By Darlene Donloe
Contributing Columnist
SOUTH LOS ANGELES — Lauren Halsey is a passionate and vocal supporter of her hometown of South Central Los Angeles.
A die-hard advocate for the community, Halsey, a noted artist, is on a personal crusade to empower and uplift the area through several projects she currently has in motion, which includes Summaeverythang. More about that later.
South Central has always had a special place in Halsey’s heart, which is why she has always wanted to be of service to her community. When she speaks about her hometown, she speaks to its rhythm, its colors, its flavor and its soulfulness.
“There is no place quite like South Central,” she said. “There are several South Centrals but there is no South Central like the one I call home.”
The area, she said, has shaped who she is as a person and an artist and given her the energy to continue to create and inspire.
Her connection with the area dates back more than 100 years, to the 1920s, when her family first called South Central home.
South Central Los Angeles is a region encompassing 28 distinctive neighborhoods stretching from Watts and Compton to Crenshaw and Inglewood.
A multi-hyphenate artist, philanthropist, and activist, Halsey has done the work. A fierce believer in the possibilities of South Central, the work comes in the form of community organizing, food drives, public installations, and now, a community center set to open in 2026.
To get it all done, she put her money where her mouth is, leveraging her art and one of her three art studios in South Central to launch a nonprofit called, Summaeverythang Community Center Inc., which, when all three phases are completed, will offer just that.
The organization, which opened in 2020, is dedicated to empowering and uplifting South Los Angeles through comprehensive arts, technology, college preparation and health programming.
The organization has three phases.
Phase one included a “food for the people” rapid response to COVID that reached more than 93,000 community members along with evergreen online collaborations with local organizations like Green Meadows Recreation Center, LA Film Kitchen, Eartha Robinson Dance Academy and Dymally High School.
Phase two, currently under construction, is Halsey’s forthcoming immersive Sister Dreamer installation.
Phase three is a permanent community center five minutes north of Watts that, when completed, will be committed to fostering personal growth, educational opportunities and holistic well-being for individuals of all backgrounds.
The center, designed by Barbara Bestor of Bestor Architecture, is scheduled to open in 2026.
“I recently hired Diamond Jones to do the programming,” said Halsey, who is big on collaboration. “We’re working on the center right now.”
“Together, we can create a more inclusive and equitable future where every member of the community has the resources, support, and opportunity to thrive,” said Jones, Summaeverythang’s director of programming.
Everything Halsey does comes from her love of community and her love of art. She has impressive creative credits that include artwork in the collection of several national museums, including her 2018 presentation of “we still here, there” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.
The following year, Halsey’s first solo exhibition in Europe, “Too Blessed 2 be Stressed!”at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, featured an immersive environment of objects linking diasporic cultures from Los Angeles to Paris.
In 2021, Halsey, who earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from California Institute of the Arts, a master’s of fine arts from Yale University in 2014, and attended El Camino College in Torrance, where she studied architecture and art, was commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to produce a series of banners combining contemporary images from her neighborhood with ancient Egyptian and Nubian works from the museum’s collection.
The subject of a solo exhibition at Gagosian in Paris in March, she will also be the subject at Serpentine in London in October.
I recently spoke to Halsey about how she’s going to do Summaeverythang.
DD: Describe South Central.
LH: My family has lived here since 1920 via the great migration. I grew up here. I have three studios here. There are several different South Centrals. The USC South Central isn’t the same as the one that borders Inglewood. Where else can one go in L.A. and there’s an exterior of city blocks in pastel, a woman’s braids, the ice cream trucks? It’s a dream world. An affinity poetically and aesthetically. There’s baggage everywhere. There is also light and inspiration.
DD: What is your hope for the community?
LH: To offer at a very high level, time and space for youth in the community to be uplifted and have full-time support. That is powerful. It creates confidence and hope. It’s a space for initiatives that are important politically. It’s a space to just chill.
DD: Why do you care about the community so much?
LH: I don’t know. There is a myth that Black people don’t take care of each other. That has not been my experience. My heroes are doing it all day, everyday. There is an activist spirit that I respond to.
DD: Tell me about the center.
LH: I bought the center three years ago. Now we have the designs. Now I’m getting it built. It’s our job to get it built.
DD: The nonprofit is dedicated to empowering and uplifting the South Central community through comprehensive arts, technology, college preparation and health programming. That’s a lot. How are you going to pull that off?
LH: We have education consultants. Between Diamond and I we have a lot of relationships in play. It’s not the Boys and Girls Club. It’s about working with intentions. I leveraged my many relationships, so did Diamond. I bring people in and create partnerships.
DD: Describe how it will look when finished.
LH: We have the designs. Now it’s about getting it built. We are still working through the schematics. When it’s finished, it will be two stories, about 4,000 feet. It will have everything from classrooms to computer labs, flex space, a recording studio, a courtyard and botanical space, basketball court, a roof deck and more. It will have everything the community needs.
DD: You have a great food giveaway. What kinds of food are in the produce box?
LH: Berries, corn, spinach, kale, lettuce, pineapple, organic baby food. There is also fish. The produce boxes aren’t the sole component on Friday. Other people began to add to the giveaway. In addition to hygiene kits, there are all kinds of kits including sports kits. At one point we did hot meals.
DD: How many people have you helped with the various boxes?
LH: We used to count. The last time I counted, it was 32,000. At one point we were giving away 600 boxes of food a week.
DD: Your immersive Sister Dreamer installation is a monument to South Central.
LH: It’s the sculpture I have been prototyping for 17 years. There are high- engraved relief panels, which is a carving technique. It’s designed to tell the community’s story. I started carving it in the 12th grade. It will eventually reveal images and text.
DD: From where and what do you get your inspiration?
LH: From Black and brown people and their South Central experience and wanting to archive that.
DD: How did your interest in art begin?
LH: My mother was a schoolteacher. She would bring art material home. My bedroom was whatever I wanted it to be. It was space for me to be myself. I painted and drew on the walls. It was my first installation.
DD: What is art?
LH: Possibility. It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s like infinity.
DD: What does art do for you?
LH: It inspires me to be freer. It inspires me to be my funky self.
Darlene Donloe is a freelance reporter for Wave Newspapers who covers South Los Angeles. She can be reached at ddonloe@gmail.com.
