“These are the stories of generations of migrants,” Times staff writer Deborah Vankin writes of Yurshansky’s work. The artist has produced a web-based audio guide that tells stories about plants not typically found in California, like the Canary Island date palm. Soviet-era refugee Jenny Yurshansky has upended everything you think you know about “invasive” or “non-native plants.” The Lincoln Heights artist created a work that asks us to see beyond what are sometimes “blacklisted” flora and instead think about the trauma of refugees arriving in countries with unrecognizable landscapes. By all means, take time to visit the monsters - and revel in the imagination of an almost-forgotten immigrant artist. “We stayed true to the vision of Benjamin Dominguez and stayed true to the vision of what San Gabriel had in mind in the 1960s,” Zarate said. La Laguna stands as a testament to his legacy in Southern California. Yet when Zarate began looking into the story behind the sculptures, he found references to “the Mexican” instead of Dominguez being identified by name, even though he is up there with Isamu Noguchi and Pablo Picasso as distinguished artists who also designed playgrounds. La Laguna was his last work, completed when he was 70. Dominguez was a well-known Mexican concrete artist before he came to the U.S. His creatures can be found around Legg Lake at Whittier Narrows Recreation Area in South El Monte (Solis allocated money to preserve this site and invited Dominguez’s descendants to a ceremony with the restored creatures), the Atlantis Play Center in Garden Grove and sites in Nevada and Texas.īut his story was almost lost to history.

La Laguna is not the only place with Dominguez’s works. (Ron Brown / City of San Gabriel / Friends of La Laguna) Donations can be made through the Friends of La Laguna website. One more piece, a lighthouse that doubles as a slide, needs to be restored. Over the course of more than a decade, the group raised almost $700,000 - with help from the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles Conservancy and county supervisors, among others - to preserve the playground that cost $12,000 to build in 1965.

Fast-forward to today: La Laguna is on the National Register of Historic Places. County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Hilda Solis, who also remembered playing on Dominguez’s creatures. He co-founded the nonprofit Friends of La Laguna and eventually enlisted the help of L.A. If we have to put up our house or whatever else - we just firmly believed that San Gabriel is not San Gabriel without La Laguna.” So when they said they were going to demolish it, my wife and I looked at each other and said we would do absolutely everything possible to be able to save. “It’s a time capsule of parenting, a time capsule of how kids used to play,” said Zarate, who grew up in San Gabriel and played at La Laguna.

(Dominguez family and Friends of La Laguna)Įloy Zarate, a history professor at Pasadena City College, was one of them.

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