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Episode 4 - Public Art: Transcript

Speaker: Good morning and welcome to the Richard J. Riordan Central Library. The library is now open.

Patron: I like the paintings in the rotunda.Do you know who painted them?

Sheridan: Hello everyone, this is Sheridan J. Cazarez, a librarian in the Exploration and Creativity Department of the Los Angeles Public Library, back with another episode of Past Due : 100 years of Central Library, a podcast commemorating the Central Library Centennial. To celebrate the old girl, we'll put on a smorgasbord of events, a special reading challenge, and creating tons of original content for Angelenos to celebrate their beloved Central Library. To learn more, visit lapl.org forward slash Central 100.
On today's episode, we're talking about public art at the Central Library. With so many museums just a stone's throw away, one typically would think of the library as a place to go for books, and not as a place to view art. The library building itself is a piece of art, and because of that, it's worth having it on your list of places to check out amongst our neighbors like the Broad and MOCA.
Today we're also going to go behind the scenes to chat with Mark Garbutt from our shipping department to find out how a book that gets returned to San Pedro finds its way back home to Los Feliz. And we're going to discuss the case of the missing Well of Scribes. While many of us are used to misplacing our keys, not many of us have misplaced a 3,000 pound bronze sculpture.Stay tuned for more.

Today we're chatting with Stephen Gee, an award-winning writer and television producer from Norfolk, England, but now based in Los Angeles. He is the author of Los Angeles Central Library, a History of Its Art and Architecture, amongst many other wonderful works about the history and architecture of Los Angeles.Stephen, welcome to the past two podcasts.

What an honor. It's an honor for me.I always love coming back into this building, so I appreciate the invitation.
Of course we couldn't miss out on inviting you. Would you introduce yourself, share your name, and something about yourself, like what you do for work, what neighborhood you live in, how long you've been visiting Central, or anything else you'd like to share.

Stephen: My name is Stephen Gee. I'm the author of several books on the history and architecture of Los Angeles, including Los Angeles Central Library, a History of Its Art and Architecture, which I worked with Arnold Schwartzman on.

Sheridan: Stephen, how did you first discover Central Library? What do you remember about your first visit?

Stephen: Well, growing up in England, my father was a huge fan of libraries, and he always sort of explained to us that when we go to a new place, the first place you should always go is to the Central Library and figure out the city based on what your library was.

I remember coming here on the bus in the mid-1990s. I'd never been here. I didn't even know what it looked like.Getting out in front of the building, staring at it and thinking, is this the Central Library? Am I actually in the right place? Years later, researching a book about the history of the art and architecture of this building, finding a quote from Bertram Goodhue saying that he basically wanted people to stand outside the building, scratch their head, think, you know, am I in the right place, but not scratch your head and give up. I found that really a profound connection to the history of this building, because Bertram Goodhue, decades later, had exactly that impact that he desired for people in the 1920s. He'd had it on me.

I had the same reaction. I wanted to go inside. I wanted to find out what it was all about.

And that's how it started. When one steps into the library, typically one thinks of books and not necessarily art. In your opinion, what role does public art play in a library space compared to art in a museum setting?
The obvious difference, I guess in a museum you would be invited to carefully study the art and spend time with it.In a library, I guess the emphasis is on integration, perhaps speaking to the higher power of the building. One of the sort of comparisons that I really enjoy is when you compare the Central Library to a church. And it was interesting, we had the 100th anniversary celebrations recently, and I was driving down to the library and I felt guilty that I hadn't been here.

Sheridan: Right.

Stephen: And I hadn't been here for a few weeks and I hadn't seen the exhibits go up. And I thought about, well, where's this guilt coming from?

Sheridan: Right.

Stephen: And I thought about it. And it was like, it reminded me of when I was a kid growing up in England and I hadn't been to church.

Sheridan: Right.

