On these sunset art walks, you'll carry art to Griffith Park

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Los Angeles gallerist Lauren Powell and about 30 others walked up a steep, winding path in Griffith Park. The group dragged huge framed paintings 2.5 miles to the top of the hill. Almost everyone was wearing pastel-dyed shirts or other sunset-hued outfits. The procession of artists, curators, collectors and art enthusiasts. — As it wound its way up the trail, it looked like an animated brush swirl of pink, cream, tangerine, and blue, snaking uphill.

Several of the canvases… by Los Angeles-based artist Senon Williams, hanging on a handmade reclaimed wood porch that the artist had built of discarded furniture he found on the street. Two participants were needed at a time, with the support on their shoulders, to transport the works to the top of the mountain. Other paintings were mounted on sandwich boards that individuals took turns using, one painting glued to each side of the easel-like structure. The works adorned the chests and backs of the volunteers as they huffed and puffed their way to the top.

Art lovers, with paintings on their backs, take part in a sunset art walk to the top of a Griffith Park trail.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Upon reaching the park's Berlin Forest, a shady pine forest trees and picnic tables, the group set up the six works for a temporary outdoor exhibition, or a public “art offering,” as Powell calls it.

But the journey to the summit, a ritual art walk, was the final destination.

“I would say it's a pilgrimage,” Powell says, “to bring the gallery outside the four walls to the public.”

Powell has been leading free monthly art walks, open to the public, for about a year and a half. Her Sunset Hiking Club is a way to form a community around fused loves of culture and outdoor exercise. And she feels uniquely Los Angeles, a search for connection amid the city's sprawl and a consequence of its countless energetic arts scenes.

Walks always begin at Powell's gallery on Hollywood Boulevard, Lauren Powell Projects, before heading up the sidewalks of Thai Town and Franklin Avenue. The hikers then passed through residential neighborhoods. towards the north, passing by old artisans' houses and garage sales going on and gawking runners heading to the park. They then follow the Fern Dell Nature Trail to the East Observatory Trail before reaching Griffith Observatory and eventually the adjacent Berlin Forest. The trip lasts approximately one hour, depending on the speed at which participants walk.

A group of art lovers take part in a sunset art walk to the top of a trail.

There is a clear health component to these art walks: getting artists, who may spend hours at their desks or crouched over works in progress, to move their bodies more. Not to mention everyone else.

Another consideration is providing an antidote to anxiety.

“As a human being with a lot of social anxiety,” says Powell, who often attends business meetings while hiking, “being sociable with strangers on the go really helped me.”

But at their core, art walks are about accessibility. Art galleries can be intimidating “transactional spaces,” Powell notes, where some people may be more concerned about the crowd or the bar than the art itself. Others may feel unsure of how to dress or act in a gallery. By taking the works of art outside, into nature, everyone can participate, even if unexpectedly as a passerby.

“It's important to me to open the door to the art world for others,” Powell says.

Powell, 38, grew up in a blue-collar family, she says, in a Detroit suburb, and visual art was not a part of her life as a child. She worked at a digital creative agency and in commercial real estate in New York for about a decade before helping a friend make a sculpture in 2017. That led her to independently curate several friends' exhibitions in galleries and online .

She opened Lauren Powell Projects in 2022 in Los Angeles with a loan from a client whose art collection she manages. Since she is not a trained artist or curator, sees herself as something of an outsider in the Los Angeles gallery world. Her gallery features contemporary painting, sculpture and specific installations, mostly by emerging and underrepresented artists. “I show a lot of queer art, colorful art, and I do a lot of programming in response to shows that integrate art,” she says.

Lauren Powell listens to poetry readings at dusk sitting on the ground between trees.

Your artistic walks — which often include poetry readings at the summit, with the paintings in the background – arose from this mentality.

“Music is art, dance is art, food is art,” he says, adding that he plans to host live comedy, dance and music performances at future art walks, as well as plein air painting classes. The next art walk is December 17.

Williams' paintings are part of a series of sunsets, he explains on the way to the summit. He calls them his “human paintings” because they employ figurative elements in amorphous shapes that may look like a mass to one person or a landscape to another. Some of her works also include text. This is her second procession of paintings with Powell; the previous one, in June, also included works of sunsets.

“We thought it would be beautiful if my sunset paintings, as if they were living, breathing things, could contemplate the sunset on their own,” Williams says of the vision for the exhibition.

About halfway to the trailhead, passing hikers stop to photograph the artistic hikers, now sweaty and out of breath. With their tie-dyed headscarves and sandwich boards, they give off a Burning Man meets Sierra Club vibe.

Most of Powell's group are friends of Williams or the gallery; but about a third, he says, are members of the public who saw the event advertised online. Mixing with random, like-minded people on the trail, chatting with whoever keeps up the pace, is part of the beauty of art walks, she says.

As if on cue, a member of the group catches up to us, a little out of breath. He wears Jil Sander purple velvet pants, a cream jacket, and vintage loafers with comedy and tragedy masks; he is dressed more for art than for the walk.

“I didn't realize it was a real hike,” says Drew Stafford Harper, a 34-year-old writer. “I thought it was going to be a walk in our minds, like we were going on a journey together!”

Poems by artist Senon Williams are seen in a print magazine in Griffith Park. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Nia Lee, left, and Beyond, right, listen to poetry readings at sunset during an event with Lauren Powell Projects in Griffith Park. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Lauren Powell guides a group of art-goers through a parking lot.

There's a ritual aspect to these art walks, Harper says, adding that she grew up in an “intensely evangelical Christian” home. “So any kind of surprise hike to the top of a mountain, holding a big piece of wood, is something I'm willing to do. But I would have worn different shoes!”

Haley Roeser, 29, a culinary artist who moved to Los Angeles from Vancouver two and a half years ago, said Los Angeles is a more creatively disjointed city than she was used to, and art walks help.

“My experience, in other cities, is a more cohesive arts or music scene,” he says, “and it's nice to have something that focuses on cultivating community.”

At the top, Powell and Williams install the six paintings on the portico, some of which hang from leather straps. The canvases, backed by a view of dark-looking hill silhouettes at dusk, gently ripple in the breeze.

The now-weary hikers sit on picnic benches or on the pine needle-covered ground to enjoy the snacks they have brought and a series of poetry readings by Williams and others.

As the sun sinks deeper into the horizon and the colors of the sunset intensify, there is a point where the paintings, with their orange, pink and gold tones, match the sky behind them almost perfectly. At that moment, they almost seem to disappear into the background.