Artwork Detail

The Park to Playa Trail is a 13-mile long regional trail that connects a network of trails and parks from the Baldwin Hills Parklands to the Pacific Ocean. Artist Kim Abeles created seven sculptures, Citizen Seeds, placed along the Park to Playa Trail in six different locations, leading visitors along the winding trail between the Scenic Overlook to the west and the Stocker Corridor in Kenneth Hahn Park to the east. The artworks, which take the form of seed pods from various native California trees, are fabricated in concrete, terrazzo, and metal. The interiors of the seed pods depict maps which are further informed by activities, locations, and viewpoints found throughout the trails of the park. This project considers the magical scope of the Park to Playa experience. The large seed forms (sugar pine, California Black Oak, Coast Live Oak, bladderpod, black walnut, and manzanita) have a visual presence from afar, and detailed imagery upon closer inspection. The sculptures and their imagery “inside” the seeds speak to the metaphors of growth, as well as the journeys and trails that the hikers and visitors experience to connect with the nature in our urban setting. Each sculpture includes a bronze plaque that indicates in image and text that you are “here”. All the sculptures reference the mapping of the trail in unique ways: Site 1 includes two sculptures showing a young cone of the Sugar Pine divided in half to become an entryway, like an open book, for the easterly start of the trail. The complete Park to Playa trail is shown on both using brass and color terrazzo: first as a street map and second as the palm of a hand with the trail defined in color terrazzo. The infinity sign speaks to the continuum of our journey and the circular nature of the use of the trail. Three-dimensional, cast concrete seed forms model the sculptures on the six sites and are placed as they are along the trail.

Kim Victoria Abeles is an American interdisciplinary artist and professor emeritus currently living in Los Angeles. Her artworks explore biography, geography, feminism, and the environment. Her work speaks to society, science literacy, and civic engagement, creating projects with the California Science Center, health clinics and mental health departments, and the National Park Service. Her collaborations with air pollution control agencies involve images from the smog, and largescale projects with natural history museums in California, Colorado and Florida incorporate specimens ranging from lichen to nudibranchs. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, California Community Foundation and Pollack-Krasner Foundation. Her work is in forty public collections including MOCA, LACMA, Berkeley Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, California African American Museum, and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. Abeles’ process documents are archived at the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art. To learn more visit: https://kimabeles.com/