Bridge Project Featured in Gallery Art Show

Image courtesy of Artillery Magazine

During the past three years, four painters were granted access to the Gerald Desmond Bridge Replacement Project construction site to document the dynamic building of the bridge on location in oil, watercolor, charcoal, ink and pencil. The culmination of these painters’ work will be part of a fine art exhibit entitled “The Art of Infrastructure” that will open at the SoLA Contemporary Gallery in Los Angeles starting tomorrow.

Each of the 4 artists featured took a unique approach to capturing their work:

• Helen Cox’s drawings focus on the fleeting aspects of construction, such as scaffolding and variations in light. Her paintings record the temporary history of the building process, rather than the finished product.



• Sarah Arnold’s paintings depict the more industrial subject matter of the project in a simplified palette and color schemes.



• Kathryn Babcock’s highly textural paintings capture the build as a series of dramatically lit surfaces. Bold swaths of background color evoke the changing climate of the harbor, with sunsets, haze and cloud cover.



• Elizabeth Talbot’s impressionistic paintings spotlight objects that have been necessitated or displaced by its construction, against a background of sky and sea that record a moment in time, as well as a timeless composition of line and color.

The artists accumulated a significant collection of small to mid-sized paintings and drawings, as well as larger abstract architectural interpretations. The collection also includes photographs taken by Paul Trinidad and Nicholas J. Santa Anna Jr., two members of the bridge’s construction crew. The photos, taken from the top of the crane towers and throughout the site, look down through the clouds at the bridges below, at crew members working in mid-air or at the angles and geometry of the bridge fixtures. The images help to present the distinct viewpoint of the workers who helped make the bridge a reality.

The exhibit opens tomorrow at 11 a.m. at the SoLA Contemporary Gallery located at 3718 W Slauson Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90043. Visitation to the gallery will be 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, ending on January 30. Due to Covid guidelines, limited space will be available for walk-in visitors. To ensure access, please RSVP by emailing info@solacontemporary.org.