Landscape of constant change

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Thursday July 07, 2005

HISTORY
Landscape of constant change
* Southern California's residential dwellings make up the region's defining architectural icons. The art of craftsmanship rules even amid an ever-transforming backdrop of traditional and modern styles.

By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer

The architectural history of the Southern California home is far too rich, innovative and colorful a narrative to fit neatly onto one newspaper page, but the following timeline gathers a variety of important milestones -- beginning with the establishment of the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781 and continuing through the current-day designs of Frank Gehry and Thom Mayne -- into a quick retelling of a fascinating tale.

1781: Pueblo of Los Angeles is established.

1840-60s: Latinos and whites discard the popular one- and two-story adobe style and turn to wood construction, masonry, and to styles from the East Coast and Midwest such as Classical Revival and the Shingle, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles.

1880s: L.A. experiences a population boom fueled by land availability, cheap transportation by newly arrived railroads, and extensive promotion. People arrive in droves from the East Coast and Midwest, bringing their architectural styles with them.

1880s: Mission style, a symbolic attack on California's materialism rooted in Spanish architecture, dominates.

1891: Mission Revival or Mission style becomes symbolic of the region. The first great ode to the Mission is the California Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, but the style quickly spreads across California. A.B. Benton and others design the Mission Inn in Riverside. Residential architects Lester S. Moore and Sumner Hunt are key.

1894: Charles Lummis and other celebrants of Spanish-Mexican culture establish the California Landmarks Club to preserve and restore Catholic mission churches.

1900-15: Rise of the American Craftsman movement in Southern California (alongside Berkeley and Oak Park). Popular in the Arroyo Seco at Pasadena, where it was championed by the intellectual and artistic elite. Even when Charles and Henry Greene and others elevate the Craftsman style to a high art (Gamble House in Pasadena, 1908), it remains a conscious appreciation of the carpenter. The movement emphasizes honesty of materials, hand craftsmanship, and the relationship between house and garden (Blacker House, 1907).

1900-36: Peak years of Irving Gill, an architect associated with the Spanish and Craftsman styles and considered by many to be an early homegrown Modernist. Gill often utilizes the indoor-outdoor space of the pergola. His Dodge House (1916), considered by many to be the first truly modern home in L.A., is demolished in 1970. The Horatio West Court in Santa Monica (1921), four units arranged as a group, still stands.

1905, into the 1920s: Rise of the bungalow and bungalow court, a one- or one-and-a-half-story, single-family home set in a garden. The original idea was to have all activity on first floor, but Southland architects cheated and added kids' space upstairs. In 1911, architect Sylvanus Marston unveils California's first bungalow court in Pasadena, and Lewis B. Easton becomes well known for his bungalow designs.

1907 and on: Beaux Arts movement. East Coast designers such as Stiles Clements, trained in the Parisian-derived Beaux Arts model, are drawn to the Southland's architectural landscape and population boom.

1909: L.A. is first in the U.S. to adopt a comprehensive zoning ordinance.

1909: Frank Lloyd Wright begins his California work by designing George C. Stewart's Montecito house. Wright becomes part of the pre-Columbian Revival (1920s) that happens alongside the Pueblo Revival.

1917-22: Wright's Barnsdall House (Hollyhock House). A variation on his earlier Prairie style into which he inserted Mayan and Zapotec detail, patios and pergolas -- Wright's attempt to forge a whole new style known as "California Romanza."

1920: Planning Commission established for the L.A. area. Some outlying communities create architectural and landscape architectural reviewing agencies; Palos Verdes, for instance, becomes a domain of Spanish Colonial Revivalism. Other popular styles of the decade: Norman French Provincial, English Tudor, Colonial Revival, and later: Monterey Revival, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne.

1920s: Spanish Colonial Revival (more broadly: Mediterranean Revival) reflected romance of California, offered a respite from the horrors of war and the accelerated pace of modern life. Morgan, Walls and Clements was one of several firms to introduce Spanish, Mexican, Churrigueresque and Plateresque forms. Architects most associated with Spanish Colonial Revivalism: George Washington Smith of Montecito, Wallace Neff and Roland Coate.

1920s: Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas draw R.M. Schindler and Richard J. Neutra to L.A. Both work for Wright before beginning their own projects.

1922: Schindler's house built on Kings Road in West Hollywood. The orientation of his complex spaces to nature indicates his effort to create architecture that is uniquely Southern Californian.

1922-26: Schindler builds Lovell Beach House in Newport Beach, one of the celebrated relics of 20th century modern architecture.

1923-24: Wright continued using pre-Columbian stylings in his concrete block houses, ranging from the Millard House ('23) in Pasadena to the Ennis House ('24).

1926: Sowden House by Lloyd Wright (son of Frank). Lloyd begins as a landscape designer before expanding into architecture.

1920s: Population boom imbues L.A. with fashionable architectural and artistic styles. Next to New York, L.A. to this day exhibits more Art Deco than other parts of the U.S.

