Madonna Inn, San Luis Obispo

It looks like I fell in love with this pepto bismol pink palace. Here are some highlights. Key card for the Swiss Rock Room.

Swiss Rock Room lamp (in general this space was too dark to obtain a good photograph).

Wall paper in the main building's women's bathroom (shiny).

The restaurant decorated for the Christmas season (enter people gathering for every holiday party within 20 miles).

The quest for odd landscaping continues. A fountain directly across from the famous men's bathroom.

Postcards of all the themed rooms.

Wandering around at night looking at them became a favorite pastime.

Red carpet treatment heading toward the Buffalo Room.

Two doors down from the Cave Man Room.

The infinity pool at dusk (80º all the time = even though it was cool and no higher than 63º, it was a must swim visit).

The pink glow emanating from the pool at night.

One of my favorite details - the bath soap was packaged in a container resembling cake ...

... which produced a photograph of a cardboard box "cake" float.

My favorite image from the Madonna Inn - the tennis courts.

I was also on the hunt to find the ugliest possible decor. I thought it was this photograph of a payphone surrounded by glowing pink but then...

I saw this floral carpet clash. I finally settled on this...

... fake grape chandelier with a sparkly, green foam ceiling.

I hate to say it but I may have aspirations on staying at the Madonna Inn again (perhaps next time on a higher floor in a lighter room that isn't covered with rock walls, though they were ideal for hanging the pool towels).

Robert Heinecken - "Object Matter" at the Hammer Museum

The Hammer Museum is always a mandatory visit in LA especially if one of the key exhibitions is the original "Artist Who Uses Photography" (or one of my biggest inspirations in the sculptural photography department). Ultimately, Heinecken referred to himself as a "paraphotographer" as he combined the photograph with many mediums, a common practice for artists in the 1960s.

Robert Heinecken, Are You Rea Installation

In his essay, "Reality Effects," Matthew Biro writes: "In 1968, Robert Heinecken released one of the signal works of his career: Are You Rea, a portfolio of twenty-five grainy, ghostly, tonally reversed photograms taken from the pages of popular magazines. His introductory text leaves no doubt as to why he is today considered one of the most prescient forerunners of appropriation. Disclosing his debt to Surrealist theory, he professes his interest in “the multiplicity of meanings inherent in aleatory ideas and images” and declares that “these pictures do not represent first hand experiences, but are related to the perhaps more socially important manufactured experiences which are being created daily by the mass media.”

Heinecken's guerrilla interventions displayed as if they were in a newsstand. He once said: “I sometimes visualize myself as a bizarre guerrilla, investing in a kind of humorous warfare in which a series of minimal, direct, invented acts result in a maximum extrinsic effect, but without consistent rationale.”

Robert Heinecken, Fractured Figure Sections, 1967

The Hammer's installation of several of the "figure sections." [enter many ideas for future display.]

Robert Heinecken, Surrealism on TV, 1986 [three of 216 projected slides = timing is everything]

One of the highlights of this exhibition was seeing a singular concept (the ironic combination of imagery from the media) materialize through several methods (slides, photograms of magazine pages, lithography, and so on). This was the first time I had witnessed one of his slide shows and it was memorizing/humorous (particularly when animal and people comparisons were projected).

Robert Heinecken, TV Dinner #10, 1971 [This is very similar to the one I saw repeatedly while working at the Center for Creative Photography. I was surprised the photo paper has been preserved this long.]

Robert Heinecken, Vanishing Photograph (Krims/Doubleday)

I had long heard about the "vanishing photographs" and to see one gradually changing color and disappearing was gratifying. I witnessed a part of the process and was thrilled to see it displayed in full light rather than hidden behind a cloth, much like a daguerreotype or other light sensitive image would have been shown (or hidden) in a contemporary museum.

There were so many other works I wish were included in Object Matter but I know this was not a posthumous retrospective.

Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass"

I watched the spectacle of Levitated Mass online as it was moved from a quarry in Riverside to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art over the period of ten nights in 2012. In person, it is a sight to be hold and very easy to photograph multiple times at every angle.

The image above depicts one of the two entries which, fortunately, only featured five people (rather than two dozen) photographing themselves as Hercules lifting the 21' high, 340 ton monolith over their heads. 

I was curious about support systems in a location so close to the San Andreas Fault.

It was equally important to walk next to the monolith as it was underneath it. The light changed the form drastically from one side to the next. At one moment it resembled an Egyptian pyramid but quickly turned into a prow of a ship.

I suppose I should watch the movie before we discuss Michael Heizer in the earthworks class. Netflix thinks I will only rate it 2.7 so this is not promising.

