'Not a Cornfield' Idea Is Food for Thought

The corn is growing.

Rows of it are rising from the dirt right on schedule at the Not a Cornfield project, a 32-acre, $3-million art installation taking root this summer at Los Angeles State Historic Park north of downtown.

The growing plants -- hundreds of thousands of them -- are turning what once was an abandoned rail yard in the industrial flatlands near Chinatown into a sea of cornstalks that sway and shift in the breezes.

Soon the stalks will rise taller than most adults' heads, obscuring views of the neighboring warehouses from the field's central pathway.

The vast conceptual art piece is meant to serve both as a point of celebration for the multiethnic history of Los Angeles' old core and a beacon for downtown's gradual revitalization.

But where corn stops being corn and becomes an important artwork is leaving some visitors a little stumped.

"It's very low-key, kind of conceptual, so it's kind of hard for people to understand," said Pasadena resident Ellen Biasin, 57, who visited last week with her 15-year-old son, Alexander, and her father, Nobe Kawano, 82.

"I don't know what to say about it," said Kawano, a Boyle Heights old-timer who currently lives near Dodger Stadium. He thought for a moment. "It looks nice, though."

Biasin and her family were among the few who visited the site in recent weeks as the field has gradually transformed from a brown wasteland into the living green mass that Los Angeles-based artist Lauren Bon envisioned.

Launched quietly in late July, the Not a Cornfield project has not captured the public's imagination like other large-scale public art events in the United States, such as Christo's "The Gates" in New York or Millennium Park in Chicago.

The city's fractured, centerless nature might be partly responsible for that, said Bon, a trustee of the Annenberg Foundation, which funded the project.

But it also may be that the nature of the project itself is to blame for its lack of buzz, she and others have said. There was no lavish, media-saturated opening-night party. The first seeds were planted at dawn after an all-night vigil and a Native American ceremony meant to request Earth's permission to plant in it. Instead of swarms of tourists, there are drum circles, corn-planting sessions and small film screenings.