Above, in red, Melinda Ann Farrell with Kin program artists
Center for the Arts Eagle Rock (CFAER) is a multidisciplinary arts organization location in a classic Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival building with a Northeast-LA community focus. Executive director Melinda Ann Farrell calls the building itself “a community treasure,” but much the same could be said about the organization itself.
“Our mission is to provide access to transformative art experiences and arts education. We provide free after-school arts programs throughout Northeast Los Andeles Title 1 middle and elementary schools with our after-school Imagine Studio. As a part of that program, we hold Little Masters, a salon-style exhibition in December every year in our dedicated gallery here. The kids get to see their artwork in a professional setting and share their journey of creativity with their family.”
Farrell says the exhibition was an idea she had to make “the connection between classroom and gallery” to empower the children, and contribute to their confidence. She terms the exhibition “beautiful to see.”
Little Masters is one of seven art exhibitions CFAER holds annually, along with multiple concerts, film screenings, and all-ages, multi-disciplinary arts workshops ranging from painting to textile designs, writing graphic novels, creature making, sculpting, and music. “Above all, we want to make sure our programming is accessible to everyone,” Farrell asserts.
The center also hosts the 30-week Cal Arts Animation Program, offering free animation lessons; and 10-week comic arts workshops to help young people develop their own comic book characters, the culmination of which is an actual comic book.
Above, Nica Aquino
Then there’s Balay/Bahay, “a year-long project for which we received a grant from the California Arts Council and a Creative California Communities grant. It’s an outgrowth of an exhibition we curated by the photographic artist Nica Aquino. Basically, we wanted to create a place where the Phillipine community could gather. There is a large cross-section of people here looking for that type of cultural programming,” she explains.
The original exhibition featured percussionist Gingee. “After the exhibition, we were hoping to do monthly events like this, and now with Balay/Bahay, we’re doing them for a year.”
Coming up in November will be Other Space, featuring musical performance, food, music and art, culminating in a lecture or workshop. The multi-disciplinary approach extends beyond Balay/Bahay to all aspects of CFAER’s programming. This weekend, CFAER is creating an art care package workshop at Eagle Rock Plaza. “We try to bring our programming out in the community as well as in our location.”
Farrell says she’s extremely proud of a community mural-making workshop series with Ismael de Anda III in English and Spanish, a collaborative project in which participants were given a 28” x 28” panel to paint together. The panels were then compiled into a large mural at Eagle Rock High School. Student participants collaborated with professional artists and worked to the prompts of “where is your home, who is your family?” The project was completed earlier this year.
“Our philosophy is to provide arts experiences. When we do an exhibition, there is always a companion workshop or concert, there is always thematic programming that goes with the exhibition, so people can have a richer experience that brings the community together. There is a lot of cultural discovery and collaboration that comes from that,” Farrell relates.
Her background in filmmaking is a part of this process for her. “I have always loved bringing people together, seeing what ideas work and come out of that. Filmmaking is such a collaborative process. I feel very grateful to be the director of this organization, because wonderful things happen with unexpected parings of people.” She feels that her background has helped her to communicate “the story of all these talented artists and all these people in the community.” Her focus has also led to including more filmmaking at CFAER, from showing a documentary on what was going on in Northeast LA to her support of Jorge Alarcon-swaby who provides photography of center events.
Farrell has brought together a total of 14 grants for CFAER recently, including those for Balay/Bahay. Others include a general operating grant from the Annenberg Foundation; a National Workshop of the Arts grant for the community ink program building on Comics of Color; and a grant from the Ahmanson Foundation for documentary camera equipment which Farrell describes as “near and dear to my heart.” There is also an exhibition grant from the Los Angeles Arts Commission and the DCA for community arts programs; an international concert grant that allows CFAER to bring in an act from New Zealand; and the Dwight Stuart Youth Fund Grant, which provided a grant youth arts programming for Imagine Studio. Then, there is the grant for Current: LA Food, LA’s public art triennial.
According to the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Fairs general manager Danielle Brazell, “There are over 75 commissioned events during the month-long triennial taking place across the city for residents and visitors.” The events begin October 5th; artists and community organizations were paired together to encourage conversations and provide engaging experiences in each location, and encourage audiences to think about food and issues surrounding food in new ways through art.
Farrell describes CFAER’s Current: LA Food interaction as taking place November 3rd in the Exhibition Park Rose Garden. “We’re turning it into a site for culinary and artistic discovery. People will discover all these wonderful tableaus we set up. We’re doing an enchanted picnic with model Tara Zorthian. Sascha Stannard, a fantastic whimsical painter, is leading a painting and drawing scenario with a wonderful scavenger hunt tableau experience in the gazebo, themed to Alice in Wonderland.”
Also on tap: Nica Aquino will lead a vegetable print-making workshop, vintage cookbooks will be used to reveal reveal poems in a workshop from the Los Angeles Poet Society, and a community recipe book will also be produced. “We also have an artisan chocolate maker, Zoila Newton, making Zapotec-heritage chocolate recipes from cacao,” Farrell notes, adding “I am the curator of our Current: LA project, and I’m really proud of the CFAER programming for the event. I’m really proud of all the programming CFAER is creating.”
- Genie Davis; photos provided by CFAER