The Silver Lake Arts Scene of the Early 2000s Is All Grown Up

Los Angeles artist Mel Kadel has just released her first coloring book, called "Dream Drops," published by Secret Headquarters in Atwater Village. The book is full of detailed hand drawings of brave, hopeful, and adventurous women and girls. Readers are invited to add their own colors to Kadel's imaginative characters, making the art their own.

Arts editor Jessica Gelt remembers first meeting Kadel more than 25 years ago. At the time, Gelt had just moved to L.A. from Boston to play in an indie rock band. She and her bandmates rented an apartment in Silver Lake and quickly became friends with a group of talented local artists and musicians, including Kadel.

Kadel and her partner, artist Travis Millard, lived in a small cabin near Echo Park. Friends gathered there regularly to draw, make music, and hang out together. Kadel was almost always at work, filling pages with careful, detailed drawings that later appeared on friends' walls and on fliers for local music shows.

Kadel encouraged many of her friends to try making art themselves. She organized a group art show at an Echo Park record shop called Sea Level. Gelt painted a self-portrait on wood for that show, and she says it still hangs on her wall today.

Kadel also created the album cover for the Silversun Pickups' first EP, "Pikul," which came out in 2005. Later, she painted a giant mural on the side of the band's record label building in Silver Lake. The mural featured one of her well-known characters — a woman in blue stripes with long, flower-filled hair.

This week, Los Angeles has many exciting arts events happening around the city. On Friday, actress Eleanora Owen performs a one-woman show about French singer Edith Piaf at the Odyssey Theatre. Also on Friday, "Green Corridors" opens at City Garage Theater in Santa Monica — a drama about four Ukrainian women who fled their country after Russia's 2022 invasion.

On Sunday, A Noise Within theater company opens its season with "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," a play set during a 1927 blues recording session in Chicago. On Tuesday, the Los Angeles Philharmonic plays Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl, led by incoming conductor-in-residence Anna Handler. The concert also includes the U.S. premiere of a brand-new piece by composer Grace-Evangeline Mason.

In other local arts news, a 250-year-old painting called "The Portrait of Mai" has arrived at the Getty Museum. The painting shows a young Tahitian man who sailed to London with explorer Captain James Cook in 1774, and it was purchased for $61 million. The Los Angeles Children's Chorus also received a record $2,040,000 grant from the Perenchio Foundation to support its programs as the group turns 40.