We walk Skid Row with VA chief Bob McDonald; how Vidiots changed journalist Elina Shatkin’s life; a classical bassist who went to New Guinea to study a singing and composing tribe.
Inside Edition's Zoey Tur, first transgender TV reporter, flies again
When last we spoke with Zoey Tur about her gender reassignment, she said her goal was to become the nation's first transgender TV reporter.
"I'm really worried about transitioning. Will I be able to work in broadcast news again? There's not a single transgender transsexual person on the air in the United States that's open. And I don't know of anyone that's living stealth that's a broadcast reporter." -- Zoey Tur on KPCC's Off-Ramp, 5/21/2014
With a turn this month as a special correspondent for Inside Edition, Zoey Tur, the former macho TV chopper reporter Bob Tur, became the nation's first transgender TV reporter, and -- as far as she knows -- only the third in the world.
"It's important that there be a transgender person on the air because diversity is important, and TV stations and networks have always promoted that they're diverse, but the reality is it's really a white, male-dominated industry ... The transgender community needs their role models."
How did she get the gig? Inside Edition kept calling her for an interview about her transition.
"And I felt like if I'm good enough to interview, I'm good enough to be on the air. So I called up Charles Lachman [Executive Producer of Inside Edition], left a message, and he called back three minutes later. And I said, 'Do you want to make history?' And he said, 'How so?" And I said, 'There's not a single trans person anywhere on the air as a television reporter.' And he said, 'I get it; you're hired.'"
Zoey Tur says she'll be reporting both hard news and stories about transgender issues. "It's a real gig." And she has hopes for the job with Inside Edition to continue past this month.
What does Zoey think about Bruce Jenner, who's been undergoing his own very public transformation as a transgender person? "To have the world's greatest athlete on the team is phenomenal. On the other hand, I feel she's gone about this so wrong, because she's lost control of her narrative, which has been told by the tabloid press."
Zoey says she's adapting to the lack of male privilege. She likes that the AAA mechanic fixed her dead battery and called her "dear." She doesn't like that one of her (male) doctors started condescending to her.
And she's adapting to another change with an old friend: After Zoey returned from her three-week trip for her surgery, her dog Laika didn't recognize her smell. It took a while, which made Zoey sad. Laika eventually realized Zoey is the former Bob, and they're friends again, but now Laika has become dominant, for instance, growling when Zoey tries to take back the covers in bed, which the dog never did before.
Burbank's WET made the Bellagio Fountains and other water artworks you love
You probably haven't heard of the Burbank company WET, but if you've been to Vegas, you know their work.
WATCH: Even the Bellagio Fountains have their own official trailer
Mark Fuller, the energetic, 63-year-old owner of WET, says the Bellagio Fountains “started as an icon for the hotel and became an icon for the city." These fountains, plus dozens of other fountains in hotels, shopping plazas, and other venues around the world were all designed and built by WET, which started in a church basement and now employs 375 engineers, metal workers, animators, carpenters, receptionists, computer programmers ... and one full time fitness instructor, because Hollywood.
Asked if he’s ever calculate the number of times WET's fountains have appeared on TV or the movies, Fuller responds “Only when it pops up on TV and my wife says, 'why don’t we get a royalty for that?' ... that number I know.” You also might have seen their spouting talent in Sochi at the Winter Olympics. While closer to home WET did the fountain at the Americana shopping mall in Glendale and Universal CityWalk.
The basic idea is always the same, instead of water running over a sculpture, the water is the sculpture. And thanks to any number of combinations of pumps, nozzles, lights and computers, they can make H2O do pretty much anything.
Fuller, a former theater nerd turned engineer, makes it sound almost philosophical: “People are drawn to water, it is both an antagonist, and protagonist… supreme.”
Heading into the chemistry room, there are large flypaper like strips on the floor to clean the dirt off the bottom of your shoes. There’s a drum kit and grand piano in the common area, a laser bench, a 3-D printer or two and a full time teacher who leads classes in Fluid Mechanics and Comedy Improv to improve employee communications skills.
Andrea Silva, a Senior Project designer at WET, says, “Five years into the job I was sitting in a pump room in Japan at 2AM. I was wondering what I had done to get here…” It’s like walking onto the set of what you think the perfect office might look like. But with the low-end fountain running a million dollars and the big jobs clocking in north of $200m, they can afford it.
Silva says part of the challenge is finding a way to make their foreign fountains culturally relevant. “Even with Dubai fountain…our choreographers are there, they come out and this is how you move to this piece of music, this is the dance you do, so we incorporate those specific… whether that’s a hand gesture, we incorporate that into the actual choreography.”
