GLANCE Rachael Yamagata
Emerging onto the World Stage
ARTBOARDS
WORK FROM FIDM STUDENTS
An Interview with The Beautiful Mind
Ed Ruscha talks role of comtemporary artists
ISSUE 704 JUNE 2013
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Table of content
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EDITOR’S NOTE
GLANCE is City Arts’ antidote to that morass of useless thinking. In this issue, we present 20 sources of ingenuity to inspire us forward and reveal pockets of unfamiliar activity. These culture-makers represent an enormous swath of influence. They’re forging the future with their ideas and determination, whether bypainting, architects, or concocting cocktails. It’s not a list of people you already know, it’s a list of people you want to meet and get to know. Assembling the names alone was fun for our staff, but the real pleasure was in the interviews: sprawling and exciting
conversations with artists about their work, their communities and where things are going from here. I left each one buzzing with enthusiasm. Our cover story shines a light on the many ways the Hopkins community is adapting to a “greener” world. With new environmentally oriented institutes, programs, and initiatives, the university is rising to the challenges of global environmental change and sustainability. You’ll find similar themes of innovation woven throughout the rest of the issue as well, from
the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s national initiative to transform science education, to the newly announced Collaborative China Studies Center and Cordish Lacrosse
Center, to an impressive number of seniors who will soon be Teach for America corps members at schools around the country. Yeeman, Editor in cheif
2013-14 SEASON MUSIC & ART AT
LACMA
BUZZ EPICURIA S C H O O L SOJOURN A U R A L
Working BUZZ story about FIDM
Dine LA Week Specials By Bibi Ciber
Not only food, but also a way of life
Let the person know that is for a publication design tclass and you would like to photograph them. Ask for permission to both photograph and publish (so to speak) their story. Enjoy. Like to photograph them. Ask for permission to both photograph and publish (so to speak).
B BU ZZ
JOY DOG FOOD,
THE HEAVENLY TASTE YOUR DOG CRAVES FOR.
B BU ZZ
E S S A
PICURI C H O O O J O U R U R A
A L N L
BEEN HERE DONE THAT
MODEL STUDENT
HELEN TAYLOR TURNS FROM THE SUBLIME TO THE LIMELIGHT AS A MODELING CAREER TAKES OFF
BY IRIS MOTH
After graduating with the Fashion Design degree from FIDM in 2007, Meira Elituv ’09 pursued her bachelor’s degree in Business Management at the college. Since then, she worked for an L.A. company that did private label for Lane Bryant and Express, among others, and was recruited to work at the Victoria’s Secret Home Office in Columbus where she was a merchant for the Sleepwear department. We recently caught up with the Canadian native to chat about her latest venture.
B BU ZZ
E S S A
PICURI C H O O O J O U R U R A
A L N L
“This beautiful stretch of beach on the west side of the island is fringed with palm and coconut trees against a backdrop of gentle sloping hills.” from the others; each Thailand province contains unique cultural, historical, and natural attractions from the northern peaks (replete with wildlife and home to exotic hill tribes) and the central plains (the “Rice Bowl of Asia”) to the northeastern plateau (stretching to the Mekong River border with Laos) and the spectacular beaches and islands of the south (including both Phuket and Samui).
Sawadika, Thailand By Suski Mood
There are five regions of Thailand: North, Northeast, East, Central, and South, which are divided into 75+1 provinces, each geographically distinct from the others; each Thailand province contains unique cultural, historical, and natural attractions from the northern peaks (replete with wildlife and home to exotic hill tribes) and the central plains (the “Rice Bowl of Asia”) to the northeastern plateau (stretching to the Mekong River border with Laos) and the spectacular beaches and islands of the south (including both Phuket and Samui).
There are five regions of Thailand: North, Northeast, East, Central, and South, which are divided into 75+1 provinces, each geographically distinct from the others; each Thailand province contains unique cultural, historical, and natural attractions from the northern peaks (replete with wildlife and home to exotic hill tribes) and the central plains (the “Rice Bowl of Asia”) to the northeastern plateau (stretching to the Mekong River border with Laos) and the spectacular beaches and islands of the south (including both Phuket and Samui).
