Week 9 Sonia Romero

I unfortunately was really sick last Friday and am sad that I missed the presentation that Daniela made of Sonia Romero but I have been interested in Sonia's work. The work I am most familiar with is her installation for MacArthur Park/ Westlake Metro station. I first came across this installation a few summers ago when I went to Levitt Pavilion in MacArthur park for the Kinky concert it was hosting. I live in Pasadena and I do not have a car so I almost never travel past Little Tokyo and Downtown (every once in a while I'll go to K-town to eat). What I love about taking the Metro Line is the different art installations at most of the stations. What I love about the installation piece that Sonia did for the MacArther Park and Westlake station is that she really captured most of the essence of the area. As soon as you walk out the station you see vendedores outside as you see represented above with the man with the tamales cart. You see the Westlake Theater across the street from the station, and you see people enjoying the park. This installation was created in 2010 so I do not know what the state of homelessness was then, but I know that it is something that one cannot miss now in Westlake and overall all of Los Angeles. Public artists are always asked to portray the city life but commissioned pieces often have limitations to what they can depict (activism wise) and for who.

I like her printmaking art as well. The technique of printmaking is very simplistic but as we learned in class it also allows for art to be more easily distributed and accessible (either portraying activist art pieces or folklore icons ). A printmake piece by Sonia I thought was cool is Mermaid (pictured above).