Outside on the lawn, we pass a squeaking underwater multi-axis robot, then enter what they call Area 9…which is where all the cool stuff is: Fuller designed a way to make water shoot like it’s encased in a clear plastic tube, without the tube. Something about having all the molecules moving at the same speed. There’s also fire that burns under a mushroom shaped ball of water and what they call water on fire, a column of water with a flame inside. (It’s a display you can stick your hand into if you’re careful, and the feeling is something other-worldly.)
Fuller says recent projects have included a solar power component that uses gray or undrinkable water and cleans it in the process. He likes the fact that anyone, rich or poor, can enjoy the work they do at WET. And as for his definition of what makes a successful project, this former Disney Imagineer says that’s pretty simple too.
“So we’ll take a lake or pond and treat it like a screen, a fantastic visual instrument on which we can create endless visual performances. If you and I were walking by a creation, and we didn’t stop in this interview and say hold that thought, then I would think we failed.”
Off-Ramp and FilmWeek animation critic Charles Solomon nabs Annie award
A big congratulations from all of us at KPCC to Charles Solomon for winning an Annie award this weekend!
The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, gives out the Annies. "How to Train Your Dragon 2" won best animated film at the 42nd Annie Awards Saturday, held at UCLA's Royce Hall. Charles Solomon was awarded the Annies' June Foray Award, "for his significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation."
(Solomon interviewing Disney's Scott Watanabe and Paul Felix about "Big Hero 6." Credit: John Rabe)
Charles, a veteran of Airtalk's Filmweek as well as Off-Ramp, penned “Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation” in 1989, which was the first film book nominated for a National Book Critics’ Circle Award.
One of his recent books was a lavishly illustrated tribute to Disney's Golden Books.
In 2008, with Queena Kim, Charles won an L.A. Press Club award for a profile of animation artist Tyrus Wong. He's also a lecturer in animation at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television and has been involved in many fundraisers for animators in need.
Watch a zoetrope demonstration
By the way, the award, which you can see Charles holding in the photo, is in the shape of a zoetrope, an early animation device. To use it, you put a strip of drawings inside the cylinder, spin it, then view from the outside, through the slits. The Annie award is a working model.
UPDATED: The night VA chief McDonald made his now infamous 'special forces' claim
UPDATE 2/24/2015:
VA Secy Bob McDonald has come under fire for claiming to be a member of US Special Forces as he was walking through Skid Row, talking with a homeless man who claimed to be a Special Forces veteran.
WATCH the CBS report. KPCC's Rabe appears in black, with umbrella in pocket
I elected not to use that exchange because there was no way to prove whether the homeless man was a veteran (McDonald himself doubted the claim), and the homeless man seemed highly uncomfortable; he obviously felt ambushed by the media hoarde.
15 seconds into the audio for this Off-Ramp segment, as we talk about flashlights, McDonald does say, "I was a Ranger." According to a VA spokesperson: "As a graduate of the US Army Ranger school, Secretary McDonald was entitled to wear the Ranger tab on his uniform throughout his career."
-- John Rabe
The day after vowing to end veterans homelessness in a landmark settlement, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald sought to underline his commitment to the issue by taking part in L.A.'s annual homeless count.
McDonald walked the streets of L.A.'s Skid Row for a couple of hours, looking for homeless people, and Off-Ramp went with him.
One of the most poignant and symbolic moments came as we passed a homeless encampment, and McDonald was learning the rules for the survey: Count each individual you see. If you only see a tent, put down "tent." But if there are people outside of it, don't count the tent and the person, and if "there's a foot sticking out, that's one person."
That brings it home, McDonald said, "Particularly when you think that that person could have been in Iraq or Afghanistan, sleeping on the ground. Vietnam. Korea. Waking up and going out to fight."
McDonald didn't find any confirmed vets for sure during his walk around Skid Row. The volunteers are told specifically not to poke into tents and ask invasive questions of the homeless during the census, and McDonald abided by those guidelines.
Reprieve reported for Vidiots, which gave many a real film education
UPDATE: 10:30pm Friday, 1/30/2015: The LA Times reports that film producer Megan Ellison and Vidiots customer Leonard Lipman have given an undisclosed amount to "keep the store open for the foreseeable future," according to Vidiots co-owner Cathy Tauber.
Journalist Elina Shatkin has a great piece in the latest L.A. Weekly lamenting the impending closure of Vidiots, the Santa Monica video rental store.
Shatkin graduated from the UCLA School of Film and Television, but as she writes, "my real education began the moment I stepped behind the counter at Vidiots."
