LATON, CALIF. — On a cool Saturday evening, with alfalfa fields rustling in the breeze and acres of walnut groves bursting into bloom, this quiet Central Valley farming town, population 1,200, threw open its doors for a party.
There were refreshments and speeches in the United Methodist church -- closed for three years because of a diminished congregation, but now filled to overflowing. Outside, Fresno musician Patrick Contreras cranked up his electric fiddle and beckoned people into the two-block-long main street to cut the ribbon on a welcome sign for the unincorporated township, which had lost its previous sign to vandals.
Then, as if dueling for attention, the wail of Bobby Joe Neely's one-man blues band drew the crowd to the front steps of the Laton Library. A young boy played air guitar with Neely, who was dressed in his signature red three-piece suit, while others danced in the street. As many as 1,000 people strolled around, before the rain came.
It wasn't just the music that made this party different from the very few remaining civic events, like the Laton Rodeo Parade, which once a year draws the locals of this economically struggling town onto De Woody Street. The normally blank walls of the buildings were alive with video projections of local couples two-stepping in their Wranglers and ropers, and shots of the nearby walnut groves. Video monitors tucked into the few commercial storefronts played interviews with the citizenry. Throughout, a team of artists and MFA students from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles scurried about with walkie-talkies and video cameras, orchestrating and documenting the night's events under the close watch of veteran artist and educator Suzanne Lacy.
The March event, "Laton Live! Reunion Reunion," was part fiesta, part art happening and the culmination of nearly eight months' work by first-year students in Otis' public practice MFA program. With a grant from the Ford Foundation, Lacy and her graduate students, as well as undergraduate classes at Otis and its high school outreach program, first descended on Laton in August with the intention of creating a town-wide project to combine the aesthetic values of art with the social values of community engagement. The idea was to highlight the struggles and delights of an emblematic small town while providing what they hoped to be some lasting benefit from the shared encounter.
