WELCOME TO LAUREN HALSEY'S NEIGHBORHOOD

The red-hot 36-year-old artist has achieved global success with a very local approach: applying imaginative, laserlike focus to a few square blocks of her hometown. In doing so, she renders and reflects what it's actually like to live and work in-and never, ever leave-South Central Los Angeles.

- JASMINE SANDERS

ENTERING Lauren Halsey's studio, which sits on a lowkey corner in South Central LA, there is the feeling that the quasi-industrial space has been subsumed by Halsey's creations. The studio does not merely house art, but has become art. On the unsurprisingly sunny Saturday when I visit, the layout bursts and gleams, in contrast to the concrete surroundings outside. On broad tables, palm trees made of acrylic, resin, and feathers loom over glittered, woodmounted cutouts of Halsey's heroes, who often happen to be local heroes. The scene has come alive, bustling with body builders, members of Halsey's family, and celebrities like the rapper MC Eiht, whom I recognize from Menace II Society. Everyday denizens commingle with the well-known, imparting not just an image, but the texture and intimate thrills of Cali life.

Halsey is inconspicuously dressed in a hoodie and sneakers, and discusses her practice with nonplussed clarity of vision and purpose. Her voice is smooth, lilting: "The work will reference South Central, as it always does," she tells me. "What I love about these is I can really get into a hyper-specificity. Down to, like, my cousin's car or the doughnut shop on the corner." Halsey turns and points to those figures, which will later be rendered into massive murals with a combination of spray paint graffiti and photography. They seem to preside over the whole scene, contributing to the sense that the work is in memory and recognition of those who are dead yet remain present. Halsey's partner, nearby, spatters glitter onto a photograph.