40 years ago on this day my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly. I was a continent away and had to scramble to get home for the funeral. I thought I’d never get over the grief. I did, though. Whatever deep-seated sadness remains is certainly more than balanced by the gratitude to have known unconditional love and been given gifts galore: an interest in all of what the world has to offer among them. She was an intrepid traveler, and nothing escaped her eyes, no matter how mundane. Her moods could swing from amused to serious to fearful to exuberant in the shortest amounts of time and I see myself in that as well.
Mt. Shasta with no and very little snow 6 weeks apart. New crops planted now that rain has started.
Fall colors have arrived.
And frost once you crossed back into southern Oregon.
She would have enjoyed the roadtrip that brought me to L.A. and back, all 3.400 kilometers in a small car, with frequent stops to take in roadside attractions. She loved to drive, as do I, which is a blessing since I can no longer fly. She would have exulted in meeting the newest generation, named Lina in her honor, who will perhaps – hopefully – see the world with the same wonder as her predecessors.
Same view from a slightly different angle 6 weeks apart – beginning of October, end of November, pains now flooded.
Today’s photographs are selected to describe the range from amusement to awe. Here is the absurdity of a Potemkin village mimicking a Western town, a playground for children adjacent to a diner off of I 5 near Kettleman City, with Bravo Farms proudly displaying their collection of old signs, surely ignored by the kiddos who are overly excited to be released from the confines of their carseats. (Be warned: inside the restaurant, it is a zoo, with shooting arcades and proud display of gun imagery, overpriced and greasy pulled pork sandwiches, and noise levels that aim to deafen your remaining hearing capacity.)
Maybe they should reconsider their choice of beverage?
On the way North, 1000s of Ross geese had reached their destination, ready to stay in California for the winter. Seeing this abundance of beauty is one thing, hearing it is another – the sounds are indescribably moving.
I picked today’s music accordingly – migrating swans and other birds can be heard in the background.
Mud hens congregate in front of the geese
And since that was the only serious piece I could find on migration, there is another Swansong , Schubert’s Ständchen transcribed and transformed for piano by Liszt – one that was played by my mother at bedtime, right below my room. Love is nigh.
Walk with me. A slow amble under a hot November sun through strangely empty streets in central L.A. on a Saturday morning, with visual input galore.
Where are all the people? This was around 11.am.
Frequent stops for photographing – not enough, as it turned out, or not always focused enough.
As is my wont, I went into a neighborhood without having read up on it, always hoping to have a fresh eye. More educated now, I wish I’d had added stops for this or that landmark, oh well. Still captured the essence, I think.
A lonely tagger.
I had chosen L.A.’s art district for my outing because it is generally advertised as a haven for graffiti, and it did not disappoint. Its history, now that I have read up on it, is generally more interesting than most of the murals, however. More distressing as well. Much of the graffiti is simply tame.
The area was actually the center of California’s wine industry in the 19th century, L.A. then known as the City of Vines. Not only were the vineyards located on land taken from the indigenous Chumash, Tongva, and Tataviam tribes, but tribal labor was used to build the business in systems not unlike slavery. When native Americans came to the mission and were lured in baptism it brought with it a bidding contract that they could not leave. They were forced into indentured labor, including winemaking, and lived in subpar conditions that introduced and spread European diseases. When the mission systems were secularized, their land was given to white settlers instead.
The Earth Crew mural, a community mural from the 1980s, renovated 5 years ago.
Displaced, they roamed the area and many of them turned to alcohol to drown their sorrows, which led to horrid consequences.
Eventually the vineyards gave way to the citrus industry, which was later destroyed by treatment-resistant parasites. During its heyday, it needed a shipping network, provided by the railroad that arrived in 1876. First Southern Pacific, then the Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad and finally the Union Pacific. By 1905, Los Angeles had become the western terminus for three major transcontinental railroads. All three railroads built depots, transportation buildings, warehouses, and rail yards in and around the Arts District. Many cheap hotels providing single rooms for the workers followed. Some of the photographed buildings capture the old architectural structure.
By WW II the rail system was replaced by the trucking industry, with the industrial nature of the area permanently ensconced until the 1960s or 70s, when artists moved into many warehouse now vacant, because smaller businesses had been absorbed or displaced. The alleys had also become too small for ever increasing truck sizes. By all reports the urban environment was decaying and dingy, but increasingly dedicated to art- making and -living spaces, once the City of Los Angeles passed the Artist in Residence ordinance in 1981, which allowed artists to legally live and work in industrial areas of downtown Los Angeles.
Looked to me like the little scooters were longingly staring at the mega truck…
Some 50 years later, gentrification rules the neighborhood. There is enormous loss of inexpensive lofts to developers who have converted some former loft and studio buildings into condos.
New high-rises change the character of the neighborhood.
The district is still one of the most filmed locations ever, with as many as 800 filming days a year. The movie industry knows a good thing when it sees it. Chic bars and restaurants around many corners. Weed dispensaries everywhere.
Privately run and decorated dog parks as well – probably a good thing, for dogs and neighborhood alike.
Some landmarks remain, but are also undergoing changes, something that was true through the centuries for the American Hotel. That building and its occupants alone is a living testament to the changing times – a fascinating, detailed summary (with a link to a documentary movie) can be found here. It was the first hotel that was legally open to Black people, with a bar that was shut down in 1914, when it became obvious that Whites and Blacks mingled and partied together.
