Cover, 2009 54 x 90 Inches, iPhone photograph, archival pigment on canvas

Now a recognizable figure in the increasingly legitimate genre of cell-phone art photography, Poe’s entry to the world of fine art is as miraculous as his near overnight realization.

The process began after he accidentally shot several photographs on his new iPhone. While he says he was initially inclined to delete them, he later decided they were of artistic value. This, in turn, inspired him to devote all his time to his new craft and seek out a suitable venue to display his blossoming portfolio.

Poe, a business development manager with a thriving telecommunications company, was so inspired by the photographic process, and a certainty he could nurture a successful art career, that he decided opening his own gallery wasn’t such a premature thing, more something that would ensure he pursued his new creative outlet.

“My entry into fine art photography was entirely happenstance. A couple of years ago I purchased an iPhone the very day it came on the market and just started snapping away. I simply started playing and came up with some interesting images. I took a picture with very blurry types of images and rather than delete them, I decided they were very artistic.

At first I was going to delete them because they really weren’t up to scratch, then I decided to keep them and tinker with them. I ended up with several abstract works and from there I decided this could be a really great thing to do as an artist overall.”

Bob says his happy accident then became increasingly sophisticated. “Initially I started printing on paper, then I opted for canvas. I like the way printing on canvas offers a real painterly quality. I tried a number of surfaces including plexiglass, though nothing offered the warmth and organic quality of canvas. I’m settled on it now, as I like the way the colors are, and the way the images reproduce.”

Asked about his work’s evolution, and his stylistic and thematic progression, he reveals, “My work reflects a painterly vision of everyday subjects that exceed the original intention of the photograph. I currently employ the use of an iPhone camera, both for its accessibility and ease of use. What was initially viewed as a benign collection of subjects and locations has become an instrument that allows me to discover, and allows an audience to discover, the complexities that lay just beneath their surface.”

“The spontaneous nature of the iPhone lets me capture images that, when viewed at length, display curious juxtapositions, symbolism and humor. As each photograph unfolds, it offers viewers an opportunity to apply their own personal, artistic and philosophical interpretation. Unintentional visual distortions resulting from the iPhone’s inherent limitations provide a playful temperament to much of my work, and add ambiguity to otherwise straightforward images.”

Poe says his subject matter includes anything that strikes him as unusual, quirky, or that can evoke multiple interpretations. “I haven’t actually had any formal arts training apart from some assignments with black and white photography during high school. The majority of my work is improvisational, as the iPhone allows me to take quick and impulsive photographs. The absence of a heavy camera and equipment is liberating, and permits me to capture a moment in its authentic form.”

“I work in large-scale reproductions of my photographs because I believe this format displays each piece’s subtleties, richness and depth. The canvas also provides a dramatic backdrop for an image that is usually viewed on a very small device.”

“My most recent work explores the role of discovery in the artistic process. Specifically, how the iPhone’s lack of shutter speed and aperture control” - which frustrates many of its users – or “an accidental finger over its lens, can create powerful and beautiful images.”

In terms of his broader creative vision Bob claims he ultimately wants to encourage his audience to pursue their own artistic endeavors, “for pure enjoyment or for further discovery of the artist within themselves.”

This is a stark contrast to his former high ranking corporate career where Poe spent over 20 years in the broadcast industry, developing pioneering media initiatives for a variety of clients. He was the Director of Broadcasting for the Orlando Magic, and cultivated a strong fan base for the team when it was founded in 1989. Most notably, he was General Manager of WMMO, a breakthrough radio station in Florida that provided quality, uninterrupted music programming for adult listeners. His efforts earned him the prestigious Radio Wayne Award for General Manager of the Year and earned WMMO the Radio Station of the Year award from Billboard.

Shot throughout the Los Angeles and Santa Monica area, Bob Poe’s latest show, titled “Illumination,” investigates the effect of light and movement on his subjects. L.A. artist Lisa Adams curated the exhibit.

Bob Poe Gallery
Bergamot Station
2525 Michigan Ave., Gallery G8A, Santa Monica, CA 90404
http://www.bobpoephotography.com

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Lisa Marie • Dress: Vintage Sonia Rykiel

Hats are sexy! Unlike a bag, a hat frames the face. It can broadcast taste, style, glamour, confidence, originality, personality, wit, imagination. It can suggest courage or conformity, be playful or serious, flirtatious, seductive, bold or bashful. A hat is expressive. It sends a message, and in the dressed-down, anything goes, flip-flop and t-shirt uniformity of contemporary Los Angeles, designer and milliner Louise Green knows that a hat can make a statement that distinguishes you and sets you apart. And so do her legions of customers. From the celebrities who come to her for custom designed chapeaus, to the young and old fashionistas who flock to her sample sales, to the men who know a good fedora can set off a suit, or jeans, and turn heads. For Hollywood stylists, hip musicians, museum council ladies that lunch, and especially African-American Sunday church women, because nobody knows hats better, or wears them with greater panache than they do!

When the British-born Green came to Los Angeles in the 1980s, she had the good fortune to fall under the tutelage of two women who were masters of custom-made fashion headwear – Mrs. King, and the late Wilma Rey Gordon who held hat-making gatherings in her View Park home. There, Green honed the high level of craft that is the foundation of her art.

Green’s esthetic is romantic, elegant and witty. Vintage-inspired cloches and picture hats with shaped brims dominate her collections. But it is the imaginative combinations of color and materials in her trimmings – custom-made silk flowers in an array of patterns and textures, leaves, grosgrains, embroidered ribbons, laces, feathers, touches of beading, or veiling – that distinguish her handmade couture designs. They make each hat an individual personal statement and conjure up just the right amount of cinematic fantasy.

A stroll through the aisles of Green’s workroom reveals her vast collection of new and vintage textiles and accessories, and hat blocks from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. It reminded me of the back streets of the old Les Halles market neighborhood in Paris with its little shops housing dusty boxes of velvet flowers, antique ribbons, and exotic feathers, before it was bulldozed in the early 1970s.

Green’s “fascinator” hats are an assemblage of trimmings atop a little clip-on headband that sits perched flirtatiously at a cocky angle. A must-have accessory, they add glamour or sassy sophistication to well-styled hair, like a unique piece of jewelry on a simple black dress. Or, like Billie Holiday’s gardenia, a customized Green “fascinator” can easily become a personal signature.

For Spring 2010, Green has added a delicious new confection called the Doll Hat that was inspired by Impressionist paintings. Think of those miniature brimmed hats worn by Renoir, Manet, and Cassett’s fashionable Parisian women, with a contemporary twist. We can also look forward to a light airy collection of sheer textures, lacy sisal, shades of vanilla, ivory and cream, a cloche in a new ribbon weave jute, big soft brims. and one of my favorites, an exquisite shallow crowned hat with flowers under the brim beside the face rather than above. And for something a bit more tailored, there are the very chic black and white combinations, while soft metallics of pale silvers and coppers add dressier luster. The Spring Collection also features sporty fedoras, and even a couple of bowlers for the guys!

Style is all about attitude. Whether you want to attract admiring glances, or just perk up your day, try a Green chapeau. Instead of another short-lived electronic device, invest in a hat. Be alluringly elegant, coquettish, or a noir femme fatale. Be fabulous.