At UCLA, I’d seen "Citizen Kane," "The 400 Blows," "Raging Bull," and "Rear Window." At Vidiots, I was on a steady diet of everything else. Aquatic monster movies. Post-Vietnam vigilante flicks. Busby Berkeley musicals. British kitchen sink dramas. Perverse Czech animation. At Vidiots there was no shame in loving a slapstick fart comedy as much as you loved a French existential drama.
It was an "aha!" moment.
It wasn't a conscious choice but that egalitarian ethos became the basis of how I approached everything I now do as a journalist. Whether I’m writing about an upstart taco truck or a world class chef, a dude who organized bathroom graffiti crawls or the head of a multimillion dollar arts organization, I treat them with the same consideration.
Elina reads the whole piece for us this week on Off-Ramp.
Learn more about Vidiots in this video produced by the Academy:
Editor's note: This piece has been edited to reflect the good news.
The story behind LA's mysterious yellow and black filming location signs
Base Camp. Bully. Anonymous. Heima.
Nonsense written on yellow and black signs all over Los Angeles, each with a giant arrow. Where do they come from? What do they mean?
If you've lived in Los Angeles for more than a couple years, you probably know the basics already: TV and film production companies use the yellow and black signs you see on the side of the road as directions to film sets.
But it's 2015. The age of the smartphone, the built in navigation system, Waze. Why do the cast and crew need yellow and black signs pointing the way?
Byll Williams is a location manager who works in Los Angeles, and he says it isn't that simple. "Everybody, when they're an individual, is very intelligent," he says. "When they're a group, for some reason, intelligence goes out the window. And they get lost on one way streets."
When I met Byll he was preparing for a Ford car commercial near the L.A. Times building Downtown. As if to prove his point, his phone rings midway through our interview—a crew member needed directions.
Location Managers are a crucial part of the filmmaking industry in Los Angeles. Byll and his colleagues with the Location Managers Guild coordinate logistics for the crew, talk with local officials and, of course, put up the signs.
Location managers are often the first on set and the last to leave. When I met Byll downtown, it was 7:30 a.m. And he hadn’t gotten to bed until 4 a.m. the night before.
He sets up signs pointing to a couple different parking lots—things like TRUCKS and CREW are written on top of the sign, and inside the black arrow it says "Anonymous" — Anonymous Content is the production company.
Sometimes, though, the production company doesn't want to reveal its name, or the project it's working on. Signs for "The Dark Knight Rises" read "Magnus Rex." "We Bought a Zoo," the Cameron Crowe movie, had the code word "Heima" — Icelandic for home. It keeps the super fans and paparazzi away. Williams says commercial shoots are starting to use the signs, too.
If you need one of the signs yourself, your best bet is to hit up JCL Traffic—one of the leading manufacturers. In their Arts District warehouse, they make traffic signs for every occasion: no parking, road work ahead, lane closed and the humble, yellow-and-black set location signs.
Jim Morris, JCL's general manager, is a former location manager and says the "location directional" signs, now printed on a durable corrugated plastic, came about as an idea from another scout. Before that, it was the dark ages.
"People would use foam core, which was very expensive," said Morris. "The sheets cost like about $10 a sign. And then if it rained, they would fall apart. They would use old posting signs — anything you could find — paper plates."
Here's how they're made: First comes the message — it's typed out on a computer and then etched in vinyl. Then the message is "weeded out" from the vinyl:
Then—in another part of the building—employees pull out unmarked yellow signs with the black arrow preprinted on them. Like a bumper sticker, the vinyl is rolled out and applied to the sign:
Then, voila! The vinyl writing gets peeled from the sign, and filmmakers now can find their set:
One employee at JCL estimates he makes about 80 to 100 signs per day and ships them anywhere.
JCL also wants to do more than just location signs and traffic control. In another part of the factory, they have dozens of street signs designed for the city of South El Monte. If you want to buy a sign for yourself, you're in luck: JCL is open to the public.
Staying a Backstreet Boys fan in 2015
Anyone listening to the radio in the late '90s probably remembers the Backstreet Boys, but the pop boom that made them superstars eventually fizzled out, even though they're still making music today. The life of a pop band after the peak of their fame is explored in the new documentary "Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of," but what's it like for those who remain fans?
Fan Nadia Vazquez is one of the fans that's kept the fire alive ever since, with more than 15 years of devotion. It's different being an adult fan of the group, she told KPCC.
"People make fun of me way more," Vazquez said, laughing. "I think now that I'm an adult, it's a little weird for some people to hear that I'm going to see the Backstreet Boys with my mom. But I don't really mind, because I know what I like now. And maybe it's just because I'm getting more set in my ways and stubborn, but it's something that I like in a time where people like things so ironically."
She first discovered the Backstreet Boys in second grade, when she heard them on the radio and the sound grabbed her.
