Benches, Water Fountain, Bamboo Entrance Gates Now In Place

As crowds grow at Not A Cornfield, particularly during Friday Nights @ Not A Cornfield and Sundays @ Not A Cornfield activities, objects that are one part form and an equal part function have been added to the 32-acre art project's grounds. They include: wooden benches, placed around the one-mile walking path to encourage contemplation of particularly scenic vistas; a water fountain with dog bowl; and most noticeably, large bamboo entrance gates standing at both the project's north and south access points.

August 26 @ 7:30pm - Friday Nights @ Not A Cornfield

Open Mic / Open Screen
"From Chinatown to China:
The Chinese American Experience"

August 28, 2005 - Sundays @ Not A Cornfield

Lauren Bon and Not A Cornfield cordially invite you to:
Sundays @ Not A Cornfield
Drum Circle + Corn Planting + Oral History Booth + Story Series

SUNDAY AUGUST 28 @ 3-7pm

Growing in the historic center of Los Angeles, the Not Cornfield project transforms an industrial brownfield site into a cornfield for one agricultural cycle. Now the Los Angeles Historic State Park, the site popularly known as 'The Cornfield' had remained derelict for more than a decade. The project serves as a potent metaphor that provides a focus for reflection and action in a city unclear about the location of its energetic and historic center.

"Sundays @ Not A Cornfield" brings people together into a hand-planted "eye" within the mechanically planted cornfield in order to work, talk and make music together, thereby bringing a communal energy to the project and allowing the handmade versus mechanically-made edge to hum.

*Interpretive Tours of the 32-acre art project available at 3pm.
*Drum Circle with artist & drummer Michael McCall from 4-6pm. (Bring your own drum or other instrument.)
*Corn Planting with gardener Jaime Lopez from 4-6pm.
*Oral History Booth with RadioSonideros from 4-6pm.
*Story Series, "From Downtown to Highland Park" with R.S Armstrong, Bob Steinberg, and Hilary Kaplan at 6pm.

Not a Cornfield artist, Lauren Bon resides in Los Angeles and holds a Masters of Architecture degree from MIT and a BA from Princeton. Ms. Bon is a trustee of the Annenberg Foundation and President of Not A Cornfield, LLC. Her recent urban, public and land art projects in the U.S., Hong Kong, Belfast and Northern Ireland, as well as her role as a trustee, make her uniquely poised to build the capacity of the Foundation in the area of site based philanthropy, serving communities through education, civic, health, artistic initiatives and programs. Not a Cornfield art project is being developed through a grant by Annenberg Foundation.

R.S. Armstrong is a poet and artist who lives and works in downtown Los Angeles. She studied poetry at Yale University, Middlebury College, and Bennington College. Her work has recently been published in The Diagram and the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Bob Steinberg was born in Rochester, NY in 1928 and moved to Highland Park in 1945, where he graduated from Franklin High. He has practiced law for the past 50 plus years with the firm of Rose, Klein & Marias representing injured workers involved in worksite accidents. The firm's principal office has always been in downtown LA. Bob and his wife Lenny have three daughters and six grandchildren.

Hilary Kaplan, Story Series curator and LA native, founded and directs "Gathering at the River," the LA River oral history project. Her work as a writer, editor, and oral historian has appeared in the Los Angeles Public Library's Central Library, Pond Gallery, Fourteen Hills, The Next American City, and select department stores. She is Kaufmann Humanities Scholar at San Francisco State University, where she is an MFA candidate in poetry.

Not A Cornfield
1201 North Spring Street
Phone: 323.226.1158
Always Free to the Public, Handicapped Accessible
Free Parking at South and North Gates

DIRECTIONS (NORTH GATE): From the intersection of North Spring and College (Gold Line - Chinatown stop) take North Spring north 3 blocks to the northern end of the project site. The entrance is on the left, co-located at 1799 Baker Street.

Hand-Planted Corn Tasseling

The first plants in the Not A Cornfield crop have begun to tassel. These plants are located in the art project’s hand-planted area, near the “eye.”

Photo by Jamie Lopez

Corn Hip-High in Parts of North End

Growth of the machine-planted corn isn’t perfectly even throughout Not A Cornfield’s 25-acres of the crop that many call “maize,” but at least in one particularly fast-growing area of the site’s northwest end, the corn has already reached hip-high on a six-footer’s frame. Stop by and measure yourself against the plant’s progress.

Busy Past Weekend at Not A Cornfield

Special guest speakers, active and engaged members of the public, and the usual bevy of serendipitous moments were all found in abundance this past weekend at Not A Cornfield.

On the evening of August 19, 2005, the “Friday Nights @ Not A Cornfield” series debuted with a happening that began with a casual walk to the fire pit-heated outdoor amplitheater and project “eye” for greetings and refreshments. That was followed by a return stroll to the South End stage. There, in from England, visiting artists and scholars Anselm Krut and Felicity Powell presented a witty, sophisticated tag-team look at the art history of “Corn in European Painting.”

The pair projected images by and discussed a range of artists including Pieter Bruegel the Elder (see: “The Harvester”), Thomas Gainsborough, Giovanni Bellini and Francisco de Goya. Topics included madness, fertility, mythology, agricultural history, nomenclature, labor issues, and more. Not A Cornfield artist Lauren Bon and writer / curator Janet Owen joined the conversation, as did audience members.

During the evening, a large group of bicycle riders pulled up at the Not A Cornfield South Gate entrance. They turned out to be affiliated with the bicylist group Critical Mass, out for a moonlit ride. The peddlers pulled in and mingled with the other guests.

Early Saturday, “Morning, A Dance Performance at Not A Cornfield was scheduled to have occurred.


Sunday afternoon, August 21, 2005, engaments resumed. The weekly “Sundays @ Not A Cornfield” mix of Drum Circle + Corn Planting + Oral History Booth were augmented by the second installation of the 6pm Story Series. Longtime Dog Town resident and "Con Safos" literary jounral founder Ralph Lopez-Urbina appeared with Pitzer College educator and “Wallbangin’” author Susan A. Phillips to discuss the history of graffiti and the L.A. River, as well as share other local memories and anecdotes.

Lopez-Urbina, known by the nom-du-tagging, “Rafas,” recollected the cottontails and river marshes that predated the concrete channeling of the river that runs –- or ran -- through his backyard. Rafas also noted the straightforward origins of the Dog Town moniker –- a city dog pound was located nearby -- and he talked about more mischievous matters, such as tagging bridge walls with railway grease and the rite of passage of leaping 30-feet down from a bridge onto a moving train.