Sculptural Forms

Five hours south through the Central Valley and we're approaching Los Angeles for a weekend catch-up with Ira's son, who's in school there. Traffic in this sprawling city lives up to its reputation; blocky Land Rovers and sleek, bullet-shaped Porsches dart in and out of lanes and swallow up parking and no-parking spaces. Where the U-Turn is San Francisco's signature move, the "Left on Red" belongs to LA. Hesitate a beat too long and you'll be honked at, mouthed at, pursued and punished in a manner that far outranks the crime.

Walking's not an option in Los Angeles so we drive everywhere, mostly in search of interesting ethnic food. Korea Town provides a nothing-like-Nicky's barbecue, mounds of way too much red meat, lightly grilled, and arranged in diagonals with spicy kimchi on the side. At a bakery called "Toast" we munch crispy triangular quesadillas stuffed with avocado, and in Little Armenia we try smoked eggplant and green-onion salad, defined and brightened by parsley and lemon juice, and by their melodic names: baba ghanoush and fattouch.

 

Francisco Zuniga

George Rickey

   









As a counterpoint to street madness we walk through the Murphy Sculpture Garden on UCLA's campus. It's incredibly quiet.  A relief sculpture by Pietro Consagra invites us to run our fingers over its shallow recesses and topographic contours. George Rickey's kinetic sculpture, similar to one on the University of Kentucky campus, shimmers in the breeze above an earth-bound bronze nude by Francisco Zuniga. These two figures seem to symbolize a human paradox: on one hand we reach for freedom. On the other, we yearn for all that binds us to earth and place.

Late Sunday night as we're traveling back to San Francisco, four lanes of surging traffic slow to a creep and we watch the green digits of the dashboard clock as an hour crawls by.  Braced for a scene of carnage, we nose our little Subaru closer and closer to orange cones and cruisers. Finally a dozen pulsing blue lights telegraph the facts: an overloaded hay transport has flipped, scattering hundreds of golden bales in their own random, sculptural forms across the median, the exit ramp, the shoulder, and four broad lanes of highway.