"I had money that I would save so I could get singles, because that is what I could afford at second grade, and I got the 'Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)' single. And it came with postcards of all the boys in it," Vazquez said. "And I memorized every photo of them, and I thought, like, wow, these aren't Boyz II Men. This is a whole different group, and they're really cute!"
Quit Playing Games (With My Heart) video
The seed was planted, and Vazquez's fandom grew.
"We didn't have cable growing up — my parents are immigrants, so we didn't have quite a lot of money until maybe I was in high school, enough to go to concerts and things, so I would go over to my friends' houses and watch their MTV and record them on a VHS tape, and then take it home and watch it."
The group became a bond between Nadia and her mom.
"It was before the Internet, and before Craigslist, so if you wanted to get tickets to a sold out concert, you'd go in the newspaper. And my dad was the newspaper guy — he still reads the newspaper — and found tickets for the Backstreet Boys from a guy who worked at a vacuum repair shop."
Her dad bought the tickets, but when Nadia and her mom got to the show, they found themselves going up... and up... and up, until they were in the stadium's very last row.
"My mom is a really tough lady, and she said 'No. This is unacceptable. How are they selling this?'"
Nadia's mom took her and talked to different ushers, before finally talking to the box office — which printed them new tickets.
"So we go in, and it's on the floor, at the very back of the standing room section. So these are great seats, and we look behind us and there's this really big target in the middle of the stadium, and I'm like, well, what is this? And then I think, 'Oh my God, the Backstreet Boys are going to be right behind us!' And they were! They came out from this target, and did the whole flying thing, and they were just right there. And I was like, 'Mom, it's so close! I can see Nick Carter's pimples!'"
Nadia and her mom still go to Backstreet Boys concerts together.
"Now I'm starting to be more independent financially, so I got us both in the fan club, and I buy her tickets to the shows now. So it's kind of like my mom was with me all this time, and now I get to take her with me, and she gets to have fun," Vazquez said.
So far, Vazquez has had up close and personal interactions with three of the Backstreet Boys. She saw Kevin at "Jimmy Kimmel Live" after getting into the green room through a friend when the group was playing the show.
"Kevin from the Backstreet Boys came in to get a beer. And like two thoughts were going in my head, and one was, 'Kevin drinks beer!' And the second one was, 'There's a Backstreet Boy in front of me!'"
While she didn't get the courage up to say hi to Kevin, she did say hi to Howie at Disneyland — on his way to the bathroom. But her peak Backstreet fan moment came when she was chosen as a huge Nick Carter fan to meet him on daytime talk show "The Doctors." She was told that Nick was on tour, but that she would be able to ask him questions via Skype.
"They said 'Oh, well, it's too bad you couldn't be here, Nick,' and he said, 'Well, let me see what I can do about that,' and then he stepped out from behind the wall and he was there. And oh, it was just so awesome, and I didn't know what to do with myself, and when I watch it, I don't really remember. I was so hormonal," Vazquez said. "I took a screenshot of myself hugging him, and just my eyes were wild, and he was very uncomfortable, and it's one of my favorite photos of myself ever." (You can see that photo above.)
Watch the video of Nadia meeting Nick Carter on "The Doctors":
Nadia meets the Backstreet Boys
The Backstreet Boys also helped form a bond between other members of the Vazquez family. When Nadia's eldest sister was deployed to Afghanistan, Nadia's nephews, then 2 and 3 years old, were inconsolable.
"And it was really hard to get them to just calm down, and I actually had just gotten the Backstreet Boys music video DVD, and I played it once, because I was like, maybe they will help. And I played 'Shape of My Heart,' and they were completely silent after crying all day. And the video was over, and they said 'Again! Again!'" Vazquez said.
Backstreet Boys: Shape of My Heart
"They brought a lot of calm into that house where it was really stressful. It's stressful to have someone overseas in the military and have these small children in the house, and the Backstreet Boys were a really good way to calm all of us, really."
Vazquez plans to keep being a fan, and she doesn't care what anyone else thinks.
"It might not necessarily be the cool thing to like, but why not like something if you like it, you know? I'm tired of saying something is a guilty pleasure. I don't believe that that is real anymore. If you like the Backstreet Boys, like the Backstreet Boys! Do what makes you happy."
She can also be an easy fan to spot.
"I remember buying a lot of merchandise and not using, because I didn't want to waste it, so now I'm using it as an older person. So I walk in with a Backstreet Boys notebook sometimes to work, and people are like, what are you doing? It's my Backstreet Boys notebook! It's great."
If you want to see the story of the band that's inspired this fandom, "Backstreet Boys: Show 'Em What You're Made Of" opens this weekend.