Following is a sampling of the Louise Greene collection.

• Photography: Alyssa Lavine / http://www.alyssalavinephotography.com
• Photo Assistant: Jedediah Johnson / http://jedediahjohnson.com
• Make-up and Hair: Veronica Lane / http://www.veronicalane.com
• Styling and Art Direction: Jacki Apple / http://www.jackiapple.com
• Models: Lisa Marie, Aline Rock, Banke (Models International)

Louise Green Millinery Co.
1616 Cotner Avenue (1/2 block north of Santa Monica Blvd @ 405 Freeway)
West Los Angeles, CA 90025
(310) 479-1881
http://www.louisegreen.com

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Sheldon Figoten

FABRIK: What inspired you to become an artist and when?

Sheldon Figoten (SF): My parents were working class, Jewish immigrants from Latvia and Russia, so we had no library and they weren’t interested in art. But I had a friend in high school who was taking a correspondence course in commercial and fine art. He invited me to his house one day, where his parents had allowed him to convert a porch into his studio. I stepped into that studio and was hooked—loving the smell, the atmosphere. My friend gave me a few tubes of paint and away I went.

As an undergraduate student at UCLA, I took art history courses, marking the beginning of a lifelong study. I was awestruck attending a retrospective of Henri Matisse—stunned by the crudeness, the directness, the expressiveness. It didn’t look like anything I thought painting should be—it was sophisticated and primitive at the same time. “The Dance,” from MOMA knocked me out! Another of his paintings, the more abstract “Open Window, Collioure” was a framed black rectangle and had very few references in the painting. I think that particular painting even scared Matisse, but it left a deep impression on me.

Kurt Von Meir, an art critic for a New York art magazine, came to the West Coast to teach a modern art class at UCLA. Excited about the LA art scene, he insisted we go out and see it. We used Art Forum Magazine for one of our class texts. I visited the Nicholas Wilder Gallery and The Irving Blum Gallery. At these two galleries you could see the best of New York and Los Angeles art. Those two venues, especially, provided an immense education.

FABRIK: What did you learn about the difference between East and West Coast artists?

SF: In New York, the abstract painters were traditional and formalistic—paint on canvas. In LA, there were two schools of modern art: the classicists, who were the older, erudite easel painters who did hard-edged planar abstractions. They were the gentlemen. The Ferus group were the Venice guys—hip, experimental and into new processes and materials. I became intrigued by those possibilities, some of which were seen in John McCracken planks, Larry Bell boxes, and Ron Davis fiberglass paintings.

FABRIK: What did you do after studying art in college?

SF: I wound up going to dental school in San Francisco 1966 to1970, taking classes at the Art Institute and painting every spare minute. But when I graduated I knew painting was what I wanted to do. Practicing dentistry would allow me the time, means and freedom to continue to paint. I left town and set up a studio in Weaverville, Northern California and started to paint abstract painting full time.

European painters traditionally go to The Louvre and copy the masters but I thought I’d copy a Frank Stella painting. Of course, it didn’t wind up like his and I was off on my first group of paintings using commercial Rustoleum black and metallic paints—a lot slicker than Frank Stella’s work!

I was drawn to people using new materials and processes, inventing new forms and structures—all part of the legacy of the Ferus group. Then I saw this show in SF, called “California, The Modern Era” and for the first time I saw a group of paintings by John McLaughlin and was ready to understand and connect with them.

I wanted to learn more about McLaughlin and that led me to The Archives of American Art housed in The De Young Museum (now housed in The Huntington). They had received his papers from his estate and I was lucky enough to go over them before interviewing his wife, Florence, in his house and studio. So in 1980, I wrote and published an article about him which led to more writing and reviewing. As a consequence of my interest in McLaughlin, I was introduced to Ed Moses by art dealer Daniel Weinberg, who had helped open doors for me in my research on McLaughlin. Ed came up to San Francisco preparing for a show. I happened to bring in a couple of paintings to show Dan.

Dan said, ‘I’ve been telling you about this young guy inspired by McLaughlin, come take a look at his stuff.’

Ed looked at my poured and irregular, not hard-edged vocabulary and said ‘I like that pecker track right there!’ (Laughs) (Meaning a visceral mark, organic, not refined!) That was the start of our friendship.

Interviewing Ed for The American Archives and getting to know him opened my window to the Ferus artists. He told me stories about each one. Ed and I have followed each other’s work for 28 years. He has influenced me most importantly in his attitude towards change, openness and freedom. Not many painters are as fluid as Ed—he’s one of the great ones. He’s been enormously generous in his attention and I’ve been lucky enough to travel with him.

In 1990, he had a show in Japan and took me along. Ed knew how much Japanese pottery meant to me and we both were able to see wonderful local pottery villages and museums. My work has been strongly influenced by Japanese pottery. The old stuff is the best—natural, unforced, unselfconscious, it moves me tremendously. There were scholar potters, but I loved the tradition of the farmer potters who learned century after century how to make the shapes and had to make their water storage jars and bowls during the winter. The attitudes inherent in those pieces have seeped into my paintings and freed me.

FABRIK: In what way?

SF: There’s a direct action when you pour paint—you don’t mess with it, whatever happens, there’s the acceptance of what the paint does and wants to do, how it runs and where it runs. I make abstract paintings in as clear and direct and truthful a fashion as I can.

FABRIK: What effect do you want your paintings to have?

SF: I hope to engage the viewer through this immediate sensory experience, not to please or entertain or to make something simply beautiful, but to create an imbalance, to challenge the viewer’s perceptual sense, throwing people off a little to put them into a state of active contemplation. I hope the paintings provide a stimulus that is about questions, not answers. The freedom in abstract painting is that the viewer can provide his or her own meaning, own sense of order, if need be. McLaughlin said, “I don’t want to tell the viewer who I am but want to let the viewer find out who the viewer is.” I agree.

FABRIK: And what do you hope for in the future?

SF: Most importantly, I look forward to continuing to work, to show and sell my work more than I have in the past—giving me greater personal freedom.

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Carver Apartments

SKID ROW TRUST INTERVIEW:

FABRIK: Why did you choose Michael Maltzan as the architect for the Carver Apartments?

Skid Row Housing Trust (SRHT): The Trust chose Michael Maltzan Architecture (MMA) as the architect on the new Carver Apartments as a contemporary solution to a challenging site located in a challenging location. The site was irregularly shaped, on a lonely street, sat next to freeway and lastly, the site was on top of a methane zone. Michael Maltzan was clearly challenged by the site, but achieved success in being able to provide a balance between contemporary design, density and open space, while simultaneously mitigating noise and pollution and connecting the building to the exterior environment. The New Carver Apartments is the second building the Trust commissioned Michael Maltzan Architecture todesign for us.

FABRIK: What were his guidelines and budget?

SRHT: MMA’s first and foremost guideline was to design a building that would provide as many new homes for homeless individuals as possible, while also seamlessly integrating into the neighborhood context. MMA was flexible in their guidelines as the project had to undergo a significantly burdensome entitlement process that also had to integrate design guidelines from the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles. Also, to a great extent, MMA had become familiar with the Trust’s housing model from our previous partnership with MMA, the Rainbow Apartments. MMA built on the lessons learned from the Rainbow, and pushed the envelope of supportive housing further with the New Carver. The design budget for the New Carver was $750k.