1920s-70: Neutra is perhaps the most influential modern architect in L.A. See his steel-framed Lovell House in the Hollywood Hills (1929). Perkins House in Pasadena (1955) brings the garden indoors.

1930s: Depression. Architecture curtailed; notable exception: Classical (PWA) Moderne buildings -- mostly government buildings and theaters, and some houses along Los Angeles' Miracle Mile. After the initial shock, the well-to-do resume building houses now emphasizing the Colonial and the Regency over Spanish and Mediterranean Revival modes. Architects Wallace Neff, Paul Williams, Roland E. Coate, John Byers, Edla Muir and H. Roy Kelly develop open interior spaces, then garb them in forms conjuring the past. Hollywood directors and stars continue to favor the Modernists. Neutra builds the Von Sternberg house in Northridge (1936; demolished in 1971) and a house for Anna Sten in the Santa Monica canyon (1934).

End of the 1930s: Cliff May and others develop the California Ranch house, a combination of traditionalist and Modernist modes that would dominate not only Southern California but America after World War II.

1930s: Modernism flourishes. Schindler, Neutra and Lloyd Wright lead the charge, joined by the European expatriates Kem Weber, J.R. Davidson, and Paul Laszlo. By the mid-'30s, a younger contingent emerges: Harwell H. Harris, Gregory Ain, Raphael S. Soriano, Whitney R. Smith, Wayne Williams, A. Quincy Jones, Richard Lind and John Lautner.

1939-45: By end of '42, L.A. has 12 public housing projects, uniquely low-density, in styles ranging from California Ranch house to the International Style Modern. See Neutra's Channel Heights Project (1942).

1941: Wallace Neff continues to work on issues of low-cost housing, designing his igloo-shaped, reinforced concrete Bubble House.

1945-on: Postwar economy and influx of returning veterans stimulates a building boom, mostly of tract housing, in the San Fernando Valley and east toward San Bernardino.

1945-60, on: Smith, Williams, Harris and Jones steer the International Style Modern in a mellow, woodsy direction, sometimes referred to as "soft" or "organic" Modernism.

1945-60: John Entenza and his magazine California Arts and Architecture bring the Modernist aesthetic to the masses. Is the general population interested in the glass-and-steel designs a la Neutra, Soriano, Ain, Davidson, Craig Ellwood, Pierre Koenig and Charles and Ray Eames (who used more prefab materials)? The first six Case Study houses receive 368,554 visitors.

1950s-60s: Crushed by taxes and disinterest, important works by prominent architects are bought by developers, the houses destroyed and the land subdivided, including the Cord estate by Williams and the Otto English estate by Carleton Winslow.

1960s and on: Large developers build "residential communities" on vast, open land holdings utilizing revivalist motifs grafted onto the modest California Ranch house.

1960: Esther McCoy's "Five California Architects" puts Southern California architecture on the map. Profiles: Bernard Maybeck, Gill, Greene and Greene, and Schindler.

1962-today: Frank O. Gehry uses commonplace materials such as exposed wood studs. See his Santa Monica home with its corrugated steel frame and storied use of chain-link fencing on the second floor.

1965: First edition of David Gebhard and Robert Winter's "A Guide to Architecture in Los Angeles and Southern California." Becomes bible of Southland architecture.

1970: Paige Rense takes over as editor-in-chief of L.A.-based Architectural Digest. The magazine grows from a supermarket giveaway (circulation 50,000) to the leading interior design and architecture magazine (circulation 820,000).

1970s: Architect Charles Moore expands consideration of the stucco box traditions in Los Angeles through his projects and teachings at UCLA.

1972: Southern California Institute of Architecture (Sci-Arc) founded by Ray Kappe along with a small number of students, including Michael Rotondi and Thom Mayne.

Mid-1970s: Booming population, traffic, smog and water shortages inspire a surge in city planning. Historic preservation of everything from Victorian architecture of the late 19th century to '30s Streamline Moderne becomes a cause celebre.

1978: Los Angeles Conservancy born from attempts to save the Los Angeles Central Library. Today, it's the largest membership-based historic preservation group in the country.

1970s, on: California Ranch style begins to revert to its Spanish-Mexican roots. Acres of single-story, slant-roofed tract houses spread across the Valley and are joined by similar apartments, condominiums and row houses.

1970s: Before Cesar Pelli leaves L.A. for Yale at the end of the '70s, he produced a variety of buildings that encouraged a specific L.A. brand of high-tech imagery, International Post Modernism and-or deconstructionism.

1970s-90s: A new generation of architects addresses both Modernist and post-Modernist issues in residential projects, including Frederick Fisher (Caplin House, 1978), Mayne, Eric Owen Moss (708 House, 1982), Hodgetts + Fung, and Frank Israel (Goldberg/Bean House 1991).