B BU ZZ
Rachael Yamagata
A veteran musician who is just now emerging onto the world stage Yamagata’s duet with Dan Wilson. She also performs the Muppets song I’m Going To Go Back There Someday on a cov Her songs have appeared on the TV shows The L Word, Charmed, How I Met Your Mother, ER , Nip/Tuck, Men in Trees, Alias, One Tree Hill, Los Serrano, Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy and The jfieo fiseo glnku yuy6u 6u 6u 6u 67 6 e5y 5yhrt yjtuk ink so that means
Yamagata became the vocalist for the Chicago group Bumpus and spent six years touring, writing and recording with the band before leaving in 2001 to begin a solo career. In September 2002, she obtained a two-record deal with Arista’s Private Music and her self-titled EP produced by Malcolm Burn, Rachael Yamagata EP was released in October. [citatiohn Alagia at Compass Point Studios. Yamagata toured
with Mandy Mooreu6 64u 667 In May 2008, Yamagata released a three-song EP, Loose Ends. Her second full-length album Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart was released in October 2008.[4] Billboard characterized the album as much darker and sadder in tone than its predecessor.One Life to Live.[7 EPICURIA S C H O O L S O J O U R N A U R A L
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Art Boards
Los Angeles FIDM graphic design students collab to make fashion and art intersect.
By Mani O’ Brien
T
he bold wooden sign hanging six feet high on the wall of Signal Snowboards’ factory in Huntington Beach lovingly expresses what makes the mountain accessories brand so unique, “Proudly Made in California.” FIDM Graphic Design Students Angelica Villegas (left) and Patrick Lee holding the snowboards they
designed, custom built by Signal Snowboards for FIDM DEBUT 2013. Boasting 15,786 YouTube subscribers and more than 2 million views over the past two and a half years, Signal is celebrating its 10th year of business and has gained notoriety through ETT through which the company shows
off its manufacturing process and transforms unusual materials (xylophone keys, Italian glass and Legos, for example) into one-off custom snowboards. Through ETT, which is in its third season, Signal has developed a bulletproof board, a board equipped with solar panels to charge electronic devices, and even a board-bicycle hybrid that allowed paralyzed former pro snowboarder Tim Ostler to get back on the slopes Made possible by Signal’s unique domestic manufacturing facility– a rare if not nonexistent practice in the industry– the show has served as a marketing tool that demonstrates the company’s commitment to innovation, which reflects the rebellious nature of the action sports industry they serve. Fashion will be the focus of an upcoming episode of ETT, details
of which will be revealed in April. In the meantime, 11 excited FIDM Graphic Design Students are thrilled to have been involved in a special industry collaboration with Signal who manufactured custom boards that will be unveiled to 10,000 people over three days at FIDM’s DEBUT Runway Show next week. “Collaborating with FIDM has been a lot of fun. We’re breaking
new ground by colliding two worlds together in such a unique way,” says Signal’s CEO Dave Lee. “Through ETT, we are going from concept to design and onto the runway! A fun project for all involved.” Models donning winter action sports attire designed by FIDM Advanced Fashion Design Student, Kelly Knagg, will carry the 11 boards at FIDM DEBUT, along
borate
with a special concept board that will be featured in the April episode of Signal’s ETT series. The DEBUT models will include Signal’s own team manager, Joey Yorba and pro boarder Pat Garvin. Last week, five of the 11 graphic design students ventured to Signal Snowboards’ headquarters, located in the heart of the surf/skate/action sports apparel industry (down the street from Quiksilver/ Roxy, Vans, and DC for example) to get a first-hand look at how Signal builds their boards from start to finish.
GLANCE
INTERVIEW WITH
ED RUSHUA
HA ED RU S ED RU SC H RU SC HA E SC HA ED R Interview with the Beautiful Mind By Martin Gayford
“For 50 years Ed Ruscha’s brash yet elusive paintings have intrigued, puzzled and entertained, as a major new retrospective of his work reveals.”
