Dauna Whitehead

ECHO PARK ISN'T LOS ANGELES' FIRST, NOR THE BIGGEST. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN just a small lake with a tiny island reached by a wood bridge, dotted with palm trees at its northern extremity and aswarm with ducks, all surrounded by a venerable neighborhood of old houses and apartments and Aimee Semple McPherson's 1920s Angelus temple.

ECHO PARK ISN'T LOS ANGELES' FIRST, NOR THE BIGGEST. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN just a small lake with a tiny island reached by a wood bridge, dotted with palm trees at its northern extremity and aswarm with ducks, all surrounded by a venerable neighborhood of old houses and apartments and Aimee Semple McPherson's 1920s Angelus temple.

A group of Echo Park artists has banded together to put on an arts festival and studio tour in the style of the Venice Art Walk on the first Saturday of October. "It's to show there is an artists community here in Echo Park," said Theresa Powers, a festival organizer and local mural artist. "The big gallery scene is at places like Bergomot Station [a former Red Car repair station on the Westside that was transformed into galleries] and other Santa Monica galleries.

Artists are the seismic sensors of society. Marshall McLuhan said so in the '60s and it's still true. Artists feel the quake coming. It's not that they are able to see the future; they simply see the present more clearly than most of us. The works on these pages are the appalled testaments of Los Angeles illustrators and photographers who were commissioned by this magazine to share their reactions to the L.A. riots.

When Maxine Levine and Margy Sievers decided to work together to organize an exhibit for the Finegood Art Gallery, they also agreed that they would present provocative art that reflects the issues facing Los Angeles after a tumultuous year. These members of the Art Council of the Jewish Federation Council's San Fernando Valley region--which is responsible for curating the gallery's shows--have realized their goal by bringing together the diverse work of six local artists in the show, "L. A.

After the riots, economic instability and dire warnings about the condition of our global atmosphere rained on Southern Californians in 1992, many local artists were compelled to create works that convey their thoughts and feelings about the social, political and environmental issues of our time.

Few plays have "made in Los Angeles" stamped all over them as much as Lisa Loomer's "Broken Hearts," the witty and stylish culmination of Cornerstone Theater's residency (so far, at least) in L.A. The play's noir style is right at home here, of course. And "Broken Hearts," at Los Angeles Theatre Center's Theatre 2, is set in four specific Southland neighborhoods: Boyle Heights, Broadway and Hill (Chinatown), Beverly Hills and Baldwin Hills.