Ownership changed hands, and was Japanese, as were most of the guests, until they were brought into the camps after Pearl Harbor. A Mexican immigrant bought and operated hotel, bar and market in the mid 80s, and the artists moved in, using the exterior for murals as well. Here are the current ones:
“La Abuelita/Má’sání” (2015)(Portrait of a Navajo weaver by El Mac. The geometric pattern above Abuelita was painted by Augustine Kofie and the lower left portion was painted by Joseph Montalvo AKA Nuke One of the UTI Crew.
White paws below on the other side of the building.
A pioneering social activist, Joel Bloom, opened a General store on the ground level in 1995 and fought for years against the forces of gentrification before he died in 2007. It looks like 16 years later that battle is still ongoing.
Lots of buildings are shuttered and For Lease signs everywhere – prices waiting for investors, I suppose.
Part of the attraction of the Art District is/was the music, always at the cutting edge before commercial appropriation. The only music related mural I found, though, commemorated murdered rap artist Nipsey Hussle, shot in front of his store in 2019 in a gang dispute. He was a rising musical talent and also revered as someone giving back to his community and trying to revitalize the neighborhood.
Mural by Mister Alex, Biganti26, Hufr – Hussle and Motivate (title of a track)
And memorialization of Kobe and his daughter is found here as well, as so frequently across this city that still mourns the loss, the sun providing a kind of halo.
Not much political art that I came across, maybe that needs to be explored in different neighborhoods.
But there was plenty of reference to comics and a certain affinity for portraits.
My eye, of course, was over and over caught by the saturation of the colors, even those in the pastel range. The light here is so different from up north, and it affects everything.
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Yup, a lot of visual load. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Music today is by L.A. music ensemble Wild Up, playing a rousing piece by Julius Eastman.
Between October 28 and November 3, Mexicans and other people with Hispanic heritage celebrate the Day of the Dead. It is believed that those who have departed can return during this period, visiting from the underworld, Mictlán in Aztec mythology.
Traditionally, families provide some support for the reunion with altars that contain symbolic items to make the spirits comfortable and show them that they are remembered. These gateways between two worlds are called ofrendas.
Some are small to fit into one’s house, others are large community affairs, combining individual remembrance with establishing communal bonds by upholding the tradition. I’ve come across several of them during my L.A. explorations.
I was told that they traditionally make reference to earth, water, wind (papel picado) and fire (candles) as elements that have meaning for the visit, representing the terrestrial plane that the loved ones are about to reenter.
There are items that symbolize purification and protection for the visitors, like the burning of copal or incense.
There are photos of the visitors themselves, an important part of remembrance, and usually chosen to display them while doing something they loved.
Other items focus on decoration to show that we celebrate their return, in particular Papel Picado, intricate paper cut-outs that also symbolize wind.
Marigolds are a big part of the celebration, seen everywhere with the flower vendors and on the ofrendas. Cempasúchil, a flower of Nahuatl origin and called flower of twenty flowers” is believed to represent the sun and the light emitted to illuminated the travelers’ path.
Then there is bread, that points to the cycle of life and death. It is specially made for this annual occasion, with orange, anise and topped with sugar. The shape varies apparently from region to region, symbolizing parts of the physical body with an elevated center that refers to the head or the heart.
And there are the calaveras/calaveritas, sugar skulls that also refer to the sweetness of life and death as belonging to each other. Sometimes they are made from more durable materials, paper maché, clay or wood so that they can be reused every year.
Often, alcoholic drinks and even cigarettes are included to invite the traveler to enjoy themselves once again and think back to the good times in life, as are fruits that represent sweetness.
The ofrada strikes me as a wonderful way to keep memory going, introducing younger generations to both their forbears as well as the traditions of one’s culture. The focus on comfort, sweetness, nourishment and protection are a counterbalance to the pain that loss and grieving instills. The brightness of the colors, the marigolds that illuminate every corner is so incredibly life-affirming.
Some versions are more modern, but expressing the same sentiments:
A book of memories and tokens for the loved ones.
Yellow and orange can, of course, be found all around during halloween times. Here is an abundance of pumpkins that were displayed at Descanso garden right next to a communal ofrada.
Now, if you tasked me with decorating, you’d probably get this….
Sunday afternoon, I happened to be at Sycamore Grove Park, a little neighborhood park, and an Aztec dance group, Xipe Totec, performed for Dia de Muertos. I’m just floating on the sounds and sights…
Here is a traditional folk song for the occasion La Llorona
Classical Music by Gabriela Ortiz is titled ofrenda..
“At its outset in the mid-1960s, the historic preservation movement contributed to the racial splintering of the nation’s urban fabric. It denied the freeway’s entry into communities deemed historic while granting its passage through communities judged differently. It empowered some communities in their fight against the freeway while putting others at a disadvantage. In the disproportionate number of black communities that bore the brunt of urban highway construction, the preservation strategy had no chance, leaving displaced residents with a meager set of resources to recuperate their connection to the past. This is why we need to pay attention to murals, festivals, autobiographies, oral histories, and archival efforts. In the high-stakes struggles over the fate of the American city, these were the “weapons of the weak,” the tools invented by displaced communities to fight the forced erasures of their past.” ― Eric Avila, The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City
WHEN YOU ARE NEW to a city, like I am to Los Angeles, one way of exploration is to hit the history books. I had described my early mapping of the city onto Mike Davis’City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles in April here, while reviewing an exhibition from the LACMA archives, Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany.
This time, I brought Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism by Ehrhard Bahr, thinking I might follow in the footsteps of my exiled Landsmen during the 1940s, artists and intellectuals fleeing Nazi persecution. The book’s introduction contains the following description: “Los Angeles has occupied a space in the American imagination between innocence and corruption, unspoiled nature and ruthless real-estate development, naïveté and hucksterism, enthusiasm and shameless exploitation.”
