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What would you make with two weeks in a peaceful cabin of your own with a view of the mountains?
That’s the question asked by a new multidisciplinary residency embedded in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Tujunga.
“There’s a whole family of crows that live here, and they’re incredible,” artist and writer Emma Kemp said as she gave a tour of the grounds of the 500-square-foot cabin-like house just below the Angeles National Forest.
There’s a garden with native plants like monkeyflower and buckwheat, and an enclosed porch serves as a mini farm stand. Kemp stocks a fridge with eggs from her chickens and there’s locally-made candles, bouquets of flowers grown nearby and a selection of books.
In the Tujunga garden.
The charming little house and garden floats in a liminal space between the public and private in this residential neighborhood.
“It’s been cool to have, like, local neighbors who have lived here for a long time being like, ‘Oh what is this, wow, this is so weird, oh this is cool,’ and just coming to get eggs,’” Kemp said.
The mini farm stand offers fresh eggs.
Come January, the house will welcome its first artist in residence, a photographer from Montana, followed by an L.A.-based journalist and writer.
Called the “Transverse Range Residency,” Kemp has intentionally kept the framing open, as the residency website illustrates: “Whether you’re mapping a watershed, writing about fire regimes, listening for birdsong, or tracing stories carried by wind and stone, we invite you to join a network of interdisciplinary thinkers and makers expanding knowledge of this unique region.”
The only real requirement for the residency is that the participant give a lecture or other kind of presentation that brings in the community. Kemp, an assistant professor at Otis College of Art and Design, said the plan is to have that community event hosted at nearby Bolton Hall Museum or possibly the McGroarty Arts Center.
The little house is minimally furnished with thrifted antique furniture and a large wooden desk.
The interior of the Tujunga cabin-like house
“The desk overlooks the San Gabriel Mountains. And [when] the sun sets over the San Gabriel Mountains, it’s stunning, it’s beautiful,” Kemp said.
The idea for the residency grew out of No Canyon Hills, an environmental group Kemp co-founded in 2023 to conserve 300 acres of the nearby Verdugo Mountains, which are at risk of a luxury home development.
Having artists come and make work inspired by this neighborhood and that nearby natural landscape could bring some attention to this sometimes overlooked area of Los Angeles, Kemp said.
“Many of my friends are in the art community space. Very few of them know Tujunga and have never been to Tujunga even if they’ve heard of it. Most often if I tell people I live in Tujunga, they think I’m talking about Topanga,” she said.
Kemp was able to get the landlord of the place to agree to an affordable rate for a year. During that one-year window, the plan is to have a cast of multidisciplinary creatives come here for two week stints and make whatever the neighborhood of Tujunga and its surrounding landscape inspires them to.
“L.A. — the downtown L.A. scene and different neighborhoods in L.A. — have really vibrant, critical, creative arts programming. And we’re really lucky to be in a city in which that kind of work thrives,” Kemp said.
She added that she hopes the residency will build some bridges between that vibrant arts programming in L.A. and this little cabin.
You can learn more about the residency and apply here.