Stephen: And I hadn't been to church. And I guess in a sense, the Central Library is like a church. You just replace the idea of God with an idea of knowledge.It's a temple of knowledge where the artwork is kind of meant to really serve the higher purpose of what the building is about. It's meant to lift you up and make you do a better job at that purpose. And then if you think about the history of this building, the fact that Everett Perry, the city librarian at the time, had a very keen sense of what the latest trends in art were. And then you look at the architect of the building, Bertram Goodhue, who had a fine history of designing beautiful churches. And then you think about, even when we got to the beginning of this building, even though Bertram Goodhue got tired of reinventing complicated historical forms, he never got bored of the idea of integration. And, yeah, it's a fantastic building, but that's kind of, I think, the purpose of the artwork that's here.

Sheridan: Yeah. That's fascinating that you mentioned that because looking at the history of libraries in general, you know, the first librarians and the first libraries really were monasteries and priests. And so much of that baggage of those initial librarians and those initial collections of scrolls, of manuscripts that all had to do with the knowledge of the church, or what the priests were collecting as part of their collections within the monasteries, carries over to us now.I mean, we're discussing it even here now.

You were mentioning also the history of the Central Library. It's gone through many changes over the past hundred years.Do you think that any of the works that are currently in the space respond to major historical events?

Stephen: If you look at the artwork that came in here in the renovation and expansion of the building, I think there's definitely a sense of renewal, a sense of purpose that goes into that. I mean, if you wanted to answer your question in a very direct, straight line, I mean, look at Jud Fine's reinterpretation of Lee Lawrie's Well of Scribes. It's a geographical map of library fires, including the Central Library fire in ‘86.It's an interesting work. And I know that he did a lot of research on the destruction of books to get it there. So it's highly relevant and, I guess, directly answers your question.

Sheridan: And tell us a little bit more about Jud Fine's artwork, just for any listeners who haven't visited the library.

Stephen: Jud Fine came up with a program of artwork for Maguire Gardens in the Flower Street entrance that was called Spine, a reference to the spine of a book. It does what so many of the other original artworks that went into the building do, in the sense that it tells a story.It's packed with the progress of civilization. It's packed with knowledge. And it's a reminder that whenever you come and visit this building, you can learn something from every little piece of it, which was kind of the original intention of it.

Sheridan: For any listeners out there who are interested in learning a little bit more about Jud Fine's sculpture, Spine, visit lapl.org and read our excellent blog article by our docents called Sculptor Jud Fine Reflects on the Maguire Gardens Spine. There's also an excellent book about it that you can find in our collections that we'll link in the show notes. I've been training as a docent, and I actually just wrapped up my training this past Sunday. So I'm learning all about the building. And I know that the light of learning is sort of the big overarching theme of the building. Can you talk about some of the other major themes that run through the library's murals, sculptures, or even architectural ornamentation?

Stephen: Certainly, historical identity and a sense of place is one of them. You know, if you look at the murals created by Dean Cornwell, I mean, it's a very outdated view of life in California, but it was an attempt to give folks here, perhaps a lot of them hadn't grown up here, an idea of what it meant to live in California, what some of the history was. If you look into some of the more modern art that's gone into here, Ries Niemi's Literate Fence, which has a lot of important quotes in it in multiple different languages, speaks really to the diversity of Los Angeles, you know, what it means to live here. I mean, the fact that they're interpretable by different parts of the community. It's no mistake, I guess, that Jud Fine has a Californian outside the Flower Street entrance. And then I think one of the more direct ideas about a sense of place is when John Laddie Dill was asked to create the fountain nature's analogy. He figured out that there had once been a stream that ran under this land long, long, long ago and figured out that he would use the natural minerals and oxides for the coloration of that project.
But just going on, honoring wisdom in different cultures is certainly a theme. Cosmic and celestial ideals are certainly a theme. I mean, you see that in Lee Lawrie's work, you see it in Renee Petropoulos' Seven Centers in the main lobby. But there's so many of them.

Thurman Statham's chandeliers. You know, the funny thing is, I never really thought about place being so central to it, but it makes sense because even at the top of that civilization statue, we have the two angels, we have the California bear, we have the Central Library kind of being this apex and zenith of the progression of civilization and knowledge throughout history.And they're sort of positioning LA as being the final, the very west of the Western world.

