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UniqueLA

Fretting over finding that last minute, yet oh so perfect gift for your mother?  Or perhaps you’re tired of going to the standard Mom-osa filled brunch & want to try something new…  Well you’re in luck, this weekend the wonderful Sonja Rasula is putting in another installment of the coolest independent design & shopping show in the country, Unique LA.

With over 300 designers & artists showcasing their wares over the course of two-days of fun filled shopping this is truly an event not to be missed.  I know I always come home with armfuls of amazing finds, from jewelry, to purses, to ironic t-shirts for my boyfriend & one-of-a-kind “omg where did you FIND that” outfits for me.  It’s also a great way to meet a ton of local designers, many of whom are right here in Los Angeles!  Plus there are a ton of workshops & food vendors peddling all sorts of yummy treats camped out at the event.  You can even check out a preview of some of the awesome clothes in their new catalog!

Your $10 admission includes…

• Free drinks & a hosted bar (IZZE, Honest Tea, Bear Flag wine, Hendrick’s cocktails, and Numi Tea)
• Unlimited re-entry for both days
• Your very own collectible tote bag, exclusive to each show!
• Free DIY workshops and handmade Mother’s Day cards all weekend
• Plush lounge seating area hosted by H.D. Buttercup
• Access to giveaways and door prizes all weekend long
• Souvenir copy of the Vendor Directory + Mini Magazine

Unique LA
May 7th & 8th (11am – 6pm)

California Market Center’s Penthouse
110 E 9th St # A727
Los Angeles, CA 90079-1727
http://uniquela.com/

Buy tickets HERE.

I am looking for a furniture/cabinet maker that can make a simple 4 legged round table about 4 feet tall to put into the corner.  It would need to have the feel of  something like the 40′s modern look-clean lines no ornamentation.  We’d want it in a dark wood color.  It would not be big as the corner is 2 foot by 2 foot.  Does anyone have anyone they can recommend for such a job? If so leave me a note and I’ll get back to you for their contact info or have them contact me direct at frazgo at mail dot com.  Thanks in advance for your help.

Epoxy and fiberglass time for Rick's Art Bear.

My little corner of LA had “Samson the Hot Tub Bear” visiting us for a few years back in the mid-90′s.  Even the national news picked up on this bear.  Most saw him as an endearing critter and rather than kill him for being a pest he was captured and set off to a zoo to live off his remaining years.

To celebrate the legacy of Samson and the coming 125th Birthday of Monrovia (which some of us affectionately refer to as the Art City) there will be Art Bears.  There will be about a dozen of these bears in various styles produced by Monrovia artists.  These bears are sponsored by the locals as well.  These bears will be placed about Old Town Monrovia after the big birthday celebration parade in May.

This particular bear is being done by local artist Rick Kess who also happens to work for Disney in their visual arts department.  This bear so far is just getting some additional decoration on him prior to painting.  The next step is to sand him and down and prep for painting over next weekend.

Art Bear in the works...very early stages.

Pics by me and get bigger with a click.  More pics of the prep in my flickr set.

Honest to goodness celebrities: Kevin O'Connor and Norm Abram

When you hear Reality Show you might first think of Survivor or American Idol, Top Chef or Project Runway. If you are a fan of PBS you probably think of the first and finest reality show of them all: This Old House. And after nearly 30 years on the air, TOH has come to Los Angeles for its first ever LA remodel. (Watch the video sneak peak here.)

You might find it hard to believe that there is actually anything “old” in LA to renovate, right? Since we are famous for our facelifts and all. This sweet Spanish Revival house in Silver Lake is getting more of a “gentle spa treatment” than an “ass-fat injection to the cheekbones” operation. The original two bedroom, one bath floorplan was fine for the married couple when they moved in 12 years ago, but now with two small kids, it was time for more space and more bathrooms.

This Old House is about education and part of every house redo series includes stories of the local craftspeople who work on various details of the house. Look for visits to the tile company that recreates 30′s style tile for the bathrooms and kitchen, the iron workers making new wrought iron and the roofers who reuse the old roof tiles and tell you the history of how these 70 year old tiles were originally made. TOH will also visit Frank Lloyd Wright houses and Richard Neutra sites so we can all see that LA actually has some awesome architectural street cred.

The homeowners Kurt and Mary were not looking for the limelight (far from it), but were very pleased to have their general contractor approach them to be part of the show. What better record of your home remodel than a full documentation on This Old House? Plus you get to meet master carpenter Norm Abram!! (Seriously that guy rocks the woodwork.)

This Old House: The Los Angeles Project begins airing on KOCE this Thursday (1/27) at 7:00pm. (Check your local listings as different cable/dish providers may have a different schedule.)

Kevin, Norm, Mary and Kurt (Homeowners), Steve Pallrand (General Contractor)

(All Photos by Image Group LA and used with permission by This Old House.)

(Full disclosure: I am friends with the homeowners, but sadly I have not met Norm.)

