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By Makeda Easter

Artist Juan Capistrán was a teenager on an afternoon bus ride from Venice to his home in South Los Angeles when the 1992 riots began. Even though Capistrán noticed passengers were increasingly upset the further east and south his bus traveled, it wasn’t until he was nearly home that he learned a jury had acquitted four police officers in the beating of Rodney King.

Seven years after the breakup of Sonic Youth, the godmother of grunge has carved out the unconventional career in music and visual art she always hoped for.

Winners of the 2x8 Exhibit Design Competition, a student awards program by the AIA Los Angeles chapter, have been announced with Sally Park 's "Collage City" taking first place. 2x8 is a competition, exhibition, and scholarship fund for architecture students at institutions of higher education throughout California. Academic institutions select two projects by student teams, which is then considered by a jury of architects and designers.

Silas Munro is a designer, educator, and writer based in Los Angeles. He’s currently an Assistant Professor in Communication Arts and MFA in Graphic Design at Otis College of Art and Design, Advisor, Chair Emeritus in the MFA program in Graphic Design at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and his work and writing has been published in many forms around the world.

At the summit of a steep incline in Elysian Heights, past an unassuming gate, down a slightly dangerous walkway, you’ll find a concrete landing that serves as the plein-air home studio of Gajin Fujita.

At the art-world Oscars, Norm Laich would be a perennial shoo-in for best supporting role. The Los Angeles–based artist, sign painter, and fabricator has been instrumental in producing the iconic works of a great number of big-name leads, including Kay Rosen, Stephen Prina, Mike Kelley, and Lawrence Weiner.

It’s an uncharacteristically cool, rainy afternoon when I climb the steps to Judie Bamber’s home and studio in a neighborhood off Sunset. As I enter her studio—a surprisingly spare and self-contained space—a rectangle of golden light seems to float on an easel set up at the rear of the room, seemingly appropriated from some magic hour we’re bound not to see on that particular day. As I move further into the room, I see that it’s a work in progress—with portions of the painting covered around this rectangle, which now discloses an identifiable section of human anatomy.

Fashion school students around the world are preparing to enter an industry that's rapidly changing. There are courses to pass, design prompts to ace, runway shows to prep for and professional connections to make. In our series, "Fashion School Diaries," those students give us a firsthand look into their day-to-day lives. Here, we meet Jinny Song, an Otis College of Art and Design class of 2018 fashion student, ahead of her student show.

LOS ANGELES — The artist Alison Saar set a goal for herself long ago: to clearly communicate her ideas and emotions through the power of form. Her sculptures have their own personal vocabulary that speaks in a direct language about history, race, and mythology. If her sculptures are the melodies that capture one’s soul, the narratives behind them are the lyrics.

Fay Ray (BFA '02) often says her work is about the construction of identity, which is something a lot of artists say. But in “I AM THE HOUSE” Ray takes that premise in sublime new directions, in a series of sculptures and photo-based works that through formal materials, actions and techniques of their processes, and narrative aspects of their content, do construct identity, right before your eyes.