Festooned with LACMA rubble, 7th Ave Garden is L.A.'s most unlikely arts oasis

The enactment of L.A.-based conceptual creator David Horvitz has ne'er been casual to categorize. For the past 2 decades he’s worked crossed media, from video to sculpture to recovered materials. His latest project, 7th Ave Garden, besides defies casual categorization. On a vacant batch successful Arlington Heights, he’s created a tiny but verdant oasis that hosts exhibitions, poesy readings and performances.

On a formerly fallow batch disconnected Washington Boulevard wherever a location had burned down, Horvitz has worked with scenery architecture steadfast Terremoto to physique a concealed plot that besides acts arsenic a surviving ecological laboratory and creation project. Horvitz has a handshake woody with the spot owner, who gave him support to physique a plot with the cognition that the batch could beryllium developed oregon sold successful the future.

Undeterred by its imaginable ephemerality, Horvitz began readying the garden. When friends questioned the contented of planting a plot that whitethorn beryllium destroyed to marque mode for existent property development, Horvitz brushed concerns aside. “If I person [the garden] successful 5 years, this histrion volition beryllium 5 years older and it’ll beryllium 25 feet tall, right? But if I hesitate, past thing volition happen. It’s a precise hopeful act,” Horvitz says.

Terremoto elder task manager Kasey Toomey, who worked connected the garden, considers the site’s temporariness portion of its appeal. “It forces you to beryllium actively contiguous successful the moment. You person to bask it portion it’s there,” helium explains.

Reclaimed worldly from Los Angeles County Museum of Art gathering demolitions astatine 7th Ave Garden successful Arlington Heights.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

Work connected the plot started astatine the aforesaid clip arsenic demolition of Los Angeles County Museum of Art buildings for its caller Peter Zumthor-designed campus, creating an accidental to usage the rubble of the depository to make a caller artwork. Tipped disconnected by creation satellite connections, Horvitz collected factual detritus to service arsenic plot hardscape.

Other recovered materials see pieces of level factual pulled from Ballona Creek to marque a walkway, rubble from the tract of the erstwhile South Central Farm, and soil from the historically Black-owned oceanfront tract of Bruce’s Beach successful the South Bay.

Some of the shells peppered passim the plot travel from Horvitz’s beachcombing excursions, others are from oyster tasting parties held successful the garden, but astir were collected from section restaurants specified arsenic Michelin-starred Mexican seafood edifice Holbox successful South L.A.’s Mercado de Paloma. The shells service a dual intent — 1 that is functional, arsenic they decompose to amended the ungraded quality, and different formal, reflecting moonlight successful the evening.

Small bells and oyster shells from a Michelin-starred edifice astatine 7th Ave Garden.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

Horvitz is acutely alert the plot has a dual existence. “There are 2 gardens here,” helium explains. “There’s the plot that has plants and there’s the plot that’s my artwork. It has a antithetic mode to articulate and sermon it.”

Working with Terremoto’s team, Horvitz planted astir 100 autochthonal plants, including elderberry, sage, brittlebrush and manzanitas. The dense rains of the past fewer winters helped nurture scattered wildflower seeds, creating a dazzling burst of flowers successful the outpouring that attracts butterflies and bees to the vivid petals. Horvitz besides near immoderate of the archetypal inhabitants of the plot intact, including a roseate bush, juniper and 4 o’clocks. Plumeria cuttings from his grandmother’s location successful the vicinity were besides added to the plot.

Sophie Appel reads a poem from a March 30 publication motorboat lawsuit astatine 7th Ave Garden successful Los Angeles.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

The plan of the plot isn’t the effect of a ceremonial process and plan. Rather, it was built intuitively connected site. “It emerged alternatively than was pre-designed,” explains Terremoto main David Godshall. After purchasing the autochthonal plants, Horvitz and the squad astatine Terremoto hosted a works layout time guided mostly by instinct. “Our plan intent was to not marque a plan,” Godshall says.

A woody level and benches successful the halfway of the plot service arsenic a focal constituent for performances and events. Horvitz invites different friends, artists and curators to nutrient exhibits, events and readings and collaborate with him, taking a relaxed attack to programming: He intentionally keeps the garden’s programming comparatively casual and escaped form. There is nary authoritative website oregon newsletter oregon Instagram grip for the garden.

“What I don’t privation to person hap is this to go a full-time occupation and go professionalized,” Horvitz insists. Instead, Horvitz relies chiefly connected connection of rima for events, and volition sometimes station to his idiosyncratic Instagram a time oregon 2 earlier an event. He precocious hosted a March 30 publication motorboat enactment for “The World’s Largest Cherry Pie,” a postulation of poesy by his person Sophie Appel, that featured a harpist and beverage tasting. And connected Saturday astatine 4 p.m., determination volition beryllium a speechmaking of Cecilia Vicũna’s poesy astatine the garden.

Leng Bian plays the harp during a caller lawsuit astatine 7th Ave Garden successful Arlington Heights.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

While the plot is rooted successful section culture, built spot by spot from the flotsam and jetsam of Los Angeles locations and plants autochthonal to the ecology, the programming is much planetary successful approach. Interdisciplinary artists Martine Syms and Sophia Cleary partnered connected a poesy speechmaking successful the garden. L.A.-based nationalist arts nonprofit Active Cultures hosted a accepted Chinese beverage work and cooked mushrooms successful a crushed oven for a assemblage barbecue with artists Yasmine Ostendorf-Rodriguez and Shanhuan Manton. Dance institution Volta Collective has choreographed and performed successful the garden.

During this year’s Frieze Los Angeles creation just successful February, Horvitz partnered with French modern creation depository Frac Lorraine. The Frac Lorraine prominently features a plot arsenic a surviving artwork astatine its determination successful Metz, France. Horvitz and Fanny Gonella, manager of the Frac, collaborated connected an accumulation that included enactment from the Frac Lorraine postulation including Rosemary Mayer, Lotty Rosenfeld and Mario García Torres. The artwork is chiefly conceptual and performance, avoiding immoderate of the stickier issues of transport, retention and security astir depository loans entail.

A reproduction of a Corita Kent mural that reads, “Hope Arouses arsenic Nothing Else Can Arouse a Passion for the Possible” astatine 7th Ave Garden.

(Etienne Laurent/For The Times)

While the Frac inhabited the 7th Ave Garden temporarily, Horvitz has contributed a much imperishable artifact to the Frac’s postulation done his enactment “Fleur de Corbeau.” The piece, a frangipani subdivision from his grandmother’s erstwhile plot successful the neighborhood, volition beryllium planted successful the museum’s garden, crossing temporal and spatial boundaries betwixt the instauration and the artist.

The exhibit, titled “Conversations With Ghosts,” included a mural reproducing a item from a portion by Corita Kent presently successful the Frac Lorraine collection. The bold achromatic and yellowish painted Kent aphorism connected an adjacent wall, “Hope Arouses arsenic Nothing Else Can Arouse a Passion for the Possible,” inactive overlooks the garden, serving arsenic a trenchant ocular reminder of the garden’s purpose.