I don’t know about the American imagination, but those of us who devoured Berthold Brecht’s California poetry 20 years later as German teenagers obsessed with America were undoubtedly influenced by his assessment:
Contemplating Hell
Contemplating Hell, as I once heard it, My brother Shelley found it to be a place Much like the city of London. I, Who do not live in London, but in Los Angeles, Find, contemplating Hell, that it Must be even more like Los Angeles.
Also in Hell, I do not doubt it, there exist these opulent gardens With flowers as large as trees, wilting, of course, Very quickly, if they are not watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets With great leaps of fruit, which nonetheless
Possess neither scent nor taste. And endless trains of autos, Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than Foolish thoughts, shimmering vehicles, in which Rosy people, coming from nowhere, go nowhere. And houses, designed for happiness, standing empty, Even when inhabited.
Even the houses in Hell are not all ugly. But concern about being thrown into the street Consumes the inhabitants of the villas no less Than the inhabitants of the barracks.
Bertolt BrechtNachdenkend über die Hölle, 1941, translated by Henry Erik Butler
Mural and Paintings by Devin Reynolds on the walls of the Hammer lobby. Contains references to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, displacement from a beautiful home acting as a red thread through the histories of many Angelenos.
Many decades later I wholeheartedly disagree with Brecht’s description – I find L.A. vibrant and fascinating – though not his political analysis. He knew class divisions and precarity when he saw it. By all reports, he clung to negative emotions as a motor driving his writing. But his ability to pick up on what makes this city thriving, underneath capitalistic excess or popular culture driven by interests to keep racial segregation intact, might have been curbed by what was then and still is not easily visible to the outsider. At least that is my speculation after chancing on Eric Avila’s The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City, from which I cited at the very start of these contemplations.
Knowing the history of a place is essential to understanding its character. Who rose to the top and who was pushed to the bottom will define the nature of both the lay-out, the (d)evolution of neighborhoods and the way power hierarchies are distributed. My hometown of Hamburg, Germany, for example, needs to be read in the context of its merchant marine and membership in the Hanseatic League, its intermittent warfare with Scandinavian neighbors, and its destruction under Allied firebombing during World War II.
There are ways of learning about the past of a city and her people that are not found simply by looking in all the traditional places. Clearly, mainstream historians have little incentive to document attempts towards self-empowerment or organized resistance by those not among the ruling classes. Facts about the past are instead often woven into the fabric of experienced daily life, painted on neighborhood walls (I had written about Pacoima, for example, here,) told during story time in corner libraries, experienced during Saturday’s soccer matches at the local park, found during celebrations of special days for different nationalities. Not just the past, I’d add, but the present, as it resurrects what was to be extinguished. Not exactly easily accessible to a foreigner like Brecht, struggling with the language, not particularly mobile, traumatized by persecution and exile, and facing the fact that there are 88 cities, approximately 140 unincorporated areas, and communities within the City of Los Angeles.
Jibz Cameron Cops, Coyotes, Cars, Crows (2023) Watercolor, Correction Fluid and Graphite on Paper
We, on the other hand, are lucky enough to find quite a bit of it all in one place, a weave that is compact as well as sprawling, screaming as well as whispering, consciously representing or intuitively describing, like L.A. itself. It’s made possible by curators who brought a cross section of yet undiscovered stories into an exhibition that in many aspect mirrors the city it drew from.
At least that is how I experienced the Hammer’s current exhibition Made in L.A. 2023: The Act of Living, an iteration of its biennial attempt to showcase new talent, unknown or underrepresented artists, providing access to what is likely hidden to most of us from different cultural enclaves. Guest curator Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez, who joined the Hammer museum full-time in June, and Ashton Cooper, Luce Curatorial Fellow, have assembled some 250 works of 39 locally based artists, challenging us to confront our stereotypes and navigate an abundance of thought-provoking art. I come back to what I had written about our own Portland’s current art extravaganza, Converge 45: perceptive curation is a mystery to me, like herding cats, but when it succeeds it is a gift to the community (never mind an intellectual feat.)
Their guiding principles can be found in their statement above.
***
AT RISK OF FALLING for surface rather than structural characteristics, here is an analogy I can’t resist: as L.A.’s neighborhoods differ along multiple dimensions, so does the chosen art in this show. By size, by spacing, by density, by degrees of familiarity. Just as I like some neighborhoods more than others, some leaving me cold, some moving me to the core, some eluding my comprehension, some dull, some riveting, some evoking scorn, and others longing or admiration, so it is for much of the work on display. What registered most deeply was the fact that many of the exhibits taught me something I would not have otherwise known, and how much, sometimes viscerally, texture ran as a common theme through the galleries. Texture, indifferent to past, present or future, is, of course, a stand-out characteristic of Southern California’s nature for this Northerner, with its unusual mix of desert and tropical plants, all ridges, grains, thorns, spines and spikes, peeling bark, twisted fronds, and leathery surfaces.
Kinetic sculpture by Maria Maea“Lē Gata Fa’avavau (Infinity Forever)” (2023) including parts of palm trees, car parts and feathers.
Really, I think there are few materials known to man not included in this biennial. Natural materials like wood, bones, wool, cotton, pearls, wax, mica, graphite, dirt, salt, limestone, copper, leather, feathers, palm fronds, sea shells, corn, corn or other plant based substances. Fabricated materials like acrylic, plastics, paper, forged metal, glass, lead alloys – you name it, it was affixed or served as a constituent even in the context of more traditional forms of painting. Some assemblages consisted of more material detail than you could possibly take in at a single visit. Videos were (blissfully) few and far in-between, although demonstrations of octogenarian Pippa Garner triggered some giddiness.
