Join Clockshop for our 5th Annual Community & Unity People’s Kite Festival. Taking place at Los Angeles State Historic Park on Saturday, May 17, 2025 from 2:00–6:00 PM.
This all-ages, family-friendly cultural festival brings together diverse communities in Los Angeles through the art of kites and a day of joyful connection in this important public green space. Clockshop invites attendees to participate in free arts workshops, enjoy live music, and meet local community organizations to learn about their work in the nearby neighborhoods. The Kite Festival is designed as a celebration to honor the communities surrounding Los Angeles State Historic Park that fought for and steward this public parkland, recognizing their resilience, cultural histories, and aspirations.
This year’s festival is organized around the theme Entangled in Community. As we mark five years of the People’s Kite Festival at Los Angeles State Historic Park, we celebrate the relationships that emerge on and around public land: from the conversations sparked between strangers while untangling kite strings, to the vast web of community relationships that created and sustains this park.
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RSVP Here
As part of our annual kite commission program, our 2025 artist, Maria Maea, will design and create two unique kites that draw upon the connective threads between Mexican and Samoan cultural traditions, adapting the emblem of the Lau Lupe bird in a woven sculptural form.
For the second year in a row, a kite competition will take place, inviting attendees to compete for the best handmade kite, judged by kite masters.
Clockshop encourages attendees to make their own kites or visit the ‘eco-friendly kite options’ section here for suggestions on where to purchase or make kites ahead of the event. Additionally, we will offer a Kite-Making Station with a limited number of donation-based kites for attendees to assemble, decorate, and fly on a first-come, first-served basis.
This event is free and open to the public. Clockshop suggests a $5 donation to support our free public programming and artist commissions.
KITE ARTISTS
Each year Clockshop commissions a contemporary artist to use the form of the kite to create imagery related to the natural environment of the park and speak to its history.
5th Annual People’s Kite Festival Artist: Maria Maea
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Maria Maea (b. 1988, Long Beach, California) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, performance, film, and sound. Maea deepens her connection to land, somatic memory, and ancestry through artworks that act as a residue of her lived experiences as a first-generation Angeleno of Samoan and Mexican heritage. Using repurposed objects, living and dead palm fronds and other organic matter, concrete, and rebar, she builds film set-like sculptures that offer dimensions of multigenerational duration and nonlinear narrative-making. Maea’s work has been exhibited or performed at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2024); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Lisson Gallery, New York (2023); Murmurs, Los Angeles (2023, 2022); and more. She was an artist-in-residence at the Palm Springs Art Museum (2022) and is a recipient of the Artadia Award and the Mohn Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND) grant.
4th Annual People’s Kite Festival Artist: Yaeun Stevie Choi
Yaeun Stevie Choi, “Fight for Flight,” Bangpaeyeon Korean Fighter Kite (Edition of 3), 2024. Metalized BoPET film, acrylic paint, bamboo, 24 x 32 inches.
Artist Yaeun Stevie Choi created three large-scale Bangpaeyeon, a traditional Korean fighter kite known for its distinct bowed rectangular form and a central vent. The sails are made of metalized BoPET film, used to protect equipment, perishables, and bodies, and the artist’s designs emerge where the aluminum coating is stripped away. Each kite represents a species endemic to Los Angeles currently threatened by privatization and development: the Least Bell’s vireo songbird, the El Segundo blue butterfly, and the La Tuna Puma, a North American cougar in the connectivity area between the San Gabriel and Verdugo mountain ranges.
A diasporic Korean artist living in Los Angeles, Choi connects the colonial legacies in Korea to the ongoing processes of environmental degradation in her new home. The Bangpaeyeon was deployed in the 1500s to communicate during invasions, and later as an everyday craft and object of play. When the kites were banned under the Japanese occupation of Korea in the early 1900s, kite makers continued to craft them, such as Noh Yoo-Sang, who constructed a kite honoring the Siberian tiger, a native species and national symbol systematically eradicated during the occupation. Choi works within these historical precedents where land is connected to its people and their liberatory struggle against dispossession and extraction. In “Fight for Flight,” the Korean fighter kite, a symbol of agency and defiance, becomes a vehicle for ecological protest. To quote Palestinian anthropologist and engineer Dr. Hadeel Assali, “We cannot have environmental justice without reversing the harms of colonialism.”
