Like Marcel Proust and his madeleine, Jill Giegerich dips into the historical past, mining the mythology of Modernism so that its outward traces become a series of recalled memories. In Giegerich’s case, the esthetic sources are Cubism and Constructivism, reified orthodoxies that she reworks and reevaluates through a series of wall reliefs that the artist calls “constructions.” By carefully avoiding the loaded historical rhetoric usually associated with painting or sculpture, Giegerich is able to drain the vocabulary of artists such as El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, and Alexander Rodchenko of

No Stone for Studs Schwartz, 1987, is an unlikely success, but it packed this theater on Skid Row for two months and, at this writing, is still playing to enthusiastic audiences and rave reviews. Even though its story line is barely coherent and its cast often appears nearly out of control, this group improvisation by the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) displays an energy and craft that has made it the hottest ticket in town, drawing audiences to a dangerous downtown neighborhood crowded with street people who huddle in dirt lots over bonfires of trash.

Studs Schwartz is a flashback life-story