All the Saints of the
City of the Angels
Local Artist J. Michael Walker Uncovers Cultural
History
Via City Streets
February 29 to September 7, 2008
“All the Saints” and the streets they occupy are less about romance and
naming than about passage and transformations. These streets are not boundaries but conduits.
—J. Michael Walker
Tangible history and unlikely associations are revealed in All the Saints of
the City of the Angels, opening February 29, 2008, at the Autry National Center.
Artist J. Michael Walker unlocks a treasure trove of voices amidst the saintly
named city streets of Los Angeles, where stories carry metaphorical qualities,
and examines connections between our history, heritage, and present-day
realities. Approximately 50 exquisitely detailed, large-scale paintings will be
set among precious objects and artifacts from the collections of the Museum of
the American West and Southwest Museum of the American Indian.
Each painting is meticulously composed and framed by architectural and
metaphorical elements borrowed freely from Spanish religious art. Walker’s
models—the workers, the homeless, the indigent, and others who often go unseen—give
the stories of Los Angeles streets back to their namesakes. English and Spanish
text panels; video clips; retablos and bultos (18th- and 19th-century devotional
objects from the Autry collection); an interactive area where visitors can
further explore the saints and contribute thoughts; and la capilla, an altar
where visitors can reflect and leave offerings to the saints, enhance museum
visitors’ experience as they connect with All the Saints.
Saints’ names have come to identify our local mountains, bays, forests,
and, over the past century, a good number of our city streets. Since 2000,
Walker has been researching every Los Angeles street named for a saint, delving
into city records, hagiographies, old photographs, maps, and history books. The
exhibition combines meticulous research with creative inspiration to depict both
historical and contemporary stories of community, conflict, education,
homelessness, poverty, sacred space, spirituality, urban development, violence,
and more.
Only a handful of L.A.’s saintly named streets date back to the Spanish or
Mexican eras. Ironically, it was after Anglo Easterners rolled into Southern
California on the tracks of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific Railroads,
consolidating their control of what had been a culturally Mexican pueblo, that
the push to retrieve, reconstruct, and retail the past inspired boosters and
developers to dust off the old Spanish saint names and affix them to their newly
minted roadways. Little did they imagine that the proud, defiant, thoughtful,
and melancholy saints would reveal their own unique version of Los Angeles
history.
A stunning large-format, heavily illustrated publication, All the Saints of
the City of the Angels: Seeking the Soul of L.A. on Its Streets, copublished by
the Autry National Center and Heyday Books, will be available for sale at the
Autry Museum Store.
About the Artist
J. Michael Walker is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work is grounded in his
decades-long immersion in the rural Mexican culture into which he married over
25 years ago. His affection for that world inspired his series of works on
Mexico’s patron saint, The Daily Life of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which has
been widely exhibited in the United States and in México.
Walker is the recipient of more than a dozen grants, artist residencies,
fellowships, and public art commissions, and he has participated in more than 95
exhibitions in the United States and México, including solo shows at Yale
University’s Institute of Sacred Music; the David Rockefeller Center for Latin
American Art at Harvard University; el Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares in
Mexico City; the National Museum of Catholic Art History, New York City; and the
Arkansas Arts Center. He is also a California Humanities Scholar.
A long-held curiosity about the saints and an abiding interest in local
history sparked the artist to research and portray the 103 Los Angeles streets
named for saints as a way to explore the city’s richly complex cultural
heritage. All the Saints of the City of the Angels comprises an ever-growing
collection of large-scale, mixed-media paintings which combine image and text to
portray the convergence of the story of the street and the story of its namesake
saint. The All the Saints of the City of the Angels project has received four
grants from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, as well as one
from the California Council for the Humanities.
Walker’s second book, The Angels’ Lament, published by Peregrino Press,
Los Angeles, is available direct from the author. His previous book, All the
Saints of the Western Valley of the City of the Angels, appeared in 2002 and is
now available in its second edition.
The artist-author resides in Los Angeles, California, with his wife, Mimí,
and son, Jacobo.
Autry National Center Mission Statement
The Autry National Center explores the experiences and perceptions of the
diverse people of the American West, connecting the past with the present to
inform our shared future.
Museum of the American West
The Museum of the American West explores the interwoven histories and myths of
the American West and its diverse peoples. The museum enhances our understanding
of the present by collecting, preserving, and interpreting objects and art,
making connections between people today and those who have shaped the past. It
is located in Griffith Park.
The Museum of the American West and Museum Store are open Tuesday through
Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. >From June 1 to August 31, Thursday hours are 10
a.m. to 8 .pm. Admission is free on the second Tuesday of every month and free
for veterans year-round.
Admission is $9 for adults, $5 for students and seniors 60+, $3 for
children 3–12, and free for Autry members, veterans, and children 2 and under.