Special thanks to Erin Min.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Yaeun Stevie Choi is a sculptural artist, based in Koreatown, Los Angeles, who reimagines objects from her memory through historical research and art making. She specializes in the making and study of Korean kites through which she investigates human flight, affect, and diasporic personhood. Choi co-facilitated a kite workshop with LACMA in May 2022, co-fabricated handmade kites and was a Kite Master at Clockshop’s Community & Unity People’s Kite Festival in 2022 and 2023, and co-taught a public kite workshop with Candice Lin at Frieze London 2023. Choi received her BA in Art from UCLA.
3rd Annual People’s Kite Festival Artist: Misa Chhan
Misa Chhan, “Land is Kin,” Edo Kaku-Dako Kite (Edition of 3), 2023. Cyanotype on Thai Kozo and Manila Hemp.
Artist Misa Chhan created Edo Kaku-Dako kites, rectangular traditional Japanese kites, crafted from handmade Mino-gami paper made of Thai kozo and Manila hemp. The kites are treated in a cyanotype print, one of the oldest photographic processes that utilizes UV light to develop monochromatic prints of objects placed directly on light-sensitive paper, creating a brilliant blue hue that alludes to the skies.
At the center of the kite, Chhan stylized “Land is Kin” with an organic type treatment encircled by cyanotype prints of native plants foraged from Los Angeles State Historic Park. Chhan’s kite design references Indigenous knowledge; the concept “land is kin” was introduced by Rudy Ortega Jr. (Fernandeño Tataviam) at a Clockshop program, Dreaming Land Back into Reality. This concept asks us to consider unceded land as lost relatives for First Peoples who seek to reconnect with and recover their relationships with them. Also guiding Chhan’s process are frameworks from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’ around honoring ourselves and the land as inseparable from one another. These kites remind us that when we begin to see land as a community rather than a commodity, we learn to value it with more love and respect.
To see how the kite was designed watch this video here.
Fabrication and test flight supported by Yaeun Stevie Choi.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Misa Chhan is a Los Angeles-based artist who works with natural dyes, textiles, printmaking, and artist’s books. Through her art practice, Chhan aims to create a container of pure joy to demonstrate our fundamental interdependency with nature, thereby challenging the extractive mindset of domination. Chhan spends her time gardening; practicing how to coax color from plants; composting; researching natural dyes, minerals, and materials; and finding ways to be resourceful with what already exists. Misa Chhan received a BA in Book Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
2nd Annual People’s Kite Festival Artist: Audrey Chan
Audrey Chan, “Protect Public Lands,” Rokkaku Kite (Edition of 5), 2022. Block print on Japanese mulberry paper.
Clockshop commissioned artist Audrey Chan to design five large-scale Rokkaku kites, which are traditional six-sided Japanese kites crafted from Japanese mulberry paper. In the spirit of the Kite Festival, Chan designed the message “Protect Public Lands,” which was hand-stenciled on mulberry paper with a block printing ink. The design is inspired by Chinese paper cutting and Mexican papel picado, two culturally significant traditional crafts. The stenciled images on the kites draw from the rich cultural histories of Los Angeles Historic Park and the surrounding neighborhoods. Storytelling through allegorical imagery, Chan designed abstractions of a Tongva reed dwelling, plants native to the Los Angeles River, a water wheel connected to Zanja Madre, and Kite Master Tyrus Wong.
See the kite in action in the Los Angeles Times here.
Fabrication and test flight supported by Yaeun Stevie Choi.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Audrey Chan (b. 1982, Chicago, Illinois) is a Los Angeles-based artist, illustrator, and writer. Her research-based projects use drawing, painting, public art, and video to challenge dominant historical narratives through allegories of power, place, and identity. She received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and a BA with Honors from Swarthmore College. Public art commissions include Will Power Allegory for LA Metro at the Little Tokyo/Arts District Station and The Care We Create at the Los Angeles offices of the ACLU of Southern California, where she was the organization’s inaugural artist-in-residence.
REGISTER FOR HANDCRAFTED KITE COMPETITION
Clockshop’s 5th Annual Community and Unity People’s Kite Festival invites the public to enter their kites in the Handcrafted Kitemakers’ Competition, judged by this year’s Kite Masters. The competition will be held on Saturday, May 17, 2025 at Los Angeles State Historic Park. We encourage all levels of kitemakers, from beginner to experienced, to showcase their creations and enter for a chance to win.
Stayed tuned for more information on how to preregister your handcrafted kite.
ART WORKSHOPS
The Kite Festival arts workshops are free for all ages and skill levels. Children under the age of 10 require adult supervision.