FABRIK: How many housing developments has Skid Row done in downtown?

SRHT: The New Carver Apartments are the 22nd apartment building developed by Skid Row Housing Trust. For the past twenty years the Trust has been rehabilitating existing historic residential hotels and building new permanent supportive housing developments for homeless men and women downtown. Since the organization was founded, we have been dedicated to providing stable homes for the most vulnerable men and women in our community. Our model is called permanent supportive housing because we combine affordable residential buildings where our residents can live as long as they need to with on-site supportive services and healthcare to restore our residents’ lives.

The Abbey

SRHT: The Trust screens in, rather than screens out. We target the most vulnerable men and women living on the streets, who are individuals who have often spent years living on the streets and suffer from multiple disabling conditions. We target those individuals because we want our permanent supportive housing to have the greatest positive impact on our community. We know that we have the greatest impact both on our residents’ lives and our community when we reach out to the men and women who would be homeless but for the homes and support we provide. Residents moving into the New Carver will only be able to qualify if they are homeless, extremely low-income, and suffer from a physical disability, chronic disease, and/or mental illness.

FABRIK: Is it rent free or low rent?

SRHT: The apartments at the New Carver include a rental subsidy provided by HUD’s Section 8 program. Residents will be asked to pay between 30 to 40% of their monthly income in rent. For example, many of our residents survive on General Relief benefits provided by the County of Los Angeles of $221 a month, which means they pay approximately $58 a month in rent for their apartment.

FABRIK: When will they be moving in?

SRHT: We began accepting applications on Monday, October 5th. We hope that the first residents will move in by the end of October.

FABRIK: Do you provide furniture/household items too?

SRHT: The apartments come furnished and with very basic household items.

FABRIK: How do you think Skid Row Housing is changing or affecting the fabric of LA?

SRHT: Skid Row Housing Trust is committed to ending chronic homelessness by providing stable homes and support to the most vulnerable men and women on the streets. Our work both benefits our residents, but also the communities we work in. Downtown LA is a better community because there are fewer people on the streets because of our work and because we are improving blighted properties by building beautiful buildings. Additionally, by targeting the most vulnerable men and women on the streets we inspire others in our community to reach out by proving that no one is beyond help.

FABRIK: What new projects do you have in the pipeline?

SRHT: The Trust will open the Charles Cobb Apartments in January 2010. The Cobb is designed by Kivotos Montenegro Partners and will provide 76 apartments for chronically homeless men and women. The Trust is scheduled to break ground on the New Genesis Apartments in November. The New Genesis is designed by Killefer Flammang Architects and will provide 106 apartments in the historic core of downtown. In addition to the New Genesis, we’re in pre-development on the Star Apartments with Michael Maltzan and the New Pershing with Killefer Flammang.

The Trust is now working on a 3rd development with MMA, the Star Apartments, which will contain among other things, “prefab going up”. It will be the first time, in the City of Los Angeles, where prefabricated modular housing units will be stacked, up to 4 levels, and will sit on top of an existing concrete shell. The existing building is a shopping center on the ground floor with parking on the top. The development will reduce the impact to the environment by maintaining the majority of the structure and then utilizing prefab construction for additional stories. The Star is at the end of its design development phase and the Trust expects to begin construction by the end of 2010.

FABRIK: How can an individual help out with Skid Row Housing?

SRHT: People can get involved in our work by visiting www.skidrow.org. There they can watch our residents’ stories, sign up for a tour, and learn about volunteer opportunities. They can also donate! Here are examples of how important donations are to our work:

• $100 enables a formerly homeless person to receive healthcare for a month.
• $300 provides case management for two months.
• $500 brings two months of substance abuse recovery groups to Trust residents.
• $800 delivers six months of mental health care to a formerly homeless person.
• $1,000 allows a chronically homeless person to have daily access to a nurse.
• $5,000 gives a homeless person a home for a year.

FABRIK: Anything else you’d like to highlight about the Carver?

SRHT: One cool fact about the Carver is that it was supported by President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). ARRA funds both supported construction jobs and provided homes for the most vulnerable.

MICHAEL MALTZAN INTERVIEW:

FABRIK: How do you think the Carver Apartment building has changed the landscape of downtown LA?

Michael Maltzan (MM): Once the building is occupied by tenants, we expect that the residential density will dramatically increase the amount of pedestrian traffic and street life in this particular section of downtown Los Angeles. One of the fundamental design concepts for the ground floor, courtyard and public spaces in the building involves weaving urban conditions and street views through the interior spaces – essentially connecting the life of the street and the life of the building. The residents are formerly homeless; experience suggests that when they lived on the streets, they tended to block out the urban experience, leading very private, inner lives out of survival necessity. Once these residents have a home, they have their own truly private spaces and can begin to reshape their public lives and re-enter a collective experience. As such, it’s fundamentally important that the building foster a sense of urban liveliness, and that the design expresses this by connecting visually and perceptually to the local landscape at multiples scales. Conversely, the awakening of 95 new voices in the neighborhood has a tremendous potential to shift the character of life within the local community.

FABRIK: How did designing a building that sits a few feet from the I-10 West freeway influence your design and how do you think it will affect the residents?

MM: We’re fortunate to have a site located directly along the I-10 West. While designing adjacent to the freeway meant that we had to deal with atypical acoustic requirements and undertake a significant amount of noise mitigation, the freeway also made it possible to create urban connections in unexpected ways. Residents engage the street life not only from within the ground floor public spaces. They have a courtyard with a grand stair connected to the street; they have dramatic views of the downtown skyline from the 6th level roof terrace; and they sit eye to eye with the freeway traffic when watching television or doing laundry at the level 3 community room. These connections not only embrace the dramatic urban qualities of the site, they bring a strong individual presence to a block that previously lacked human scale.

FABRIK: One of the goals of Skid Row Trust is to bring a once hidden population into the public by integrating them into the community. How did that play into your design of the building?

MM: Formally, the building has tremendous potential to inflect the landscape of downtown LA. Viewed from the freeway and from afar, the faceted form articulates the scale of individual units within, and expresses a dynamic relationship between an urban fabric composed of individual lives, the texture of our collective experience, and the speed of the freeway. In dealing with such an underserved and often-neglected population, it’s intentional that we provide an architecture which embraces the urban landscape and brings visibility to its population.

FABRIK: It really is a striking building on par with other for-profit condo/apartment projects of downtown LA, how did you stay within the $750k budget and still make it look desirable, modern and artistic?

MM: Budget is always a challenge in any project. As the designers, it’s significant to have a client who understands that their project needs a strong visual presence as well as a strong functional design, and is willing to embark on building a design with unique formal characteristics. Through experience with multiple projects for this developer, we’ve learned the parameters, and continue to refine our sense of how to work within the ambitions of the budget. Understanding the rules of the typology allows us to push the vocabulary of the building in meaningful and ambitious ways. Given the constraints of this type of budget, we do rely substantially on the form of the building and the character of its spatial relationships to distinguish the design.

