Sunrise:

Zara Schuster


The buildings are covered in hues of red

The umbrellas are filled with luminosity


Five men huddle around the fire, 

We can't see their ears and the sun is rising 

Above them. In the scape, it seems like the 

known is obvious, but everything remains hidden 


He leans forward, with his head in his hands

His hand moves towards the temple, he's got 

something of a chronic headache, and we need 


distribution. Or else nothing will heal.

I dedicate this to the meadows, the fields,

which are empty stages, like seashells.


I dedicate this to you, blue green grey,

Skies. And the dream that summer cast.


The darkness speaks for itself, as it twists itself into:

Sunset 


The beginnings are red and the hues are blue, 

monitors, clocks, dancing frogs, eating hotdogs,


Five men huddle around the fire, 

We can't see their ears and the sun is rising 

Above them. In the scape, it seems like the 

known is obvious, but everything remains hidden 


He extends an arm to the man,

'This too shall pass,' but his brow is already too 

burrowed. In heat, and stroke and infamy

He's carrying the weight of the masses, the many, 

'we need distribution':

Or else nothing will heal


We repeat after each other: 

A love letter: a spell: a song 

A dancing frog, theater, dancing bears 

tap dancing shoes, and men that love 

the blues: a sunrise, a sunset 

a shell made of percocet, welcome to LA 

where all the doppelgängers come to play 


We'll storm the streets! Or Chateau! We'll write the words, 

and sing the songs! We'll bring our friends, they'll sing along! 


Being made in LA is.

sunrise 

Being made in LA is.

sunset 

---

Will JPL explode, and how do we catch a moving object?

Ella Morner-Ritt

The board members were all faking tears. In Tuesday’s LA Board of Supervisors meeting, the attendees were mad at the board members were mad at the cops were mad at the firefighters were mad at the politicians were mad at the power companies, who didn’t obviously send a rep or anything. All the city-sponsored reports and studies of the fires haven’t captured the truth. All their suggestions involve more technology, more bloated police forces. Fingers were outstretched toward each other, shaking with an anger not quite their own, diluted in the absorption from their constituents. 


But someone made a public comment before the meeting that freaked people out even further.


Shelby C. Edison, the worst fake name, claimed a call came from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena to fire officials in the wee hours of the height of the fires. The person, allegedly an administrator, allegedly told officials JPL’s personal fire brigade lost control of the fire. Allegedly, JPL needed immediate assistance from city firefighters. 


According to Shelby, this diverted fire resources from West Altadena, where at least 19 people died.


This alleged JPL administrator allegedly told fire forces that if the fire broke through onto campus, there would be a massive blast. A 10-mile radius due to the explosives on campus. “Large explosion and shock waves,” claimed the public comment, quoting the alleged JPL administrator. 


People also claimed they saw firetrucks go by in the neighborhood of JPL, towards the lab on the night of the fires. The sound an alarm rings when it’s nearby. Shrill, loud. Doppling as it travels away, deepening into a low and quiet buzz. They stood there, listening to it go.


The great parade of local politics continued on for three hours during this meeting on Tuesday, and the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to make another group to really seriously look into the fires.


Is there a prophecy we can imagine where the answer to the questions we all have is good?

Brian Rochefort’s sculptures are not inspired by Los Angeles, or our fires, but rather the other planets I guess of Bolivia, Peru, East Africa. A lot of places look like an approximation of LA, though, at least to me.


The melted mounds scatter around a platform like monuments to burn area. Like burnt out cars or melted homewares. They appear distended, swollen, baby pink and azure blue and stark stark red. But all of the interiors of Rochefort’s sculptures are blanketed in a thick film of glass, an unexpected veneer gleaming up to me from a technicolor and burned exterior. 


