THE EYE OF L.A. / MARK BRADFORD

An early-morning, pre-rush-hour walk through the multiracial, multilingual South Los Angeles neighborhood of abstract expressionist artist Mark Bradford, hometown boy made good on the international art scene, reveals the working-class sensibilities and mashed-up cultural influences that shaped his childhood and that continue to shape his work. A Korean body shop stands across the street from a taco & burger joint, which sits kitty-corner from a flower shop with signs in both English and Espanol. On the same hectic thoroughfare are a storefront psychic, unisex hair salon, $1 Chinese Food stand, Blockbuster video store, Korean acupuncture clinic and a record shop whose lopsidedly handwritten sign reads "Especial: 4 CDs por $2/Herbalife De Venta Aqui." Colorful litter, the detritus of assorted cultural and economic exchanges--dirty yellow straws, slivers of red plastic cups, tattered pink balloons, flattened ketchup packets--flowers the sidewalk. This is the contemporary version of the rich merchant culture in which Bradford was raised by his mother and grandmother, women whose fierce work ethic and professional ingenuity are now manifested in Bradford's own creative expression. It's also the DNA for his critically acclaimed collages, videos, photographs and installations, in which issues of class, off-the-books commerce, race, gender and sexuality are abstracted for clarity, turned into art through Afro-American alchemy.

A few blocks over, on a quiet residential street, is Bradford's temporary studio. A way station between his old digs on West Boulevard and a new space being built in Leimert Park, it dominates the top floor of a massive turn-of-the-century house owned by a friend. It's one of those grand old Los Angeles homes that speaks of a bygone era's opulence and careful attention to architectural detail and craftsmanship. The third floor, a former ballroom turned workspace, is spacious but filled with an artist's clutter: paint-splattered tables, piles and piles of posters and handwritten signs that have been gathered from telephone poles and fences. A collage in progress stands on a small table, propped against a wall.

And stretching the length of the cavernous room is his latest project, "Ridin' Dirty," an ambitiously sprawling mural for the Sao Paulo Bienal later this year. "The goal of the piece," he says, "is to make the viewer feel the presence of global 'ghost economies,' cities covered with rectangles of paper made identical by visual hyper-local communication." It already measures 15 by 25 feet, but Bradford says he wants it "larger, much larger."