Educators and sommeliers of characters, words, sentences, paragraphs and pages. Typography classes & workshops in Los Angeles and beyond. We exist to protect and serve the letterform. Join us in our quest to typeset against the villains of bad typography.
Lowest grade taught: 9th Grade - Highest grade taught: 12th Grade
Founded in 2014 by Victoria Alessandra Hotfire under the management of The Hotfire Empire as the Institute of Performing Arts. The Hotfire School is one of the world's eminent performing-arts institutions, with college level programs in music (including jazz, opera and historical performance), dance, and drama. There is also a Pre-College Division, for children and teens, and an Evening Division, for adults interested in continuing education.
LELA started as Lantern of the East, an art movement initiated by four Asian artists, Lee Kye Song, Hideo Sakata, P. Khemraj, and Yoko Kamijyo, who became concerned about trends in the contemporary art world in the late 20th century. These artists viewed the art scene as becoming increasingly dominated by commercial forces and tending towards a mono-cultural, Western-oriented bias. This perception was reinforced when he NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1996 at their special exhibition of '20th century Great Artists' featured scant representation from Asia. The Lantern group believed that Eastern art, with a different sensibility derived from the intrinsic religious and culturl traditions of the Asian region, needed to become a more active force in the contemporary visual art scene and that in doing so, would be a driving force in shaping the world of contemporary visual art in the 21st century. The Lantern of the East then became Lantern of the East - Los Angeles, or LELA, as the founders were motivated by the conviction that art can unite people in our troubled modern world across boundaries of race, faith and national borders, helping all of us to reconnect with our fundamental spiritual essence and to find an inner peace and happiness. In that spirit, the founders began, in 1996, and continue an annual international art festival to communicate the spirit of "Global Art Community" to the far and remote corners of the world. The movement these Asian artists started became rooted in many locations on a global level, from the Korean city of Pyong Taek and their hosting LELA International Art Festival to APEX in L.A., which marked the 10th anniversary of the LELA by hosting an International Art Festival being it's largest and most ambitious project in its history. It presented not only the spirit of Eastern art to Westerners but also introduced the sensibility of Central and Latin American art. The founders of LELA hope that more cities in the world like Pyong Taek and Los Angeles join this movement and provide spaces to enjoy and appreciate all that represents the diversity and intrinsic beauty of our global artist community.
The Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts, known unofficially as Grand Arts High School, is a magnet, public high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District. It is located on the site of the old Fort Moore at the corner of Grand Avenue and Cesar E. Chavez Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, adjacent to Chinatown. The school's distinctive architecture has made the facility noteworthy beyond the Los Angeles area.The school reserves 1,200 enrollment slots for students in the surrounding area and the rest from across the district. Admission requires no prior training or auditions and there is no tuition or fees.The school's principal is Ken Martinez and, as of August 2013, the school's executive artistic director is Kim Bruno (former principal of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts).ProgramsThe school offers a full range of standard academic programs as well as specialty programs in four arts academies:Dance AcademyMusic AcademyTheatre AcademyVisual Arts AcademyHistoryWhen the school opened on September 9, 2009, it was known as Central Los Angeles High School #9. Suzanne Blake was its first principal. In June, 2011, the school board renamed the school in honor of then-former school district superintendent Ramon C. Cortines. As of 2014, it has been unofficially called Grand Arts High School.