Alake Shilling’s creature comforts I also want to touch and hold, peek inside them to see their fluffy innards and see something brilliant and full of vivid colors, something we’ve known before. We want to hold something so used to being held but it’s now on a pedestal. Her bears cry out to us. Or they hold us in their gaze. We should really be able to touch this stuff. Dry the bear’s molten blue tears!


Rochefort’s monuments and Shilling’s Is there hope for me once more
look like the only toy my friend could find in the ashes of his parents’ house that burned down in January. Vivid colors dulled by multiple firings. I wasn’t sure I should touch that toy because it was covered in whatever we use to paint houses, melted shellac. 


Similarly, Mike Stoltz engages “with the(im)materiality of the moving object.” His dizzying footage of LA city lights, reeling and spinning, blurs any geographic sense of the city. I know the valley when I see it, though.


This is a city that has to watch itself as it changes, and hold onto something as it melts. How else can you explain that change, aside from the whim of a larger force, something we can’t control? The lizard people, the explosions just on the horizon.


Made in LA 2025 does not have a through-line though, even as fires appeared as a written precursor to the gallery itself. But the fire is also a prevailing subliminal text of much of the works. We are grasping for something outside of frame, referential or self-referential. 


We are all watching as something is leaving in motion and what are we left with? Is there hope for us once more? I’d love to imagine a future with you that’s nice. Aside from Shilling and Rochefort, I feel little comfort here.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s official Instagram account commented on a post about the public comment. They had the truth. They don’t store rocket or jet propellants on the property. They said that the possibility of a 10-mile radius blast “is non-existent.” 


They said they allow LA County Fire to use their water tanks and helipad during emergencies, and their brigade never lost control of the fire around them.


Then people asked where the call came from and who issued the public statement and why someone would lie about that. The questions spiraled out from there. Just out of reach here. Can’t catch a melting object.


But the Board of Supervisors doesn’t run this city. The bears do.

---

INTO THIN AIR 

Written by 

Name of Bobby Sutton 

In response to made in LA OCT 4th, 2025 

Planet: Earth 

Phone: (512) 415 - 6482

INT. CAR - DAY 

KHATIYA KING sits idle in traffic as she waits to turn into the QUICNY GALLERY valet. In her car radio we hear the carefully chosen words of Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception.’ 

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION 

Successfully (whatever that may 

mean) or unsuccessfully, we all 

overact the part of our favorite 

character in fiction. And the fact, 

the almost infinitely unlikely 

fact, of actually being Cezanne 

makes no difference. For the 

consummate painter, with his little 

pipeline to Mind at Large by 

passing the brain valve and ego 

filter, was also and just as 

genuinely this whiskered goblin 

with the unfriendly eye. 

Khatiya’s car is motioned forward by a sharply dressed valet workers. 

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION (CONT’D) 

For relief I turned back to the 

folds in my trousers. ‘This is how 

one ought to see,’ I repeated yet 

again. 

As Khatiya waits for the valets to swap with the driver from the car in front of her she looks down at the folds in her black trousers. 

KHATIYA 

This is how one ought to see. 

THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION 

And I might have added, ‘These are 

the sort of things one ought to 

look at.’ 

KHATIYA 

These are sort of things one ought 

to look at. 

A tap from her window. She looks up from her trousers. She rolls down her window. 

VALET 

Company please.



KHATIYA 

I’m sorry company? I don’t know. 

What do you mean? 

The Valet doesn’t speak much English besides ‘company please’ He looks to the other valet worker who is in the exact same boat. 

VALET 

(Spanish to coworker) 

Ehhh... I don’t know. It’s just 

what we were told to say. 

Valet 2 doubles down 

VALET 2 

Company? Necessitas company? No 

company. No... 

Valet 2 points and cross both forearms signifying - no bueno. Shakes his head. Khatiya doesn’t know a company but she does know Spanish. 

KHATIYA 

(Spanish) 

I’m sorry I am the artist. 

She fumbles her purse and pulls out the artist program. It’s her face on the front cut in half with a HAWK. 