Facing an amount that was more than the shades cost new, at one point I even bought a soldering gun and sat there with the thing in one hand and the spool of metal in the other trying to convince myself I could somehow immediately acquire the skills required for such pinpoint detail work. Wisely I put down the gun and stepped away from that fiasco-in-waiting before I could entirely fubar them. Instead, I put them away where they lived with a sliver of hope in a series of drawers.

Why? Well the broken glasses became somewhat representative. I won’t bore you any more than I already have with the details of their symbolism other than to say they cracked at a time when a lot of other things broke — most of them intangible stuff like relationships and dreams, but all of them pretty much beyond repair. Suffice it that Y2K may not have fucked up my personal computer but it wreaked havoc on my personal  life, and out of that annus horribillus these beloved glasses became one of the few things I could fix — or so I’d hoped. And hoped. And hoped.

And hoped. Fast-forward to this summer when it had been literally four or five years since I’d given the glasses a thought and Los Angeles magazine’s “Best of LA” issue arrived. Flipping through it I found a write-up extolling the miracle work done by a humble gent who goes by the name Paul Gross in his humble hole-in-the-wall on Wilson Avenue in the Jewel City and I thought my long-dormant prayers had been answered — except when I went hunting for the shades they weren’t a-n-y-w-h-e-r-e to be found and I became dejectedly sure it was because at some point a few years back I’d extinguished that flicker of hope kept burning for so long and pitched them in the trash.

Then came last Thursday when I dug into a cabinet looking for something else entirely. In the back behind a Polaroid camera and under some dead batteries and light bulbs was an old glasses case and inside (cue the angels singing) there they were. In my infinite wisdom I’d torn the page out of the magazine with the shop’s info, but of course I’d misplaced that, too. Thankfully instead of four months it only took me a few minutes to locate it on the LA magazine website. Gawd bless the internest.

Eagerly hustling over there the next afternoon, I told the proprietor my tale of woe and no and fruitless searching and he told me he’d been in business the whole time plus five years. I rolled my eyes and told him better late than never as I showed him the carnage. He took one look at them and shook his head. It wasn’t that he couldn’t fix them, he said, it was that owing to the fragile point of the break the repair wouldn’t be very strong. “It just wouldn’t be worth it.”

I asked him what he meant by “worth.” He looked at the decade-long dead things carefully. “Twenty-five dollars,” he said, except it came out a bit tentatively like it was inconceivable someone in their right mind would pay such an exorbitant sum.

I could’ve hugged him. “For sentimental value alone I’d pay triple that,” I said, and he nodded cautiously as he started writing up the work order. “When do you want to pick them up?” he asked, and I figured they might not be ready for days  — maybe a week.

“Whenever you can have them finished,” I said. He looked at the clock, which read 3:55. “Be back in an hour,” he said, and my jaw dropped. I told him I had an errand to run at the Galleria and was on my way out the door.

“But no later than 5, that’s when I close.”

I walked back in at 4:55 p.m. and he presented them to me, whole again for the first time in a decade. The solder work he’d done was almost imperceptible. “Try them on,” he said and I did. They were perfect. On several levels.

Epilogue: So, I beat the dead horse out of all that on the off chance you might be in need of knowing about Paul Gross, the Best Eyeglass Repairman Ever. Whether your story is as long and belabored as mine or you just have a pair of glasses you can’t bring yourself to toss in the garbage, chances are tremendously good that you can find quick and affordable repair and/or redemption at the following place:

Paul Gross Eyeglass Repair
805 E. Wilson Ave., Unit B
Glendale, CA 91206
(818) 243-3975
Mon-Tue, Thu: 10 am – 7 pm
Fri-Sat: 10 am – 5 pm
Cash only
(No website, but there’s a Yelp page)

Appropriately-named "Spaghetti Western"

Santa Monica Art Studios, housed in a former airplane hangar at the Santa Monica Airport, opened its doors this past weekend for the 6th Annual Open Studios event.  I have been to several of the six yearly events, ostensibly to support one of the artists in residence, my old friend Rachel Grynberg.  But each year I really enjoy the variety of works on display, and the ability to meet the artists and their representatives.  This year’s event did not disappoint.

Artist Rachel Grynberg in her studio

The hangar, including a front space (the “Arena 1 Gallery“), a couple of hallways, and over 30 studios, was lined with artwork that ranged from a giant Clint Eastwood-clad Barilla spaghetti box to paintings, prints, photos, and much more.  The Arena 1 space was occupied with a show entitled F-Utility (with a dot, not a dash), curated by artist Oona Gardner and displaying a number of pieces and images from a variety of artists, including Julie Schustack, Mark Moskovitz, and Matt Monroe.  Moskovitz’ You Are Here series of digital prints was a result of something that would be right at home on blogging.la: the Cleveland-area artist took an east-west run from the Highland Park area to the Santa Monica Pier and back — over 30 miles — and took snapshots of what he saw along the way.

Julie Schustack's "Piano Vise" -- a working music player

Monroe’s Frontier also picked up the travel theme, but in a different way.  His piece — the most noticeable of the entire event — was a full-size covered wagon made from plastic IKEA items, including shower curtains, baseball bats, ice trays, and toy guns.  Imagine how America would have been different if the pioneers had been able to stock up at IKEA before their trek westward, and neatly store their items in large plastic tubs.