Museum of Jurassic Technology and Center for Land Use Interpretation

At long last, the Museum of Jurassic Technology was open on a day that I could visit! I was not allowed to take photographs so excuse the minimal visuals.

I have wanted to see this museum for years and reading Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder increased my desire. I was very interested in the elements of display. One of the most distinctive pieces was a mole skeleton placed in a plexi-glass box on a purple satin "pillow." Resting on top was a small photograph of a living mole propped up against a piece of wood. The living and the dead (though both long gone) functioned as one.

Other highlights in the presentation include the viewing devices. There were wooden handled 3-D glasses and 10-12 microscopes to see miniature floral mosaics half the size of a dime. In other exhibits, old rotary phones were available to listen to more information about the objects.

The staircase featured stair dioramas in the wall. There were miniature holograms, a mouse sandwich, a rocket ship with living quarters and a small scale moon with a landscape that did not fully wrap around the sphere. There was a model of a pregnant woman's hands holding a dying creature which would insure her trembling for life. Carvings of religious icons in the eyes of needles were nearly as fascinating as a man barking like a coyote (maybe).

I  cannot wait to return and look forward to adding this to my Los Angeles must-see rotation.

[The bathroom at the Museum of Jurassic Technology (surely they won't be mad at me for posting that).]

Also on the my list was the Center for Land Use Interpretation. I was pleased to visit the mother ship (located next door to the Museum of Jurassic Technology) after calling their phone number twice from the Wendover, Utah outpost to gain access to the combination that would unlock the gallery. I may have learned about too many books to acquire in the gift shop. In late November, I finished Lucy Lippard's Undermining (top right) as part of the reading requirements for the new class I am co-teaching, Space, Land and Concept in Art of the American West. I spent last weekend dissecting Overlook (center) for a powerpoint presentation, learning more about their database than I had known previously.

This day was one of the most rewarding and inspiring art viewing experiences I have had in years. Here's hoping that happens with greater frequency.

Pacific Ocean in December

There are a number of locations in Southern California that are on my Autobiography in Water list. I conquered several in the Los Angeles area in December but will have to return to San Diego at some point in the future to finish gathering documentation. As I was constantly thinking about water, there are surprisingly, 800 images on my iPhone, mostly of this subject matter. Here are half a dozen from California.

One seagull watching lunch consumed in the car - San Simeon, California. [The coldest, wettest day of ten.]

Three photographs from Hermosa Beach on the Winter Solstice.

Nearly everyday there was a surf advisory with waves predicted to be as high as 15-20 feet. I am not sure they achieved that height but they were the largest I have ever seen - Pismo Beach.

California Through the Binoculars

Fog rolling into Los Angeles from Topanga State Park

 Topanga State Park: At first I thought it was a pool but then it was "grass."

Pismo Beach with the horizon sliding to the right*

Pismo Beach

*Missing the ocean today even though it is 41 degrees in the Rust Belt

Random California Photographs Focusing on Something That Resembles Nature

My first desert oasis sighting on the Art Smith Trail, Palm Desert.

Turf at the Imago Gallery, Palm Desert.

A keyhole in the eagle, Palm Desert.

Fresh mulch, Palm Desert.

Madonna Inn, San Luis Obispo.

Yuri Ancarani at the Hammer Museum

Here is an excerpt from Yuri Ancarani's trilogy of short films, La malattia del ferro (The disease of iron) from 2010-2012.

This is the most hypnotizing video I have seen all year. It reminded me of Ed Burtynsky's photographs of the marble mines in Northern Italy and seeing the quarries on the train ride from Florence to Cinque Terre.

The main character in the film is the Italian foreman who is coated in marble dust and sweat. The subtle nuances in sign language (and the resulting actions of the machines) and the potentially dangerous situation both he and the excavators are placed in, will cause one's jaw to drop. Even though this video clip does not do it justice, it was the most detailed resolution and high sound quality of any video I have seen in recent memory. The moment that caused me to gasp had nothing to do with marble crashing but an upclose detail of two of the foreman's missing fingers.

From the Hammer Museum's brochure:

"We are confronted with a massive white marble wall and gigantic excavator claw slowly stretching over the peak and latching onto the top to extract half the wall under the direction of the foreman, who moves back (seen in slow motion) as a chunk of the wall gently falls away and marble dust fills the air, meeting the dense fog... In Il Capo, the tanned, shirtless foreman directs his crew wordlessly, using a series of lyrical hand gestures similar to those of an air traffic controller or a symphony conductor. A series of close-ups reveal his hairy chest, a gold crucifix around his neck, and his deeply wrinkled face. Slowed down, his motions become almost balletic."