The valets eyes open wide. 

VALET 

(Spanish) 

Oh oh oh we’re so sorry. Uh here 

let’s get you out of the car and 

we’ll take care of this. 

KHATIYA 

(Spanish) 

Thank you. Sorry for the confusion. 

A call from her phone Jimmy (Papa). She lets it go to voicemail. 

VALET 2 

(Spanish) 

We did not mean to hold you up! My 

wife loves your work. Thinks very 

highly of it. 

KHATIYA 

(Spanish) 

I love to hear that. Thank you. 

Call again from Wesley Mark. She ignores it and walks down the alley to the backdoor entrance that says employees only. 

INT. QUINCY GALLERY - MOMENTS LATER 

Khatiya walks in and her senses are bombarded by people, music, lights, and stimulation. 

WOMAN 1 

Khatiya! Oh my goodness the work is 

so lovely. 

MAN 2 

Khatiya of how you’re style is 

elevated. 

WOMAN 2 

Khatiya you certainly out did 

yourself this time. 

MAN 1 

What type of Hawk is that? 

Continuous bombardment. In the distance her agent waives. WESLEY MARK, tall and neolithic looking with a demeanor of passive aggression. 

She weaves her way throughout the crowd and then is scooped by Wes and huddled to the back as if to discuss a football play. 

WESLEY 

I’ve been trying to reach you! 

KHATIYA 

I’m sorry a lot of shit came up 

with the baby sitter and just the 

kids are... a lot. 

WESLEY 

Why can’t they be here? 

KHATIYA 

Are you serious? I can barely be 

here let alone give my kids any 

attention while at something like 

this? 

WESLEY 

Where’s James why couldn’t he 

handle this for you? 

KHATIYA 

You know Jim. 

WESLEY 

You need to divorce that sucker. 

Clearly this isn’t the first time Wes has suggested this and Khatiya puts a firm stop to it. 

KHATIYA 

Wesely you seriously need to watch 

your mouth ok. I love him and yes 

he is not perfect but no one is and 

we all have our things to fix. OK 

seriously. You know I don’t need to 

hear any of it right now. 

Suddenly one hand grabs Khatiya’s shoulder. It’s her husband JAMES KING a modest man - humble to his core. Wesely exits the conversation. 

WESLEY 

(whisper) 

It’s your funeral. 

Khatiya grabs his arm. 

KHATIYA 

Hey, cut it. I mean it. 

WESLEY 

You’re supposed to speak in 5 and 

this right here is cutting into 

that. 

He points to her hand white knuckling his arm. He gingerly taps her fingers to signal ‘let go’ then vanishes into the crowd. 


Hey 

JAMES 


He holds her back and looks at her. Khatiya falls into him, and they hug for a brief moment. 

JAMES (CONT’D) 

(alluding to Wes) 

What was that about? 

KHATIYA 

Jim I need you to do better with 

the kids. (MORE) 


KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

I just got off the phone with Juney 

last minute and tried to find a 

replacement because her dad is 

sick, and then I couldn’t find a 

replacement, so our kids are home 

alone and there’s no plan. They 

don’t know what’s going on. Your 

mom didn’t pick up and Wes is on my 

fucking ass about this opening. Why 

didn’t your mom pick up Jim? and I 

tried calling you and you didn’t 

pick up either! 

James takes it in. She’s frenetic he’s composed. 

JAMES 

It’s ok Kha. 

He hands her celebration flowers hidden behind his back. 

INT. GALLERY STAGE - SAME TIME 

Wesley speaks into the mic introducing the show. 

WESLEY 

Khatiya King has risen to the Los 

Angeles art scene as one of the 

finest... 

INT. BACKSTAGE - SAME TIME 

She looks at the flowers and is obviously appreciative, but doesn’t want to ignore her previous point. 

KHATIYA 

Thanks you James 

She takes said flowers. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

..but is what I’m saying making 

sense? 

