Poets Cafe
w/Guest Host Lois P. Jones
Wednesday, January 28th at Noon
J. Michael Walker
In spring 2000, Los Angeles artist J Michael Walker noticed that in this city named for a saint (Nuestra Senora de los Angeles), there ranged dozens of streets named for saints. |
He received a small grant to portray Downtown's "saint-streets" in city bus shelters - essentially, talking about the streets on the streets. |
As he began researching the histories of the streets and the stories of the saints, interesting points of convergence revealed themselves -- |
San Julian Street, where the city's homeless and the clinics serving them gather, was named for a saint who wandered the earth before serving and sheltering other wanderers. |
Tiny, forlorn Santa Clara Street, southeast of Downtown, mirrors the saint's vow of poverty; and the sweatshops there complement her patronage of embroiderers. |
And so it went, street by street, saint by saint. |
After portraying this first cluster of saint-streets, J Michael set off across the City of the Angels, neighborhood by neighborhood, for eight years, until he had uncovered and revealed each one: |
All 103 of the streets named for saints in L.A. -- |
All the Saints of the City of the Angels |
1 November 2008 - 12 April 2009 |
“Walker sees angels everywhere, the divine in the ordinary, saints in survivors" - Sandra Cisneros |
"a Sam Spade of saints ... unearthing contemporary symbolism" - The New York Times |
"the best book about Los Angeles we wish we had thought of" - Sunset Magazine |
“a meditation on L.A.'s past, the ghosts that pass over this land" - Lynell George |
Poets Cafe
2nd & 4th Wednesdays at Noon and 12:30pm