What follows are some photographs to relate the overall variety of art on display, not necessarily work that I liked, but work that speaks to the range of cultural production, the focus on texture, as well as entryways into histories new to me. I will then turn to my absolute favorites, both artists I had never heard of. In one case, apparently, the same was true for the curators, who only met the young painter upon recommendations of other studios.
Beautiful weavings by Melissa Cody, Scaling the Caverns (2023) at center, detail below
Sensuous configurations of leather, painting- or quilt-like, by Esteban Ramón Pérez,
Esteban Ramón PérezCloud Serpent Tierra del Fuego) (2023) Leather, rooster-tail feathers, urethane, acrylic, nylon, jute wood.
Disquieting collages by King Seung Lee,
Kang Seung LeeUntitled (Chairs) (2023) Graphite, antique 24-k gold thread, same, pearls, 24-k gold leaf, sealing wax, brass nails on goat skin parchment, walnut frame.
(Aside: what it is with chairs that can so easily register as ominous? Look at Tadashi Kawamata‘s currently exhibited at Liaigre’s building in Paris: Nest at Liagre. Or is it just me?)
Photo creditL Sylvie Becquet
From the younger set:
Michael Alvarez 2 Foos and a Double Rainbow (2019) Oil, Spray Paint, Graphite and Collage on Panel
A reminder for those of us who vicariously experienced the AIDs epidemic as young adults when living in NYC, with friends dying:
Joey Terrill works, the selection depicting formative memories and daily experience in queer communities.
The Munch-inspired scream on steroids below attracted a lot of attention, justified, in my opinion, only if you looked more closely on the backside of the sculpture that provided a narrative worth the attention grabbing. The sculpture was co-created by numerous Native Americans.
Runner-up to the works below that inspired me most, was this assemblage using a silk parachute. Talk about texture!
Erica MahinayLunar Tryst (2023) and Details. Acrylic, raw pigment and aluminum leaf on half-silk parachute, lead, ostrich feathers.
And here are Kyle Kilty’s paintings, as vibrant, patterned, and hibiscus-colored as L.A. itself, capturing the imagination with abstractions that turn representational upon closer inspection – just about the same process the traveler experiences when getting to know and learning to navigate this moloch of a city.
For some reason I was reminded of Paul Klee, had he lived in another century, under the California sun and caved to demands for size. (The Phillips had an informative exhibition on Klee’s lasting influence on other American painters, some years ago.)
Kyle KiltyIt could be, Frankly (2022) Acrylic, mica flake and oil on canvas.
Kyle KiltyIt Could Get the Railroad (2022) Acrylic, oil, and graphite on canvas
Kyle Kilty Arranging (2019) Acrylic, oil, and gold leaf on canvas
And here, finally, is the essence of story telling about the facets of this city here and now, its hidden treasures and traditions, the diasporic nature of its people due to displacement from their home countries and/or the grid of highways, literally embedded in the substance of L.A. county itself: the soil collected from its various neighborhoods, mixed with salt, rain, limestone and masa. Jackie Amézquita’s 144 slabs are testament to the unwritten history of the many unseen people who constitute the lifeblood of L.A., the embedded drawings representing typical sights during quotidian encounters.
Jackie Amézquita El suelo que nos alimenta (2023) Soil, masa (corn dough), salt, rain, limestone, and copper
Here you can see her at work and hear her explanations of the artwork. It is terrific on so many levels.
***
THERE IS CHANGE AFOOT at the Hammer. This week we learned of the planned retirement of long-time director Ann Philbin, with a search for a replacement underway. It will be difficult to fill those shoes. Hopefully, the core of her focus will endure, a commitment to contemporary art with a focus on emerging artists and social justice. The 2023 biennial certainly can serve as a model: reconsidering the past in the sense that it paves the way for grasping a more equitable future, but then moving on, creating our own utopias.
Started today with an incisive German voice. Might as well end with another one. If you replace the words “(social) revolutions” with “art,” and “19th” with “21st” century, the museum might eventually follow this model:
“The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot take its poetry from the past but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped away all superstition about the past. The former revolutions required recollections of past world history in order to smother their own content. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead bury their dead in order to arrive at its own content.”
Karl Marx The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. 1852
Up for a bit of vicarious travel? The kind where you see a tons of things at once, not knowing where to look first, and how to make sense of it all? Follow me to Long Beach, CA, a city about 20 miles south of down town L.A., on land that was once populated by the Tongva before the colonial settlers arrived.
Beautiful beaches (hence the name). Stunning yachts in the harbor. The wealthy, sunny California dream, until you move in more closely. It is a town with quite a tumultuous history; in the 1900s it was known for its beaches and amusement parks, drawing rich vacationers and tourists. Oil fields on land and under water were discovered in the 1920s, leading to a massive boom, with population influx from many mid-western states. The town was demolished by a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in 1933, with at least two redeeming consequences: it led to the California Field Act of 1933, which requires earthquake-resistant design and construction for all public schools, and downtown was rebuilt with the new Art-Deco style, making for some interesting discoveries of architectural gems.
“Recreation” on the south side of the parking structure of the now-defunct Long Beach Plaza.
Lots of interesting architecture in general, including a Convention Center that sports the largest mural ever, visible from space. Created by maritime artist Robert Wyland for his series of Whaling Walls, Planet Ocean was dedicated in 1992.
In general, quite a few murals, even while walking only a small district down town.
