Yash Pics: Fresh PaintDate posted: October 26, 2011 |
There’s nothing like a new coat of paint to freshen up the curb appeal of Yash La Casa Market.
The Market Makeover crews were hard at work during a series of Community Volunteer Work Days to get the store ready for the Grand Re-Opening on Saturday, October 29th.
Check out the work-in-progress below:
EXTERIOR STOREFRONT:
Public Matters worked with Nathan Cheng Consulting and the Songu Family to come up with the new color palette + exterior design treatment for the market’s exterior. The selected color palette reinforces the freshness of the forthcoming inventory of fruits + vegetables inside as well as the edible garden underway in the backyard.
BACKYARD FENCE:
The wooden fence in the backyard got a colorful facelift, via graphic large-scale fruit + vegetable silhouettes drawn + painted by the Market Makeover Crew. Many thanks to Volunteers of East Los Angeles (VELA) for the donation of paint!
EXTERIOR SIDE WALL:
The wall on Hazard got a graphic treatment that calls attention to the new garden on the other side.
LatinoGraduate.Net, 10.20.2011Date posted: October 21, 2011 |
“LatinoGraduate.Net,” 10.20.2011
Public Matters’ Mike Blockstein and students from the East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) at Esteban Torres High School (above from left to right: Andy Alvarez, Florisel Rojas, Jessica Rodriguez, Martha Mejia and Clara Mejia) joined host Armando Sanchez of LatinoGraduate.Net to talk about their work with the UCLA-USC CPHHD to improve healthy food access in East Los Angeles and to promote the launch of the Proyecto MercadoFRESCO’s first East LA Market Makeover at Yash La Casa Market.
See Part I of the segment here >>
See Part II of the segment here >>
KXLU 88.9 FM, 10.16.2011Date posted: October 16, 2011 |
Christine Palma, “Out the Window: Interview with Anne Bray, Mike Blockstein + Paolo Davanzo,“ Echo in the Sense, KXLU, 10. 16.2011
Yash Pics: Interior MotivesDate posted: September 30, 2011 |
Yash La Casa Market had an interior typical of most corner or liquor stores: the familiar wall of chips, racks of candy, refrigerators stocked with soda and other sweetened beverages, walls and ceilings covered with ads for alcoholic beverages. It’s a large store, as far as convenience stores go, but it felt dark and cramped. The space also didn’t feel particularly friendly.
Nathan Cheng’s plan is to make the store a more warm, inviting place to shop, a retail space that reflects the friendly, hospitable qualities of its storeowners, who have run this family business since 2002 and are very much a part of the East LA community. The Market Makeover will open up the space, consolidate the store inventory in a more organized manner, increase efficiency and promote a better sense of spatial flow throughout the store, and bring natural light in by opening up the front windows to the street. Last, but not least, we’re bringing in a new produce refrigeration case to house Yash’s forthcoming fresh fruit + vegetable inventory.
See the dramatic results at the Grand Re-Opening on Saturday, October 29th, from 10am-NOON!
Until then, check out these images of the Market Makeover Crew hard at work freshening up the store’s interior. . .
Yash Pics: Future GardenDate posted: September 24, 2011 |
The backyard of Yash La Casa Market at 3968 Hammel Street in East LA started out as a concrete slab, with a few weeds poking through the cracks. It served as a combination parking lot, delivery + storage area and repository for boxes, bottles and other miscellaneous materials. There was a lone jujube tree. After this summer, Yash’s backyard will never be the same.
The plan, conceived by Nathan Cheng and approved by the storeowners, Kulwant and Balvinder Songu, is to tear out a significant part of the concrete and replace it with raised bed gardens that will grow a wide variety of edibles. A Market Makeover Team consisting of ELARA Student Interns, UCLA, Nathan Cheng, Public Matters, Volunteers of East LA (VELA), and local community members will work to transform the backyard into a garden oasis that will be open to the public as a community resource.
See the dramatic results at the Grand Re-Opening on Saturday, October 29th, from 10am-NOON!
Until then, check out these images of the Market Makeover Crew hard at work. . .