Orizome Paper Dyeing with Hiromi Paper
Come experience the Japanese dyeing technique, orizome, and create a one-of-a-kind colorful sheet of paper to take home! This simple and fun dyeing method begins with folding a piece of special paper into geometric shapes such as triangles or squares. The folded paper is then dipped into multiple colors of ink. After dipping every corner of the paper into the dye, a beautiful pattern will unfold.
Hiromi Paper is a paper company based in Culver City, specializing in papers from Japan and around the world. Hiromi Paper is devoted to the creation of a greater rapport between Japanese papermakers, printmakers, artists, conservators, designers and bookmakers, while developing new directions and a deeper understanding of Japanese papers or washi.
Knot Exploration with Eugene Ahn
Learn about ropework, the tactile language that enables us to fly kites, catch fish, connect objects, make our surroundings safer, and so much more. Facilitator Eugene Ahn presents an interactive, hands-on, play-centered workshop that will guide you to a new knowledge and love of tying knots. Learn and practice tying knots that you’ll find use for every day! Participants will have an opportunity to contribute their own ropework ideas to a group project at the workshop site, and are invited to take home their own practice rope.
Eugene Ahn is a mountaineer, artist, and designer who incorporates his life-long experience working with rope into interactive experiences. He created the Knot Explorer experience and since 2015 has facilitated public workshops celebrating Los Angeles’ culture of open spaces, including at the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles State Historic Park, Bowtie Project, Rio de Los Angeles State Park, and Lewis MacAdams Riverfront Park. He has taught art and design at local colleges, and has exhibited work internationally, including most recently in Venice, Italy and Prague, Czechoslovakia.
ECO-FRIENDLY KITE OPTIONS
We highly encourage attendees to make their own kites, purchase a kite from our friends at Bridge Kite Shop, or visit the American Kitefliers Association here for resources to ensure you can join in on kite-flying festivities!
RESOURCE GUIDE
Kites traverse boundaries. They can soar over national borders and are important symbols of cultural heritage. We hope that this resource guide can enrich the work you’re already doing in your classroom to inspire curiosity about a wide range of academic subjects and a deep sense of care for the wide world we belong to.
Kites have much to teach us, whether we approach them through the lens of history, science, literature, art, or mathematics — or all of the above. The study of kites invites opportunities for joyful, hands-on exploration; meaningful social-emotional learning; and the focused deepening of academic skills. This activity and resource guide is a collection of kite-related offerings for you to explore and adapt, in combination or individually, with your students in leading up to Clockshop’s Kite Festival.
PLANNING YOUR VISIT
Arrival
Los Angeles State Historic Park is located at 1245 N. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, directly adjacent to Chinatown and the Metro Gold Line. The park is located just 1 mile away from Los Angeles Union Station, making it accessible from several Metro routes. We will offer ample bike parking, and highly encourage the bike-riding public to join, either by biking independently or setting up group-rides to the park. Otherwise, we ask attendees to prioritize public transportation, rideshare, biking, or carpooling.
Parking
Parking at Los Angeles State Historic Park is extremely limited. There are two paid parking options at the park, both of which are on a first-come, first-served basis: the Main Parking Lot (1543 N. Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012) and overflow lots operated by a third-party vendor for a flat fee of $20. Please consider reserving these spots for families with young children and those with limited mobility. If you are able-bodied and are not accompanying young children, consider using street parking or, better, public transportation. If parking on the street, please avoid street parking to the South and East of N. Main Street; this is a dense residential area and street parking needs to be reserved for residents.
Restrooms
Several portapotties will be available on site. The park’s main restrooms will be unavailable for the duration of the festival.
For Public Transit take one of these lines to one of the stops:
Metro L (Gold) Line
Chinatown
Dash Downtown B
Alameda St. & W College St.
Dash Lincoln Heights/Chinatown
N Broadway & W College St.
Alameda St. & W College St.
N Main St. & W College St.
N Main St. & Wilhardt St.
Broadway & Avenue 18
Metro Bus Line 45
N Broadway & W College St.
Broadway & Avenue 18
Metro Bus Line 76
Alameda St. & W College St.
N Main St. & W College St.
N Main St. & Wilhardt St.
SUPPORT
This event is made possible by our ongoing partnership with California State Parks, our event sponsors, programming partners, Clockshop Circle donors, and the generous support of our broader community.
Sponsors
City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs
Sieroty Company
Beth and David Meltzer
Michael and Alice Kuhn Foundation
LA City Councilmember Eunissess Hernandez (CD-1)
Sierra Club
American Business Bank
Partners
California State Parks
LA Parks Alliance
LA River State Parks Partners
Arts District Community Council