the common thread as to why that smaller group chose that particular trait. This activity the transitioned to another exercise described as Spectrum. We were instructed to create a line that represented the spectrum of how we individually believed about how art is used. On one end, it was “Making art for the sake of making art” and on the other end, “Using art for social justice”. We each had to determine where we stood in that spectrum and once the line was in place we went through and heard from a few folks about their decision to stand in their place of the line. I placed myself as close to the middle of the spectrum as I could because I feel that I personally like to maintain a balance of the two ideas.
I think that whenever any artist begins discovering their passion it initially begins as sort of a self-fulfilling experience; we perform, paint, or play that instrument because we enjoy it and love what we can create with it for ourselves and for other people to admire. However, I also strongly believe that along the way, as an artist develops in their passion and learns more about it and how it can be used, then there is a taste to wanting to use those natural gifts of creation and performance to benefit a cause. For me, that has definitely taken place in my life while being in college and while I still always enjoy the creation of a performance because it makes me feel elated, I have now developed a stronger sense of purpose of how that piece can be used to bring social awareness to the audience.
Cornerstone’s Associate Artistic Director Daniel Penilla gives a brief presentation on the company to the interns over lunch.
Daniel leads the interns in a Cultural Mapping exercise by having them organize themselves in a spectrum. Far left is “Art for social justice” and far right is “Art for art’s sake”.
Following this activity, we continued our tour of the Arts District with a visit to Art Share L.A., a sanctuary for the arts. Art Share is not only an art gallery, it also contains a performance space, artist work rooms, rehearsal rooms, and affordable residencies for artists. A diverse amount of classes are also offered to the public. After a tour of the space, we then met up with Jonathan Jerald who is the secretary of LADADSpace and the new director of the Arts District Center for the Arts, opening in January 2016. He is also connected to Cornerstone having performed in two productions, one being our most recent show California: The Tempest. He provided us with another lesson of the history of the Arts District and how it became such a vibrant part of Downtown Los Angeles. Once the tour was complete, we ended the day back at Cornerstone and said our goodbyes. It was sort of a bittersweet moment because we all knew this would probably the last time we would see each other for a while. Internships are ending soon and eventually people will be heading back to school or moving on to their next project.
Muralist Damon Martin poses with the group in front of one of the murals he has painted in the Arts District.
Ultimately, I have learned to value the importance of establishing yourself with other artists and sharing each other’s visions with one another. My time with Cornerstone and the opportunities provided by the LA County Arts Commission have shown me what community really means. We are united by what separates us, and it is a beautiful thing to witness when we realize that. If you have the chance to become an intern through this program, I urge you to not take your Learning Community Group for granted. You could possibly be working with them someday.
Written by Joseph Reyes, Cornerstone’s Communications Intern. Joseph is studying Theatre Arts and Business Management at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, CA. This internship is made possible by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission Summer Internship Program.