FABRIK: What challenges did you face designing for the Skid Row Trust rather than for a client of a typical house or hotel?

MM: We always design with the client; in this case, the client is a not-for-profit developer who undertakes construction of multi-million dollar buildings serving a formally homeless population. In many ways, working with this type of developer is similar to working with an institution - we receive a program and work to build an understanding of the needs of the organization. Because the Housing Trust is both the developer of these projects and the long-term property manager, they are a direct conduit to our understanding the evolving needs and hopes of the tenants. We embrace the opportunity to address these specific needs, as well as to formalize the maturing ambitions of the service providers who serve the residents, through development of the common areas.

FABRIK: Despite the challenges, do you feel rewarded as well by doing your part to alter a person’s life through your design?

MM: Our effort is to create a building - to give form and shape, and to organize a coherent sequence of program relationships - that serves the goal of the client. In this type of project, one of the fundamental challenges is to understand the way that the building is operated. In doing so, we have the ability to respond to the client’s needs, and as such, the opportunity to shape the interactions between the building’s different occupants. In many ways, the building serves as a place where residents can reassemble their lives and social relationships. Therefore, in addition to creating individual living spaces - homes - for these tenants, there is real challenge and reward in creating spaces where the residents can interact with each other and the world in meaningful and new ways.

Words Lanee Neil
Images Courtesy of the Skid Row Housing Trust

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Walter Hopps

Walter Hopps was clearly a visionary. The self-taught curator’s 2005 obituary in the Washington Post aptly observed: “Go back through his record, and it’s like a pounding drumbeat, first, first, first, first.” The former director of the Ferus Gallery and the Pasadena Museum of Art made great strides in promoting Los Angeles’ burgeoning art scene in the late 1950s and 60s. Famous for his laid back sense of time (the curator was notoriously late and given to disappearing for days at a time), Hopps was an “artist’s curator,” widely respected for his inventive thinking and lasting relationships with many of the artists whose work he promoted. Just as Hunter S. Thompson changed what it means to be a journalist, this so-called “gonzo curator” played a vital role in shaping the taste of the latter part of the twentieth century, presenting the first career retrospective of Marcel Duchamp at the Pasadena Museum in 1963 and introducing the work of Ed Ruscha, Barnett Newman, Joseph Cornell and R. Crumb to the American public.

Eve Babitz

Friend to Neil Young and Gram Parsons, former lover of Jim Morrison, goddaughter of Stravinsky…Eve Babitz knew everyone in LA in the 1960s and 70s and purchased Steve Martin his signature white suit to boot. She may be best known popularly for playing a game of chess nude with Marcel Duchamp during his retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art, but her legacy should belong to her writing.  Babitz’s breathless, yet incisive roman a clefs possess a Proustian potency. No one explicates the significance of 1960s and 70s Los Angeles counterculture as brilliantly as she does. Her candid insights into LA living in Slow Times, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh and LA and Eve’s Hollywood place her in the ranks of great California writers like Joan Didion, Nathanael West and John Fante. And if her taut, moving prose isn’t enough, the woman is cool. In the tradition of the best observer-participants, Babitz lives what she writes about and shares her stories with unabashed candor.

In Praise of Barbarians

Though his detractors have called him a “city-hating socialist,” Mike Davis has stayed in Los Angeles, despite the earthquakes, floods, riots and wildfires he describes in Ecology of Fear and Dead Cities, making vital contributions to academic life in Southern California through his teaching positions at Southern California Institute of Architecture; University of California, Irvine; and University of California, Riverside. The Fontana born former meat-cutter and self-proclaimed Marxist-Environmentalist became an academic sensation in the early 90s for his astute application of Marxist theory to issues in Los Angeles’ social policy, architecture and race relations. His book City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles has become a corner stone of urban studies and kindled international interest in studying Los Angeles as a quintessentially post-modern city.

Jack Goldstein

Other than Las Vegas and Dubai, few cities are as spectacular as Los Angeles. It is only natural that the “Pictures Generation,” a group of young artists in the 70s and 80s working at the intersection of conceptualism and pop, began in Los Angeles. The Canadian-born, Los Angeles-bred Jack Goldstein worked at the forefront of this movement, which included art super-stars like Richard Longo, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Krueger and David Salle.

Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, MGM Lion Roars

David Lynch & Danger Mouse

David Lynch takes Bunker Hill’s noirish tales of women in trouble, young starlets and physical brutality and transports them to a nightmarish present in which dreams and reality collide in the canyons and flatlands of contemporary Los Angeles. Few can rival the free -floating, dreamlike malaise Lynch conjures in his films.  The influence of his movies has extended far beyond the film industry. With Lynchmob, an exhibition of 30 international, emerging artists, Berlin based curators Emilie Trice and Christopher David sought to “‘invoke in the viewer the same psychological and emotional response as Lynch’s films.”  It seems that Lynch himself is not above making work inspired by others. He created original photographs to accompany Danger Mouse’s album Dark Night of the Soul.

Richard Neutra

British architectural critic/LA Enthusiast, Reyner Banham, aptly noted in his seminal book on Los Angeles that architect Richard Neutra’s buildings possessed a “Californianated” version of the “creative angst” of European modernism. Together with his longtime friend, Rudolph Schindler, Neutra is responsible for the architectural style casually known as California Modernism. His design aesthetic, which he deemed “nature-near” was a striking combination of geometric forms in glass and wood which emphasized surrounding natural elements, incorporating prototypically Californian concerns such as health and the fluidity between indoor and outdoor space. An exhibition of Neutra’s drawings and architectural sketches is on view at the central branch of the Los Angeles public library until September.  Originally founded in 1926, his architectural practice has been presided over since 1970 by son and partner, architect Dion Neutra.  This year, the firm celebrates its 83rd year in practice.

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Case Study House No. 22, Los Angeles, Calif., Iconic Girls, 1960; Pierre Koenig, Architect. © J. Paul Getty Trust. Used with permission. Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library at the Getty Research Institute

In Built Upon Love: Architectural Longing After Ethics and Aesthetics (MIT Press), architectural historian Alberto Perez-Gomez puts forward the enticing idea that “true architecture is concerned with far more than fashionable form, affordable homes, and sustainable development.” The architecture he speaks of responds to the aspiration for an eloquent place to live.  Julius Shulman’s magnificent oeuvre of photography maintains that the impression of order resonant with the occupant’s dreams is well within the domain of such architecture. A sublime lucidity anchors the compositions of spaces photographed by Shulman. Even at 98, he remained a paragon of California Cool. Though laid-back, his mastery over the medium was palpable. An exemplary eight-decade career elevated his work to iconic status and him to legend. Shulman transcended the frame by perfectly representing that invisible quality of carefree glamour, so eagerly sought throughout the world, despite its ephemeral nature.