SC HA ED RU
“When I began painting, all my paintings were of words which were gutteral utterances like Smash, Boss, Eat. Those words were like flowers in a vase.� -------------------------------------Ed Ruscha
R
uscha is generally classified as a Pop artist, along with Warhol, Lichtenstein and Rosenquist, but though he may be as important as his East Coast contemporaries, he does not appear to belong in that narrative. LA art was different.’Ruscha,’ wrote JG Ballard, ‘has the coolest gaze in American art.’ In comparison with the New York masters of Pop, Ballard argued, ‘Ruscha is closer in spirit to Vermeer, who quietly compressed a universe of experience and sensibility into his modest domestic interiors.’ Looking at the work of Ruscha (pronounced Roo-shay) gives one the feeling of being on an endless road through an immense landscape, interrupted by puzzling messages on billboards, at once folksy and mysterious, a journey through a wide space the only features of which are logos, gas stations and parking lots. Joan
Didion – another literary admirer – wrote that Ruscha’s works ‘are distillations, the thing compressed to its most pure essence’. They are also sometimes surprisingly funny, in a laconic, Marcel Duchamp-meets-Clint Eastwood sort of way. Ruscha invented an entire artistic genre – one of several in his repertoire – that consists of nothing but words and phrases, floating in vaguely defined space: All You Can Eat, ½ Starved, ½ Crocked, ½ Insane, Chicken Rivets, Girls Girls Girls, Defective Silencer Units, Etc, and – especially ironic in the current circumstances – I Don’t Want No Retro Spective, a pastel from 1979. His studio, where I meet him, is on the slightly edgy outskirts of Venice Beach, close to the border where that haven of artists, body-builders and tourists merges into the gang-haunted ghetto of Oakwood. Ruscha has been
renting this space since 1988 – which makes him, as he puts it, ‘a late-comer to the Venice community’, although now he is established here. Dennis Hopper, who is an old friend, has a studio nearby – ‘he’s my neighbour down the road here’ – in a structure described by the Rough Guide as ‘the ultimate in maximumsecurity architecture’. Hopper, Ruscha explains, was ‘one of the first people who was a real member of the Hollywood world who was interested in art – collecting it, making it and documenting it.’ In 1964 Hopper took a wonderful photograph of Ruscha exuding charisma and standing in front of a shop window containing a neon sign (tv radio service) and, reflected in the glass, the street, a passing car, the whole mobile urban scene. This is itself one of the most memorable images of the Los Angeles art world in the 1960s
The art of Ed Ruscha – the subject of a retrospective in London this autumn – is oblique, sardonic and somehow saturated in the feeling of the West Coast. He is a major artist from Los Angeles, one of several figures who do not quite fit into the history of 20th-century American art as it is usually told.
Every time I think about my work, I think it all started at 18 years old, and the way I felt then is really still the way I feel now. The things I was doing then are really what I’m doing today. That can baffle a person
– a tiny subculture in a city that few outsiders thought of as producing art at all. As far as the rest of the world, and America, was concerned, in the 1960s New York was the global capital of art, and Los Angeles was a city of cinema, private eyes, urban sprawl and smog. Of course, over the past 45 years things have changed. ‘Nowadays,’ Ruscha observes, ‘there are a lot of movie people who are art collectors. The entertainment industry seems to have opened up to the art world and to be truly interested in it. There are a sizeable amount of collectors.’ Indeed, in the 21st century the art scene in Los Angeles – revolving around a resurgent LA County Museum, with the Getty Centre looming like a temple on the brow of a hill, and a host of other galleries – is almost as powerful a presence as the film world. But that is a recent development. The story of the Los Angeles art scene in its early years is still littleknown – but Ed Ruscha has a starring
role in it. He certainly looks the part. In old photographs Ruscha is broodingly handsome, his appearance somewhere between James Dean and Kirk Douglas, with maybe a smidgen of Chet Baker. At 71 he hasn’t lost that touch of cowboy glamour. In March he made GQ’s list of the 10 most stylish men in America, and did so in a characteristically laidback manner. To the magazine Ruscha described his preferred get-up as ‘loose and lazy’, adding that for a quarter of a century of his life he had worn nothing but used clothing. ‘When I do wear a tie, it’s usually a bolo [bootlace] tie. I have a collection of ’em – I like those little strings that dangle.’ Before Ruscha moved to Venice he had a studio in East Hollywood. It was there that he made a series of paintings and prints of the Hollywood sign on Mount Lee, giant letters in the landscape set against a sky turned Technicolor red and orange by pollution: epic, decadent and with a touch of the sinister.
