Alexis Smith

The one name missing in Kevin Starr's otherwise superb article on the restoration and relighting of L.A.'s neon ("Landscape Electric," Opinion, July 4) is Los Angeles artist Alexis Smith. It was her public artwork in MacArthur Park, which included the relighting of the nearby Westlake Theatre sign, that actually gave birth to the entire citywide neon restoration program that Al Nodal has so brilliantly choreographed. JOEL WACHS Los Angeles City Council

Alexis Smith has been doing the same thing for 40 years: pasting items she finds in thrift stores and at yard sales into scrappy collages that paint a portrait of America as a place where much  has gone wrong but all is not lost. With the patience of a saint and a work ethic that's nothing if not old-school, the 64-year-old artist has gotten really good at what she does: stir wistful sentimentality and barbed discontent into a cocktail whose tastiness makes its kick all the more dangerous.

Alexis Smith has been doing the same thing for 40 years: pasting items she finds in thrift stores and at yard sales into scrappy collages that paint a portrait of America as a place where much  has gone wrong but all is not lost. With the patience of a saint and a work ethic that's nothing if not old-school, the 64-year-old artist has gotten really good at what she does: stir wistful sentimentality and barbed discontent into a cocktail whose tastiness makes its kick all the more dangerous.

The artist's studio is part factory, part chapel, part Merlin's cave, reliquary and museum. Some artists say it doesn't matter where they make art. Others claim their studio is their art. Some cities preserve studios, but L.A. does not. We worship artists; we trade real estate. Sunday is the 30th annual Venice Art Walk & Auctions, when artists open their studio doors for the public to peek at sanctum sanctorums in houses, lofts and commercial buildings.

The show, "Alexis Smith: Public Works," which survey's the artist's public art projects through plans, models, and photographs, starts out with a few strikes against it. For one, plans for art in public places are several steps removed from the real thing, and thus several notches lower on the scale of sensory impact. They lack the colors, the textures, the physical immediacy of the finished work.

Alexis Smith, Hollywood's statuesque and aloof but magnetic leading lady of the 1940s and 1950s who made a Tony-winning comeback in the Broadway musical "Follies" at the age of 50, died Wednesday. She was 72. Miss Smith died of cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said actor Craig Stevens, her husband of 49 years.

In 1975, Alexis Smith made a collage out of macaroni--specifically, out of macaroni letters like the ones in a can of alphabet soup. Glued in a single line across a plain, 12x9-inch sheet of heavy white paper, they portentously announced: "Words cannot cook rice--Charlie Chan."

Having a retrospective is like being janitor to your own statue. That's the initial impression conveyed by artist Alexis Smith who, at age 42, is having a major museum retrospective opening next Sunday at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. It was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the first retrospective of an L.A.-based artist to be arranged by the Whitney since the 1975 show of Robert Irwin. It is a victorious moment. "It's so much work," moans Smith.

"I get a huge kick out of what I do. I like doing it. I like it when it's finished, and that's carried me through the years," said artist Alexis Smith during an interview in her Venice studio. What's this? A happy artist? Yes, but not a complacent one. The fun of Smith's art-making cannot be entirely cracked up to amusing subject matter. It's also a product of her roll-with-the-punches temperament and hard-won self-confidence.

Alexis Smith is a culture scavenger. For 25 years, she has drawn quotes from authors as disparate as Jane Austen and Jack Kerouac and combined them with found objects such as posters, matchbooks, ticket stubs, toys, puzzles, car parts, costume jewelry or whatever else might catch her magpie eye. Quirky, amusing and wry, she has been labeled a principal second-generation inheritor of the L.A. Pop tradition.

Despair, optimism and disinterest. Bring a group of creative people together to talk about the millennium, and a healthy dose of each emerges. Audiences, they say, are broadening and are receptive to a mix of media and information, yet it's still hard to get significant quality work made.

The one name missing in Kevin Starr's otherwise superb article on the restoration and relighting of L.A.'s neon ("Landscape Electric," Opinion, July 4) is Los Angeles artist Alexis Smith. It was her public artwork in MacArthur Park, which included the relighting of the nearby Westlake Theatre sign, that actually gave birth to the entire citywide neon restoration program that Al Nodal has so brilliantly choreographed. JOEL WACHS Los Angeles City Council

Alexis Smith is a culture scavenger. For 25 years, she has drawn quotes from authors as disparate as Jane Austen and Jack Kerouac and combined them with found objects such as posters, matchbooks, ticket stubs, toys, puzzles, car parts, costume jewelry or whatever else might catch her magpie eye. Quirky, amusing and wry, she has been labeled a principal second-generation inheritor of the L.A. Pop tradition.

It's disconcerting--as well as hopeful--that the Getty Center has been commissioning artists to create permanent works for its glamorous new campus in Brentwood. Disconcerting because, to date, the Getty has been strongly identified with art made before the 20th century.

Alexis Smith, Hollywood's statuesque and aloof but magnetic leading lady of the 1940s and 1950s who made a Tony-winning comeback in the Broadway musical "Follies" at the age of 50, died Wednesday. She was 72. Miss Smith died of cancer at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said actor Craig Stevens, her husband of 49 years.

Graceful yet lethal, seductive but dangerous, the snake has long been regarded as a slippery character. Ever since it tempted Eve with a piece of forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, the snake has been stuck with a reputation as a bad influence. Deep in collective memory, the snake lurks as a symbol of evil and the loss of innocence.

The artist's studio is part factory, part chapel, part Merlin's cave, reliquary and museum. Some artists say it doesn't matter where they make art. Others claim their studio is their art. Some cities preserve studios, but L.A. does not. We worship artists; we trade real estate. Sunday is the 30th annual Venice Art Walk & Auctions, when artists open their studio doors for the public to peek at sanctum sanctorums in houses, lofts and commercial buildings.

Alexis Smith has grown from a precious and precocious local spinner of delicate collaged insights to an artist of national reputation making conceptual supergraphic installations. All along she has maintained a marked fondness for literature which still shows in a current exhibition inspired by Jack Kerouac's classic Beat Generation novel "On the Road." Some 20 large collages are a jumble of old posters, calendar art, magazine clippings and objects from arrows to baseballs.

In 1975, Alexis Smith made a collage out of macaroni--specifically, out of macaroni letters like the ones in a can of alphabet soup. Glued in a single line across a plain, 12x9-inch sheet of heavy white paper, they portentously announced: "Words cannot cook rice--Charlie Chan."

Having a retrospective is like being janitor to your own statue. That's the initial impression conveyed by artist Alexis Smith who, at age 42, is having a major museum retrospective opening next Sunday at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. It was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the first retrospective of an L.A.-based artist to be arranged by the Whitney since the 1975 show of Robert Irwin. It is a victorious moment. "It's so much work," moans Smith.