LOS ANGELES — Dodger fans who are not quite ready to let go of this World Series run had one more very blue way to celebrate it this weekend. In the heart of Chinatown, the Eastern Projects Gallery (900 N Broadway #1090, Los Angeles, CA 90012) wrapped up a Dodgers art show that had been running since mid-October. The walls are packed with Fernando, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and more, all reimagined in materials you do not usually see in a gallery. The exhibit closed on Saturday with a reception from 4 to 8 p.m.
Artist Billy Kheel was there throughout the run, watching people wander in off the street in their Dodger gear and stop short in front of the work.
Kheel shares the show with fellow Dodger fan and artist Pat Riot. The collaboration grew out of one very specific moment from last year. “Pat Riot, who’s the other artist in the show, and I really connected last year over the moment of Gavin Lux and Kiké Hernández’s crotch bump celebration,” Kheel explained. “We found it to be very unexpected and kind of crazy, but pretty cool. It was a moment that we both connected on, and we both admire each other’s work.” Their shared love of the team and of baseball imagery turned into a plan. “We both work with material that’s related to baseball,” he said. “Pat with bubble gum, me with felt, which is like the uniforms and pennants. Bubble gum is obviously with the trading cards. We decided to try to do a show, and both of us live near the stadium, we’re both Dodger fans, love the energy, so we were like, let’s plan a show and have a heavy Dodgers theme involved.”
Like a lot of fans, they were watching the standings while they worked. “As we were planning it over the summer and the spring, the Dodgers were stumbling a little bit,” Kheel said. “We got a little nervous when they were in the wild card that maybe this might be a sad opening if things didn’t go well, but they obviously went great. It’s been amazing and it’s really helped the reception of the show.”
Kheel’s work catches people off guard because it is not paint on canvas. It is felt. “I was inspired to use felt working down in the fabric district downtown and just walking around and seeing the giant rolls on the street,” he said. “I’m a big sports fan, I’ve been involved in sports my whole life, and this soft kind of crafty material kept popping up in my head when I thought about sports. Your varsity jacket with the felt, the old felt player uniforms, the pennants that a baseball pennant is made out of felt. I thought this might be an interesting thing to use that connects to sports in a different way.”
Over time he has turned that idea into a detailed process. “I started working with it as a material and over the years I’ve refined my process,” he said. “Now I cut a lot of it on a laser, but then I hand sew it all together. I like the experience of maybe you see something from far away and you think to yourself, what is that, and then you get closer and you see the stitching and the layers involved in each piece.”
Pat Riot’s work brings a different texture to the room. From a distance, his portraits of Shohei, Fernando and Mookie look like prints. Up close, they are something else. “His work is with bubble gum,” Kheel said. “If you come in and look at some of these pieces, they’re completely bubble gum. He’s chewing it, and then takes a little piece off and puts it on. He’s chewing it one piece at a time. He sources all the different colors of bubble gum, which is one of the harder parts, and then he’s sitting down, chewing. He did a demo for us, he chews a big wad and then just takes each piece almost like a pointillist painter, like Seurat with little dots.”
The closer you get, the more you see. “From far away, they look like prints or drawings or paintings, and then you get closer and you see each little detail of bubble gum,” Kheel said. “When he does a first pass of bubble gum, the bubble gum dries up and shrinks because the water evaporates out of it, and he has to go back in and fill in more. If you look closely, that’s where he gets really funky with the colors. In some of the shadows there are pinks and reds and different colors where you’re like, wow, I didn’t see those from five yards away.”
This year’s World Series has already found its way into Kheel’s felt. One new piece hangs behind him in the gallery. “It’s so fresh,” he said, turning to look at it. “The collision catch between Andy Pages and Kiké Hernández was such a perfect sort of bookending moment. It was totally unexpected, kind of weird, but then turned out to be great, which I think is the same feeling we had about the crotch bump celebration. This was the first thing I thought, this is amazing.” He is not done mining this October. “Obviously the double play, I mean, this was just an epic World Series,” he said. “It got the whole city so excited and the energy has been amazing. I’m taking suggestions as well.”
Dodger fans have been wandering through all month, sometimes thanks to a news hit they saw during the Series. “It’s been great,” Kheel said. “We’ve gotten some coverage in the local news, definitely during the week of the World Series. We talked to some of the local news stations, and that’s had a lot of people coming in.” Once they arrive, he loves seeing who shows up in Dodger colors. “The really neat thing to me is that Dodgers fans are such a variety of people, all types of people, all stripes,” he said. “Ohtani fans to Mookie fans to old school Fernando fans, and that’s what’s really cool to see, all the different kinds of Dodger fans out there. It’s got to be one of the most diverse fan bases there is.”
The show even stepped outside Chavez Ravine now and then, with pieces that nod to the wider baseball universe and some painful history. There is Mookie Wilson, Bill Buckner, and the moment that set up Vin Scully’s unforgettable call. There is a mosaic that rewards a long look. The whole room felt like a baseball time machine built out of fabric and gum.
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