JAMES 

Absolutely. I’m sorry for not 

communicating it better, but I 

handled it. 

INT. GALLERY STAGE - SAME TIME. 

WESLEY 

Her enriched meso-american 

background and deep roots to 

ancestral and paternal ties to 

Tokyo infuse symbolic iconographies 

with impressive wood block 

printing. 

The gallery waits with small numbered bidding signs in their hands. 

MAN 3 

(leaning to his partner) 

I’ve been buying and then reselling 

for more. 

WOMAN 3 

Pump, then dump. As they say. 

INT. BACKSTAGE - SAME TIME 

JAMES 

I ran into Juney at the store while 

picking up these flowers. We worked 

it out my parents are going to see 

her dad and take care of him. I 

gave her a couple extra bucks for 

the trouble. It figures that my dad 

and her dad knew each other from 

the army. Which I was surprised 

hadn’t come up before. 

INT. QUINCY GALLERY - SAME TIME 

WESLEY 

And now her most undeniable piece 

Hawk in the Pines. 

A curtain falls and a massive wood carved block print is unveiled. In all of its glory: A hawk on a pine tree branch. Soft with its avian eyes subtly following every single attendant in the room. 

INT. BACKSTAGE - SAME TIME 

JAMES 

The kids are alright, and even if 

it didn’t work out they would’ve 

been fine anyways. We’ve left them 

alone before. 

James looks out the corner and sees the hawk unveiled. Khatiya puts her head on his chest. 

KHATIYA 

(into his chest) 

God, I’m sorry. 

James kisses her on the head and rubs her back. He pretends to announce the gallery show. 

JAMES 

And now to talk about her Magnum 

Opus legendary artist ‘MIKE HAWK’ 

INT. QUINCY GALLERY - SAME TIME 

WESLEY 

And now we would like to introduce 

someone you all know and love 

Khatiya King! 

The audience erupts, and Khatiya walks out. Over the applause Wes says one last thing. 

WESLEY (CONT’D) 

The Quincy Gallery acknowledges 

its presence on indigenous land 

and its relations to tradition, 

ancestry and the erasure of such. 

The applause drowns out his expedited excuse for indigenous recognition. Khatiya walks and is overwhelmed. The people. The bidding numbers. The recognition. Her sense of self. She reaches the mic. 

Silence - the mic slightly feedbacks. 

KHATIYA 

Wow what a turn out huh. 

The crowd gently claps. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

I’d like to start by thanking 

Quincy Gallery and all those 

affiliated with. Those people have 

championed my work since as long as 

I’ve been an artist and I am so 

grateful to have a show like this. 

To unveil a piece of this size. 

More gentle clapping. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

I know I’m gonna go off script 

here, but I first started working 

on this piece at the beginning of 

my career and I never knew where to 

take it. 

She looks over at the piece and there’s something peculiar. Suddenly there is no hawk. The once central hawk is now vanished - into thin air. She blinks, and then blinks again. And then again. And then again. 

The piece is in perfect condition. As if printed without a focal animal. It didn’t make a shred of sense. There was the brown bark of the pine crisp and creaking. The pale blue sky whispering to a dark blue. Green needles nestled in clusters. But where was the Hawk? Where were those piercing eyes. 

She continues. 


And where? 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 


She stumbles, but catches. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

And where.. where has my career 

gone from there. Only up. Like a 

hawk. 

More people clap - stronger this time. But they do not recognize anything wrong with the print. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

And at one time everything felt so 

fragile, but now I know that the 

current things I am printing and 

the connection to my ancestry, and 

my people are the things I ought to 

see. 

She looks beyond the crowd and at the door entry is a hawk. A real live hawk on the ground. The exact hawk from the print. 


It pecks the door, and there is a loud clink. Nobody seems to hear it this first time. 

Khatiya continues to quote Huxley. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

These are the sort of things that 

one ought to look at. 

