Metabolic Studio

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Metabolic Studio Led by artist Lauren Bon, The Metabolic Studio transforms resources into energy, actions, and objects that nurture life.

Come by every Thursday for our Community Creative Practice and Potluck from 5-10 PM. Derived from the Greek word for change, “metabolism” is the process that maintains life. In continuous cycles of creation and destruction metabolism transforms nutrients into energy and matter. Working to sustain these cycles, the Metabolic Studio transforms resources into energy, actions, and objects that nurture life. Led by artist Lauren Bon, the studio now includes full time team members as well as the Optics and Sonic divisions of the studio.

10/09/2026

Día de Mu***os at Metabolic Studio

Join us in honoring our loved ones and the generations who came before us.

On Sunday, November 1, we’ll gather with Marcos Aguilar and Anahuacalmekak to share offerings, stories, and traditions.

From 3–5 pm, we’ll decorate and place the altars. From 5–8:30 pm, join us for a ceremony and community celebration. RSVP required.

At our hands-on workshops on Sundays, October 18 and 25, Milli Macen-Moore and Wendy Isabella Escobar Procopio will lead us in making paper cempasúchil (marigold) flowers and decorating papier-mâché calaveras (skulls). Bring your handmade offerings to the community altar or take them home for your own altar.

The altars will be open for public viewing on Monday, November 2, from 5–8 pm. They’ll remain on view through our final Print Studio of 2026 on Monday, December 7.

Thank you to everyone who made this summer’s Mutual Aid Milpa possible. Over 11 Sundays, more than 1,000 people gathered...
10/07/2026

Thank you to everyone who made this summer’s Mutual Aid Milpa possible. Over 11 Sundays, more than 1,000 people gathered at Metabolic Studio to share food, space, and practice.

We’re grateful to our co-hosts Lydia Moreno of La Tacoista, Jessica Handy of Community Compound, and Marcos and the Anawakalmekak community; to Dr. Aradhna Tripati for joining Jessica for the Down to Earth conversations; and to Inclusive Action for the City and the street vendors who shared food with us. Thank you to our team for the care and work that made these Sundays possible—and to everyone who brought their time and generosity.

We made this season together.

10/04/2026

An honor to have Chief Rocha, Marcos and Ricardo sharing music with community at the Milpa Gabrielino-Shoshone Nation of Southern California Academia Anawakalmekak

Hey New York friends! Come out to Governors Island on this beautiful Saturday afternoon and join me, Betsy Damon, and Ma...
10/03/2026

Hey New York friends! Come out to Governors Island on this beautiful Saturday afternoon and join me, Betsy Damon, and Mary Mattingly at Swale House for the opening of Wandering Water: Tears, Teas, and Tides.

Today, October 3 at 4 PM, we’ll gather for a performative reading that calls in the living beings of these waters—the oysters and sturgeon, eels and shad, horseshoe crabs and cormorants, the creatures of the mud and the deep, the beings too small for our eyes to see…and the whales.

Before deeds, declarations, boundaries and claims, let us acknowledge who is already here.

And because today also happens to be my birthday, we’ll make it a little celebration too. Come across the water, spend the afternoon on the island, and celebrate water, friendship, art, and another trip around the sun with three women who have spent a good part of our lives thinking with water. 💙🌊🐋

HOW TO FIND US: Take the Governors Island ferry from the Battery Maritime Building at 10 South Street, right by the South Ferry/Whitehall Street subway stations. This afternoon, ferries from Manhattan leave every 15 minutes through 2:45 PM, then at 3:15 and 3:45 PM—so the 3:15 is the comfortable one for our 4 PM reading. The ferry arrives at Soissons Landing, and Swale House is in Nolan Park, Building 6B, just a few minutes’ walk from the landing.

Governors Island ferry schedule + tickets⁠

10/03/2026

Last Sunday at the Milpa: hands in the earth, sharing knowledge and practice.

We gathered around adobe—soil, water, fiber, hands, sun—and the living Indigenous knowledge carried through these materials and traditions. There is something powerful about learning through doing: touching the earth, working side by side, and experiencing knowledge passed across generations.

We are so grateful for the Indigenous educators who continue to bring their knowledge, generosity, and presence to the Milpa. These Sundays are becoming a space for exchange—for growing, listening, eating, creating, and being in community.

And we’re gathering again this Sunday.

This time, we come together around song—voices meeting, listening to one another, and filling the Milpa. 🎶

Come sing with us. Come spend the afternoon. Come be part of what is growing here. 🌽🌱

AdobeMaking Adobe EarthenBuilding LivingKnowledge Soil Water Song LosAngeles Community

COME SEE US AT TABLE S1Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair · MoMA PS1 · September 24–27PRINTED MATTER FOR DAMAGED SY...
09/24/2026

COME SEE US AT TABLE S1
Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair · MoMA PS1 · September 24–27

PRINTED MATTER FOR DAMAGED SYSTEMS

What can a book do inside a damaged system?

