When Lizette Hernández and I met at the Exposition Park Rose Garden on a Tuesday afternoon, a breeze flowed through the space and the sunshine was bright but not overbearing. The perfect conditions for walking through the space at a leisurely pace and pausing to watch a hummingbird or smell a flower.
The sounds of the city fell away, replaced by the chirping of squirrels and the squeals of excited kids instead. The fountain stood in the middle of it all, regal.
Hernández, a 2024 Mohn LAND grant recipient, recently opened her first major public installation: LAND DREAMS, a series of sculptures installed in the Rose Garden. On March 22, friends, family, and art enthusiasts gathered for an opening celebration, bringing picnic blankets and snacks to experience the work for the first time.
Hernández’s connection to the park starts much earlier than this, though. She remembers seeing a photo as a little kid that she loved: her mom posing in the Rose Garden shortly after she migrated to the U.S. She also found photos of her mom with her aunts, all gathered in front of the fountain. Hernández visited the park often as an adult and, in 2020, she found a studio nearby.
“I would come here already, but I didn't know that it was the same garden,” Hernández said. “I remember being here a couple of times and then asking my mom about this photograph, and she was like, “Yeah, it's right there. It's literally where you're always at.’”
This deep sense of personal history guided LAND DREAMS, as did Hernández’s love of nature and focus on community. For LAND DREAMS, Hernández held workshops at her studio for people to create smaller works that would sit nestled inside her larger sculptures. She taught participants the basic skills for working with clay—like making pinch pots—and then asked them to create works that represented “what they wish to have, or wish to experience, in their lives.”
Some of the answers felt abstract, like the desire for more love. Other artworks depicted more tangible wants: a cute dog, a new table with stools for people to gather. These representations of their dreams are now in the Rose Garden, installed amidst not only the iconic roses, but also nearby hydrangeas, hibiscus, and a variety of trees, as Hernández points out.
The works in LAND DREAMS were installed at the Rose Garden so that they wouldn’t disrupt any roots in the ground. If some pieces look slightly off-center, she explained, that’s because she didn’t want to change anything in the dirt beneath it.
“I feel so connected to that way of working because I want to prioritize even what you can't see,” Hernández explained.
Visitors see the sculptures shortly after walking in from the California Science Center side of the park, near the low brick wall that surrounds the space. On the afternoon we walked around, people were gathered for picnics, taking their lunch breaks, or simply walking through on their way to the next thing. At one point in our conversation, a little boy squealed “There’s a squirrel, I’ve never seen a squirrel before!” You can feel a real sense of wonder in the park, if you slow down enough to look.
Installing artwork outdoors means you can control less about what happens to the pieces than you might in an indoor space. Since the installation of the LAND DREAMS in March, Hernández has noticed spiders, squirrels, and birds interacting with the pieces and leaving traces of their day-to-day movements.
Hernández embraces these interactions. She created the sculptures while thinking about the tufas at Mono Lake, limestone rock structures that were created from the combination of saltwater and freshwater. These structures became places for Ospreys to create their nests; Alkali flies also interact with the limestone through the different parts of their lives. Hernández felt drawn to the ways in which different species adapt, creating new homes and finding shelter in unlikely places.
“I like to imagine what would happen to these sculptures after humans,” Hernández said. “If we go extinct or something. The material is so strong. It’s stone. It can outlive us depending on how we tend to the work. I like to think of the way other species in life would interact with the forms—if they can create some protection or shelter from a predator, or a nesting space.”
Hernández also thought about the altars created throughout Los Angeles, somewhere as simple as a street corner; the works in LAND DREAMS take inspiration from religious nichos. Since her studio is nearby, Hernández often stops by the park to brush off dust and other elements of nature from the works.
“Coming here and tending to them has been a spiritual practice that's also connected to how people make their altars, and it’s even tied to going to cemeteries and cleaning altars,” Hernández said. “I have each participant’s moment with the clay imprinted into my mind. I want the leaves and everything to do their thing, but also I feel like a responsibility to come and take care of them.”
Spending time in the park means interacting with the central fountain, the calming sound of running water enveloping you. Water was an important element for Hernández as she imagined what LAND DREAMS might look like. She surfs often and has taken to keeping clay in her car, so she can make work right on the beach.
She recalled the words of Diné (Navajo) activist, artist, and writer Pat McCabe, who tells the story of learning how to listen to water. McCabe started praying to the water, which held the reminder that water evaporates and can therefore carry that prayer far and wide.
“If the dreams and the intentions that the people from the workshops that put in the sculptures can vibrate near the water, that water starts to evaporate and it moves within the air,” Hernández said. “We're all here. We're all connected in that way.”
Hernández often thinks about the significance of the process as a whole, not just the final artworks. When you visit LAND DREAMS, what you’re seeing is the “spiritual residue” of the entire project.
“The work is putting up flyers around the neighborhood, hoping people come, and building trust with each other,” Hernández said. “The art — the physical manifestation of it — is just a shrine to that process.”
Learn more about LAND DREAMS here.
Photos by Gina Clyne.