Art Fuel

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Eleanor and Chauncey headed south on the 110 freeway. Their friend, Mat, known as Ben in previous posts, now owner of Coagula Curatorial, an art gallery on Chung King Road in Chinatown, had offered them passes to the LA Art Show. Eleanor and Chauncey left the chore lists behind and headed off to the Convention Center.

Presidents and Friends at Coagula

Mat met them at the entrance and guided them past security guards and baby strollers to his gallery's booth. Eleanor noticed familiar artworks, including, 2 assemblage chairs by Matjames Metson and paintings by Mark Dutcher. Tim Youd was there at his typewriter copying, The Big Sleep, the latest novel in his series of diptychs. Chauncey asked Tim if copying great novels made him want to write and Tim admitted, hesitantly, like all authors, that he did write, as though it were an embarrassing habit to keep secret. Eleanor understood completely. As they turned the corner, they saw three fanciful, alluring, provocative women's panties, sculpted drawings by Leigh Salgado, Mat's wife and Eleanor's longtime friend. Paradise was Eleanor's favorite while Chauncey favored Man Eater.  

Paradise, Leigh Salgado

Chauncey and Eleanor ventured away from the safety of Coagula's booth to discover other great artists that, perhaps, Mat did not know of yet. It was hard to see the art with the crowds of people carrying plastic cups of white wine wandering slowly along the narrow pathways in and around the white booths. They did notice what they both referred to as arpilleras but what the artist, Chris Roberts-Antieau, called appliques. These were humorous pieces which reminded Eleanor of Roz Chast cartoons. Seeing all the white wine made Eleanor thirsty so they waited in line for a bottle of water behind a young man with glasses and ponytail who methodically ordered 2 white wines, 2 whiskeys and a bottle of water. Eleanor wondered how he was going to navigate his way through the fair with so much liquid.

Holy Stains and Apparitions, Chris Roberts-Antieau

Suddenly, they found themselves in the "Traditional" section and immediately noticed a square of black curtains behind which were four carefully lit Van Goghs. Though Eleanor was tempted to linger, Chauncey reminded her that they were here to see contemporary art and so they moved along. They were quite pleased when they stumbled upon two collages by Louise Nevelson, having been lured into a booth by paintings which looked like they were done by Richard Diebenkorn but, in fact, were not.

They stopped in front of red curtains and took photos of each other promising to replace their facebook profile pictures with these more current ones. Eleanor spent quite a bit of time getting Chauncey to smile. He insisted he wanted a serious photo but he just ended up looking scary.

Mat was busy scoping out potential buyers when Eleanor and Chauncey returned. Inspired themselves to buy art from their favorite gallery owner but without the deep pockets for a Tim Youd or Leigh Salgado, they looked again at the farcical depictions of presidents by Curtis Lemieux and chose the one of Andrew Jackson with a big fro. They thought about Chauncey's novel, influenced by how Indians once lived on this continent, and hoped for change.

Henry

Eleanor was still lying in bed when Chauncey came in and said, “I think we lost Henry.” Henry is a grey tabby with matching black stripes on his cheekbones and black rings on his tail. Everyone who sees him says he is a handsome cat. Chauncey explained that he was awoken in the night by a cat screeching. Believing Henry to be inside, Chauncey went back to sleep. When Henry didn’t come for breakfast in the morning, Chauncey looked outside and discovered the screen from the upstairs bathroom window lying on the ground. Henry had gotten out. Chauncey assumed the screeches had been Henry’s when caught by a coyote.

Is there a God?

Henry came to Eleanor and Chauncey by way of Lila’s first boyfriend, Charlie. Charlie’s uncle was threatening to take a recent litter of kittens to the pound. Lila’s pleas to rescue one of the kittens were persistent and loud.  Eleanor and Chauncey gave in to Lila even though they knew Henry would be left behind within a year when Lila went off to college.

Henry was instantly loved by all. He was feisty and clawed the furniture unless someone entertained him with play. When he was only 3 months old, he got blood poisoning from who knows where. Eleanor and Chauncey spent an agonizing weekend worrying and waiting for the vet to call with news of Henry’s fate. When they learned that Henry would survive, they were shocked by the relief they felt.

The birds won't mind if I take a little sip.