Backstreet Boys documentary trailer
Missionaries almost erased a tribe's history, but for a Pasadena man's tape recorder
"Even when speaking, people would become so animated in their voice, it would turn to song in front of you." —Christopher Roberts
Christopher Roberts hiked into the mountains of Papua New Guinea to hone his musical skills in nature. He hoped to find indigenous singers to record; instead, he found a tribe made up entirely of songwriters.
After he graduated from Juilliard in 1980, Roberts, a Pasadena native and classical bassist, followed his curiosity to study musical prosody — our natural ability to compose — in Papua New Guinea. He'd been fascinated by the island since he saw the documentary "The Sky Above, The Mud Below" as a child.
Roberts took his bass and tape recorder with him to the Bultem region, in the Kam Valley near the Indonesian border (circled on the map below), and there he met the Wopkaimin people. To his surprise, every member of the tribe, including small children, could compose songs.
(Credit: Wikipedia Commons)
When Roberts arrived, the Wopkaimin had only recently been exposed to Western technology and languages via the construction of the Ok Tedi Mine in the nearby township of Tabubil. English words and scenes of demolition started entering song lyrics.
When Roberts' stay was over, Wopkai elders implored him to return and record more songs before they were changed any further. Roberts wrote to the Bechtel Corp., which built the Ok Tedi Mine, to request a grant for another year of research, and to his surprise, Bechtel agreed.
(Bechtel's Ok Tedi gold and copper mine. Photo: Courtesy of Christopher Roberts.)
Singing was a crucial part of daily Wopkaimin communication. Wopkai lyrics gave agricultural and historical accounts of the region, but there were also love songs, initiation rites, and comical bedtime stories.
Based on subject matter, Wopkaimin songs followed certain motifs, or melodic patterns of speech. Each song has its own unique motif, based on an ancient archetype. Roberts says that these motifs came naturally to singers — like a a guitarist's licks — and were often meant to be aural portrayals of the stories being sung. (Tribesman Kayankim's tale of a boy sent on impossible tasks was sung so swiftly, Roberts could not sing it properly.)
"Even when speaking, people would become so animated in their voice, it would turn to song in front of you," says Roberts.
When the Wopkaimin sang together, one singer would start with a phrase and hold the last note until "everyone else jumps in with shortened or upside down versions of the phrase, maybe in a different octave."
Songs were important as a means of passing on ancestral knowledge about the wilderness to Wopkai children. One of Roberts’ main recording liaisons was the ritual curator Gesok, who in 1982 arranged for Roberts to join the Wopkai boys’ initiation for both drums and songs.
Roberts believed this "double graduation" to be "an emergency measure reflecting the amount of change happening around them." Some missionaries burned Wopkaimin ritual houses, which Roberts likens to burning a library. To ensure that their songs were preserved for future generations, the Wopkaimin set aside gender-based customs and allowed Roberts to record songs customarily meant only for men or women to hear.
The Cult House at the center of all of the Wopkaimin hamlets. Courtesy Christopher Roberts.
In his book, "Music of the Star Mountains," Roberts transcribed 200 songs exactly as they were performed and included with it a 73-track CD of his recordings. The book and CD are now important cultural artifacts because by 1984, a year after Roberts’ study, missionaries had stopped Wopkai women from singing anything but church hymns, preventing their children from learning the traditional songs. The book and CD are in the process of gaining distribution in Papua New Guinea.
Of his time with the Wopkaimin, Roberts says he learned that "Everybody can compose. It's a natural gift we all have.”
Big Chinese-American film series in Little Toyko
Amy Tan's celebrated immigrant family saga "The Joy Luck Club" will be the inaugural screening in "Big Trouble in Little Tokyo," the Japanese American National Museum's new film series, on February 11.
In this 1993 take on Tan's bestselling book, a reluctant Chinese-American woman must fill her deceased mother's spot in a weekly mahjong game among a circle of Chinese immigrant women. The stories she hears of their acclimation to post-World War II America bring her a new respect for them and her heritage. The film's screenplay was nominated for BAFTA and WGA awards.
WATCH: An interview with Wayne Wang, director of The Joy Luck Club
The film will be followed by a Q&A with director Wayne Wang, the Hong Kong-born director of "Eat a Bowl of Tea" and "Maid in Manhattan."
Also included in the series are John Carpenter's "Big Trouble in Little China" on April 8 and "The Curse of Quon Gwon: When the Far East Mingles with the West," the earliest known film directed by a Chinese-American woman (Marion Wong, 1916), on May 13.
The series runs bi-monthly until November, with more films TBA. Advance tickets are $8 for JANM and Visual Communications members, $10 for the general public; tickets at-the-door are $12 for JANM and VC members, $15 for the general public.
The Japanese American National Museum is at 100 N. Central Ave., LA CA 90012.
