This week, a food elevator makes its debut, and a live figure drawing session happens in a gallery that already has rendered figures hanging on every wall and sculpted ones standing on the floor.

5. One syllable at a time

Artist Sojung Kwon just got her green card, so she's been thinking about visa systems and citizenship. She's also been thinking about differences between Eastern and Western cultures since moving to L.A. from Seoul, Korea. For The Way it Sounds, her project at call-in artspace 323 Projects — it exists only as a prerecorded answering service, and you call to listen to audio projects — she decided to phonetically write out the U.S. oath of citizenship in Korean letters. People who live in the States but haven't yet learned English do this often, using their own alphabets to write out what words sound like and then reading out loud. You hear Kwon read the oath out load when you call 323 Projects, and it sounds like a strange hybrid language at first, then you start to understand. (323) 843-4652, or (323) Tie-in-LA, 323projects.com

4. Secret restaurant with elevator

Pepin Moore, the gallery that started out on Chung King Road in Chinatown and then moved to Sunset Boulevard, is closing this year, after a charming three-part show by Emilie Halpern. The night Halpern's show closes, the Secret Restaurant, an art-and-food project by Bob Dornberger and Jim Piatt, will serve small plates at the gallery and try out its new food elevator for, it seems, lifting and serving purposes. There also will be a cash-only art auction. 5849½ W. Sunset Blvd., Hlywd; Sat., Dec. 21. (213) 626-0501, pepinmoore.com.

3. Figure drawing

Inside This Human Clay at ltd Los Angeles is a show full of human figures — Thomas Lawson's scene of a nude man with a classical physique protecting another nude in a colored fetish mask from who-knows-what, Kate Costello's paper-and-cement sculpture of a butt and thighs. To go along with the theme, the gallery scheduled two live figure drawing sessions, the second of which is this week. The model will hold both short and long poses. 7561 W. Sunset Blvd., W. Hlywd.; Thurs., Dec. 19, 6-9 p.m. (323) 378-6842, ltdlosangeles.com.

2. Fairy-tale forest meets movement theory

Artist Kelly Nipper's installation at the Hammer Museum includes oversized plaster dolls in felt dresses, handmade pillows, photographs and drawings, all loosely informed by Germany's mythic Black Forest. Dancer Marissa Ruazol, who has worked with Nipper before, will perform in the installation a few times over the course of the show. She'll base her dancing on Laban Movement Analysis, an method of recording movement developed by Hungarian dancer Rudolf Laban in the 1910s and 1920s. It's also the approach Nipper used in making some of the drawings in the show that explore how bodies move. 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Wstwd.; Sat., Dec. 21, 12 p.m. & 2 p.m. (310) 443-7000, hammer.ucla.edu.

1. Sweater aesthetic

Walking through Cherry and Martin's show of Alan Shields' paintings, some on the wall, some 3-D and suspended from the ceiling, is sort of like rifling through a closet of vintage sweaters knitted by hippies. The work, made between the late 1960s and early 1990s, has a warm, handmade, out-there feeling. For instance, Good Brother Step Beyond, made of paint and thread on canvas, has a patchwork pattern of idiosyncratic black and white trapezoids in the background below not-quite-even angled lines of sequin-sized gray and white circles. 2712 S. La Cienega Blvd.; through Jan. 11. (310) 559-0100, cherryandmartin.com.

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