In some ways, it's almost like inventing the soul of the city, right? If you think that in, I guess, the 1880s, the population's about 30,000, by the time that this building gets constructed, it's probably well over a million people, right? So you've got a lot of people that have come into the city and not familiar with the city. And then you're almost giving them an idea in some higher level, perhaps, of what it means to be here.You know, what the idea of, you know, I mean, it definitely needs an upgrade in modern terms, what that idea is now, but, you know, it's giving them a sense of, a spiritual sense of what the city was about.

Sheridan: Would you say that the building's 1920s design influenced the artworks installed later?

Stephen: In some ways, but perhaps not in the way that you would probably imagine. I mean, in Renee Petropoulos' Seven Centres, she has a historical space, so she's obviously influenced by it.
She has a set canvas, you know, and if you look at Spine too, I think when Jud Fine was commissioned, I think his first reaction was, uh, elation, I got the job. And then I think the second reaction was disappointment in the sense that so much of what Bertram Goodhue had attended for that, that space was going to come back, you know, so it influenced him in the sense that it set some parameters about what he had to work with. But, um, I think in general, a lot of the later artwork that's come in here has been a much, uh, I mean, it sticks with the same themes, it's knowledge, it's learning, but it's been a lot more, a lighter, more fun interpretation of those themes.

Sheridan: I'm curious to know if there's a particular piece here that you think is overlooked or maybe even misunderstood.

Stephen: Okay. Uh, I, I would say it's Ann Preston's Illuminations, it's the four standing lanterns on, I guess, on the escalator landing points.And here's, here's, here's why I like it, right? I don't know if you've ever sat in a meeting, right? And you're discussing some important topic and you get all these ideas and they go all over the place, right? And then there'll be one person in the room that goes, here's how you get from A to B and everybody will sit and they'll go, wow, that, that makes so much sense. You totally figured it out. It's like a, a brilliant, simple elegance to what you've just achieved in that moment.And it seems incredibly obvious, but at the same time, nobody else got it. Right? So you look at those lanterns, they are a visual representation of a female form in a library and the head is lit up. So what do you do to a human in a library? You light up their brain.It's like, oh my God, you sat down there and you totally figured this out. What happens to you when you come into the library, you light up your brain. That's the highest purpose. That's the most direct route to basically making this a human experience.

Sheridan: I'm speechless. I'm without speech. That's amazing. I've seen the lamp so many times and never thought of that, but that's amazing. I'm going to have to go back down to those lanterns and take a look.For any listeners out there who don't know what we're discussing, take a look at the show notes. We'll link an article about Ann Preston and her work Illuminations in the atrium of the Tom Bradley wing of the Central Library. So you can take a look yourself.

One more question to wrap this whole thing up here. It's a question that I ask of every guest who joins us on Past Due. What's your favorite part of Central Library?

Stephen: Okay. I'm going to pick a really obvious one. And I find that when I work in here, I can focus for like two, two, three hours maybe. And then I go into the rotunda.I look at Lee Lawrie's Zodiac chandelier that takes your eyes up to the Julian Garnsey sunburst ceiling that brings you down to Dean Cornwell's mural. And I think it was designed to do that in those stages. And then usually because that space isn't nearly as busy as you would think it would be considering how important that artwork is that I just described.I find that that actually really recenters me. And then I go back and do another two, three hours and I'm totally fine. And I think there you have the direct sort of spiritual influence that that integration was originally intended to do.

Sheridan: Yeah. I can't argue with that. Thank you so much, Stephen, for taking the time.
We know you're super busy to come out and interview with us here on the Past Due podcast. Is there anything you want to say just to say goodbye?

No, it's a fabulous building. I really appreciate talking with you.I admire you enormously for being a docent. I think it's an important public service. The building's fantastic and it's more relevant now than it ever was.

A big thanks to Stephen G for coming onto the podcast. Let's get into this month's library mystery. Producer Melissa Ortiz has been looking into the lore of The Well of Scribes.