The effect is much like the mighty names that appeared at the start of a film: MGM, Paramount, or – the subject of another Ruscha picture – 20th Century Fox. ‘When I would see movies as a young kid,’ he remembers, ‘I would see those logos and they were almost as memorable as the movies. That 20th Century Fox logo was indelible.’ Ruscha used to use the Hollywood sign, he has said, as a smog-indicator. ‘If I could read it, the weather was OK.’ As that remark suggests, despite having lived a great deal of his life in Los Angeles, he is not altogether in love with the place. He professes wonderment at the enthusiasm for the area felt by many British expatriates, such as David Hockney, another old friend (who asked me to send his regards). Hockney is still amused by an exchange they had some years ago, when Hockney announced his intention of painting the Grand Canyon. ‘I take it,’ responded Ruscha, deadpan, ‘that will be a miniature.’
capital of art, and Los Angeles was a city of cinema, private eyes, urban sprawl and smog. Of course, over the past 45 years things have changed. ‘Nowadays,’ Ruscha observes, ‘there are a lot of movie people who are art collectors. The entertainment industry seems to have opened up to the art world and to be truly interested in it. There are a sizeable amount of collectors.’ Indeed, in the 21st century the art scene in Los Angeles – revolving around a resurgent LA County Museum, with the Getty Centre looming like a temple on the brow of a hill, and a host of other galleries – is almost as powerful a presence as the film world. But that is a recent development. The story of the Los Angeles art scene in its early years is still little-known – but Ed Ruscha has a starring role in it. He certainly looks the part. In old photographs Ruscha is broodingly handsome, his appearance somewhere between James Dean and Kirk Douglas, with maybe a smidgen of Chet Baker. At 71 he hasn’t lost that touch of cowboy glamour. In March he made GQ’s list of the 10 most stylish men in America, and did so in a characteristically laidback manner. To the magazine Ruscha described his preferred get-up as ‘loose and lazy’, adding that for a quarter of a century of his life he had worn nothing but used clothing. ‘When I do wear a tie, it’s usually a bolo [bootlace] tie. I have a collection of ’em – I like those little strings that dangle.’ Before Ruscha
moved to Venice he had a studio in East Hollywood. It was there that he made a series of paintings and prints of the Hollywood sign on Mount Lee, giant letters in the landscape set against a sky turned Technicolor red and orange by pollution: epic, decadent and with a touch of the sinister. The effect is much like the mighty names that appeared at the start of a film: MGM, Paramount, or – the subject of another Ruscha picture – 20th Century Fox. ‘When I would see movies as a young kid,’ he remembers, ‘I would see those logos and they were almost as memorable as the movies. That 20th Century Fox logo was
indelible.’ Ruscha used to use the Hollywood sign, he has said, as a smog-indicator. ‘If I could read it, the weather was OK.’ As that remark suggests, despite having lived a great deal of his life in Los Angeles, he is not altogether in love with the place.ing 20th century fox) and his equally
feature The Schulman Stiry
Photographer Juliu nia Mid-century m and artfully lighte proaches to home living — a sunny cious, low-slung ho
A Sense of Space
us Schulman’s photography spread Califormodern around the world.Carefully composed ed, his images promoted not only new apdesign but also the ideal of idyllic California y, suburban lifestyle played out in sleek, spaomes featuring ample glass, pools and patios.
By Peter Gossell
Photographs by Julius Schulman
“I have always observed and respected my destiny. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was meant to be.”
E
ven if you’re confused by the fork in the driveway, which slopes up to the Edenic apex of Laurel Canyon, or don’t recognize architect Raphael Soriano’s mid-century design landmark, you can’t miss Julius Shulman’s place. It’s the one with the eight-foot-high banner bearing his name—an advertisement for his 2005 Getty Museum exhibition “Modernity and the Metropolis”—hanging before the door to the studio adjoining the house. As displays of ego go, it’s hard to beat. Yet the voice calling out from behind it is friendly, even eager—“Come on in!” And drawing back the banner, one finds, not a monument, but a man: behind an appealingly messy desk, wearing blue suspenders and specs with lenses as big as Ring Dings, and offering a smile of roguish beatitude.