SAVE THE DATE: 10.29.2011Date posted: September 23, 2011 |
We have the official date for the GRAND RE-OPENING OF YASH LA CASA MARKET, the first of four Proyecto MercadoFRESCO Market Makeovers in East LA and Boyle Heights through the UCLA-USC Center for Population Health + Health Disparities (CPHHD).
MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
WHEN: Saturday, October 29, 2011, from 10:00AM -NOON!
WHERE: 3968 Hammel Street @ Hazard in East LA!
Fresh in the Streets Fashion Show @ Outpost for Contemporary ArtDate posted: September 10, 2011 |
September 10, 2011: Fresh in the Streets Fashion Show , Outpost for Contemporary Art, Highland Park, CA
Fresh fruits + vegetables took to the streets of Highland Park as part of the “Fresh in the Streets” Fashion Show, organized by Andrea Bowers + Olga Koumoundourous in collaboration with Public Matters, East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) Students, UCLA Students and Amy Howden-Chapman. The closing event for “Transformer Display for Community Fundraising,” the festivities included a runway show, a choreographed musical performance, Market Makeovers t-shirts for sale, and a fresh produce march along York Blvd.
2011 Mexican Independence Day Parade, East Los AngelesDate posted: |
September 10, 2011: 2011 Mexican Independence Day Parade, East Los Angeles, CA
East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) students Catherine Martinez (a.k.a. Pomegranate/Granada) + Lilybeth Hernandez (a.k.a. Avocado/Aguacate) debuted their fabulous, fresh alter egos at this year’s Mexican Independence Day Parade in East Los Angeles to a crowd of several thousand spectators.
The ELARA students were invited to be part of the Volunteers of East Los Angeles (VELA) contingency to help promote the consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables in the East LA community. VELA, which runs the Farmers’ Market at the East LA Civic Center every Saturday, is a community partner in the UCLA-USC CPHHD‘s efforts to increase healthy food access in East LA; it also served as the headquarters for the ELARA Students’ UCLA-USC CPHHD Summer Internship earlier this year. The incredible costumes shown here were conceptualized and created during the students’ Summer Internship in collaboration with artist Amy Howden-Chapman.
Fruit + Vegetable Costumes Prep for “Fresh in the Streets” Fashion ShowDate posted: September 8, 2011 |
Over the course of their UCLA-USC CPHHD Summer Internship, our ELARA Students have been working with artist Amy Howden-Chapman to develop and produce a crop of fabulously fresh fruit + vegetable costumes, which will be used to promote increased consumption of fresh produce in East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights through the UCLA-USC CPHHD.
The new life-sized produce line will make their runway debut Saturday, September 10th at the “FRESH IN THE STREETS” Fashion Show at Outpost for Contemporary Art in Highland Park, the closing event for “Transformer Display for Community Fundraising,” a collaboration between artists Andrea Bowers and Olga Koumoundouros. The high fashion fun starts at 6:30pm.
See you there!
T-Shirt Silkscreening Workshop @ Outpost for Contemporary ArtDate posted: August 26, 2011 |
East Los Angeles Renaissance Academy (ELARA) students went on a field trip with Public Matters to Outpost for Contemporary Art in Highland Park for a T-Shirt Silkscreening Workshop with artists Andrea Bowers and Olga Koumoundouros. The two artists invited Public Matters to be part of their collaborative project, “Transformer Display for Community Fundraising”; the project, on view at Outpost until September 10, 2011, features Public Matters’ Market Makeovers work in both South and East Los Angeles.
As part of “Transformer Display,” Bowers + Koumoundouros offered to teach our ELARA students how to silkscreen t-shirts; they even commissioned a graphic designer to create the Market Makeovers t-shirt design. The resulting shirts, silkscreened by the artists and the students, will be available for sale at Outpost to raise funds for ELARA student stipends.
The artists also connected Public Matters with artist Amy Howden-Chapman, who has been working with the ELARA students over the summer to produce fruit and vegetable costumes they will wear to promote our work to increase healthy food access in East LA with the UCLA-USC CPHHD.
