Each year, it takes a team of about 40 electricians, technicians, and stagehands more than a week to successfully mount Tribute in Light, the annual memorial that commemorates victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The installation, which uses 88 custom 7,000-watt xenon compressed gas bulbs to beam two ghostly towers into the night sky near the World Trade Center site, has been staged continuously overnight on the anniversary since 2002, and for the past eight years has been produced by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. The beams are visible from more than 60 miles away.

In a surprise move, the Museum recently announced that this year’s tribute would be canceled as a result of health risks brought upon by Covid-19. Instead, the institution planned to honor the anniversary by illuminating the spires and facades of various buildings across the city with blue lights. The decision came after the Museum, facing a $45 million shortfall without visitors driving ticket sales, furloughed and laid off nearly 60 percent of its staff.

On Saturday, however, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state will pay for additional health personnel to help the museum safely mount Tribute in Light for the 19th anniversary of the attacks, which he cites as a crucial milestone. “This year, it’s especially important that we all appreciate and commemorate 9/11, the lives lost, and the heroism displayed as New Yorkers are once again called upon to face a common enemy,” he says. “I understand the Museum’s concern for health and safety, and appreciate their reconsideration. The state will provide health personnel to supervise to make sure the event is held safely while at the same time properly honoring 9/11. We will never forget”

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At first glance, the textile sculptures of Mary Little suggest an artist who has been painstakingly mastering her chosen medium of heavyweight canvas for decades—one who is very much attuned to the material’s unpredictability and poetic potential. Little’s tapestry-like works often evoke the tranquil landscapes from her upbringing in Northern Ireland, where she grew up surrounded by grasslands and rolling hills before her family relocated to Belfast. Recreating those idyllic settings plays a crucial role in Little’s work: “I need to focus on the good in my heart and environment. I claim the right to make beauty, to allow inner calm, to make peace.”

Given the calming nature of her works, one may never guess that Little, who maintains a small live-in studio in Downtown Los Angeles, originally found her footing as a product designer, having devised one-off collectible furnishings that now grace the permanent collections of the Vitra Design Museum and Musée des Arts Décoratifs. It wasn’t until a 2014 move to California that Little started working exclusively with heavyweight canvas, a material that enables her to experiment and take creative risks. It also affords her the clarity to reflect on turbulent times, which informs her latest exhibition, “Reflections,” a virtual show presented in collaboration with the local up-and-comers Estudio Persona.

The daughter of a gemologist, Yael Sonia Pomper discovered an affinity toward handmade sculptural jewelry at a young age. After establishing her namesake atelier that now operates out of New York and São Paulo, she gained renown for her kinetic wearables, including a bracelet that features Tahitian pearls freely traveling within a metal frame—sculptures that recast what a piece of jewelry can accomplish.

David Thompson, the founder of the architecture firm Assembledge+, is the quintessential Californian—he’s pissed about the Dodgers. “I’m struggling to get my head around the Houston Astros cheating scandal. I will not allow them to get away with it,” he says about the 2017 World Series, which the Dodgers lost in seven games. It was later revealed that the Astros used a trash can–banging scheme to tip-off pitches. “The Dodgers were robbed, and I don’t think I can ever let that go.”

Thompson, like any fan who bleeds blue, would probably give up anything for L.A’s baseball team to break its 22-year championship drought. In his life outside of sports fandom, he’s been perfecting a different kind of Southern California pastime: architecture that strips down the barriers between nature and built environments. We asked Thompson about his love of California Modernism, what it’s like to work with your dad, and L.A.’s budding design scene. Oh, and of course, the prospects for this year’s Dodgers.

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