Earthquakes are one thing. One shudders to think what happens when the sea levels rise and storm surges flood the area – there is not bit of protection from the ocean.
Photocredit: Wikimedia
The ocean is, as it turns out, part of the economic force that drives the city: it houses the second busiest container port in the U.S. and is among the world’s largest shipping ports. Unfortunately that is not just good news, despite the jobs for tens of thousands of people it provides, as do the oil rigs. Which, to the amazement of this visitor here, are camouflaged as little tropical islands, ringed by rocks from Catalina Island and filled with millions of cubic yards of material dredged from the bay. On that they landscaped with palm trees, fake condo towers and waterfalls, all designed by a Disneyland architect, Joseph Linesch.
Originally known as the THUMS Islands, based on the name of the oil consortium that built them: Texaco, Humble (now Exxon), Union Oil, Mobil and Shell. Since 1967, they are now the Astronaut Islands, with the each named after the American astronauts killed in an accident in preparation for the Apollo 1 mission. Workers still commute there via barge to wrest 46,000 barrels of oil from the earth each day.
Pretty make-believe that camouflages a terrible price for the local community (or the world at large, given continued fossil fuel consumption.)
Between the port and the oilfields, Long Beach sports among the worst air pollution in the entire country. “Sources are the ships themselves, which burn high-sulfur, high-soot-producing bunker fuel to maintain internal electrical power while docked, as well as heavy diesel pollution from drayage trucks at the ports, and short-haul tractor-trailer trucks ferrying cargo from the ports to inland warehousing, rail yards, and shipping centers. Long-term average levels of toxic air pollutants (and the corresponding carcinogenic risk they create) can be two to three times higher in and around Long Beach than anywhere else in L.A. County.
Add to that the output of the oil refineries and you get air so bad that it matches the quality of the Long Beach water: the poorest on the entire West Coast. The Los Angeles River discharges directly into the Long Beach side of San Pedro Bay, meaning a large portion of all the urban runoff from the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area pours directly into the harbor water. This runoff contains most of the debris, garbage, chemical pollutants, and biological pathogens washed into storm drains in every upstream city each time it rains. Because the breakwater prevents tidal flushing and wave action, these pollutants build up in the harbor.”(Ref.)
Ok, we won’t go swimming or fishing here.
Instead we will take a peek at the Queen Mary, who took her maiden voyage in 1936 from England, and retired in Long Beach in 1967, functioning as a hotel, events venue and a huge tourist attraction. The ship carried some 2.2 million passengers in peacetime and 810,000 military personnel in the Second World War, but here in Long Beach, an estimated 50 million people have visited.
Make that one more, me being dimly attracted by rumors of a resident ghost. I did not detect one, (truth be told, did not set foot on the ship either…) but I did see something of a Doppelgänger. Or maybe it was Camilla herself, what’s her name, consort to the current King of England, escaping her entourage for a private phone call. Or perhaps I am imagining the resemblance.
What really drew me to the city in the first place was the Inaugural U.S. International Poster Biennial that you could walk through on an outside promenade. It was actually worth the visit, with high quality contemporary poster design on offer from both national and international artists. According to the organizers, over 200 graphic design pieces were carefully chosen from a pool of 7,000 submissions across 75 countries. Themes ranged as widely as war & peace, gender relations, racism, specific announcements for theater productions, environmental concerns, and the issues of refugees, displacement and migration. Take your pick below!
And my favorite: White clouds forming “Gedenken” – Remembrance (commemorating the date of a mass shooting in Switzerland in 2001.) The whole ephemeral nature of memory, like clouds, but also a blue sky dotted by them, like a brighter place for souls released and drifting.
It was a full day, with moments of levity, so direly needed.
I think it is important to find things that lift our spirits, if only momentarily, or we will not be able to function during these dark months to come. Nourish your souls, in whatever way available, to make them stronger.
Today I am linking to a short piece in Buzzfeed. It shows images that Artificial Intelligence generated when asked to capture the stereotypesthat Europeans might hold about the prototypical residents of each of the U.S. states (with Native Americans, Blacks and Asians apparently not even making an appearance as a background character. Even the South Carolina football coach looks White.)
One might wonder what it means to say “Europeans.” Do we think someone from Finland holds the same stereotypes as someone from, say, Portugal? Do the French manage the same assumptions as the Danes? Just asking for a German…..
And what were the parameters that were provided around stereotypic aspects? Food items (Do you really think “Europeans” associate PA with Hershey chocolate?) Landscape? Type of professions? And, just as a thought, what do you think AI would do if asked about stereotypes Americans hold about the different countries in Africa? Would we even know where to place them on a map, much less hold specific ideas? Oh, my brain, drifting again. Do some of these look more like photographs than caricatures – and if so, what does that tell us about the use of AI ?in the ongoing effort to make the truth irrelevant?
Here is Buzzfeed’s disclaimer, well placed before the images:
The following images were created using generative AI image models for the sake of entertainment and curiosity. The images also reveal the biases and stereotypes that currently exist within AI models and are not meant to be seen as accurate or full depictions of human experience.
Recognize anyone? Do you realize that the reason so many of these seem darkly true or perhaps funny is because we (the Americans) understand and know the stereotypes? (A succinct introduction to the psychology of stereotyping by a very smart psychologist can be found here. There has been more work published in recent years, but this is a solid basic account, showing how it relates to person section and the continuation of racism, misogyny and self handicapping, among others.) Figuring out how AI learned the stereotypes in the first place has to wait for another day.
Grabbing another cup of coffee and getting out of the flannel shirt…while you try and digest these images.