Roll out the barrel: First look inside restored Idle Hour Cafe, historic North Hollywood gem
It's called "programmatic architecture" — a building that looks like something other than a building — and examples have been common around Southern California: the Brown Derby, the giant tamale on Whittier Boulevard in East L.A., and in North Hollywood, a giant barrel.
The Idle Hour Cafe is at 4824 Vineland Avenue, and you can see it to the left in this historic photo. It was built of cedar, and according to the L.A. Public Library, was commissioned in 1941 by Universal Studios film tech Michael D. Connolly and built by Silver Lake engineer George F. Fordyk.
(Undated photo from the L.A. Public Library's Valley Times Collection)
The Idle Hour was eventually turned into a flamenco venue called La Cana — before owner Dolores Fernandez closed it in 1984 and just started living in it. When she died, the county acquired the property, and that's where L.A. historian and L.A. Magazine writer Chris Nichols comes in:
I told the story of the barrel to some folks that were experts at creating colorful and theatrical dining and drinking spots in the hope that they could breathe new life into this landmark. Bigfoot Lodge owner Bobby Green was captivated by the beauty of the barrel and signed on. — Los Angeles Magazine, 2011
In 2011, the building was sold at auction to Green and his 1933 Group, which runs seven bars across Los Angeles, including the Bigfoots West and East, Thirsty Crow, Harlow, La Cuevita and Oldfield's. $1.4 million later, Green says, and the Idle Hour Cafe will reopen in mid-February. As you can see in KPCC photographer Maya Sugarman's photos, it's been lovingly rebuilt, restored and reimagined because very few original elements remained, and the structure was not up to code.
The 1933 Group's website says it wants to transport its customers "to another era, if only for the night," and with the Idle Hour, that era will be a Los Angeles when people thought it was cool to build a bar that looked like a barrel. Green tells us the menu will be classic American, and the many beverage taps will feature 20 beers and many draft cocktails — whiskey-based, in keeping with the barrel theme. And in back, you can throw a small party in another piece of programmatic architecture: a giant dog that eerily resembles Green's pet bulldog.
See one of the 'greatest marine painters' at Pasadena Museum of California Art
At the center of his work was the sea. Armin Hansen was one of greatest marine painters ever born in this state. But while most of his turbulent seascapes were singular and memorable, it was his portrayals of the men who worked on the oceans off Monterey that brought him lasting fame.
It’s intriguing that Hansen was putting on canvas and paper an impressionistic rendering of the same sort of people his contemporary, John Steinbeck, was then describing in his literature. Gatherings of work-aged men in shabby hats with red sunburnt noses, who bear their histories in their faces, gray-blue figures shouldering their oars against a cloudy sky as they slog to work. And though later in life he dressed like a hunting squire in tweeds, vest, and tie whenever he went out into the Central Coast sunlight to paint these subjects, they must have known he had shared their life, working as a deck hand on a North Sea trawler in the years before World War One.
(Armin Hansen on a Monterey beach, n.d. Photographer unknown. Courtesy of California Views Photo Archive, copyright/courtesy Pomegranate Communications)
Nearly 100 of Hansen’s pictures and other works are on display at the Pasadena Museum of California Art in a show called the Artful Voyage. For decades before his death in 1957, Hansen worked and taught in Monterey and Carmel. While he was appreciated by a broad public and revered by his students as one of the greatest art teachers in the West, Armin seems to have lived through prolonged rough times after the Great Crash of 1929. He made some of his family’s own furniture, including a fine dining room table on display at the show, but complained that they ate mostly “beans and bread” off of it. He may even have been self-conscious about not living up to the commercial success of his late father, Herman Hansen, a Danish immigrant who in the 1870s and 1880s established himself as a famous illustrator, as well one of America’s pioneer painters of the Cowboy West.
The San Francisco-based Herman had taught his son to paint, and sent him to study art in Munich, as though foreseeing his son’s work might eventually overshadow his own. Indeed it does: the younger Hansen’s work overflows with Impressionist colors that give it a life and emotional depth that even his father’s frontier action paintings, with their mid-1800s formality, lacked.
Armin Hansen’s seascapes vibrate with their deep blues and frothy beige grays. Oddly, he seems mostly to favor as subjects the sailing ships of the century before his—rust-streaked, weather-beaten square-riggers from the end of the sailing era, scudding sedately into the present. In contrast, most of his shipwreck paintings are of modern vessels, hopelessly ground ashore on the Monterey coast, sometimes surveyed from the shore by landsmen spectators whom he terms “Storm Birds.”