Soon after Lila left for college, Henry did not get up one morning for breakfast. Eleanor went to inspect him and discovered he had a gash on his hind leg. Four hours later, he was home resting, dosed with antibiotics and painkillers, the wound having been cleaned and bandaged by the vet. A run-in with a opossum was the vet’s best guess.

One afternoon when Eleanor was working in her garage studio, she heard a woman scream. A few minutes later, Lila came home sobbing that she had just seen Henry get hit by a car as she was driving up a nearby street. She said she stopped and looked for him but couldn’t find him. Henry showed up shortly thereafter with lacerations on both hind legs and looking pretty shaken up. Eleanor and Lila rushed him to the vet. The vet said he would be ok but that he had just used up one of his nine lives.

Hey, you can sit on the chair.

Eleanor was thinking about the possibility that Henry had really been taken from them when she heard Chauncey open the back door and say, “Oh, there you are, brother, returning home from the night shift and ready to sleep the day away. How about a little something to eat first?” Eleanor thanked the gods, once again, for keeping Henry safe.

Eleanor as Artist

When Chauncey came home yesterday from teaching a writing class at a local university, he announced that he had been assigned two more classes for the Fall. “You can keep being an artist,” he said to Eleanor.

Robert Goodnough painting

Eleanor wondered what “being an artist” meant. She knew that Chauncey meant Eleanor could continue to work in the garage creating mobiles and cards for her online shop without having to find salaried employment. But what did “being an artist” mean and when did making art become so important to Eleanor?

As a young child, Eleanor was surrounded by artistic people. Eleanor’s mother was a New York actress, singer, student of French literature and devoted museum goer. Two large abstract paintings by Robert Goodnough, which Eleanor’s mother claimed she purchased at a “basement sale” at the Metropolitan Museum, hung in the living room in Eleanor’s childhood home. Her mother’s best friend attended Bennington College and was a painter before she started having children. A colorful abstract painting of hers hung above the piano in her house on Key Biscayne where Eleanor’s mother and her friend, both transplants from New England, met in the 1960s. Eleanor was drawn in by the recognizable circular shapes.

But, Eleanor witnessed the difficulty of being creative while living in a society that promoted conformity and opted for the straight and narrow path of being a good student and following all the rules. She could not resist an urge to perform on stage and acted in plays throughout her years in school. She considered majoring in theater in college but when she did not receive the accolades she thought she deserved, she decided to stick with Spanish which was less competitive and felt safer.

Shelves

It wasn’t until she was in her thirties that Eleanor found herself making collage cards for her family and friends for their birthdays. She claimed an area in the garage which had a work table and shelves already there and turned it into her “art space.” Eleanor took several drawing classes and noticed that she felt calm whenever she was engaged in making art. She committed to spending three hours on Saturday mornings in the garage and an hour at night once or twice a week.

Devi, wire figure

Sailboat

Eleanor doesn’t remember the first time she made a mobile or even which mobile was her first. She thinks it may be a female figure she made out of wire or possibly a sailboat she made from cardboard and other materials. She doesn’t know when she started using spray paint and forms cut from paper and magazines as stencils to create pictures which sometimes worked and sometimes not but that was the excitement of the process.  Eleanor kept on making mobiles and collages because it made her happy.

Cutting and gluing

When Eleanor decided to leave her job as a clinical social worker, she didn’t know what she would do. She did not have a plan. She didn’t see herself as an artist. If being an artist meant waking up in the morning and feeling excited about going into the garage to glue beads onto cardboard or draw finches at the bird feeder as part of research and development, then Eleanor thought that the next time someone asked her what she did, she might be able to say she is an artist. Maybe.

Pussy in Chinatown

Chung King Road

Last night, Eleanor and Chauncey headed south for Chinatown to the opening of Coagula Curatorial, their friend Mat’s new art gallery. The featured artist, Tim Youd, was known to Eleanor and Chauncey as the guy who drew vaginas but called them “cunts.”

 Chauncey was well prepared for the opening. He had read Mat’s articles about the art he was presenting, watched a video of the artist talking about his work while sitting on the toilet (the artist not Chauncey) and engaged in several email conversations with artist friends about Tim Youd’s focus on female genitalia.  Eleanor concentrated on what she was going to wear.

When Eleanor and Chauncey arrived at the gallery on Chung King Road, there was already a crowd of about 100 people. By the end of the evening, there was likely to be 1,000. Chauncey was happy to have arrived early and gotten a parking space.