And here is another European, Dvorak, who wrote a string quartet capturing his views, “American,” during his visit here in 1893. At least we know he was for real….
Let’s start the week on a lighter note – did I hear a collective sigh of relief?
I came across some things that amused me last week and fed my appreciation for the creativity all around us. (Most images were seen on an IG site called The Last Artist Ever, who features what catches his/her eye.)
How do you like this version covering Vermeer’s The Girl with the Pearl Earring?
‘When the dishes turn accidentally into art’ by @e.schwaerzler
Or this version of the Royal Delft Blue porcelain artists?
In some ways, getting the jokes depends on knowing the originals in the first place. Which is not guaranteed given the state of art education in this country. (Yes, we ar not staying on the lighter note for all too long, true to character.) In Portland alone, The Oregon College of Arts and Crafts shut its door in 2019 after a 112 year run, and the Art Institute of Portland, a for-profit school owned by the Education Management Corporation (EDMC), closed in 2018. Marylhurst University also closed its Marylhurst and Portland campuses in 2018.
Congress allocated $180 millionto the National Endowments for the Arts in 2022. This amounts to just 54 cents per capita. Compare that to $8.8 billion for the National Science Foundation in the same year. When it comes to art as a profession, Fine art degrees ranked last of 162 different majors for their employment prospects, and of an estimated two million arts graduates, only 10 percent make a living as working artists.
A recent article in the New York Times spells out the details about art education decline.
Mark Rothko Untitled (Red) (1969)
Of course there is always something we can enjoy without needing prior knowledge, just embracing the weirdness. Although you can find a pretty fascinating review of monkeys as motifs in art here.
And then there is this.
I don’t know what to say about this – not my next knitting project is all that comes to mind.
Instead, I’ll collect memes that show engagement with art – I’ve selected some that have personal relevance, as you might easily see:
And here is a different kind of cover for the musical choice of the day. Some well-meaning website introduces Rock lovers to classical music.
Having written almost enough to fill a weekly quota on Monday, I figured today I’ll share someone else’s observations – conveniently offered with Legos, so you don’t have to read much more either….
Ethics in Bricks continues to amuse me, or remind me of what is important to pursue or reassures me that there are people out there sharing many of my values. You find it on various social media.
Enjoy!
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And of course here is the one that refers to the most recent tragedy which reveals our values:
Here is the American Wild Ensemble with Shy Bricks by Christopher Stark, a composer new to me. Wort keeping an eye on.
“History is who we are and why we are the way we are.” – David McCullough, American historian (1933- 2022)
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I’m curious: how many of you have ever visited the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum in Stevenson, WA? A mere 50 minutes from Portland, the drive there takes you through beautiful scenery and ends up at a multiple-acres piece of land adjacent to Skamania Lodge, alongside a small lake dotted with islands and views of the Columbia and the mountains as backdrop. A compact, modern building made of glass and concrete overlooks the property, with some rather large wood carvings and a collection of historical tools and machinery outside, and multiple exhibitions dedicated to the history of the region displayed on the inside.
I had never known the museum existed, much less visited there, until recent changes at the institution brought it onto my radar. That might have simply been my ignorance – wouldn’t be the first time – or it might have had to do with lack of outreach or appealing programming. That is in the process of changing now, under a new executive director, Louise Palermo, who is very much engaged in putting this hidden jewel onto the map beyond its familiar supporters and viewership of long-time residents of the Gorge. (And a heads-up: a new website, reflecting changes, is in the process of being installed and will be up in a few days. Information about location, opening hours and directions have, of course, not changed.)
The building houses numerous collections across two floors, conveying the history of the land and the people, from First Nations to modern settlement, forestry and industrialization of the region. A small theatre shows documentary films, some exploring the geology of the Gorge. There are a few quilts exhibited, and there is an unexpected, one might say quirky, collection of thousands upon thousands of rosaries, spiking my curiosity how some of these, donated by famous people – Lawrence Welk, Al Smith, the first Catholic to run for the office of president in 1928, one donated in memory of Robert Kennedy, who had left it in a small church in Bavaria; and one donated in memory of Dag Hammerskjold, Secretary General of the United Nations from 1953-1961, and one donated by President John F. Kennedy – ended up in cupboards in the Gorge.
You enter the museum through two rooms of exhibits describing the ways of life and fates of the tribal populations of the region.
Much needs to be done, I suggest, to bring this collection and particularly the explanatory signage up to date. Some of the language obscures the consequences of settler colonialism. Pretty much the rest of the museum is teaching us about how the settlers lived and thrived and changed the land, including the rationale for building dams and their fateful consequences.
The Grand Gallery focusses on the way wood was harvested and processed from the surrounding forests down to the mills, much to the delight of visiting school classes who get to see moving and noisy machinery, once you lure them away from the stuffed mountain lion overseeing it all,
or unexpected signs of Big Foot in the corners.
To my delight as well; I had no clue about the complex processes involved and was fascinated by the traditional steam engine, the Corliss, providing power needed to run sawmills. Harvesting of fish is shown by juxtaposing mechanical methods, a fish wheel, and Native American techniques, represented by the model of a native dip netter, at a water feature. This alone would be an interesting starting point for a conversation about extraction and preservation, particular if there were youth programs that would seed not just a love of history but an understanding of each person’s possible role as a steward of the resources of the Gorge.
Louise Palermo instructing 3rd graders
There is also a gift shop that carries arts and craft by local providers in addition to the usual fare. A small gallery offers the opportunity for changing exhibitions, with the current one, Women Artists of the Gorge, being the reason for my recent visit of the place.
