Ken Gonzales-Day

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Ken Gonzales-Day
California Landscape, Variations 1 through 4
2007

Project Area: Vermont/Manchester
Project: Los Angeles County Administration Building
Project Location: 8300 S, Vermont Avenue
Project Type: Developer & LA County Initiated

Description:

Images of idyllic California landscapes by photographer Ken Gonzales-Day scaled to the size of large movie screens are installed at the Los Angeles County Administrative Building, located on Vermont Avenue between 83rd and 84th Streets in South Los Angeles.

The colorful art work entitled California Landscapes, Variations 1 through 4 were completed as Gonzales-Day’s first public art commission. The ceramic-tiled murals are on both interior and exterior walls of the building. The largest of these photographic murals—a kaleidoscopic arrangement of oak trees—is 54-feet high, 15-feet wide and appears on the parking structure adjacent to an open-air plaza and the office building.

Together with the art mural installations, the Los Angeles County Administrative Building is a catalyst for urban renewal efforts in south central Los Angeles.

Artist Profile

Biographical Ken Gonzales-Day received his MFA from UC Irvine, and his MA in Art History from Hunter College (C.U.N.Y.). He was a fellow in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program. Other fellowships include the Rockefeller Foundation Study and Conference Center in Bellagio (Italy), and the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, where Gonzales-Day was a Senior Fellow in Latino Studies. His book, Lynching in the West: 1850-1935 was published by Duke University Press in 2006. Gonzales-Day lives and works in Los Angeles and is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Art at Scripps College.