Initiated by Supervisor Burke, the Clara Shortridge Foltz Memorial will commemorate the life and achievements of Foltz in whose honor the former Criminal Courts Building was re-named in 2002.

Artist Susan Schwartzenberg is finalizing her research and developing construction drawings for a multi-part work to be installed at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles. Her installation graphically and textually commemorates the life and achievements of Foltz, the first woman to practice law in California and a founder of the modern public defender system. A key element of the project is an "image biography," a visual narrative constructed on a series of glass panels that will be installed along the building's north and south glass window walls, interior doorways and partitions. The exterior elements, located at the north and south entrances, will focus on Ms. Foltz's public legacy. Fabrication is scheduled to begin in 2007.

About the Artist: Susan Schwartzenberg is a visual artist who has exhibited her work internationally. Her recent projects include Cento: A Market St. Journal, which juxtaposed urban history with contemporary stories in an experimental guidebook, journal, and map. She co-authored Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism, and was co-designer of The Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Richmond. In 1998-99, she was a recipient of the Loeb Fellowship for Advanced Environmental Studies at Harvard University. Currently she is a senior artist at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

Schwartzenberg is working collaboratively on this project with Ulises Diaz of ADOBE LA and Paul Okamoto of Okamoto Saijo Architecture.