Josie Huang covers Asian American communities for the LAist and KPCC newsroom.
Josie Huang takes us to the Arts District to check out a piece of street art disguised as a utility box. Walk through cities around the world and it's easy to spot the trend: utility boxes painted and transformed into public art to spiff up neighborhoods.
In downtown Los Angeles, street artist S.C. Mero has taken the idea of the utility box as art in a different direction with one she’s installed in the Arts District.At first glance, it looks like an ordinary electrical cabinet — gray, about the size of a refrigerator, with slotted vents. But instead of the usual fire-resistant metal, this one is made of wood with a faux concrete base.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.Inside, instead of a tangle of cables and cords, red crushed velvet covers the walls from top to bottom. A gilded clock and gold-framed pictures of two other electrical boxes adorn the tiny interior, inspired by one of downtown’s oldest and grandest movie palaces, the Los Angeles Theatre.“The first time I went into that theater, the feeling that I had, I wanted people to have a similar feeling when they opened this up,” she said. Like the theater, the box is meant to bring audiences together. Mero invites performers to step inside, and since its installation a few weeks ago, some 30 poets, magicians, puppeteers and clowns have reached out about using the space.“Maybe it's because of the scale of it, they feel like they can actually have a chance to get inside,” Mero said.The box theater sits on the 800 block of Traction Avenue, across the street from the historic American Hotel, an early hub for artists in the neighborhood.Easter first arrived in the neighborhood in the 1980s, a blues and rock musician who also professionally installed art. He said the Arts District has long been known for unconventional public art. Famously, in 1982, artist Dustin Shuler pinned a Cessna airplane to the side of the American Hotel with a 20-foot-long nail. “I was one of the people that was in the hotel that saw the room that the nail came down into, went through the brick wall, into the floor and stopped,” Easter recalls. Easter says Mero’s installations boldly continue that tradition of guerrilla street art in the neighborhood. After graduating from USC in 2011, she started to make sculptural works with overlooked street fixtures, exploring issues such as addiction and homelessness.Before the theater box, Mero installed an oversized mailbox at the same corner, towering over passersby, symbolizing a housing market that remains out of reach for many Angelenos. Elsewhere in the Arts District on Rose Street, she has installed a 13-foot-tall parking meter sculpture, commentary on the overwhelming nature of parking in the city.Last week, Mero asked Easter and other local artists to perform there. He played a blues song he wrote more than 40 years ago when he first moved to the Arts District.One performer, Mike Cuevas, discovered the theater by accident. An Uber driver, Cuevas was waiting for his next delivery order by the box theater as it was being prepped ahead of the night’s performance.“He's like, what's going on here? This looks so cool,” Mero said. “He said as he's driving throughout the city, in between his rides, he writes poetry.” Cuevas, who goes by the pen name Octane 543, left to make a delivery in East L.A., but he said “something in his heart” told him to return that evening. After watching others perform, he stepped up to the box and read his poetry in public for the first time, a piece about Latino pride.“Another generation will pass through,” he recited. “And they'll understand why we honor with proud delight, the continuous fight for the history of our brothers and sisters.”“I just felt something beautiful with her art,” Cuevas said. “It's time for me to start expressing myself. She inspired me to do exactly what she's doing, but through poetry.”Mero says the project has spoken to her personally, too. Growing up in Minnesota, she loved art as a child but later focused on playing lacrosse and hockey. At USC, she studied public relations. “Once I started getting so into art, everyone was kind of shocked,” Mero said. “That's why I really want to encourage people to go inside themselves and see what's there, because you never know.” Mero is hoping for a long run for the box theater. Its predecessor, the supersize mailbox, stayed up for five years, only toppled, she heard, after skateboarders accidentally ran into it. In the meantime, the small theater sits unassumingly on the sidewalk waiting for its next performer, its exterior starting to collect graffiti like any other utility box. You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our connected community. 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Inside this downtown L.A. utility box, there’s a tiny theaterJosie Huang covers Asian American communities for the LAist and KPCC newsroom.
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