Inside the L.A. Artist

In this vivacious collection of color portraits of 82 L.A. artists with their work, accompanied solely, and highly effectively, by the artists' verbal statemenaits, evocatively stylized narratives by Curt Friedrichs and Frank Romero, color-explosive expressionistic abstractions by Charles Arnoldi, Sam Francis and Roger Herman, to childlike whimsy, dreamscapes and three-dimensional work ranging among the machinistic, the formally lyrical and the coolly geometric. The personas depicted are as polar as streetwise Tomata Du Plenty and sophisticate Peter Alexander, spiritualist Lita Albuquerque and earth-wed Hans Burkhardt, flamboyant Martin Archer and reserved Helen Lundeberg. While the art speaks its own language here, Marrow's emphasis is on the artistthe unique way each interacts with his or her work. And the artists' own voices, reflecting with eloquence, passion, humor and poetry on concepts, communication, process, necessity and the stimulus of L.A. itself, add a compelling perspective to the nature of this subtly complex relationship. (May)