Solo Exhibition Proposal for:

Broadway, Los Angeles

My name is Teale Hatheway and I am a mixed media painter and a fifth generation Angeleno. I began researching and painting about Los Angeles in order to better understand my local heritage. Through the subject of urban environment, I am able to exemplify how we are culturally connected to each other despite socially imposed perceptions. Architecture is a significant building block of community because it tells stories of the evolution of a city through time – our aspirations, our needs and our values. The universal accessibility and observation of streets and building facades means that my audience, regardless of its background, has an intrinsic knowledge of place based on personal experiences. When exhibiting my work, I have found that these personal experiences spark candid conversations between people who otherwise, may never communicate. This realization has led me to regard my own work as not only a way to learn and to express myself, but also to educate and open dialogue between people (including myself) who are otherwise isolated from each other.

My works are not traditional cityscapes, but rather compositions made by combining select qualities or mental “snap-shots” of particular structures. I craft each painting to convey a spirit without being a literal representation of a place. The variety of materials I employ range from bleach to burning, acrylic to ink and charcoal to gold leaf. These materials and a variety of application techniques give me a broad range of ways to manipulate the surfaces of the coarse linen or smooth wood grounds. Some pieces receive large amounts of color while others do not. A black and white painting may look very elegant or very bleak, depending on how the materials are applied. Other paintings become more colorful and/or playfully glisten with gold leaf. Careful lighting brings my paintings to life as the layers appear to pull apart from each other creating an illusion of a third dimension.  I feel I am successful when each building successfully speaks for itself through my painted translation.

The body of work I am proposing for a solo exhibition is of the twelve historic theatres remaining on Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles. This theatre district is the largest collection of its kind on the National Register, possibly in the world, and speaks loudly to one of the most important industries of fledgling Los Angeles: cinema – pre-Hollywood. The propensity for Angelinos to “spread out” as opposed to demolish and replace buildings means that this collection of movie palaces and vaudeville houses has survived to see the present day popularity of conservation. These fanciful buildings have served Los Angeles communities for over a century as venues for high-end entertainment, war-time news reel houses, shelter for homeless men and women, adult film cinemas, churches and storefronts. Currently, as the city sets its sights on redevelopment of the district, these theatres are again in the spot light on issues such as economic viability, gentrification, adaptive-reuse and public transportation.

What follows is how I envision this appropriately dramatic exhibition:

The audience enters the (somewhat) dimly lit gallery to the left. As their eyes adjust, they see the series of twelve 3’x4’ paintings, hung left to right in the chronological order in which the theatres originally opened. The display will have a museum-like quality to it as each painting will be accompanied by wall labels outlining a brief history of each establishment. On the floor of the gallery will be small taped “x”s (spike marks in theatre lingo) which, when stood upon, will trigger a device (either through motion sensor or physical contact) which will bring up additional lighting on the painting in front of which the viewer stands, as well as the viewer, creating a staged event. This spectacle wraps around the room, at the end of which, the audience is greeted by a wall sized mural which relates all the theatres to each other geographically in an abstract cartographic representation of the Broadway district and its surroundings. (See image: Victory: Historic Bridges over the Los Angeles)

Four paintings from this series of twelve are completed. They are The Los Angeles, The Million Dollar, The Cameo and The Roxie Theatres. Four more paintings are in their beginning stages.