Bird's-Eye View

Every so often, Not A Cornfield's still image and motion video documentarians are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to take a helicopter ride up above the art project grounds. The resulting images they've produced are, for example, here, here, here and here.

This morning, Friday, December 16, the Not A Cornfield blog accompanied the staff shooters.

The immediate conclusion: For all the relevant earthbound talk on the project site about the intimate geographic, historic, environmental, and other overlaps between this 32-acre space and the nearby transportation systems, tributaries, populations, landmarks and edifices, it turns out there's nothing quite like fifteen-hundred feet of altitude to truly get across this cross-boundaried perspective.

Circling above the project site, gently sloping over Mt. Washington, navigating above One Wilshire Place and sibling downtown skyscrapers, the LA River's much-discussed relevance to The Cornfield becomes at once apparent.

Now channeled with cement, the stark straight stretch of slightly-flowing water indeed lives up to its straightjacked reputation. But the river's eastward proximity to the Not A Cornfield project grounds, and the importance of this agricultural flatland, and of the Zanja Madre jumps out at a ground-gazer from on high, as surrounding bridges, buildings, and utility towers optically recess into more earthly terrain.

Not A Cornfield's synchronicity with Olvera Street -- the contemporary name of the earliest non-native settlement in El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles -- is similarly evident. Same goes for Dodger Stadium, perched hill-high and to the west, a ballpark that replaced a neighborhood. Even nearby box cars, stored east of the river and from the copter appearing strewn like candy-colored, morning after New Year's Eve confetti, recall The Cornfield's industrial age railyard roots.

For photos from today's helicopter ride, please see the larger photos on this page.

Not A Cornfield photos by Steve Rowell