Melissa: Hey Sheridan, thanks for having me. So that's right. One of our great and ongoing library mysteries is the Case of the Missing Scribe.It sounds like a case for Nancy Drew, right? Well, for this one, we also go a little Marty McFly and go back in time and across state lines.
All right, I'm ready. Let's hear it.

Okay. So have you ever heard about The Well of Scribes? I remember working in an outreach and every now and then a staff member would mention it.

Sheridan: I have, but tell us more.

Melissa: The Well of Scribes was a bronze sculpture depicting the history of writing and was estimated to weigh about 3000 pounds and it went missing. So how does a sculpture of that size disappear? One would think that it would be noticed, right?

Sheridan: Right. And many have wondered the same and theories have been banded around. It's currently on display in someone's living room or it's been sold and melted down and now a beautiful set of pots and pans.
And the truth though, what actually happened to it? So this is when we travel back in time to 1969 when Central underwent a makeover and the cry for more parking. I mean, just some things never change.
It is Los Angeles.

Melissa: And the pools and garden on West Lawn were ripped up and paved over to create a parking lot.

Then came the fire in 1986 and a part of the project for Central Library, including restoring West Lawn to its original glory and The Well of Scribes sat in storage for all this time.Or so we thought. When time came to restore it back to its rightful place, turns out it was missing and it remained that way for years. And the theories we mentioned before built up steam.
This is a library mystery that is half solved thanks to our friends at the Alta Journal, whose 2019 piece, “Whatever Happened to the Well of Scribes?”, led to the discovery of a portion of the sculpture in Brisbane, Arizona.

Sheridan: For reference, the Alta Journal is a magazine that can be accessed for free through Libby with your LAPL library card. Sorry, I always have to plug a library resources. Continue, Melissa.

Melissa: And I expect nothing less from a librarian. Okay, so a man named Floyd Lillard, an antiques dealer, came across the article and recognized a portion of it. And it was sitting in his apartment above his store. He said he bought it from a woman from Los Angeles. And he suspects that her siblings may have the other missing portions.

Sheridan: So a part of one of the theories checks out. It was sitting in someone's home. But there is still the ongoing mystery of where the rest of the sculpture may be hiding.As for now, Lillard's portion is now here at Central Library and housed in our special collections department. For those of you interested in seeing this library mystery in real life, it's on display here at Central in the Annenberg Exhibition, The Art and Architecture of a Los Angeles Icon.

Melissa: I'm so excited that everybody's able to see it.

Sheridan: And when you do see it, you tell me how much you think that section weighs. If there is anything that we have learned from this story, it's read library article, folks, because you never know if that vintage item you bought off a Facebook marketplace may be a missing artifact from the library.

Melissa: You know, I can't deny that I, too, wouldn't mind owning a little piece of the library, (18:38) but maybe something that weighs thousands of pounds isn't very little at all.Pick up one of our commemorative library cards or a coloring page, not a priceless piece of art. I hope everyone is enjoying our centennial content so far. And thanks for being on the podcast, Melissa.

Thanks for having me.

Sheridan: That mystery was certainly a doozy, and next we demystify the inner workings of the Shipping Department here at Central Library.

It's 5 a.m., and while many of us are still sleeping, the Los Angeles Public Library's shipping crew are just starting their day.Why so early, you might ask? Well, Los Angeles is a sprawling 468 square mile city,and our 30 plus members of the shipping department tackle it every Monday through Friday to get various library materials to their intended destinations. As the elevator doors open to the shipping department, you're transported into a world very different than the rest of Central Library. A cacophony of sound can be heard, from the chatter of the crew, books dropping into bins, shipping car doors being pulled shut, and engines roaring to life before the fleet of seven vans head out onto the streets of Los Angeles.

Our shipping department moves everything from books to tech-to-go bundles to library supplies and really anything you can think of, from Sylmar to San Pedro, day in and day out. Today we're going to talk to Mark Garbutt, the shipping department's storekeeper, to learn a little bit more about a crucial but more behind-the-scenes department at LAPL. Thanks so much for being with us, Mark.

Mark: Thank you for having me today.