The crowd is slightly confused. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

Cause with this witnesses we are 

witnessing a happening. 

The hawk taps the door again. This time some people hear and begin to look for the sound. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

When I print I begin to feel. A 

feeling that we are connected 

beyond responsibility. Fiscal, 

emotional...traditional 

The hawk continues to peck at the door. Full force and flapping outside. 

People are drawn to the noise. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

Because... I always ask what is 

owning artwork? Can you even own a 

piece of art. It will always be 

there even after the owner is 

deceased. What does it matter?! 

Peck-peck 

PECK! PECK! 

PECK-PECK-PECK! PECK! 

The crowd is now almost all looking at the door. 


A hawk! 

WOMAN   


KHATIY


Owning art might even be as useless as a heart surgeon in an operating room with a full erection! 

PECK PECK PECK! 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

Can someone please get this fucking 

hawk! 

She yells into the mic and now everyone sees the hawk. James is near the door and opens it with intent to shoo the hawk, but the hawk swoops into the building. 

People scream but do not run. 

The hawk floats silently in the gallery. Its wings do not make a sound as they thump against its cream colored breast. Its eyes scan as it dances above the heads of the patron. 

This happens for a moment. 

CHILD 

Look there’s no hawk on the paper. 

Everyone looks to the print. Indeed still no hawk. Shock and awe. That’s when, with lighting speed the hawk flies directly through the paper ripping the print down the middle and vanishing against the concrete wall. 

There was nowhere it could’ve gone at 120 MPH/193 KMH. It simply vanished. 

CUT TO: 

EXT. CAR - LATER 

In the background fenced off by rope is a crowd of people yelling Khatiya’s name. Press, patrons, and spectators grovel at the chance to address the spectacle. Wes and Khaytia sit in the valet driveway. She stares off in the distance. Wes is on a call. 

WESLEY 

Thanks you of course we will be 

getting back to you. 

He hangs up. 

WESLEY (CONT’D) 

This just in that hawk saved your 

career and numbers are through the 

roof. PR is on the line and 

Christie's wants first look at new 

things on the way. Everyone has 

immediately forgotten about “Heart 

Surgeon erection.” What were you 

thinking? 


Khatiya is silent looking at the valets. A man handing a ticket to the valet looks at Khatiya. Through his sunglasses and her tinted glass they make eye contact. His car is pulled up from the depths of the valet lot. The valet motions for Wesely to back the car out of the drive way. 

WESLEY (CONT’D) 

This guy! This guy wants me to 

drive the fucking car out of the 

way. I don’t drive ass hole. I 

can’t drive. This isn’t my car. 

He beeps the horn. The valet yells at him in Spanish. 

WESLEY (CONT’D) 

Uhhhh no hablo fucktardo! 

He honks more. The Valet just shakes his head and throws his hand down in a forget about it fashion. 

WESLEY (CONT’D) 

They’re just gonna have to deal 

with that. 

Silence. He scrolls on his phone. 

WESLEY (CONT’D) 

So, tell me. Your thoughts on 

selling. 

KHATIYA 

I don’t want to sell. 

Wesley turns to Khatiya as she speaks with a stone face. She meets Wesley. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

I don’t want to sell and I’m firing 

you. 

Wesley is stunned. 

KHATIYA (CONT’D) 

Get out of my car. 

Birds eye view. We see Wesley kicked out of the car as Khatiya walks around gets back in and drives off separating the sea of people to access her freedom. 

CUT TO BLACK. 

---

TASTE

Frances Iridian 


Post your pictures online more

And forget what they're saying all that for 

You know You’ll never be on a museum wall 

Unless it’s “taste” who’s making the call


(And You know we all can see 

Your nipples through your baby tee..)


But your work is sharpened and tinted blue 

And To us that’s nothing new 

But see, in ten years time 

You’ll become an era defined 


this event is careful and colorful 

Well planned out and masterful 

But I got lost looking for you 

And my phone had a better view  

---

A Portrait of the Exhibition   

Riley Getz 


Consider all that has been demystified 

crossing avenue of the stars,


on a post-modern terrace, 

with bamboo in pea rock. 


