Sculptor Expects Heavy Traffic for Valley Drive-By Art

By HUGO MARTIN

July 31, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, as the old adage has it, but on the Hollywood Freeway, Lars Hawkes’ vision of beauty will be in the face of the commuter.

Hawkes--who welds abstract sculptures in his spare time at the machine shop where he works in Pacoima--has won Caltrans approval, under a program that offers roadside space to artists, to erect the first permanent freeway art display in the San Fernando Valley.

Three of his 12-foot-high, one-ton sculptures are scheduled to be placed alongside the freeway at Sherman Way on Aug. 20.

They manage to be simultaneously rounded and angular, spiraling and spiky, fluid and blocky. One balances an undulating yellow squiggle, another is topped by a spiky black clump reminiscent of a punk haircut, and the third looks vaguely like a giant ring gear wearing a gaucho hat.

Motorists who get stuck beside them frequently had better like primary colors.

Really bright primary colors.

The yellow squiggle reminds friends of Bullwinkle the cartoon moose, the 51-year-old part-time artist said Thursday. Another evokes images of the Statue of Liberty’s torch, he said, but the works are untitled and have no message.

“I think of them as kind of great big toy shapes,” he said. “But I tell people to use their imaginations.”

Once they’re up, Hawkes may become the only resident of Los Angeles who will actually be delighted to hear the dread words: “traffic jam.”

“If things slow down, then at least lots of people can see the sculptures,” he said. “I spent a lot of time picking this location,” between the Sherman Way off-ramps and on-ramp because the art will be seen by both northbound and southbound motorists, he said.

Hawkes’ works will be the latest additions to a Caltrans art program that has already put about 50 murals and three sculptures along freeways in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.

The program was most active prior to the 1984 Olympics, when Caltrans oversaw the creation of 21 freeway murals, including the one depicting marathon runners alongside the San Diego Freeway in Inglewood, and placed sculptures along downtown stretches of the Hollywood and Harbor freeways.

Although the sculptures will loom large in the eyes of thousands of motorists daily, the program does not require the art to pass outside artistic review to win Caltrans approval.

Irma Lopez, a Caltrans administrator who helps artists secure the needed permits, said the state guidelines are minimal: The art cannot create a safety hazard, be controversial or advertise anything.

Also, the artist must get community approval. Hawkes met that requirement by obtaining a letter of support from Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs, who represents the area where the sculptures will be located, Lopez said.

Finally, the art must win the approval of the Caltrans district executive committee, which normally makes such decisions as where to build a new off-ramp and how many lanes to add to a freeway, she said.

The committee gave Hawkes’ sculptures rave reviews, Lopez said.

Caltrans receives an average of 40 to 50 requests per year for information and applications from artists who want to install art along freeways, Lopez said, but tries not to get tangled up in the problem of distinguishing art from junk.

“It’s such a subjective type of thing,” she said. “I might love it and you might hate it, or vice versa.”

Hawkes, a relatively unknown artist, worked for two years on the sculptures in the back of a Pacoima shop where he works, building machinery that makes molds for fiberglass products, like bathtubs.

He welded the sculptures together from steel he bought at his own expense and is expected to pay about $2,000 out of his own pocket to rent the trucks and cranes needed to install them next to the freeway.

This is his second installment of what Hawkes calls “drive-by art.” Earlier, he put up 10 large abstract cement sculptures on private land next to a road leading into Sequoia National Park, he said.

Chapter 3 may be on the way. He has three metal sculptures he hopes to install beside the Golden State Freeway in Sylmar.