Sheridan: Sure, sure, sure. The shipping department is a crucial part of ensuring that the library runs efficiently.

Mark, can you tell us a little bit more about the department and how it operates and your role specifically?

Mark: Well, the department here is basically to move books around between all the different branches and within Central, we make sure that all the branches have their books. People requesting books from other branches or different areas that want it held at certain branches, we're the ones that go ahead and move that book to that branch so people can pick it up. We also handle supplies for the libraries, PPE supplies, face masks, COVID test kits for staff, gloves, hand sanitizing wipes.We handle all that stuff, make sure that branches are supplied and adequately.

Sheridan: What about your role there, Mark?

Mark: I make sure that we always have supplies on hand, make sure the inventory is adequate and well stocked. I take the orders and requests from the branches, fill those orders, and make sure they get out to branches as requested. Oversee the staff sorting of the books, making sure they're all getting sent to the right locations, making sure the book bins go into the right carts that end up on the right truck, making sure that staff is working, you know, keeping making sure the books are moving as always, you know, got to keep the books moving.

Sheridan: Got it, got it, got to keep the books moving. I love it.For any listeners out there, if you ever request a book or, you know, drop an item off at a branch where it doesn't belong, Mark and his team are the people that) get it back to where it goes, which is really important, I think, for libraries, for things to be where you expect them to be.

Mark: Yes, yes, and that's a good point right there as well. We also get books from different libraries outside of our system.They belong to the County system. People drop them off at our libraries. We go ahead and sort those out, and there's a person that comes in and picks up the books for the county system, other systems for other cities, even out of state.Somebody from out of state might drop a book off here, and we'll get that book to that library.

Sheridan: I bet that's, as your staff is driving around the city, the brightly colored trucks must grab people's attention. Have there been times when folks try to get the shipping guy's attention as they drive by?

Mark: Not necessarily try to get their attention, but they do look at the nice new trucks that we have, and they're all nice and wrapped, different colors.If you do see him out there, you know, just wave at the driver, you know, wave at the driver, you know, don't distract him too much because he is out there driving. Can't cause a car accident.

Sheridan: Yeah, safety first, safety first, you know. Most of the time, you can see the vans out early in the morning making the deliveries to all the different branches.

How early do you all start to get everything out on time?

Mark: The drivers typically come in at five o'clock. They're usually out on the road by 530 in the morning, six o'clock the latest, and they're out till about 10 o'clock in the morning, so about four hours, all over the city, different areas from the valley down to San Pedro to the west side.

Sheridan: And when you all are sorting books, like, you know, you're moving a ton of books every day, do you ever notice trends? Like, do you kind of look at what people are reading? Do you all ever stop and go, oh, wow, this book looks really interesting, I'm going to add it to my list?

Mark: Yeah, some of the guys down there, while they're sorting the books, they see new books coming out, they tend to write down the titles and put them on hold or try to put them to the side. I'm like, we can't put them to the side, you got to reserve it just like everybody else, you know. But we might see them first, but we don't get first dibs.Yeah, we have to get in line as well. And then we notice which branches are heavier with books. We typically see some branches getting more books than other branches.

Sheridan: About how many books would you say that you all move all together in a single day?

Mark: In a single day, one bin, we call them bins, they're like a gray plastic tub, one bin will hold about 30 books and roughly about, say, close to 400 bins a day. So if you do the math, about 1200, 12,000 books. Yeah, 12,000 books.

Sheridan: Are there any parts of the job, Mark, that you think people would find surprising?

Mark: I would think probably that we exist.

Sheridan: Yeah, yeah, no, totally.

Mark: Yeah, some people, they don't really see us as much, we're more in the back behind scenes, we're out there early in the morning, so nobody really sees us as much.Probably the last few branches that we deliver to might see us, but other than that, we're in and we're out like ghosts.

Sheridan: I mean, you are the people who make the library run, you know, like that's such a crucial function. Would you let us know, like, just for any interest of the listeners, let's say that we have somebody listening to the podcast who returns a book at, I don't know, Arroyo Seco that belongs at San Pedro.Like, walk us step by step what happens to that book, who puts their hands on it, where does it go, does it get labeled, does it get packed, does it get, you know, tossed around in the back of a truck, like, talk to us.