Just weeks before Julius Shulman’s passing from this world, Fabrik had the privilege of accompanying textile designer and family friend Alexandra Becket for an interview, at his Laurel Canyon residence and studio. Designed for him in 1949 by noted Modernist architect Raphael Soriano, it is now designated an architecturally significant structure, due to its being the only remaining unaltered steel frame house built by Soriano. Last year, as a cloth-bound limited edition of 1000, Nazraeli Press published by Shulman and Soriano, Julius Shulman: The Building of My Home and Studio. Still embodying his desire to narrate the beauty and livability of modern architecture, Shulman elegantly demonstrated the harmony of his own intentionally balanced environment. Although his photographs reflect what most pursue within the California dream: that intoxicating blend of ambition, success and glamour, his life and career appear the result of an incredible consistency of vision.

Always the consummate professional, his impeccably kept and extensive working archives of over 260,000 prints, negative and color transparencies, since acquired by the Getty Research Institute, have graced the pages of several excellent books documenting rarely before seen mid-century modern architecture, a few of which are even devoted solely to his work. As if to humor our inquiry about whether his fastidiousness and exceptional organizational skills were innate or learned, Julius referred us to Modernism Rediscovered, the 3-volume set of books put out by TASCHEN in 2007. “They served a purpose, for the architects and the owners,” he stated. Shulman’s life work became a visual record of and testament to the complex allure this unique metropolis holds for the entire world and perhaps especially, its inhabitants. The recently released documentary film ‘Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman’ by director Eric Bricker celebrates and explores the man and the truly extensive influence of his work.

For Wright, Neutra, Lautner, Eames, Koenig, Schindler, Becket, Ain, Soriano, just some of the mid-century masters whose practices were observed by Shulman, responsible design was environmentally involved. “I was weaned and influenced by, on the world of architecture, of design based on integrity, the total design, indoors, outdoors.”

When Fabrik asked if Shulman might like to share some observations regarding his role in helping to construct the ideology of 1960s Los Angeles, he shared the following…

“SHULMAN — That doesn’t mean anything. Those are words. This is the kind of question that we’re asked quite frequently. When I look at a building, house, commercial building, I don’t go there in a pre- determined consideration. When I go to see a house, I look at it, take out my camera, the composition that comes out is pretty straight-forward. There’s no way of determining in advance what you’re going to do when you photograph any building, like how do I produce these compositions…the best way to describe it would be to take a group into a house or building, ‘Here we are standing, look at this space, how do you put it together, into a composition’…in other words, there’s no determined visual action.

I’ve worked with Richard Neutra…in the beginning, he’d point out to me, to my assistants, what he wanted to show, or what he did not want to show. Most architects, when they call me to do a project, leave me alone, with my assistants, and we set up my own compositions, determine what i personally feel portrays the nature, the spirit of the design… With Neutra in most cases, his insistence was to show the elements which portrayed his own design. Therefore, his work which he wanted to show photographically did not persist in portraying what I would see in the same space…frequently, most frequently, I would show a Polaroid print to the client and then an 11 by 14 enlargement of each scene. Most architects were dismayed because I saw in my composition elements that had escaped their own viewing. I had to be good. That’s all.

You cannot portray a scene by describing it in advance. You go in with the architect, the client, and you start working. All this initial enterprise comes out in a photograph, it represents a good estimate of what the architects wants to show. It’s a blessing to be able to do this, and I say to students who are learning photography or architecture, forget it. You cannot lay down a rule. There’s no such thing. So maybe the answer would be …the only way in retrospect is to take a group into a building that you’d like to have a conversation about. Let’s go to the building.”

FABRIK: Does LA continue to create iconic buildings and if so, please share some that have made an impression on you?

SHULMAN: Well, hell, what is an iconic building? Any one of my large prints out there on the wall could be called iconic.

If you visualize, as we’re here now, a building that you’re familiar with, in downtown L.A., that we could go together sometime, early some morning, a public building, or a library downtown, walk in there with my asst. with a camera, and make a test, pull up a Polaroid picture and pass it around, this is what we’re looking at, and until we see a, b, and c, on the other hand, one of you may ask oh, but you’re not showing that part there, and you might say to make another composition, or you may find that significant enough. It is so much up to each person to make their own selection. There is no way of portraying a space better than being there on the scene. It’s a visual experience. I don’t know if we can answer a question that way.

FABRIK: You were here at the very beginning of modern architecture. Did it seem like it was a revolution in architecture, did it seem like there was something happening, like there was a movement, in the 30s and 40s when all the boxier buildings, the new modern building started coming around?

SHULMAN: I can’t respond to that kind of question. I didn’t see any difference.

FABRIK: Many mid-century buildings in L.A. are threatened by new development (Shulman says matter-of-factly, that’s okay) rather than restored and re-used.  What’s your reaction to the planned destruction of the Century Plaza Hotel and the Century City Gateway West Tower?

SHULMAN: It so happens that the Century City Hotel was one of the very first photographs I did for editors of magazines. It’s a good building. It serves a purpose for a lot of weddings, bar mitzvahs and every kind of ceremony, funeral services. It did serve a purpose. Are we ready now to tear it down? Is there any arbitration? Who decides how and where to tear down such type of a building, a hotel, many people say it’s been around for 20, 30, 40 years, it’s performed a function…it’s difficult. The architects have to meet with the owners, and the public would react to tearing down that wall, or another, and replacing it with something else entirely different…it’s a good building. I’ve taken some awfully good photographs of that same good building. But has it been sufficient? Or has the building been used to its use and function? No, it’s not as good as it was originally. That can happen, to authorize a change.

FABRIK: Are you involved in preserving cultural architecture in Los Angeles?

SHULMAN: Of course I am. I’ll always be there working, whether it’s an old building or new building!

Shulman’s instinct to stage suggestions of stories within his photographs makes them timeless revelations of our fascination with our constructions and our selves. It is to his credit that the iconic image, more often than not, occupies a greater psychic space than the iconic building. The symbiosis between the real and photographed building, as represented by Shulman’s compositions, is what gave modernist architecture its eloquence. In an era when architecture was fixated on the East Coast and Europe, Shulman articulated the quintessential image of Possibility, which was to be found ‘out west.’

Interview with Shulman Collaborator Juergen Nogai

Juergen Nogai with Julius Shulman

The day after we met with Shulman, Fabrik had attended a lecture at the newly opened Annenberg Space for Photography, where photographer Juergen Nogai and architectural historian Wim de Wit, who heads the Department of Architecture and Design at the Getty Research Institute, were speaking about Shulman’s work, their collaboration over the past decade, as well as Nogai’s multifaceted career as a widely exhibited fine art and commercial photographer.

Juergen Nogai was born in Germany, where he spent most of his professional life. He opened a studio more than 30 years ago doing “fine art” photography, and eventually branched out to advertising and architectural work. He also specialized in art photography, working for museums and private collectors. When Juergen relocated to Los Angeles in 2000, he almost immediately began a very rewarding collaboration with Julius Shulman, which continues to this day.

We were thrilled to ask Juergen some questions about photography as well.

FABRIK: What is the value of informing the public about architecture?

NOGAI: Do we have to inform people about architecture they have to use, or do we have to inform architects about the people they are building for? I think that what defines the difference between good and bad architecture can be reduced to the functionality of buildings – how is it working, or how are we living and working in it and out of these aspects should follow a clean and exciting design. I think it is important to document the architecture in the context of the use and educate people by showing the building, and explaining it by giving them a tour with my pictures. The observer has to figure out if this kind of architecture works for him, and if he likes it or not. I try to be as objective as possible by giving him visual help to make his decision. That means, I should also be able to photograph architecture, which is not my personal favorite, and still do a good job documenting it for my client.

