The city of Lawndale is located in South Bay, east of the 405 and south of the 105 freeways. One of the last cities to incorporate within the County (in 1959), Lawndale is a culturally mixed residential community of about 32,000.

Situated at the city’s center, the new 17,000 square foot library will be between Lawndale City Hall and the existing library, which will be renovated for another use. The new library will include an adult library and reading facilities, adult Hispanic and Chinese language collections, and a children’s storytelling area. The library also has a joint use cooperative agreement with the Centinela Valley Union High School District to provide both space and staffing for a career center and a homework center in the future library. A spacious lawn between the new library and City Hall will be freshly landscaped and accented with seating to accommodate the many community activities which occur there throughout the year.

Karlsen will collaborate with Gruen Associates to create an artwork that will be visible from both the streetscape and the civic center. For this project, she will create a kaleidoscopic glass piece with imagery derived from historical and contemporary photographs of the surrounding landscape and sites. The large-scale, multi-colored art glass will be part of the building’s façade facing Burin Avenue.

About the Artist: AAnne Marie Karlsen earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin, and has been teaching art in southern California since 1979 at UCLA, and currently at Santa Monica College. Since 1990 she has been commissioned for numerous public projects throughout the country, including the FBI Headquarters in Chicago; Paseo Colorado Development, Pasadena; North Hollywood Red Line station; and Trailside Elementary School in Anchorage, Alaska. Her work is represented in many museums throughout California and the U.S., and internationally in the Kulturverwaltung Stadt Salzburg, Austria.

Rendering by Gruen Associates and the artist.