Tell me now, with the unawareness of an actor,

in a neighborhood of gracious mountains, 


why experimentation leads to a series of unfortunate 

hairlines, and a G.I. Joe with a cock. 


In the restroom I caught an old man making 

weird faces to himself in the mirror.


We are witnessing a cowboy explosion

in the worst way.


To my left, under unfinished arches, 

She told a stranger, “my cousin lives in


Woodstock, but not that one.” Down the

hallway, a documentary about loneliness


and the decline of integration 

played in a snake loop. 


In another room, a deep voice tried

to narrate infinity. 


I could tell by the look on his face that he appreciates 

the simple pleasure of tugging an itch away.



Of all the sci-fi I’ve seen, I feel confident

in saying most of it is bad. 

I miss convertible nights, writing “fuck”

on a wall, and getting lost in a well funded


system of elevators. There’s always a chance

at becoming an engineer, and calculating 


cemetery symmetry. I can’t think of a better

place to die than Forest Lawn, logistically.  


When I was a kid I was haunted by glass pumpkins,

and the hidden letters inside of the word fauxhawk. 


A crow napped in the shade with a croissant 

in its mouth, too full to fly. 


I wonder if the elderly french kiss, or if they

keep it in the Jesuit tradition. 


From the height of opposing courtyard vistas,

two security guards took photos of each other.


The band downstairs broke into a jazz rendition 

of “Low Rider”, as a young girl prayed over a penny 


that she had just thrown into a porcelain fountain. 

Even children know that wishing is absolute.

---

Hollywood Forever

Emily Quinn Glennon


As long as I have been alive my parents have received pamphlets from Forest Lawn with offers of discounts on plots and discounts on lawn care for their forever home. There is an insistence on constant preparation for your final resting place when you live in Los Angeles. You couldn’t escape it even in the depths of the valley. 


This preoccupation is built into the landscape; people make pilgrimage here in hopes of securing a legacy, the roads are dangerous, the carcinogenic chemicals abundant. If you get in the car going 70 on the freeway enough times you will start to think about the end. 


This feels like a funeral. There was something here, now it is gone. Gravestone relief rubbings, blanketed cadavers, cars crumpled on the side of a desert road like dead dogs, video tours of a funeral procession, cinderblock walls from 10 years ago already crumbling to time. Images of Lazarus and rebirth are sprinkled around the show to offer reprieve, but our vision of the present is as uncertain as ever. We can hardly imagine what comes after this. 


Despite the constant turnover of middle-American hopefuls here, Los Angeles iconography is inevitably retro, populated by old Hollywood, skylines blanketed in smog, mid-century design. Many of the works in this show exist within this suspended retrofuture. Carl Cheng’s “nature machines” display rocks being punished, confined and eroded by neon machines made to mimic natural processes. The machines perform these processes not to improve upon anything, but simply because they ought to. 


Bruce Yonemoto’s Broken Fences diptych offers a more cautious view of nostalgia, displaying US War Relocation Authority propaganda films beside Nazi footage of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, both violent misrepresentations of reality meant to lead the public to believe that their country, or their state of California, treats its prisoners kindly. Yonemoto illuminates the sharp danger in misrepresenting history as it happens, and in the all-consuming quality of nostalgia that may mislead us from in dealing with the violence of the present. 


To live in LA is impeccably boring. The weather is unchanged, the landscape in a constant state of blurry destruction-construction, an occasional interruption of glittery commerce piercing through the floor in shapes resembling painted fenders and exhaust pipes. By some miracle and with a complete and utter lack of planning, we have managed to create the most beautiful, violent and strange city in the world. How did Los Angeles become this way? Everyone has a vastly different idea of what heaven should look like.

---