Disney Hall, Los Angeles, Frank Gehry, Architect. Julius Shulman and Juergen Nogai

FABRIK: What is the relationship between the photographed and the “real” building?

NOGAI: Without an architect there is no building and there wouldn’t be a photograph. Today we see a lot of “non- existent” buildings in strange virtual computer worlds. In my photography of architecture, I try to be objective with my subjective eye. I try to understand the buildings I will photograph and create their unique story. Our reality is always subjective, it is what we see, realize and feel. I hope, that my clientele will find the ‘real’ building in my photographs.

FABRIK: Do digital technologies alter the way you work and your experience of built spaces?

NOGAI: I am still working 80% analog with high quality large format cameras and lenses, which gives me more creative and technical possibilities, and the quality of film still feels better for me personally than digital images. I think that digital photography created more ‘shooting’ photographers, because there are no film costs involved, there is no risk. By that I mean that the thinking process comes at the end by editing countless images, instead of thinking upfront and creating your story. This means for example, that you create the right composition, find the right position / angel, watch the natural and artificial light situations, people, etc. and make a decision for the tools you have to use to capture, what you have in mind. The camera comes always at the end. I am not exploring the world through the camera, I use it to collect my ideas.

My images are normally not altered, where as digital photography, because of its technology, leads itself to a lot of after the fact alteration: in light balancing, color shifting, correcting tilting lines etc., because you always have to go through the computer and its software to look at your images. All of that does not mean that digital photography is in general not appropriate, but it needs a lot of discipline and it is much better placed in press, sport and documentary photography. Let’s say it this way, why should I use a racing car for heavy loads or sight seeing tours – architectural photography needs an understanding of the building, a constructed view to tell its story, so that a recipient can understand it without a floor plan.

FABRIK: Please share the names of some artists who have won your respect/admiration and why.

NOGAI: I am coming from classic art study backgrounds, which lead me to the ideas of the BAUHAUS. So I would say this confrontation with a broad spectrum of art and history, makes it very difficult to name single artists, but for sure a genius such as Da Vinci, challenges not only painters, video artist, musicians, but photographers as well. Among the photographers I admire, I would have to name Alfred Stieglitz, who I feel was so important for his photographic life documentary work, Andre Kertesz, with his personal photographic composition, and unorthodox camera angles, which created his personal photographic style of telling his story. The Bechers, who photographed buildings with large format cameras, in a straightforward and intensely austere ‘objective’ compositions. Reinhart Wolf, who inspired me with his incredible “Faces of Buildings”. I could go on and name more, because I am in general always interested in the world that surrounds me and shapes me. It is like that in my relationship to Julius Shulman. He influences me, and in some ways I also influence him.

Blue Jay House, Los Angeles • Zoltan Pali, Architect. © Julius Shulman and Juergen Nogai

NOGAI: Yes, my wife and I collect art. We collect photography, paintings, weavings, etc. I am more on the side of collecting photography and my wife Jeannie, who is an illustrator, is more responsible for paintings. But we both are open for everything we are confronted and moved by.

FABRIK: Please share something you love about living and working in Los Angeles.

NOGAI: The variety of “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” What I mean by that is the tension that is created between the different colorful cultures and people. The extreme contrast between wealth and poverty, the social problems. You find the glamour of Hollywood, and the people selling this glamour as “Star Maps” and organizing “Star Tours” and then on the other side you have the homeless people pushing their shopping carts through the alleys. The diverse social context gives this city a special dynamic.

Los Angeles is for me a city, which is exciting in its enormous amount of different expressions in art, architecture, film, theatre and music. There are not so many places in our world with such a vibrant and diverse art scene as we have here. The extreme contrast between well thought out architecture, and then the functioning, stucco “living boxes” and over-decorated displays of wealth. It took me some time to realize that this city is permanently pushing me forward in my creative life, and also in putting me in touch with many people with whom I learned different ways of looking at our world.

FABRIK: What do you most love photographing?

NOGAI: I’m a visual person. In that way, I try to capture what I see, and that can be people, social problems, or design in its various forms. Everything that catches my attention, I somehow freeze in my camera as a time document, or just as a creative play with color and form.

Architectural photography, of course, became one of my main interests. Through this profession, I am communicating with architecture and design of all kinds, very intensely, and it became a major part in my photographic life. I feel very lucky that I can do in my life, what I love to do.

As collaborators, Shulman and Nogai have produced books, publications, numerous magazine features and countless private and public assignments. Their work will be on show until August 22nd, 2009, at Craig Krull Gallery, Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, CA.

In Spring 2010, there will be another show at C/O Berlin, International Forum for Visual Dialogue, in Berlin, Germany, followed by an exhibit in September 2010 at Zephyr Gallery in the Museum Mannheim in Mannheim, Germany.

As well as working with Julius Shulman, Juergen works on his own assignments and projects, producing numerous books for publishers including Harry N. Abrams Inc., and Taschen.

Alexandra Becket on Julius Shulman

Alexandra Becket with Julius Shulman. Photo: Ted VanCleave

Julius Shulman photographed one of my grandfather, Welton Becket’s earliest architectural projects in the late 30’s, the Pan Pacific Auditorium.

I never saw the Pan Pacific before it was destroyed by a fire in 1989. When I came across a large format photo of it in Taschen’s “Julius Shulman, Architecture and It’s Photography,” the composition left a strong impression on me. Julius took the photo from a large empty lot to the west, so the entire auditorium filled the frame. It shows the structure’s strong horizontal layout, beautiful rounded corners and four prominent streamline modern towers reaching into sky. Buildings live on through photography and can teach us so much about our past.

When I met Julius for the first time with my sister Alisa, he invited us to his home studio. Julius shared his library of negatives with us, showed us some portraits he took of our grandfather and gave us a carefully typed list of photos he took for Welton Becket. We loved hearing Julius’s recollections of what it was like working with our grandfather, including specific stories such as a chance encounter they had sitting next to each other on a flight to Egypt in the 60s when the Nile Hilton Hotel was being built.

The last time I saw Julius was for this interview, just a short while ago. He insisted that you couldn’t describe how to photograph a building. You have to be on site to capture a composition at that moment. As you will read, he expressed an ardent desire to take us or anyone interested in photography out to the field to learn about composition. He spoke passionately about demonstrating his technique, sharing his knowledge, and teaching others. It was inspiring and fulfilling to hear his enthusiasm for photography and his desire to share it with others.

Links:

• http://www.craigkrullgallery.com
• http://www.juergennogai.com
• http://www.getty.edu

• Story by Aparna Bakhle-Ellis.
• Interview with Shulman conducted by Alexandra Becket.

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The intimate environment features state-of-the-art, high-definition digital technology as well as traditional prints by some of the world’s most renowned and emerging photographers. The exhibits change three times a year, however the common thread is exhibiting, rather than selling, exceptional photography.

The Photography Space informs and inspires the public by connecting photographers, philanthropy and the human experience through powerful imagery and stories. It is the first solely photographic cultural destination in the Los Angeles area.