Exhibit curator Scott Shields suggests Armin Hansen’s financial hardships inclined him toward new directions, such as his midlife still lifes. Perhaps, but I am more impressed with his turn towards his father’s finest work with his wonderful rodeo tableaus. His riders and horses can be bright splotches of color, or simply tan manifestations of the dust of the Salinas arena, all in impressionist precision.
(Armin Hansen, Cowboy Sport. Monterey Museum of Art. Gift of Jane and Justin Dart. Image protected by copyright and courtesy Pomegranate Communications)
His father would have been proud. “Like me,” old Herman Hansen might have said, “only so much better.”
Armin Hansen: The Artful Voyage is at the Pasadena Museum of California Art through May 31. 490 East Union Street, Pasadena, CA 91101
Men who quilt: Sci-fi scenes and cement blocks
We make a lot of assumptions about quilts — that they're not art, that only women make them. The Craft & Folk Art Museum's answer to these outdated ideas is an exhibition featuring the work of male quilters. It’s called “Man-Made: Contemporary Male Quilters” and it’s a far cry from your grandma’s sewing circle.
“We wanted men who really make quilts as part of their main practice,” says Suzanne Isken, the exhibition’s curator and the executive director of the Craft & Folk Art Museum. “They identify as quilters. Not all of them only quilt, but quilting is something that they come by because they’re serious quilters."
The eight men featured in the exhibition quilt not just professionally, but as artists. Isken says they have a long history of female quilters — who turned a domestic chore into art — to thank for this.
“If it was such a chore, then why did women spend so much time making it harder and harder to do? The patterns become more and more intricate, and more and more challenging,” says Isken. “So, in fact, men can take it on now because women really elevated it into an art form.”
And this history comes across in most of the quilters’ work. Most of them learned to quilt from a woman — either a family member or a mentor — and say that gender plays a role in their work.
“We asked the quilters themselves, ‘Does being a male quilter really affect your work?’ and most of them said, ‘Yes, definitely,’” says Isken.
Some of the artists address their gender by quilting typically masculine imagery. Ben Venom’s quilts evoke motorcycle gangs and heavy metal. Jimmy McBride quilts sci-fi scenes based on Hubble telescope images.
(Jimmy McBride, Phobos V2, 2010, handmade and hand-and-machine quilted, hand-embroidered, 48” x 48”. Courtesy of the artist.)
Others use the materials and techniques they quilt with as an expression of their gender. Joel Otterson says he asked himself, “How would a man make a quilt?” And his answer was a cement “quilt.”
(Joel Otterson, The Garden Floor (Concrete Crazy Quilt), 2002 - 2012, glazed ceramic, stone, marble, and concrete, 87 !” x 87” overall (20 "” each panel). Courtesy of the artist and Maloney Fine Art, Los Angeles.)
Isken says many of these quilters struggle with skepticism that their quilts are in fact art.
“Joe Cunningham tells a story of going to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and seeing Rauschenberg’s ‘Bed’ on the wall. And apparently when he went, there was a label at the time that said something about Rauschenberg elevating the ‘humble quilt’ into an artwork through the painting, and that was always offensive to him,” says Isken. “A quilt is a work of art.”
(Joe Cunningham, Some Dumb Old Painting, 2013, machine pieced, appliquéd, and quilted cotton fabric and batting, 71” x 69”. Courtesy of the artist.)
An opening reception for "Man-Made: Contemporary Male Quilters" will be held on Jan. 24 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., and the exhibition will run until May 3rd. Visit the Craft & Folk Art Museum’s website for more information.
The art of finding art for TV shows
Have you ever been watching your favorite TV show and suddenly notice the painting hanging in the suspect’s home, and you think, "Huh, pretty good taste for a serial killer, I wonder where that came from?"
It happens more than you think, and thanks to Hollywood’s fear of lawsuits, artists and galleries are starting to cash in.
“Every week we have a police station, morgue, no art there…”
Set Decorator KC Fox is walking the set of "Criminal Minds." Near the back there’s a massive wall covered in art — hundreds of paintings and photos her team will use to decorate the show’s fake offices and homes this season. All of it cleared for use on the show.
(Every piece of art you can see on the wall in "Criminal Minds," like the artwork circled in this screenshot, has been cleared for use on TV.)
“You used to be able to go to thrift stores, get paint by numbers or macaroni art,” says the industry veteran. “Now unless I know the provenance, I can’t use it.”
What changed the way Fox and others had to do their jobs was a movie called "The Devil’s Advocate." The story goes that the people behind that film wanted to use a big bas-relief sculpture for Satan’s office. The artist said no, so the studio just went out and made one — which the artist said was a little too similar to his. Cue the lawyers.
There are rumors of a million-dollar settlement, but what for sure happened was a newfound insistence that everything you see on TV or in the movies be cleared, licensed and not sueable-over.