Carry memory. Share methods. Circulate knowledge. Seed the next action.

Metabolic Studio presents five publications—five entry points into an ongoing practice of land, water, infrastructure, fire, photography, memory, and repair:

ACTIONS: 20 Years In and Around the LA River — by Anuradha Vikram

Not a Monument: Lauren Bon and the Aesthetics of Regeneration — by Alex Arydice Jones

Fires of the West — by Lauren Bon and Richard Nielsen, with photographs by Metabolic Studio’s Optics Division

Crisis Archive — edited by Red Rotkopf and Lauren Bon

Silver and Water — by Lauren Bon, with images by Metabolic Studio’s Optics Division

FRIDAY · 4 PM
Launch of Not a Monument with author Alex Arydice Jones

SATURDAY · 4 PM
Launch of Crisis Archive with Red Rotkopf, Richard Nielsen, and Lauren Bon

Work becomes knowledge.
Knowledge becomes print.
Print circulates.
Circulation becomes action.

Come by Table S1. Pick up the books, meet the authors and editors, and join the conversation.

09/19/2026

MUTUAL AID MILPA
Join us Sundays 12-6 pm. This conversation launched Latino Conservation Week at Metabolic Studio—beginning in the Mutual Aid Milpa, where conservation is understood through the lived practices of land, food, water, culture, and community.

The milpa carries generations of knowledge across Mexico and Central America and into Los Angeles: a way of growing that depends upon relationships among plants, soil, water, people, and seasons. It is agricultural knowledge, but also cultural knowledge—carried through families, migration, cooking, language, memory, and collective work.

At the Mutual Aid Milpa, we practice these relationships together. We plant and harvest, tend the soil, prepare and share food, exchange seeds and stories, and learn from the knowledge people bring with them.

Latino Conservation Week is an opportunity to recognize that conservation does not only happen in institutions or in places designated as “nature.” It also lives in everyday practices: in how food is grown and shared, how water is cared for, how knowledge moves between generations, and how communities care for one another and the places they inhabit.

Join us on Sundays at Metabolic Studio for the Mutual Aid Milpa.

Come spend part of your Sunday working alongside us. Put your hands in the soil. Help tend and harvest what is growing. Share a meal. Exchange a seed, a recipe, a story, or something your family taught you about growing and caring for food.

You don’t need to be a gardener, and you don’t need to bring anything.

Bring yourself—and, if you like, bring someone from another generation.

What we grow is shared.
What we know is shared.
And everyone is welcome to take part.

Latino Conservation Week Community Pachanga celebrates culture, community, and conservation! Join us on September 13 as ...
09/11/2026

Latino Conservation Week Community Pachanga celebrates culture, community, and conservation! Join us on September 13 as we bring together the people, organizations, and neighbors who are protecting urban nature and expanding access to green spaces across Los Angeles. 

Enjoy a vibrant community gathering filled with opportunities to connect with local organizations, celebrate Latino leadership in conservation, and discover how we can all play a role in creating healthier communities for people, birds, and wildlife. Whether you’re a longtime nature enthusiast or joining us for the first time, there is something for everyone at this Latino Conservation Week celebration.

RSVP in at the link in our link tree!

09/05/2026

Solano Canyon is a living community with a long memory.

Its history is inseparable from the transformations of this part of Los Angeles—from the displacement of communities that made way for Dodger Stadium, to the land that would become Los Angeles State Historic Park, and to the neighborhoods that endured alongside these enormous changes.

For more than two decades, the people of Solano Canyon have also been part of the life and work of Metabolic Studio. Our understanding of this place—its water, land, histories, and possibilities—has been shaped through relationships with the people who have lived here and cared for it across generations.

We especially honor elders including Alicia Brown, who is no longer with us, and Carol Jaque, who is very much here and continues to carry the knowledge and memory of Solano Canyon. Their voices, along with those of so many neighbors, remind us that a place cannot be understood through infrastructure or geography alone. It is made through people, relationships, memory, and care.

As our work continues in and around Los Angeles State Historic Park, we return to those relationships. Solano Canyon is not simply part of the history surrounding this work. The community is part of the work itself. Richard James Montoya

08/30/2026

Come to the Milpa this Sunday august 30, and make Guardians of the Well from wild clay!

This clay was dug from the earth beneath the Milpa—land that was once part of the Los Angeles River’s floodplain, before the river was channelized.

Our colleagues at Anahuacalmecac have taught us that, traditionally, children are understood as guardians of the world. Inspired by this teaching, we invite children and adults to sculpt guardian figures from the clay. Alex Tanasi and our team will transform them into lids for the ollas that hold Los Angeles River water and slowly release it into the soil, nourishing the plants growing in the Milpa.

Come make a guardian, tend the water, and join us in caring for this living place. Sunday at the Milpa!

Address

1745 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA
90012

Telephone

+13232261158

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