Painting the saints of L.A.

I've been meaning to mention J. Michael Walker's unique artistic take on Los Angeles for weeks now, just for its scale alone. But it keeps slipping out of mind at the wrong times. Now the L.A. Times has done a feature on him. What Walker is doing is researching the background of every street named after a saint, then painting an image inspired by what he finds. That's every L.A. street with St., San or Santa in the name. He's got 60 so far, with 26 to go. He calls the project Todos los Santos de los Angeles. "I believe these stories have been waiting to be revealed," Walker says. His show of 10 paintings of saints off Sunset Blvd. is at Gallery 727 downtown through November 5.