LAVA to present LA walk, talk and salon Sunday

On 3/28 LAVA flows in Downtown LA with cultural salon, artist talk and historic walking tour

WHAT: On Sunday, March 28, LAVA (The Los Angeles Visionaries Association) presents an afternoon of free cultural exploration in Downtown L.A. with the first monthly Sunday Salon gathering at Clifton's Cafeteria (noon-2pm, 648 South Broadway) including the 1pm display of Visionary Gene Sculatti's fantasy cityscape scroll drawings, followed by the debut of a walking tour series from Visionary Richard Schave of Esotouric, "The Flâneur & The City: Historic Core" (2:30 pm, LA Athletic Club, 7th & Olive, free, reservations required).

MORE INFO: http://www.lavatransforms.org

Launched one month ago by Richard Schave and Kim Cooper--the founding Director and Curator of the Downtown Art Walk non-profit--the creative consortium LAVA (The Los Angeles Visionaries Association) is already making a splash with a calendar packed with compelling, offbeat urban events and a growing list of Visionary contributors. And on Sunday, March 28, the new LAVA community comes together in the first monthly Sunday Salon at historic Clifton's Cafeteria in Downtown L.A., in what is sure to become one of the hottest (free) tickets for urban explorers seeking intelligent conversation, connection and inspiration not to mention Clifton's famous home cooking.

Each monthly LAVA Sunday Salon is an opportunity for one LAVA Visionary to shine, and on March 28 the spotlight falls on writer and artist GENE SCULATTI, who will be exhibiting and talking about his extraordinary body of outsider artwork for the first time anywhere. Since the age of 9, the untrained Sculatti (now 63) has been drawing and coloring imaginary cities on sheets of paper up to 60 yards long, the contents of the fantasy locales reflecting the changing interests of the artist as a child (schools and ball fields), teen (rock clubs and highways) and adult (bridges, vintage signage, historic downtown redevelopments). These scrolls are enormously engaging works, and the artist will be unfurling two of them from different periods to share details on his working methods and favorite sections and answer questions from the audience.

Artist Gene Sculatti says of his cityscapes, "They're full of streets and buildings, people, freeways and beaches, power plants and broad, palm-lined arterials. Because they were drawn over many years, they in effect comprise a rough chronological snapshot of what (mostly) Cali has looked like to me: sprawling suburban tracts announced by "Vets No Down!" billboards (60s), the mansard-roofs of fast-food franchises (70s), theater and concert venues whose marquees hype long gone films and idealized pop-music bills. Somehow, though, it is, like the weekly radio show I do, all sort of contemporaneous, the accretion of architecture, signage and sensibility all meant to bear the time signature of the eternal Now, which, I suppose, is a key part of the California Dream that informed my growing up and lifelong residence here."

Gene Sculatti will roll up his scrolls as the Salon concludes at 2pm. Then aselect group of LAVA guests who have made reservations will continue a fewblocks west to the historic Los Angeles Athletic Club, where LAVA founderand Esotouric bus adventures co-owner RICHARD SCHAVE will present the first in a series of free LAVA walking tours, "The Flâneur & The City: Historic Core." This exclusive LAVA tour series inspired, by the work of Water Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire, explores some of the more important issues revealed by the revitalization of Downtown, looking at how culture and history are treated as commodities to be packaged and promoted, while many fascinating aspects of urban life are forgotten. The tour begins on the roof of the Los Angeles Athletic Club for a general overview of the forces at play within the Historic Core and a basic orientation to the geography of the neighborhood, followed by a stroll along Broadway and Spring Streets to discuss the finer points of the impact of recent public policy on urban renewal, gentrification and positive public space on the fragile ecologies of these two important thoroughfares. To reserve space on Richard Schave's walking tour, visit
http://lavatransforms.org/flaneur310

ABOUT LAVA:
Through participation in LAVA, a select group of creative professionals come together to promote cultural programming that speaks to the urban experience while promoting positive public space. LAVA's creative partners share a love for L.A. and unique ideas for exploring it in their work. Formed by social historians RICHARD SCHAVE and KIM COOPER --proprietors of Esotouric bus adventures and until recently the Director and Curator of the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk -- LAVA brings together L.A.'s most visionary promoters, artists, writers and thinkers. The first crop of Visionaries in the growing curated community includes cultural chronicler ADRIENNE CREW, Cacophony Society co-founder AL RIDENOUR, poet and publisher ALEIDA RODRIGUEZ, back-to-nature pioneer ALICIA BAY LAUREL, former Metropolitan Museum curator ALLON SCHOENER, designer/mom of Chicken Boy AMYINOUYE, custom tours maven ANNE BLOCK, documentarian and radio producer ANTHEA RAYMOND, pop culture historian BECKY EBENKAMP, master puppeteer BOB BAKER, producer and promoter CHRISTIAN VOLTAIRE MEOLI, performance artist CRIMEBO THE CLOWN, the NEA's outgoing Director of Literature DAVID KIPEN, author and educator DOROTHY RANDALL GRAY, documentarian and exploitation film historian ELIJAH DRENNER, musician and performance artist FEATHERBEARD, pop critic and outsider artist GENE SCULATTI, no-longer-Teenage Glutster food blogger JAVIER CABRAL, horror film director JEREMY KASTEN, social historian JOAN RENNER, Musso & Frank co-owner JORDAN JONES, performanceartist JULES ROCHIELLE, curator and activist JULIE RICO, "Kristin's List" cultural chronicler KRISTIN BEDFORD, esoteric scholar and lecturer MAJAD'AOUST, poet and dancer MONA JEAN CEDAR, L.A. Historic Theater Foundation rep NICK MATONAK, music producer and impresario NO'A WINTER LAZERUS, musician OCTAVIUS, peace activist PAUL NUGENT of the Aetherius Society, historic ghost seeker RICHARD CARRADINE, filmmaker and preservationist ROSS LIPMAN, social networking mistress SHAWNA DAWSON, Warhold star and writer TERE TEREBA, metal artist TOM WALKER, and hat designer and multi-media artist YASMIN DIXON.

Applications from prospective LAVA members are being taken at
http://lavatransforms.org/apply

To learn more about LAVA, please visit
http://www.lavatransforms.org