Conservation of Public Artworks
Why is conservation important?
One of the primary responsibilities of the Cultural Affairs Division is to manage the routine maintenance of the city’s own permanent, public art collection, which consists of over 100 artworks. Public artworks help to beautify public spaces and enrich many lives, and require frequent assessment, cleaning, and specialized treatment.
Photo of La Ballona by artist May Sun before restoration.
La Ballona, located at City Hall, received a complete conservation treatment that included the fiberglass repairs of the effigies (pictured), removal of calcium/lime efflorescence buildup from brick surfaces, and cleaning and replacing of missing metal hooks in the pool floor.
Photo of work being done on Hanging Garden by artist Ed Carpenter
Hanging Garden, installed at City Hall, received a full cleaning and polishing of the individual stained-glass pieces by chemical and soft abrasive means; the removal of rust oxidation throughout the monumental, stainless-steel frame was executed.
Photos of completed work on The Lion's Fountain (left) and A Moment in Time (right).
Artist Joshua Callaghan with one of the refreshed Almost Invisible Boxes.
This series of wrapped utility boxes is located throughout downtown plaza and surrounding area. Callaghan’s project, which was created in 2004 and has had updates over the years, is very popular and recognized internationally. Callaghan has attached his original designs to three newly identified utility boxes in addition to the original 14 ones.
Callaghan takes photographs of spaces and plants surrounding the utility boxes, edits the digital images in Photoshop, prints them on photographic vinyl, and then adheres the designs at life-size onto the boxes as wraps with the help of Salome Xochipiltecatl. The resulting containers produce all kinds of distortions of perspective, scale, and perception of space. The vinyl wraps, which are durable, graffiti-resistant, and can endure bad weather and direct sunlight up to 5 years, are on display until the next iteration is determined.
Joshua Callaghan said "It’s a real pleasure to be back here 20 years later. This is a very lively public space and it’s great to be a part of that. I’ve come here over the years and really examined the landscape and tried to intervene in it. It’s remarkable how much it’s changed. It becomes almost philosophical on some level in that you try to do something in the city and the city is just a creature; it’s alive. It immediately assimilates what you do and changes it.”
“It really does bring the fore how the dynamism of reality versus the image that’s captured," he said. "And just the churn and flux of change. So immediately when these go up, the landscape around them is changing.