Pigeon Box Art and Pigeon-Related Art Commissions Around the Greater Los Angeles Area. [Updating: now, with Pigeons and Friends]

An ongoing online exhibition featuring visual odes to the pigeons that I've discovered, or happened upon, as a trekker of many streets and locales in and around the Greater Los Angeles area. 

Box Art is a trending artistic expression form that sprung up, several years ago, as a seemingly ordained vehicle of artists' aspirations for public recognition (I'm not sure of the origins or certifying agency behind the legality of painting on public sidewalk utility server boxes). 

The pigeons, being the endearing young explorers and ambassadors to the town that they are, have merited several works of art dedicated to them over the years, in the lives, works, and hearts of artists and art lovers all across several locales around the Los Angeles region. 

Update: 02/17/2025:

It must have been someone local, who had taken note that Pershing Square had, in recent months, been taken over, it might seem, by flocks of pigeons who are well-fed, on a daily basis. Here, we see a miniature fiesta scene, with pigeons adorned in Mexican garb, eating mariscos (seafood). This begs the question as to whether or not the pigeons actually do eat shrimp, and I tried it out, with some shrimp cocktail.

Update: the pigeons don’t like shrimp.

The South Pasadena Metro Station

Los Angeles Trade Tech College Murals

 

The Martin Luther King Blvd. at Harbor Freeway 110 Underpass Murals.

The Ernst and Young Plaza Poetry Pigeons; Curious Over a Fried Egg - Cast Metal Statue

Santa Monica Pier re-opening welcome banner.

Update: 01/24/2022: 

While out working on some more recent developments, of about a year-and-a-half since I’d last made inclusions and updates to this blog, I’ve come across a previously unknown, or previously non-existent - charming mural rendition of some of the Friends of the Pigeon: a sparrow, and what appears to be perhaps a baby seagull, with a characteristically youthful withdrawn stance, about the bust (breast, neck and head) of the bird, of which would suppose a more socially-shy and unsure fledgling addition to a flock, amongst adults, in a similar manner in which a puppy reserves it’s tail in between its legs, as an ostensible sign of submission to the elders and authorities of the pack, or family unit. This mural is located in the Playa Del Rey area, which is part of the expanse of public works projects that include a nature reserve designation, of sorts, that encompasses the Los Angeles River, which begins, winding further up the road, and around the bend, a bit, feeding in to channels that comprise the Venice Beach Canals (which are an upscale series of channeled waterways that mimic the Classical Canals of Italy’s Venice; thus Venice Beach, CA, is rightly named as, such that it would suppose a proper nod of the hat towards a facet of our Western heritage and culture, here in America; Venice Beach, largely known as a small, yet concentrated locality of the West Coast, in attracting many professionals and patrons of the Los Angeles, CA artistic culture and of progressive minds and lifestyles, and the area is, therefore, rich in diversity, arts, and spirituality. The Ballona Wetlands, as it is known, further up in to this current area, known as Del Rey, bordering on Culver City, in this instance, is a rehabilitated natural and native wetlands plants reserve, where the river flows inland, turning, at some point, several miles up the road from the beach, and winding its way through Los Angeles, as a large concrete ditch, perhaps anywhere from 20-30 feet deep, and, at times, anywhere from 30-75 feet wide, perhaps more, in some cases, as a watershed management development of the larger systems of society and government, and it is rumored that, at some point, the development project is projected to expand the entirety of the lateral expanse of the lower 48 states of America in coming decades.

Somewhere, 

at the edge of two localities, the river becomes a great wash basin, capable of handling a significant flow of water, perhaps, someday.

Hollywood, CA - YMCA building.

The Hollywood YMCA, in the heart of Hollywood, CA, features an external mural and protective wall (since there’s sometimes small civic uprisings that find their way in to Hollywood, lately, at times [mid-late 2022]) featuring black and white birds, perhaps pigeons, that they could be. 

The iPigeon.institute "Journey Through Art History" Generative AI Online Art Exhibition (annotations coming soon).

 It's the year 2024. 

2025.

We'd had several months' lead up time, to this place in time (February, 2024), in which conversational AI, Search Assistance with AI, and AI featuring Large Language Models had been introduced to the general public, alongside various generative AI platforms, some of which promised to shake up many industries and professions, with users' minds being given a vastly new and competitive margin in creating content, whether it be audio, video / visual, or code-based, in nature.

Personally, I let a lot of the headlines come and go, as I'd been preoccupied with healing up, from my months in being homeless (I'm now housed), for the most part. That being said, I've now come across a neat platform for generative AI at labs.google (it's called ImageFX), in terms of image generation, via text prompt. I thought of some humorous and idiot concepts, pertaining to pigeon'ry, or, which would ostensibly include pigeons, in the rendered image. 