Tim Youd's Coney Island of the Mind

Inside, people were quietly looking at large and small drawings of vaginas with lots of pubic hair and orange colored labia. There were also wooden structures in box shapes with humorous drawings of Henry Miller on them and words scrawled in black ink. Chauncey clarified for Eleanor that Tim Youd had been inspired by Henry Miller’s book Tropic of Capricorn. Eleanor realized she should have done some more research before seeing the exhibit.

Getting a handle on it

Handles were attached to some of the shorter box structures so that the boxes could be rotated by hand. Eleanor saw a girl of about 8 take hold of a handle to turn the box. It was something she could do to distract herself from the clearly adults-only art on the walls. The handles were Eleanor’s favorite part of the show. There was also root beer in tubs which, according to Chauncey, was the best root beer he had ever tasted. From a previous meeting with the artist, Chauncey knew that in addition to drawing “cunts”, Tim Youd made and bottled his own root beer, Margot’s Bark.

After viewing the show, Eleanor and Chauncey emerged from Coagula to have some champagne and cake with other guests in the alley. The cake, called “Super Cunt” with chocolate shavings serving as you know what, was cut by the artist. Eleanor noticed the strawberries were still frozen. Chauncey’s response was, “You start to think everything’s intentional.”

Cutting the cake

As they wandered away from Chung King Road in search of food, Chauncey and Eleanor heard a man say, “Now, I actually want to read Tropic of Capricorn.” Eleanor thought to herself, “I bet you do.”

Walk in the Neighborhood

Most afternoons between 5 and 5:30, Chauncey and Eleanor put on their walking shoes and head out for a walk in the neighborhood. When Lila is home, they invite her to come with them.

Neighborhood politics

From their house on a cul de sac they walk westward before turning right for the first uphill climb towards the San Gabriel Mountains.  Seeing the No School on Palm signs usually incites some discussion about the latest attempts by owners of a nearby property to start a school in the neighborhood. Chauncey is adamant that this should not happen and is an active participant in the No School on Palm Association.

Trouble in paradise

After years of walking in the neighborhood, Chauncey and Eleanor have developed fascinations for particular houses. One of their favorites early on the route is the house they refer to as "the Martha Stewart house" because it is meticulously landscaped. There is trouble in paradise though, because Chauncey and Eleanor have heard the owners sniping at one another on more than one occasion as the woman, in metallic blue running shorts and sleeveless tank, waters the plants, and the man smokes a cigarette. 

Wisteria skirts

Farnsworth Park

Halfway through the walk, after they pass the wisteria climbing on the palm trees,  Chauncey and Eleanor come to a crossroads of sort. At Santa Anita and Athens streets, they have to decide whether to turn right and end the uphill aerobics or continue to go north uphill to Farnsworth Park. In the Spring and Summer, especially, it is a treat to sit in the bleachers facing the baseball diamond and stare at the mountains before beginning the trek home.

The way home takes Chauncey and Eleanor past other familiar sites, such as the miniature lighthouse, the house where the horse lives and a row of Janes cottages. Each of the four Janes cottages has been for sale during the past year and all are looking well taken care of after being somewhat neglected. Chauncey says they look like how he imagines houses look in Poland and Czechoslovakia. He and Eleanor can not remember which of the four houses they looked at when they were househunting many years ago.

Janes Cottages

Often, as they turn onto their street, Chauncey and Eleanor run into one of their elderly neighbors who likes to stop and tell them about her latest illness. Chauncey praises her for continuing to walk despite her ailments as Eleanor races home. At this point, she is usually starving and ready for a snack. 

Birthday Reconnaissance

With her birthday coming up in a week, Eleanor decided to do a little research on where to go. She knew she wanted to check out some new beer pubs as well as a karaoke bar she found online. Her friend, Siobhan, a singer whose birthday is the same day as Eleanor's, suggested that a night of karaoke would be fun for all. Chauncey put on his favorite going out outfit and announced he was ready to try them all.

Beer flight and a pint

Chauncey and Eleanor mapped out a route from home to Koreatown designed to avoid Saturday night traffic. Unfortunately, they missed a key turn. Now it was up to Eleanor to navigate using an old Thomas guide. They had no modern technological devices. Chauncey remained unusually calm and they found their way to Beer Belly on Western and 6^th street. Beer Belly offers a small but welcoming space with walls made of different colored woods. The bartender invited them to sit down at a reserved table. He said the guests weren’t coming for another 45 minutes. Enough time for a pint before heading off to the next spot.