PhotoCredit: Kristie Strasen
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“If you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday then any leader can tell you anything.” – Howard Zinn, American historian (1924-2010)
I don’t know if these things existed in the U.S., but in my German childhood one of the highlights were the trips to the country fair or the green grocer were you could plunk down your 10 Pfennig and receive a tiny paper packet stuffed with miniature toys, colored puffed rice and small candies. It was called a Wundertüte, a “wonder packet,” full of surprises. (Of course it was also a way to assure that young kids got used to return customer – consumerism, given the inclusion of collectibles, cards or toys.)
The current exhibition Women Artists of the Gorge, brought the analogy to mind. Here is a collection of incredibly varied works hung in a small space, with many of them delectable and some eliciting, well, wonder. Shout out to Jen Smith, who artistically hung a show that ranged across so many dimensions, type of media included, paintings, prints, photography, collage, macrame and woven tapestries in this tight space. Shout out to the folks at the White Salmon Valley Community Library and the White Salmon Arts Council, Ruth Shafer and Kristi Strasen respectively, who had originally conceptualized an exhibition of regional women artists in honor of Women’s History month, from which a subset followed the invitation to show their work at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center. Shoutout to the staff who kept the daily visitors happy and helped with the pragmatics of mounting the exhibition. The loudest shout out of them all, of course, goes to the artists:
Julie Beeler, Jillian Brown, Janet Essley, Sally Gilchrist, Daiva Harris, Kristine Pollard, Autumn Quigley, Jacqueline Moreau, Cathleen Rehfeld, Ana Rugani, Jen Smith, Kristie Strasen, Cyndi Strid, Kelly Turso and Jodi Wright.
Their work teaches us history in different, more personalized ways, through love of place and depictions of its beauty up to warnings about environmental protection and the need for inclusion and conflict resolution.
I can obviously not review each and every one of the works, so know that my selections are based on personal interest or curiosity, and not at all linked to the quality of the work. As a photographer, I was drawn to one of the photographs on exhibit which anchored the entire show for me in its depiction of female family members capturing a moment of laughter and joy. For many decades, San Francisco-born Jacqueline Moreau‘s work has documented the lives of Native American peoples along the Columbia River, and their fight to secure the rights afforded to them by a provision in the 1855 (Confederate Tribes of Warm Springs) treaty. The intimacy of this photograph is evidence of how integrated a photographer can become with a subject if respect, empathy and shared values overcome outsider status, enabling new forms of community.
Jacqueline Moreau The Spino family (Mona, Geneva, Andrie, Joyce, and Delores.)
As someone who has worked on documentary film projects about the fossil fuel industry, I was moved by the portrait of an Alaskan native whose land, heritage and fate is intrinsically connected to the future of drilling and pipelines and the havoc they can wreak. Janet Essley, a muralist, teaching artist and activist for justice used dabbed motor oil on paper for the portraits in her series Endangered Species (2004), which features people across the world (Columbian, Indonesian and Tajikestani natives among them) whose lives are touched by oil extraction and production.
Janet Essley Alaska
Two depictions of wildlife caught my attention – Autumn Quigley‘s for the wit and thoughtfulness that went into the collage, which seamlessly combined spring’s trilliums and fall’s seed pods and fallen leaves, and Jen Smith‘s for the obvious concern how shared space can be made a reality for creatures that are still truly wild. Ever encroaching human construction is a true threat to habitats, at the same time that we are in such dire need to provide more housing for ever growing populations.
Autum Quigley Windfall
Jen Smith Queen of the High Country
Last but not least there were tapestries that impressed with motion (the strong Gorge winds, swaying the grasses and echoing the waves of the river, were palpable in the one depicted below,)
Jodi Wright Mount Adams
and coloration, the subtle and beautiful gradations of which could not be fully captured under the light conditions.
Kristie Strasen River Tryptich
(I got a better shot at the intricate color play when I visited Strasen in her studio to learn more about the origins of this communal exhibition that she originally co-mounted. Let me share the beauty.)
A set of pillowcases and a collection of small works done during pandemic isolation, defiantly exuberant.
Sometimes I learned interesting backstories that helped to appreciate a work even more. Driven by her passion for mycology, the science of mushrooms, Julie Beeler, together with some collaborators, created a Mushroom Color Atlas which “is a resource and reference for everyone curious about mushrooms and the beautiful and subtle colors derived from dyeing with mushrooms.” People around the world can use this on-line resource, learning and experimenting with it, being drawn into a growing interest for our natural environment. Beeler also teaches in person in various workshops around the nation and lectures at scientific conferences. The best part: not knowing ANY of this would make no difference for the appreciation of the sheer beauty of her pieces. Well, for this viewer, in any case.
Julie Beeler Fungi Bedrock
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I photographed the show when it had been hung on the day before before opening night, and so worked in an empty room bereft of people. Yet a sense of community was palpable, since the accumulated works really seemed representative of so many different artists, stages of experience, cross section of interests. By all reports that experience of community was present in squares during the opening reception, with a lot of people attending, fortified by wine generously provided by Domaine Pouillon, and interested in getting to know each other.
In some ways that seems to me an important part of the mission this museum under new leadership could adopt: providing a commons, a platform where people with shared interests or concerns, for that matter, can meet, mingle, learn and exchange ideas. One of the definition of commons is “natural resources that groups of people (communities, user groups) manage for individual and collective benefit.” Here it could simply be the offer of a cultural space, shared by the the many of us.