As chief curator Patricia Lanza confides,“This is a purist exhibition space. We aren’t driven by salability. If someone wants to buy, we will refer them to the photographer concerned, but our main concern is exhibiting exciting work.”

“We opened on March 25th and have had phenomenal interest from the public, having had over 20,000 people visit the space,” Patricia adds that the Annenberg’s real function is that of a conduit to connect people with the art of photography.

Testament to this commitment to facilitate the public’s access is IRIS NIGHTS, a regular lecture series held at the space. This public program, offered free of charge, by reservation online on a first come first serve basis, brings to life the featured exhibit with hour-long lectures by the photographers featured in the Photography Space exhibits, as well as by other notable guest artists and experts.

Despite what seems a Los Angeles Times monopoly, lectures so far have included the likes of the inimitable Catherine Opie, Patrick Ecclesine, a 33-year-old commercial photographer, and Helen K. Garber, a fine arts photographer. Times photographers Kirk McCoy and Genaro Molina recently offered a talk about the joys of their daily beat .

Photojournalist Carolyn Cole also offered insights into her world. Cole has spent the past 15 years traveling to distant places, capturing the news and bringing it to the readers of the Los Angeles Times. She has covered the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Sudan and Liberia, often focusing on victims caught in the crossfire. Her high impact photography, not only informs, but captures the aesthetics of light, color and composition, often under chaotic circumstances.

The inaugural exhibition of the Annenberg Space for Photography celebrated contemporary photography through works by eight internationally renowned photographers John Baldessari, Carolyn Cole, Greg Gorman, Lauren Greenfield, Lawrence Ho, Douglas Kirkland, Kirk McKoy, Genaro Molina, Catherine Opie, Julius Shulman and Tim Street-Porter.

Their work focused on the complexity and vitality of the city of Los Angeles by featuring different genres of contemporary photographic exploration – architecture, portraiture, photojournalism, and art – with interrelated themes weaved throughout. Through a relationship with the Los Angeles Times, L8S ANG3LES also featured the work of celebrated Times staff photographers and a selection of archival photographs of the city going back over 100 years.

Julius Shulman and Tim Street-Porter are famous for their focus on both modern and vernacular southern California architecture. Douglas Kirkland and Greg Gorman memorably portray the city’s celebrities from the industries for which LA is best known, while Lauren Greenfield’s photographs probe the lives of children who “grow up in the shadow of Hollywood.”

Carolyn Cole’s visual reports from international war zones are made for The Los Angeles Times as are the works of Lawrence Ho, Kirk McKoy, and Genaro Molina. Catherine Opie’s series “In and Around Home” merged personal and local issues with global perspectives. And John Baldessari added dry wit to the practice of “nip and tuck” and to “painting” one’s face in his most recent series.

June 28th marked a return to photojournalism for the space with the second exhibit featuring the work of winning photojournalists and visual editors from Pictures of the Year International (POYi), the oldest and most prestigious photojournalism competition in the world. The top images are chosen from more than 45,000 global entries.

Traditionally they were shown on a smaller scale at the University of Missouri at the Missouri School of Journalism. Now, for the first time ever, after 65 years of success in the Midwest, Pictures of the Year International is moving to Los Angeles, where it will exhibit over 80 prints and thousands of digital selections in its new home at the Annenberg Space for Photography, which is on view until November 2nd, 2009.

Kicking off this year’s exhibit was a two-day conference-style event comprised of presentations, discussions and lectures given by the winning photojournalists and visual editors.  Named the 66th Annual Pictures of the Year International Education & Awards Program, this program took place at the Annenberg Space for Photography on Friday, July 10 and in the Ray Kurtzman Theater at Creative Artists Agency on Saturday, July 11, 2009.

The full-day program celebrated the work of the award recipients. Presentations by winners included Photographer of the Year Emilio Morenatti, The Associated Press; the World Understanding Award recipient Jakob Carlsen; and the Photo Editing portfolio recipient Angus McDougall, National Geographic; among others.

Some of the award-winning presenters included:

• MAGAZINE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
  Uriel Sinai, Getty Images
• NEWSPAPER PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
  Emilio Morenatti, The Associated Press
• BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK AWARD
  Jason Eskenazi
• COMMUNITY AWARENESS AWARD
  Matt Eich, Aurora Select
• DOCUMENTARY PROJECT OF THE YEAR
  Seth Gitner, Roanoke Times and roanoke.com
• GLOBAL VISION AWARD
  Balzas Gardi, VII Network
• ANGUS McDOUGALL OVERALL EXCELLENCE IN EDITING AWARD
  National Geographic
• WORLD UNDERSTANDING AWARD
  Jakob Carlsen, Freelance

Again embracing the notion of photography as a documentary tool, Sport, another forthcoming show set for November, observes the work of esteemed Sports photographers Walter Iooss and Neil Leifer.

Running from early November, 2009 through March, 2010, the work of two of the world’s most preeminent sports photographers come together in this compelling exhibit celebrating the athlete. Iooss is best known for his work seen on the front of Sports Illustrated (his images have been shown on more than 300 covers) as well as for his portraits of famous athletes like Michael Jordan and Ken Griffey, Jr.

Leifer’s work has also been seen on numerous Sports Illustrated covers as well as well in the pages of Time Magazine. Leifer’s love of sports photography started at a young age when, as a boy in New York City, he would gain free admission to Giants games by pushing the wheelchairs of disabled patrons and then use his free ticket and camera to position himself on the field with professional photographers.

Removed from the need to commodify the work it exhibits, the Annenberg Space’s future shows aim not only to entertain but also educate patrons, offering them valuable insights into both the technical and creative vision of photographers on show.

Chief curator Patricia Lanza concludes, “by offering lectures and digitally documented interviews with photographers, the public has a greater insight and understanding of their work. It’s all about intimacy, where people are connected with the work on every level.”

Words Craig Stephens
Images Courtesy of the Annenberg Space for Photography

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The collection, which consists of wood, glass, furniture, metal, ceramics, and textiles of periods spanning from the 14th century to the present day, already boasts a bounty of pieces from the Arts and Crafts movement, which flourished from the tail end of the 19th century into the very early 20th century and highlighted a nature-inspired and handmade aesthetic. While the movement took place in England, Canada, and other parts of the United States, California remains a significant location in Arts and Crafts history. Until recently, LACMA already included (among many items) a beautiful cellarette from the New York-based artisan community Roycroft, lighting fixtures by the Linden Glass Company and Karl E. Kipp, furniture from Pasadena’s relished Blacker House (designed by the noted firm Greene & Greene), and a stunning mosaic-ed fireplace front from the Patrick J. King House in Chicago. Much of these items are from the private collection of donor Max Palevsky.

Despite the collection having such attractions, one vocal person felt a significant absence in some of the local representation. This person, William J. Zeili, was the great-nephew of a man who ran a furniture shop with Arthur and Lucia Mathews, two major artists of California’s Arts and Crafts movement in the early 1900s. At the time, LACMA’s Decorative Arts and Design collection only held one work by the duo, a landscape painting. At Zeili’s invitation, the Decorative Art department, spearheaded by curator Wendy Kaplan, selected a handful of pieces including a standing candelabrum and a hand-painted chest from the South Pasadena family home. The pieces were unveiled at LACMA on June 14th, 2009.