To my delight, some of the renders come out just fantastic, to be honest! I was truly impressed by some of the images that ImageFX returned. After a few go-rounds with the web-based platform, I decided that I could compile a "History of Art," of sorts, with all art works featuring pigeons, in place of humans, or that just have pigeons present in the image. 

This article begins as simply an uploading compilation of images, and I expect to update the art exhibition, intermittently (hopefully soon, maybe later today) with annotations and art historian insight and allegory, as though the reader is brought along, on a tour. Here are the images!

Van Gogh-styled Almond Blossoms.

Here, I drew inspiration from an Amazon product I came across, which is a 3D-printed nightlight that depicts one of Van Gogh's works that I hadn't previously been familiarized with.

I easily conceived of the pigeons amongst the blossoms, perched on the branches, done in Impressionist style, and the images came out beautifully, with Google Labs' ImageFX to render the pictures.

Creole Folk Straw Craft Pigeons.

I got the inspiration for this set of images while browsing through the Los Angeles Public Library's catalog of books for Creole-themed folk art. I came across Phyllis Galembo's book, Maske, with a gorgeous color scheme to these two eclectically-costumed figures. I didn't get to see the book, but the cover was very inspirational.

Phyllis Galembo: Maske - Books

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com › Phyllis-Galembo-Maske

The book features vibrant, beautifully lit mask and costume art, modeled by almost entirely anonymous people, captured in a photographic museum which appeals to ...

 Rating: 4.7 · ‎67 reviews · ‎$24.27 · ‎$5.99 delivery · ‎30-day returns

I decided to try out a query in ImageFX, to see what I could come up with, in the context of folk straw art and pigeons. 

The renders came out much better than expected! I'm inspired to learn straw-weaving, so that I can make authentic replicas of these straw pigeons, based on these images.

Lascaux Cave Art of Southern France

I felt that the original Lascaux cave art images were a perfect place to begin a journey through art history, since the images are commonly regarded as some of the chronologically first remaining evidence of artistry in modern man. Here, pigeons take the reins, as the imaginative figures of man's encounters and imaginations, with a slice of bread being eaten by the birds.

Classically-styled pigeon busts, featuring curly-haired wigs

The next style of artistry that I visit, here, is the classical white marble sculptural bust of a pigeon, with some notes of fashionable styles of a different period in our Western cultural and historic legacy; in this case, the powdered wigs, which became fashionable around the 16th century, amongst the social and cultural elite and aristocracy.

Giant Chinese Buddha-styled pigeons

One of my formative childhood memories was visiting my Cantonese (Chinese) mother's home of Hong Kong and nearby coastal Chinese areas. Memories that surface include the Chinese Buddhist temples, which stand as historical and cultural testament to China's former (and remaining) Buddhist monks, as well as some of their mannerisms, values, and establishments, such as rich aromas of incense, marketplaces, where food, handiworks, such as ink stamps and miniature jade stone carvings were sold. They also sell small fireworks, year-round, for children to play with.

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Roman frescoes featuring pigeons

This art history reference draws influence, locally, in finding inspiration still present, in society, in establishments such as J. Paul Getty's coastal home, which stands as a museum, here, nearby Los Angeles. The decorum of the classically-styled grand home and enclaves feature painted imagery of some effects of nature; in this instance, pigeons.

 Illuminated Manuscript Pigeons

Here and there, over time, as a website administrator, I check on the website's incoming visitor traffic geographic location data. In this instance, I had noticed that I had a couple of visits from Mayotte, a territorial division of France, located off of the Southeast coast of Africa. I explored some of the other global island territories of France, and I encountered Reunion, which is located in the Indian Ocean. Here, the illuminated manuscript texts feature song lyrics in Reunion Creole, describing memories of flowers as cultural offerings, as well as the singing of birds.

The Golden Pigeons of Russia's Hermitage palace and museum

I'd visited Russia, around the time I was 29 years old, or so, and my (then) wife took me to visit St. Petersburg, which has some rich cultural centers and historically and artistically significant establishments, such as the former monarch Saint Peter's palatial home. One of my memories piqued, from my visit to St. Petersburg's Hermitage palace, as it's known, was an antique mechanical peacock, which plays music, and is cast in gold, as the outer surface.

Two-headed taxidermy curiosities of St. Petersburg's Kunstkamera 

Also in St. Petersburg is a small museum, which features local, pre-historic anthropological information exhibitions, as well as some of the curiosities of the former monarch's interests, such as two-headed taxidermy figures, as some of the display pieces of the collection.