film

my pendulum swings again.
my friends all laugh.
i try not to wince
at the thought that i might be
wasting my time.

schindler

here are some pix of the schindler studio house on king's road in los angeles. i visited here the last day of my trip and was happy to have done so! friend and fellow artist timo elliot accompanied me. the house impressed me because it is small but feels grand. this is partly because it is literally small scale; i could not walk through the house without ducking. all the pictures were taken on my knees! were people smaller in 1920? i've had similar experiences in frank lloyd wright houses. schindler worked for wright.

as usual, i found the bathrooms the most interesting places. the play of light on fixtures, pipes, porcelain and the private nature of the spaces draws my attention. they are functional sanctuaries.

the living spaces were a bit hard to judge because they were bereft of furnishings. bare concerete walls and floors run throughout. the fireplace is marked only by a copper hood. i guess the logs just went on the floor. pedestals with speakers playing an audio piece punctuated (or interrupted, i found) the architecture. the house is in okay shape. it's clearly old. the wood is dark with age and the paper-fiber wall panels (paper walls!) are stained. it looks fabulous in pictures! being the first modernist house in los angeles, it's a gem, and should be preserved. it's great that it's open to the public. we were allowed to wander as we pleased. there are guided tours on the weekends. a must see if you're at all interested in architecture.

timo

i had lunch with the magnificent timo while in los angeles. we hadn't seen each other in nine or ten years. we toured the schindler studio house together. timo is a painter and graphic designer. you can check out his stuff on flickr here.

you can see a picture timo took of me taking pictures here. i'll post some of the pix i took of the schindler house shortly. until then you can see them at my flickr account here.

favorite film

eraserhead, by david lynch, is one of my all time favorite films. i watched it for the god-knows-how-manyeth time last night. i recall defending this film in college and graduate school to befuddled friends who thought it was gross, stupid, incomprehensible, and a waste of time. i still feel it's one of the best films ever made and it holds up, for me, viewing after viewing. i just learned the libarary of congress has deemed it "culturally significant," so i feel supported in my early defenses. if you haven't seen it, i highly recommend it.

eraserhead was lynch's first feature. he'd made a few shorts prior. it took six years to complete, which is hard to believe when you watch the film because there's no indication of that time span, other than perhaps the lead character's hair which gets longer. it was made by a small crew working mostly at night in unused spaces at the american film institute in los angeles. the script was just 21 pages long (a typical feature script is usually around 120 pages).

it's a tense film despite the lack of dialog and action. the story is told by the environment as much as it is by the actors. radiators, door knobs, lamps, steam, sounds from outside, long periods of silence, and misunderstanding move the story along. one of my favorite scenes is henry's wife's departure late one night. she leaves him because she can't stand their baby's constant crying. she gets dressed, goes to the foot of the bed, reaches under, and rocks the bed, moaning in escalating intensity. it seems like sex. this goes on quite some time. henry watches, dumbfounded, as are we. finally, she lurches back and we realize she has pulled loose a stuck suitcase from under the bed. it's brilliant.

abstract city

driving around los angeles with marco provided lots of opportunity to shoot pictures from his car window. because traffic in los angeles is chronically jammed (average speeds of around 7mph at 5pm) i was able to spend a lot of time looking. the variety of architecture provides lots of interesting shape-making, especially against a dusking sky. i've posted all my los angeles pictures here.

los angeles

i'm in los angeles for a little less than a week, checking out architecture, photographing, hanging out with my friend marco and his friends. then back to vermont.

mardi gras 2008

my favorite pic from mardi gras. there are lots more here.