LACMA’s under-appreciated Decorative Arts and Design Collection also showcases significant works by another California woodworker, Sam Maloof. The MacArthur “Genius” Grant recipient (who died only this year) was a contemporary force in his medium du jour, his works included in many other prestigious collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institute of Art. LACMA’s works by Maloof include a stylized-beyond-its-material rocking chair carved from cherry wood, a double-sided music stand, a minimalist settee, and an austere coffee table and chest of drawers.

If these acquisitions weren’t reason enough to explore the Decorative Arts and Design Collection, this LACMA department also features Mid-century silver jewelry by Warren Carter and Ed Wiener, 15th and 16th century Netherlander and Swiss stained glass, and Art Nouveau metal vases and andirons and wooden furniture. But curator Wendy Kaplan certainly gives special attention to the pieces created locally, making the collection beam California pride.

Click here to read about the Limited Edition book Maloof Beyond 90 - An American Woodworker by Gene Sasse.

Words Ashley Tibbits

Images Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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The first-of-its-kind National Summit on Arts Journalism, being held through USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and primarily online Oct. 2nd, 2009, received submissions of 109 projects self-selected as demonstrating ’sustainable new models with the potential to support arts journalism.’ From all those considered, five outstanding models are awarded the opportunity to present at the Summit. Then after 500 members of the National Arts Journalism Program and alumni of the NEA Arts Journalism Institutes vote on the five competitively chosen Summit projects, winners will be announced in late October. The summit is an inspired project of USC’s Annenberg School and the National Arts Journalism Program, also made possible with the generous support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew J. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Among the 109 submissions to the Summit (all of which can be viewed under Projects) is KCET’S fantastic vision for ‘Departures.’

Los Angeles’ KCET, one of PBS’ three flagship stations, produces widely syndicated television content.  A few years ago, as part of a ‘Beyond Broadcast‘ initiative, KCET New Media launched the award-winning Web Stories. The series explores the ways in which art and culture intersect the daily lives of Southern Californians. It also provides a novel approach to engaging local communities. Columbian-born half-Lebanese Juan Devis, who attended CalArts for his MFA, is Director of Production of New Media at KCET, Los Angeles.

Responsible for the ’online multimedia magazine that offers an insider’s glimpse of the cultural diversity found in Los Angeles.’, Devis is supported in creating this emergent model of arts journalism by two equally passionate associate producers. Art Center grad Justin Cram, a self-described multi-faceted designer with a love of storytelling, is also a member of the Recess Design Collective.

Mathew Williams is a documentary filmmaker, media educator, author and musician who began his teaching career at a junior high school in the South Bronx. Some of the topics explored in the series have included eco-friendly housing, the L.A. backyard party scene, rites of passage in SoCal, L.A.’s moral struggle with AIDS, and local social networks that also exist as off-line communities.

The multiplicity of voices that create the fabric of these narratives ensure a complex rendering of our urban landscape. In what was originally a breakout feature within ‘Web Stories’, ‘Departures’ was created, in Devis’ words, “to provide interactive, subjective, street-level exploration of a neighborhood through the focus of a select few blocks. In this on-line documentary, users navigate a mural or panorama of the neighborhood, meet some of its inhabitants, and learn about its history, landmarks and popular hangouts… The goal of the series is to create a collective, geo-narrative of the city and provide residents, students and community members with an open model of production that includes them not only as subjects of the series, but also as producers of its content.”

In the submission form, Devis writes:

“The Departures series has placed KCET in the community and on the ground proposing a new production model – thanks to new media technologies – in the creation and distribution of content. Our latest installment Departures: LA River, for example, is a vehicle that brings together many of the disparate activities within the station: New Media, Art, Journalism, Education & Outreach (through the programs with youth and the community), Membership with special events tied to River walks, clean-ups and lectures and Promotion. Ultimately, DEPARTURES is a vehicle that brings together neighbors and people in an unprecedented way.”

Recently, Devis began chronicling his process with a production blog for “Departures.’ A pocket video camera he carries captures ‘the nuances of creating public media with and for the Southland’s communities. By creating transparency in ‘Departures’ production process, showing the development of each series, the show, and through it, the station, can reach out to and report to the local communities it serves in an entirely new way.

Images from the KCET’s Departures Series

It is evident by the response and awards that KCET and Devis’ project of curating community through technologies that foster dialogue as well as engagement is the future of public media. And to experience its presence in the L.A landscape is eminently comforting. Perhaps no other city in the world needs media literacy more than this one. ‘Departures’ has been particularly successful involving community participation in the creation of its content and this has led to a partnership with the Adobe Foundation’s Youth Voices for three new installments of the show. Such public private cooperation has traditionally led to PBS programming of a very different kind. When socially conscious artists like Devis receive institutional support in guiding public conversation while informing citizens about local history by involving them in its production, they become media mavericks.

Tune in anytime online at http://kcet.org/explore-ca/web-stories/. If you don’t come away with a deeper more nuanced understanding of where we live, maybe you should just keep watching…

‘Departures’ Blog Posts

• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/04/3-years-and-counting.html
• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/04/departures-la-river-kicks-off.html
• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/04/councilman-ed-reyes-ventures-into-the-river.html
• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/05/backstage-with-judy-baca.html
• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/06/it-all-begins-with-paper-and-pencil.html
• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/06/the-river-rules.html
• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/06/mo-goes-to-washington.html
• http://kcet.org/local/shows/web_stories/2009/07/the-edge-of-the-western-hemisphere.html

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Ironically, the poetry in this work is in the way it succeeds in transcending the personal journey of the diarist-artist, evoking instead a timeless universal human impulse that stretches from ancient worlds to the modern, from a spiritual to a political context. One group of dark encrusted, stained surfaces, and scratched layered markings suggest the walls of a tomb, crypt, or dungeon, the presence of a prisoner in solitary confinement marking days to keep hold of reality, sanity. Our perception of time is subjective and elastic, and these images emanate the weight of interminable waiting, vacillating between willful activity and the inevitability of death. Other canvases suggest archaeological findings, preserved evidence of confinement, or merely calendars, records. A woman’s markings of her menstrual cycle? Or an inventory of goods stored? They hold the fascination of ruins with their resonances of the dead.

In contrast to these are ethereal abstract landscapes whose earthy colors, tonalities, and horizon lines evoke vast open spaces, windblown prairies on which the marks take the form of vertical slits, rips in the fabric of time, openings. Here the written lines are more like faint remnants of human passage washed over by time and the elements. Simons work invites us to contemplate our own relationship to time and the ways in which we inscribe our presence in the world.

Some of Doni’s work:

Words: Jacki Apple

Jacki Apple is a Los Angeles-based visual, performance, and media artist, designer, writer, composer, and producer whose work has been presented internationally. Her writings have been featured in numerous publications including THE magazine, The Drama Review, Art Journal, and High Performance. She is a professor at Art Center College of Design. Originally from New York, she was the first curator at Franklin Furnace in the 1970s.

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