Robert Graham
Los Angeles
Source Figure
Grand Avenue (Bunker Hill) at Fifth Street, Los Angeles
Los Angeles County Thomas Guide page 634, grid E4

Robert Graham's "Source Figure" welcomes pedestrians on the Los Angeles Public Library steps with a bronze sculpture of a woman atop a pedestal. Below her is a stream of cascading water, flowing the length of the staircase.

The three-foot bronze statue is one of the few sculptural portraits of a minority woman in Los Angeles. The African-American woman with outstretched, cupped hands offers welcome and repose to pedestrians walking up the steps and appears to be the source from which waters flow.