Mark: So somebody that drops off a book at, say, Arroyo Seco and it needs to go to San Pedro, first person to touch it is the branch itself, and they'll scan the book into the system that has been returned so the person doesn't get charged. Then it'll get tagged with a receipt of where it needs to get to and placed into one of those bins.Depending on the time of day, the driver will pick it up the next day. He'll bring it back to Central where it'll get sorted and then placed into the correct branch where it needs to get to. That bin will get placed onto a cart that gets sent over to the driver.He loads it onto his van, and then the following day it'll get delivered to that branch, and then the branch will scan it in that they have it back at their branch, and it's ready for the next person to check it out.

Sheridan: You make it sound super easy, but I'm sure it's a ton of work.

Mark: Oh yeah, yeah.It's about a two-day turnaround.

Sheridan: Nice, nice. And that's impressive.A two-day turnaround in such a huge city, like, that's not bad.
Okay, Mark, I'm going to ask you a question that I ask of everybody on the podcast. What is your favorite part of Central Library?

Mark: My favorite part of Central Library would be the Octavia Lab.

Sheridan: Oh get out of here, that’s where we are recording this podcast right now.

Mark: I'm sort of a tech-y person, and I always bring up the new equipment up to the Octavia Lab, and I see all the new stuff that they're getting here, and I try to come up here to check out more of the features. But yeah, the Octavia Lab has a lot of stuff offered to the public, and they should take advantage of it.

Sheridan: Yeah, they should. What machine do you like to use? Are you a 3D printer person? Are you more into the large format printer? Are you into the embroidery machines?

Mark: I'm going to say the Sound Studio. It makes some tracks.

Sheridan: It makes some tracks. Okay, not bad, not bad. Okay.So for any interested listeners out there, you'll want to visit lapl.org forward slash labs, and you'll be able to see all of the different technology that we have available in the different media labs. We have one here at Central called Octavia Lab, but we also have one at the P.O. Pico Koreatown branch, in case you're closer there. We've got 3D printers, we've got large format printers, embroidery machines, Adobe software, podcast recording things, which we're using right now to record this podcast, video editing software, a ton of different things.

Mark, is there anything you want to say that we didn't cover in today's interview? We're here to serve the Central Library, all the branches, and most important, the public, and make sure everybody has their materials, and make sure that they get them quick, and got to keep all the stuff circulating.

Mark: Got to keep the books moving. All right, thanks so much for being with us, Mark.

Sheridan: Before this episode is over, I would like to tell you about another fun opportunity to celebrate Central Library Centennial. If you felt inspired by Past Due: 100 years of Central Library, and want to submit your own story or special memory about the impact Central Library has made on your life, consider taking part in our Central 100 Community Oral History Project. With the recording platform, Their Story, you can record a short video or audio clip that would be preserved in our archives.If you're interested, the information will be linked in our show notes, or you can visit lapl.org forward slash Central 100 forward slash oral history. Here's a snippet of a submission.

Kendall: Hi, I'm Kendall Young.I currently live in La Cañada, but I was born and raised in Mount Washington, so just north of the Central Library. I've been visiting the library since pretty much as long as I can remember. It is one of my childhood happy places. You know, I don't remember when I first discovered the Central Library, but I clearly remember when I was most in love with it. I was researching a school report. The topic that I chose was medieval torture devices. Yeah, I'm a little dark and twisty.

Sheridan:Today's episode was made possible by executive producer Christina Hairston and producer Melissa Ortiz. It was recorded at the Central Library with help from the amazing staff in the Octavia Lab.

If you'd like to see photos, documents, or more about the places and spaces we discussed in today's episode, check the Central 100 podcast show notes at lapl.org forward slash Central 100. I'm your host Sheridan J. Cazarez with the Los Angeles Public Library. Thanks for listening to the past two podcasts. We'll see you at the library.

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