Karaoke possibility

 Eleanor had a flight of four beers, each from a different local brewery. The Hangar 24 Winter Warmer was her favorite. Chauncey went with a TAPS dopplebock but really liked the Ladyface Imperial Stout from Eleanor's flight. As he paid the bill, Chauncey chatted with the owners and said he would return soon. After that, he and Eleanor were off to check out the karaoke scene at The Brass Monkey, a few blocks away on Wilshire.

A middle-aged bouncer with few teeth asked to see their ID s at the door. After being convinced that they were over 21, he stamped their hands and showed them into what looked like a den with small round tables and a bar. The place was empty but the surly bartender assured them that it would be standing room only once the karaoke started at 8pm. It was 7:45. Eleanor and Chauncey joined 4 other customers at the bar, two of whom looked as though they were left over from the previous night. Chauncey asked the bartender if there were any beers on tap. The bartender scowled and said “no” and added that there wasn't much of a selection. Chauncey settled for a Heineken and Eleanor for a chardonnay. They left when the dj set up the microphone and explained the rules for all who wanted to sing. That’s when the 2-drink minimum kicked in.

Downtown ahead

From The Brass Monkey, they headed downtown on Wilshire to Little Bear, a pub which claimed to offer decent food with a wide selection of Belgium beer. Little Bear was on Industrial, a short street in the middle of a warehouse district. There were 3 other restaurants on the same street, all with people in them.

Do I smell food?

At Little Bear, Eleanor and Chauncey were treated to better-than-usual pub fare. They indulged in pork belly sliders, salad with bacon and a lemony vinaigrette and a cassoulet with sausage, tender pork bits and duck slices with white beans on the side. The Belgium waffles with strawberries and whipped cream were recommended by their cheerful waiter and were even better than at Syrup. The crowd was bubbling and the beer was refined.

Union Station

As Chauncey drove home, Eleanor looked out the window and saw Union Station lit up in violet and yellow. She said “I think I just had my birthday celebration.”   

On the Town

Last Saturday, Eleanor and Chauncey were treated to a night out in downtown LA by their friends, Veronica and Ben. Veronica is an artist and Ben is a journalist who writes about art, baseball and astrology. The evening began with dinner at Soi 7, a thai restaurant in what used to be a department store. It was an enormous space but not cavernous. Veronica had a sake cocktail and Eleanor a Belgium beer despite Chauncey’s recommendation that she have a thai beer. The fellows, as Chauncey calls them, had fancy ginger ale.

Night on the town

After a delicious meal, the foursome walked several blocks to a gallery in the Bradbury building for the opening of an 80’s photography show.  The photos were taken in LA and included several of Bob Marley in Watts and Henry Rollins when he was in Black Flag.

Veronica and Chauncey were cornered by a guy Veronica knows who had one tooth but said he had just eaten some ribs at Houston’s. He apologized for the barbeque stains on his face and shirt.

Eleanor wandered over to a wide window sill and sat down near the wall. She began looking at what the gallery goers were wearing. About half were wearing jeans, Eleanor and Chauncey included. The tall Asian man next to Eleanor wore jeans with a white collared shirt, untucked, and black loafers. He told Eleanor he was an architect. He pointed out the owner of the gallery who was an Asian man in his late 30s. He wore white khakis, a checked green and black button-down shirt with black blazer. His shoes were black with several buckles.

Gallery Goer

Eleanor noticed two women in their fifties who appeared to be friends. Both had bobbed hair. One kept hers white while the other dyed hers brown. They each wore skirts with black leggings and black clunky shoes. The woman with brown hair wore a bronze-colored crocheted skirt. The woman with white hair wore a loose skirt with large brown circles. Very seventies. The best outfit was worn by an Asian woman in her late twenties.  One leg of the woman’s black pants, which came to the knee, was tight around her leg. The other pant leg was loose like a gaucho pant. Eleanor figured the woman was a designer trying to make a statement.

On the way back to the parking lot, Ben suggested a stop at Syrup for dessert. The place was packed with twenty-somethings eating Belgium waffles and playing Jenga. They were on to something. 

Eleanor and Chauncey returned home wanting more of everything.