“If it’s on TV or the theater or possibly your phone, someone’s looking for it… and lawyers are after their clients' share,” says Fox.
Valda Lake runs the Wallspace gallery on La Brea. She estimates one-third of her business is renting or selling to Hollywood productions and commercials, which in turn leads to viewers tracking down her and the artists she represents.
“One man from the TV show 'Mad Men,' he had tracked down the artist, he was calling, emailing all the way from Germany,” says Lake. “It’s smart of an artist to think of this as a business, make the work work for you.”
One of her artists, who goes by "Muncho 1929," has sold or rented to so many shows and commercials it’s tough for him to remember. “For me, as an artist, I like ... more people to see my work, other than a gallery or even a mural on the street.”
When asked if he’s ever had any second thoughts about being on TV, he says he trusts his gallery will never put his work on a show that goes against his beliefs.
Galleries normally take around half of the sale price of an artwork. With rentals, the split can go as high as 75/25, with the gallery taking the big share. There’s also a market for kids art — some of which is done by children, but a lot is cut and glued together by enterprising adults.
It can all make for some strange bedfellows. According to the Set Dresser’s Society, what’s the number one show that has people emailing wondering where they can buy the art they see?
"Two and a Half Men."
(Art is featured prominently in many scenes in "Two and a Half Men")
Fox says she has been turned down by some who feel TV would be beneath them, including her artist neighbor. But for more and more artists who have grown up seeing their screens as just as valid as any gallery wall, it’s an opportunity too good — and lucrative — to pass up.
Where do judges get their robes? A factory in Chatsworth, usually
This month, 27 new judges have been sworn into state courts all across California. The newly elected jurists raised their right hand, were given assignments to courtrooms, and — for the first time — donned their robes. But where do the robes come from? Turns out, my dad had the answer.
After over 30 years working as a prosecutor in Orange County, my dad got a new job. It took years of planning, fundraising, the occasional family fight and dozens of community meetings, but on June 3, 2014, Jeffrey Malcolm Ferguson was elected a superior court judge in Orange County, California.
"I was getting close to retiring, but I'm not prepared to retire," he said. "And the law has been my life, so I decided one of the most interesting things would be to become a judge, and take a different seat in the same courtroom that I've spent the last 31 years in."
At 64, my Dad became the first person in my family to run and get elected to public office.
And when you're elected judge, the state doesn't just hand you a courtroom and a gavel. There are orientations and classes (most of them in San Francisco), ceremonies and financial affairs to get in order.
And then there's the robe — a custom-made, $324 garment paid for out of pocket. Judges buy one robe at a time, generally, and the measurement details get more specific than you might think. I met my dad a few weeks ago when he was being fitted for the robe at home.
"These little factors, actually make a difference in the comfort level," he said. "You're not just standing in it, you're sitting in it all day. And you're sweeping your arms around the bench — gesticulating, I imagine."
Like most local judges' robes, my dad's came from Academic Apparel in Chatsworth. They do robes of all kinds: judicial robes, choir robes and, like the name implies, graduation robes. The company has contracts with about a third of LAUSD schools.
Academic is the only business of its kind in Los Angeles. It employs a little over two dozen people and has been in business for almost 70 years. Evelyn Cronan co-owns Academic. She said my dad's robe might look a little like the one I wore at graduation — but there's a world of difference between the two.
Whereas most graduation gowns come to Academic from China, the Cronan family makes their judicial robes from scratch. It starts out as a giant sheet of plain back fabric that gets measured, cut, sewn, pleated and measured — over and over again until it looks perfect. The process takes an entire day.
Academic manufactures robes for judges all over the place — all sizes, shapes and even colors. Judges sometimes order pink, purple and green robes, where those kinds of robes are allowed.
Special requests usually aren't a problem: extra pockets, a gun holster... a magician once asked for a rabbit pocket. "That was probably the most unusual, a rabbit," said Cronan. "How big does an opening have to be for a rabbit?"
A bulletproof vest company once approached Academic about making bulletproof judges robes — none have been made, but Academic remains interested.
They've designed robes for Judge Judy (she's ordered about 10), almost every other TV judge, and remember the OJ Simpson trial? Judge Lance Ito wore an Academic robe — almost giving the company its big break on a major network TV show.
"When they had the trial, the OJ trial, they were looking for stories on anything they could. So they were gonna do a story on Judge Ito's robe," said Cronan. "They came in here and filmed everything and interviewed us, filmed everything — it would've been our big moment on television except that the jury came in!"
And what about the final product? My dad says it was well worth the money spent.
"The robe fits great. The measurements were great," he said. "When I put on the robe, I haven't noticed any change in my personality, yet."