You’d smile, too. At 96, Shulman is the best known architectural photographer in the world, and one of the genre’s most influential figures. Between 1936, when a fateful meeting with architect Richard Neutra began his career, and his semiretirement half a century later, he used his instinctive compositional elegance and hair-trigger command of light to document more than 6,500 projects, creating images that defined many of the masterworks of 20th-century architecture. Most notably, Shulman’s focus on the residential modernism of Los Angeles, which included photographing 18 of the 26 Case Study Houses commissioned by Arts & Architecture magazine between 1945 and 1967, resulted in a series of lyrical tableaux that invested the high-water moment of postwar American optimism with an
arresting, oddly innocent glamour. Add to this the uncountable volumes and journals featuring his pictures, and unending requests for reprints, and you have an artist whose talent, timing, ubiquity, and sheer staying power have buried the competition—in some cases, literally. Shulman’s decision to call it quits in 1986 was motivated less by age than a distaste for postmodern architecture. But, he insists, “it wasn’t quite retiring,” citing the ensuing decade and a half of lectures, occasional assignments, and work on books. Then, in 2000, Shulman was introduced to a German photographer named Juergen Nogai, who was in L.A. from Bremen on assignment. The men hit it off immediately, and began partnering on work motivated by the maestro’s brand-name status. “A
.
lot of people, they think, It’d be great to have our house photographed by Julius Shulman,” says Nogai. “We did a lot of jobs like that at first. Then, suddenly, people figured out, Julius is working again.” “I realized that I was embarking on another chapter of my life,” Shulman says, the pleasure evident in his time-
softened voice. “We’ve done many assignments”—Nogai puts the number at around 70—“and they all came out beautifully. People are always very cooperative,” he adds. “They spend days knowing I’m coming. Everything is clean and fresh. I don’t have to raise a finger.” As regards the division of labor, the 54-year-old Nogai says tactfully, “The more active is me because of the age. Julius is finding the perspectives, and I’m setting up the lights, and fine-tuning the image in the camera.” While Shulman acknowledges their equal partnership, and declares Nogai’s lighting abilities to be unequaled, his assessment is more succinct: “I make the compositions. There’s only one Shulman.” “The subject is the power of photography,” Shulman explains. “I have thousands of slides, and Juergen and I have assembled them into almost 20 different lectures. And not just about architecture—I have pictures of cats and dogs, fashion pictures, flower photographs. I use them to do a lot of preaching to the students, to give them something to do with their lives, and keep them from dropping out of school.” It all adds up to a very full schedule, which Shulman handles largely by himself—“My daughter comes once a week from Santa Barbara and takes care of my business affairs, and does my shopping”—and with remarkable ease for a near-centenarian. Picking up the oversized calendar on which he records his appointments, Shulman walks me through a typical seven days: “Thom Mayne—we had lunch with him. Long Beach, AIA meeting. People were here for a meeting about my photography at the Getty [which houses his archive]. High school students, a lecture. Silver Lake, the Neutra house, they’re opening part of the lake frontage, I’m going to see that. USC, a lecture. Then an assignment, the Griffith Observatory—we’ve already started that” Yet rather than seeming overtaxed, Shulman fairly exudes well-being. Like many elderly people with nothing left to
prove, and who remain in demand both for their talents and as figures of veneration (think of George Burns), Shulman takes things very easy: He knows what his employers and admirers want, is happy to provide it, and accepts the resulting reaffirmation of his legend with a mix of playfully rampant immodesty and heartfelt gratitude. As the man himself puts it, “The world’s my onion.” Given the fun Shulman’s having being Shulman, one might expect the work to suffer. But his passion for picture-making remains undiminished. “I was surprised at how engaged Julius was,” admits the Chicago auction-house mogul Richard Wright, who hired Shulman to photograph Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #21 prior to selling it last year. “He did 12 shots in two days, which is a lot. And he really nailed them.” Of this famous precision, says the writer Howard Rodman, whose John Lautner–designed home Shulman photographed in 2002: “There’s a story about Steve McQueen, where a producer was trying to get him to sign on to a movie. The producer said, ‘Look how much you change from the beginning to the end.’ And McQueen said, ‘I don’t want to be the guy who learns. I want to be the guy who knows.’ And Shulman struck me as the guy who knows.” This becomes evident as, picking up the transparencies from his two most recent assignments, he delivers an impromptu master class. “We relate to the position of the sun every minute of the day,” Shulman begins, e ready for our picture. I have to be as specific as a sports photographer— even a little faster,” he says, nodding at the image, in which light spills through a latticework overhang and patterns a façade. “This is early afternoon, when the sun is just hitting the west side of the building. If I’m not ready for that moment, I lose the day.” He does not, however, need to observe the light prior to photographing: “I was a Boy Scout—I know where the sun is every month of the year. And I never use a meter, I think its against nature.”
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