Thursday, September 25, 6:30–11PM
Hosted by Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio
SUPPORTER PREVIEW 6:30–8:30PM
Tour of Metabolic Studio and Lauren Bon’s personal work
Reception by Chef Jo Kim
Drinks by Chicas on the Rocks
Grab your preview ticket below!
ARTIST CELEBRATION 8:30–11PM
Performance by 011668
Music curated by Canary Test with a DJ set by Colored Craig
Drinks by Chicas on the Rocks
Grab your ticket here!
Benefit Co-Chairs
Grace Oh, Chair, LACE Board of Directors
Ever Velasquez, Director, Charlie James Gallery
Benefit Planning Committee
Grace Oh, Jackie Amézquita, Young Joon Kwak, Clare Haggarty, Sarah Russin, Selene Preciado, Fiona Crary
Join our community of supporters and artists for an intimate party to benefit LACE. As the city’s longest-running incubator for artistic experimentation, LACE champions artists, curators, and cultural workers who explore and defy boundaries through socially-engaged projects. We provide platforms within and beyond our space for diverse communities to connect deeply with challenging contemporary art. Benefit proceeds directly support LACE’s operations and programming, which platforms artists and communities currently under attack including LGBTQ+, disabled, immigrant, and BIPOC individuals. With the dismantling of federal funding for the arts and humanities, support for LACE’s Benefit is as urgent and impactful as ever.
LACE is grateful to our event hosts Lauren Bon and Metabolic Studio. This year, our annual benefit takes place within a living work: a milpa of corn, beans, and squash encircling the Mother Well, a sculptural portal to the buried LA River and a proposal for urban renewal through nourishment and interdependence.
Donors and contributing auction artists are invited to a private reception at 6:30PM on Thursday, September 25, which includes an intimate walk-through of Lauren Bon’s personal work, for the first time for this occasion. Guests will encounter The Smallest Sea with the Largest Heart, a sculpture of a blue whale’s heart that spent two years submerged in the Salton Sea following its 2023 Desert X debut—drawing solar energy and accumulating salt, memory, and myth. Also on view are sculptures formed from wild clay beneath the LA River’s concrete basin, along with drawings and indices from Bon’s decades-long, research-driven work with Metabolic Studio.
As Bon writes, “I work a lot with index. The materials I use are not metaphor—they are remnants, records, and agents of change.”
This is not only a visit—it is a rare chance to step inside a living system of art, ecology, and repair.
At 8:30PM, additional friends of LACE are invited to join our donors and attend an Artist Celebration featuring a special performance by 011668 in the cornfield at Metabolic Studio in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Not a Cornfield project and dance the night away with music curated by Canary Test with a DJ set by Colored Craig and drinks by Chicas on the Rocks.
From September 12–September 26, 2025 art lovers and supporters can bid on 50 works by iconic artists such as Patrick Martinez, Roberto Gil de Montes, Lezley Saar, and Steve Roden, as well as exciting emerging Los Angeles artists such as Jackie Castillo, Maria Maea, and Ozzie Juarez.
Bidding opens exclusively on Artsy on September 12. Online auction closes on Friday, September 26 at 12:00PM PDT (3:00PM EDT).
Featured Artists
Lita Albuquerque
Dee Alvarado
Jackie Amézquita
Nathaniel Ancheta
Sadie Barnette
Jessica Taylor Bellamy
Lauren Bon
Cassils
Jackie Castillo
Arleene Correa Valencia
Kenturah Davis
Tony De Los Reyes
Yasmine Nasser Diaz
rafa esparza
Edgar Fabián Frías
Maya Fuji
Aaron Garber-Maikovska
Anaid Garcia
Daniela Garcia Hamilton
Ken Gonzales-Day
Mark Steven Greenfield
Siyan Camille Ji
Ozzie Juarez
Sharon Kagan
Young Joon Kwak
Suhn Lee
Laurie Lipton
Kristen Liu-Wong
Manuel López
Maria Maea
Carlo Maghirang
Lilian Martinez
Narsiso Martinez
Patrick Martinez
Erick Medel
Lorena Ochoa
Kristopher Raos
Raymundo T. Reynoso
Steve Roden
Ed Ruscha
Lezley Saar
Shizu Saldamando
Kim Schoenstadt
Kyungmi Shin
Sickid
Jeffrey Sincich
Georgina Treviño
Devon Tsuno
Jacqueline Valenzuela
Christine Tien Wang
Garry Winogrand
and more…