Articles from April 2011

The MOCA Art In The Streets show coincides with a slew of street art-related events; among them, this show opening May 15 at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. Street Cred: Graffiti Art From Concrete to Canvas, curated by graffiti historian Steve Grody and PMCA Exhibition Manager Shirlae Cheng-Lifshin, looks specifically at the development of street art in Los Angeles (the MOCA show is an international …

Gary Baum of LA Weekly has written a wonderful story about the exploding food truck phenom, from a design perspective.  He writes:
“What’s been lost amidst all of the gluttonous hype and counterhype, however, has been the fact that the indigenous aspect of the movement isn’t just the fusion-fixated menus (sushi burritos, bánh mì–inspired meatballs). It’s how crucial the context of the city’s design traditions …

Hot off the Art in the Streets show at MOCA, which brings together the “best” of 40-years plus of street and skateboard art, comes the annual Venice Artwalk and its kick-off event, a skate and surfboard auction. Up for auction will be skate decks featuring art by 70+ artists including Dogtown and Z-Boys; plus custom-shaped surf boards “tatted” by local tattoo legends. All the …

By Sunil Rampersad
It’s not often that I make the long commute to Pasadena, and even much less so to La Canada-Flintridge, but I did it last week. The reason for the long commute was this year’s Pasadena Showcase House of Design, held at one of the amazing creations of architect Paul Williams (the subject of my last article).

<place picture 01.jpg here>
The event itself boggles …

Love it or hate it, Art In The Streets  at MOCA is getting lots of buzz, and raising some fascinating questions, some of which we address on today’s DnA: when does graffiti become art? Who gets to enter the hallowed halls of the art world? And what about the “real” street artists who get left out? In putting together the show, I got to …

Pasadena Showcase House of Design: This year’s Pasadena Showcase House, Paul Williams’ 1927 English Period Revival estate, will open for the public on April 17. John Bishop Green, a painting contractor, rancher and real estate broker, commissioned the construction of the 7,205 square foot home at a cost of $36,525.  The Southwest Builder and Contractor reported in 1927 that Paul R. Williams had completed plans for a …

When Walt Disney first designed Tomorrowland for Disneyland in the early 1950s, the
concept of tomorrow generated the idea of a far-off future filled with new technology and
endless possibilities. Now, the idea of Tomorrowland is obsolete.
“When tomorrow is literally tomorrow, how do you update the [theme] park that fast?”
asked Scott Bukatman, a Stanford professor of Film and Media Studies and one of a
panel of visual …

Julius Shulman is is known for his epoch-defining black and white images of glamorously lived-in Socal Midcentury Modern houses, designed by the likes of Richard Neutra and Pierre Koenig. But that was only a part of his huge oeuvre. A new book, “Julius Schulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis” presents, says Rizzoli, the publisher, many never-before-seen images on a subject closest …

Don’t miss a must-see installation, reALIze, on through Friday, April 9, at the the Nokia Plaza at LA Live. Commissioned by Muhammad Ali,  created by artist Michael Kalish and the architects, Oyler Wu Collaborative, this monument to his inimitable self manages brilliantly, say architects Robert Mangurian and Mary-Ann Ray, to be  ”a monument without monumentality.”
“Conceived of as an experiential 2-D image,” says Kalish, “the core of the project is …

The current editor of the Architectural Review, a London-based architectural magazine (that first sent me to LA, back in 1987) called me this morning asking me for the buzz on the latest project, Samitaur Tower (left) in the Hayden Tract by onetime avant-gardist, now SCI-Arc head, architect Eric Owen Moss. The tower is terrific, I told him, and will be even more fun when the promised signage,  displaying information …