"Frontier" by Matt Monroe

I also had an interesting conversation with Andrea Lithgow, artist and proprietor of the Dandy Jewelry mini-shop arranged on a couple of tables at the back of the hangar.  Andrea makes and sells beautiful glazed ceramic jewelry, including bracelets, necklaces, and more. Her pieces are hand-made yet “mass produced”: even though many pieces were similar looking, no two were identical.

Andrea Lithgow of Dandy Jewelry

Whether you want to contemplate art vs. commerce, are in the mood to buy some fascinating pieces (reasonably priced, compared to what I have seen at other art events), or just gaze at the glaze, Santa Monica Art Studios should be on your list.  The Arena 1 F-Utility show in particular will continue at the Studios through November 20.

N. Channel tower near Marina boat channel

This Saturday night, from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., the beach adjacent to the Santa Monica Pier will light up, as  GLOW returns after a two-year hiatus.  According to its website,

Glow is the only all-night art event in the United States that emphasizes the commissioning of original artwork. Glow projects invite active audience engagement and exploration and constantly surprise in their unexpected placement in spaces and times not normally reserved for fine art.

I covered the first Glow event in 2008, and found some first-time shortcomings.  This year, however, a friend of mine is working there, and I’m looking forward to seeing the new and hopefully improved version.

On Sunday, a few blocks from the beach, the 26th annual Abbott Kinney Festival will take place along Abbott Kinney Blvd. in Venice, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.  The festival features live music, gourmet food trucks, handcrafted items for sale, beer gardens, valet stations for those arriving by bicycle, and much more.  The festival is lots of fun, provided you do not mind very tightly packed crowds.

I’m looking forward to having a really fun summer this fall!

And what an environment it is.  Billed as the world’s largest art colony, the Brewery arts complex (former home of the Eastside and later Pabst breweries and the Edison Power Plant) felt like it could have been in Oregon, or upstate New York, anywhere but within the city of Los Angeles.  The studios in the one-story buildings each had front “yards,” with plants, lawn furniture, interesting trinkets, and even a hot tub or two.  Inside, while some of the studios had distinct living and working spaces (often the living spaces were the lofts upstairs), others had a more seamless flow between the two.  It was fascinating to see how different each space was, reflecting the personalities of the artists.  Some of those artists, by the way, were painfully shy, and it must have been weird for them to have strangers tromping through their combined homes/work spaces.

As might be expected, the artwork ranged from painting to photographs to jewelry, mixed media, video, and more.  However, we found the prices to be surprisingly high, up to at least $ 9,500 (why do art prices so frequently end in multiples of $ 500?)  Much of this art was not priced to sell, in my opinion, and, according to our observations, sell it didn’t.  We only saw one item sold, an attractive and reasonably priced ($120 or less) lamp.  I began thinking about the whole art vs. commerce tension.  I can understand how many of these items must have taken scores of hours of painstaking work, and that the artists would not want to part with their babies for less than a sum that reflected all of that hard work.  And perhaps many of these artists are selling commissioned pieces beyond the gaze of art tourists such as myself.  But it seems to me that some of these artists could use a bit of marketing assistance (especially for those artists or their assistants who hid in the corner when potential buyers came through their studio doors).

This artist had a terrific PEZ collection. 3 Elvises on the right.

Likewise, I was pleasantly surprised that admission to the Artwalk was free.  They could easily have charged a modest admission price of, say, $5 to $8, and still have attracted thousands of people.  Moreover, we really lucked out on parking, which some say can be difficult.  We showed up at after 1:30 p.m., and the parking staffers (who were pleasant and efficient) opened up some non-spots right inside the entrance to the neighboring UPS parking lot for us, so basically we got the third spot in.  That also made for a quick and easy exit, and a very low-stress afternoon overall.  The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Speaking of cheese, the only knock I would give the Artwalk is the food.  Inside the complex, there were basically two choices — the crowded Barbara’s restaurant, or the crowded food tent that was heavily biased towards meat items such as grilled hot dogs/sausages and beef ribs (and I am in no way intending to recall a certain verrrry long comments thread here from a few months ago).  Whether or not one tries to take into account the demographics of who attends the Artwalk, it seems to me that more food options would make sense, and dollars.

lite brite

So maybe next April, or next October, I’ll be back with my own snacks.  But I’ll definitely be back.

POV

More light installations

View from inside

The buidling as art -- green tile, electrical panels, and deco railing

While I don’t know the specific reasons for the change, I have visited this flea market on several occasions and always found it lacking in vendors. The space is large enough and the vendors that are there have a decent selection, but to draw a crowd, I think they simply need more. Perhaps moving the fair from every Saturday to just one weekend a month will encourage more vendors to participate. I also think it would be more appealing if they offered a broader selection of “arts” and “crafts” vendors, as it is mostly just vintage clothing. I love shopping for vintage clothing, but if you’re going to bill something as “Art, Craft & Vintage,” you might want to strive to carry an equal selection of those things.

For more information on the fair, visit their web site at silverlakeartcraftvintage.com.