ARTIST'S OCCUPATION ENDORSED; FOUNDATION BESTOWS $230,000 GRANT ON L.A. WRITER-PERFORMER : 23 RECEIVE MACARTHUR FELLOWSHIPS.

Byline: Mary F. Pols Daily News Staff Writer

As this year's Catherine MacArthur Foundation awards were being announced Monday morning, Los Angeles performance artist-playwright Luis Alfaro and his $600 car were limping down the Santa Monica Freeway.

The car was overheating, as usual, but Alfaro remained serene as he steered the aging clunker off the freeway and onto surface streets for the rest of his journey to a scheduled appointment.

Some would attribute this fret-free attitude to the fact that Alfaro is one of 23 recipients of this year's no-strings-attached John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awards, better known as the ``genius grants,'' which arrive annually, unsolicited but always welcome, in the bank accounts of unsuspecting people ranging from evolutionary biologists to writers and artists.

The 35-year-old Echo Park resident will be getting $230,000, doled out over the course of five years, so it seems natural to assume that he was thinking of Monday's freeway fiasco as sort of a farewell to the car, a last Odyssey in the world of the underpaid before he dumped the Toyota Corolla and moved onto something a little more snazzy.

Not so. Alfaro's serenity had more to do with the fact that he is well-used to living on the cheap. After riding city buses for years, car troubles don't rock him.

For the gay Latino activist, the MacArthur grant, awarded because he ``eloquently dramatizes issues concerning identity and social power'' in his artwork, won't signal any radical life changes. Instead of buying him new baubles and new cars, the grant will buy him time to work on his writing, he said.

He hopes it will also bring recognition to Los Angeles, which has been the strongest influence on his creativity. Alfaro calls himself a regional artist, who relies on the city for fresh ideas and for fellow artists to work with.

``All my work is about Los Angeles,'' he said. ``There is a great creative scene here, and this sort of highlights it a bit. It's not about the money, it's about how we are perceived. There is a whole arts scene in L.A. that is not about Hollywood. I hope this award will change some perceptions.''

This is not to say the money won't be nice. Those days of free poetry readings where he had to ask for gas money or, at the very least, a hot meal weren't easy. The days of confronting an empty bank account and then heading home to make spaghetti are over.

``My life is going to be better hopefully, and I'm going to be a better artist because of it, I hope,'' Alfaro said.

He grew up in Pico-Union and emerged in his 20s as a new voice for an underrepresented group, gay Latinos. Juggling his writing and performing, Alfaro made his living in a vast array of jobs: as an assembly line worker at a carburetor factory, teaching performance art to children at the Los Angeles Children's Museum, organizing for a labor union and working for an AIDS drop-in center in South Central.

Alfaro also founded VIVA, a lesbian and gay Latino arts organization. Most recently, he has been teaching play-writing courses at the University of California, Los Angeles' Extension program and serving as co-director of the Latino Theater Initiative at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

The $2.27 million funding for the initiative - created to bring Latino perspective to the theater - will run out June 30, so the timing of the MacArthur grant is perfect. Alfaro will stay on at the Mark Taper as an artist in residence, with a small office and a computer at his disposal.

If the ``genius award'' swells his head at all, Alfaro can rely on his close-knit family to ground him. When he called to tell them about the MacArthur, they were very happy for him, he said, but quickly moved on to more important topics.

``Good for you,'' his family said. ``Now, are you going to go with us to Big Bear on Fourth of July?''

Other winners of this year's MacArthur awards with California connections include Vija Celmins, 58, a New York-based artist who received a master's in fine arts from UCLA in 1965; Loic Wacquant, a sociologist from Berkeley who specializes in urban poverty; San Francisco biologist Eva Harris; and Pamela Samuelson, a Berkeley lawyer and scholar who works on technology issues.

Novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace also received a $230,000 grant.

The 1997 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation:

Luis Alfaro, 35, Los Angeles, a performance artist, playwright and poet. Grant: $230,000.

Lee Breuer, 60, New York, a writer, playwright and co-founder of Mabou Mines Theater in New York. $355,000.

Vija Celmins, 58, New York, an artist. $345,000.

Eric L. Charnov, 49, Summit Park, Utah, a theoretical biologist. $300,000.

Elouise Cobell, 51, Blackfeet Indian Reservation, Mont., a businesswoman and advocate. $310,000.

Peter Galison, 42, Cambridge, Mass., an author and Harvard University professor who studies the history of science. $265,000.

Mark Harrington, 37, New York, a writer, researcher and activist. $240,000.

Eva Harris, 31, San Francisco, a biologist and assistant adjunct professor. $210,000.

Michael Kremer, 32, Cambridge, Mass., a development economist and assistant professor. $215,000.

Russell S. Lande, 45, Eugene, Ore., a biologist and professor. $280,000.

Kerry James Marshall, 41, Chicago, a painter and associate professor. $260,000.

Nancy A. Moran, 42, Tucson, Ariz., an ecologist, evolutionary biologist and professor. $265,000.

Han Ong, 29, New York, a playwright and performer. $200,000.

Sister Kathleen A. Ross, 56, Toppenish, Wash., a Roman Catholic nun who is president and co-founder of Heritage College. $335,000.

Pamela Samuelson, 48, Berkeley, a lawyer and scholar. $295,000.

Susan A. Stewart, 45, Philadelphia, a cultural and literary critic. $280,000.

Elizabeth Streb, 47, New York, a dancer and choreographer.$290,000.

Trimpin, 45, Seattle, a musician and sculptor born in West Germany. $280,000.

Loic J.D. Wacquant, 36, Berkeley, a sociologist and professor. $235,000.

Kara Elizabeth Walker, 27, Providence, R.I., an artist. This year's youngest winner. $190,000.

David Foster Wallace, 35, Bloomington, Ill., a writer. and Associate professor. $230,000.

Andrew J. Wiles, 44, Princeton, N.J., a Princeton University mathematician known for his advances in the field of number theory. $275,000.

Brackette F. Williams, 46, Tucson, Ariz., an anthropologist. $285,000.

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PHOTO Luis Alfaro, a gay Latino performance artist-writer, was announced as a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation grant Monday.

David R. Crane/Daily News