Artists play an important role in this endeavor. Knowing history is surely something that most people see as important. Yet we live in a time of increasing restrictions on teaching history, at all or in specific ways, depending on who you ask or in which state you live. Teaching the history of a place – here the Columbia Gorge – cannot come from a single source, however richly endowed with objects and artifacts to support a particular claim. It has to be provided with the help of different perspectives, and who better equipped than visual artists to relate something in non-didactic, vivid, personal ways that might register much more easily than dry facts or official story lines. I am not implying that the artists in this show intentionally set out to convey insights about history. But the accumulative power of much of the work suggests something about what it means to live in the Gorge, be exposed to both its beauty and its hurt, its past and its present, its nature and culture that needs stewardship and protection.
If the museum opens a commons, inviting and presenting diverse voices easily found in the rich tapestry of the Gorge population, during fun events or serious shows, it will establish its place on the map in no time, an invaluable resource for all of us.
WOMEN ARTISTS OF THE GORGE
June 17th – September 5th, 2023
Columbia Gorge Interpretive CenterMuseum 990 SW Rock Creek Dr Stevenson, WA 98648
I’ve been told a thousand times over that the word love should be reserved for living beings, and inanimate objects should be liked. I guess adjectives have to pull a lot of weight, then, to express my feelings: I boundlessly, fervently, intensely, unabashedly like L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, despite the insane amount of money that was poured into its creation, money that was so direly needed elsewhere in this city. (Upon completion, the project cost an estimated $274 million; the parking garage alone cost $110 million, paid by L.A.County raising the funds by selling bonds.)
Designed by Frank Gehry, the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened its doors 20 years ago. It was in the works since 1987, with plans approved by Disney’s widow, Lillian Disney, who had commissioned the project. The construction went through quite a few rough patches, with fund raising stuttering along, and some not happy with the Deconstructionist design.
Inside, a large concert hall contains 2,265 seats with a vineyard-style seating arrangement that helps the audience feel close to the orchestra. There are no boxes and balconies, an attempt to avoid implied social hierarchies that are so often found in traditional performance venues. The room is also column-free, made possible by its large steel roof structure.
The outside is dominated by stainless steel panels, the waves and arcs made possible by a French computer modelling software, CATIA (computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application), a technology borrowed from aerospace and automotive industries. It allowed Gehry to transfer complicated models of the project into buildable forms and help contractors to translate a vision into an actual facade.
That facade delivered unexpected problems: most of it had a matte finish, but some parts were polished mirror-like panels. They ended up functioning like parabolic mirrors, reflecting sunlight in such concentrated fashion that the resulting glare led to increased traffic accidents. The reflected light also heated up surrounding condominiums, causing the air-conditioning costs for those residents to explode, and created hot spots on adjacent sidewalks of as much as 140 °F (60 °C). Two years after opening, the offending panels were identified and the surface sanded down to minimize the reflection ( I learned that from the brilliantly titled report “Dimming Disney Hall. Gehry’s Glare Gets Buffed.” )
The exuberant forms of the building, the simulated motion captured in the curvature, the strutting of the wings, the shimmering, glossy surfaces all seem the perfect instantiation of the movie industry’s selling of dreams that transport us, or try to, as the case may be. The structure links to and echoes its surrounds, both physically and in axiomatic ways, as all truly good architecture does.
It was remarkably quiet on the streets on a pleasantly warm and sunny weekend afternoon, with nary a person walking the blocks around the hall and the adjacent contemporary art museum, The Broad, side walk cafes almost empty.
The contrast to my other stop that afternoon could not have been more glaring: no sterility at the garment district. It was packed with people perusing outdoor markets around Santee Alley, in L.A.’s fashion quarters.
It was so crowded that I had to wear a mask outside. A stream of people perusing the wares, including fashion, jewelry, cosmetics, toys and electronics, hawkers’ calls, laughter and excited talk filling the air, kids included. Somewhat reminiscent of the wonderful time I spent in Mexico City, some years ago, given that I was surrounded by mostly Spanish speaking people this Sunday. The goods on offer were colorful and in abundance. So was the sea of humanity that meandered between the stalls, trying to spot a bargain amidst mass produced plastics and cheap imports.
It felt so alive in comparison to the sterile environment at the city’s center, if also living proof of the income inequality that marks our society.
L.A. county, home to one in four Californians, is one of the leaders in poverty, and direly affected by the epidemic. It hasn’t matched California’s gains in education, health, or jobs. And Los Angeles has been the biggest driver of rising inequality across the state.
The gap between high- and low-income families in California is among the largest in the nation—exceeding all but three other states in 2021 (the latest data available). Families at the top of the income distribution earned 11 times more than families at the bottom. California’s income distribution reflects high rates of poverty. Income is frequently not enough to meet basic needs. Families in the bottom quarter of the income distribution are at risk of poverty absent major safety net programs. Wealth is more unevenly distributed than income. In California, 20% of all net worth is concentrated in the 30 wealthiest zip codes, home to just 2% of Californians. (Ref.)
The density of people dropped abruptly once you entered the adjacent alleys, where I was lured by colorful graffiti and mural works, once again.
The excursion yielded one other discovery: a shop where you can rent some time and appropriate implements to express if not get rid of your rage. There are old car wrecks in a cage, cars you can hit, bang and stomp in any way you like with tools provided, sort of the adult version of the kids’ pillows that absorb their fury. Not the worst idea! Particularly in a city that incites lots of parking frustrations….
Music today is what you could listen to at the Philharmonic this week with Leila Josefowicz playing Thomas ADÈS Violin Concerto, “Concentric Paths.”
My path will go straight North as of this weekend. Will resume posting later next week.
