Spoke(n) Art Ride participants at the starting point for the November 2007 “We Lookin’ at Art” ride (photo: digablesoul).
This past weekend’s Spoke(n) Art Ride was a bit smaller than usual, but the spectrum of artistic expression on display during NELA Art’s Second Saturday was larger than ever.
Our first stop was at the confluence of the Los Angeles River and the Arroyo Seco. These two bodies of water meet near the intersection of San Fernando Road and Figueroa Street under the 5/110 interchange. We had to scramble down the cement walls of the Arroyo to get to the confluence, bikes in hand.
It was night time, so our view of the recently created murals, pieces, throw-ups, and tags was hindered by low light. I gave up trying to take night time pictures in the river bed, but if you’d like to see images of the work take a look at a series of posts about the “Meeting of Styles” that took place in early October on the LA Weekly’s Lurker blog.
Sadly, about 300 yards of murals were destroyed by the Los Angeles County Public Works Department “buffer” – a middle aged latin american man driving a white pickup truck full of grey paint. On my way to work, I see him making his bi-monthly trips up and down the Arroyo buffing (painting over) all the graffiti along the Arroyo Bike Path. Sometimes, his wife is driving the truck while he sprays.
The sculpture above was created during the course of the evening by Brian – one of our Bike Oven shop regulars. It has since been disassembled – the objects it was made out will one day ride out the door as parts on working bicycles.
Once we extracted ourselves from the Arroyo, it was on to several other galleries. We ended at the Bike Oven – for our first group show, featuring a whole host of pieces, from oil paintings to pottery. We even had some on-the-spot work created by a Bike Oven regular during the course of the evening (see photo above). The show will run until December – so stop in during shop hours to check it out. Our show next month will be collection of photographs of the Los Angeles area. If nothing else, it promises to be a fun opening night party and an interesting exhibition.
If you’d like to see more photos from the evening, take a look at digablesouls’ Flickr photoset for the evening.
- Spoke(n) Art Ride – We Lookin’ at Art [bikeoven.com]
- NELA Art’s Second Saturday [nelaart.org]
- digablesoul’s Flickr page [flickr.com]
- Lurker blog at LA Weekly [blogs.laweekly.com]
I’m so bummed that I missed last week S-n-A ride. It’s one of my fav rides! So I vicariously enjoyed it thru this site. I read the great article on the “Meeting of Styles” murals down in the arroyo. Man I got to ride the arroyo more often. If anyone sees stuff like that, Post Up for those of us riding different routes. I love that S-nA gives so many different venues exposuer, and now the Oven is doing shows too…. how kool is that! Maybe next month we can have a pre-ride that goes down the arroyo to see the murals in the light….
No worries, we’ll have something fun planned for next month. You have probably seen what remains of the show up on the walls of the Oven (big thanks to Ratt_Bones for curating this month’s show).
That “Meeting of the Styles” thing is pretty spectacular. I took a bunch of early morning photos two weekends ago – before the County painted over some of the murals.
It was a very cool moment to share that place with fellow cyclists. Hey – and no flat tires! That is soo lucky considering how much broken glass there is down in the Arroyo riverbed.