2004, on: Interplay of Hollywood and L.A. architecture continues: Brad Pitt completes an informal internship with friend and mentor Gehry and signs on to participate in upcoming Gehry projects. In 2005, actor Hayden Christensen tells Britain's Sun newspaper, "I don't find Hollywood interesting, so I'm thinking about studying architecture instead."

2005: Mayne awarded the Pritzker Prize for lifetime achievement in architecture. He is the second L.A. architect to win the highest honor awarded to a living architect (after Gehry in 1989).

*

Sources: Sam Watters, instructor in the USC School of Architecture who is writing a book on Los Angeles houses for Acanthus Press.. Robert Winter, coauthor of "Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide." Thomas Hines, professor of cultural, urban and architectural history in the UCLA department of Architecture and Urban Design. The Los Angeles Conservancy.

From Web to real world

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Thursday June 23, 2005

MIXED MEDIA
From Web to real world

By Steven Barrie-Anthony

AOL Home

www.aol.com

AOL keyword: Home

Too stubborn to hire a decorator? AOL members can try out the Internet portal's self-help home design tool, part of the premium content available only to subscribers using the AOL keyword: Home. The Web-based program doesn't work miracles, but it does help transform two-dimensional fantasies into real-world remodels.

Click to view rooms from different angles, read practical design techniques and participate in message boards. "Home calculators" take the guesswork out of how much paint you'll need for a room, how many yards of carpet for the den or how many shingles to redo the roof. AOL's shopping guide also lists retailers.

Those playgrounds in the sky

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Thursday June 16, 2005

HOME: URBAN OUTDOORS
MODERN LIFE
Those playgrounds in the sky
* In the burgeoning new downtown of lofts and condos, these private aeries offer a place to party, relax or work out -- with great city views. Not everyone is thrilled with the development.

By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer

You can't see Christopher Ulrich, but he can see you. Scan the twilight streets of downtown Los Angeles and you won't spot him. He is at the one place you don't think to look: up. Peering down over the brim of his rooftop.

Downtown has become a hip place to live, no doubt about it. Loft prices have skyrocketed, and most Angelenos know at least one transplant who talks nonstop about the merits of this gritty frontier. Drop by the renaissance after work, however, and you'll be lucky to spot a dozen of the estimated 24,000 residents downtown.

"The streets are bustling with activity all day," says Ulrich, a 32-year-old artist who lives in a Santee Court apartment. "Then all of a sudden, around 5 or 6, everyone's gone."

For many downtowners, rooftops have become the new ground floor. When the streets are empty, "rooftops come alive," says Adam Martin, an events designer who lives in a penthouse in the historic core. "It's almost like 'Mary Poppins,' where you see the chimney sweeps on the roofs. All of the sudden you see Dick Van Dykes dancing across rooftops, all over downtown."

Residents say that sunny days and balmy evenings entice them upward, that even the most industrial-looking rooftop -- crowded by pipes and air-conditioning modules, covered with asphalt -- hosts sunbathing, stargazing, birthday parties and barbecues. Invitations are usually posted in elevators: party, tonight, come.

On "drive-in movie nights," Martin and neighbors watch films projected onto the elevator box protruding from their 4,000-square-foot rooftop. They organize casual concerts. Members of the L.A. Philharmonic once drew a crowd of 100.

They've even staged a rooftop wedding for one of their own: Martin decorated his penthouse with dozens of candles and set out food stations, seating and heat lamps on the rooftop beyond. Neighbors served as bridesmaids and ushers. Financial district skyscrapers glowed in the background.

Developers have been quick to capitalize on the skyward trend, and many of downtown's newly renovated buildings boast a surprising variety of amenities. When Santee Court resident Ulrich needs a breather after painting late into the night, he often grabs a basketball and shoots some hoops on the rooftop court. A bridge leads to another part of the complex, a rooftop with a modest putting green, barbecue area and binoculars that spy the cityscape below. The pool and spa are on yet another rooftop. Still to come: an exercise area, running track and citrus grove.

"This is new for L.A.," says Brad Gwinn, vice president of MJW Investments, which developed the Santee apartment-condo project. "But it's also classic in that this is what people in L.A. are used to: eating outdoors, hanging out with friends."

Though rooftops are most often associated with New York, Gwinn did his research by scouring Portland, Denver and Dallas. Gwinn's latest renovation is Boyle Heights' historic Sears building, which has a rooftop that spans nearly four acres. "Dream away," he says. "We'd like to use all of it."

Residents of downtown's Toy Factory Lofts choose between barbecuing on a rooftop garden filled with colorful flora and soft grass, or luxuriating poolside on the uppermost rooftop. On cool evenings, residents warm themselves around a gas fireplace by the pool and take in the panoramic view.

Designers and developers say that the tops of downtown buildings are becoming as malleable as their interiors.

"Now that people have seen a few of these rooftops, there's a tremendous amount of support for imaginative processes like these, for the kinds of things which might originally have been delegated to the Frank Gehrys of the world," says Mia Lehrer, a landscape architect who crafted the rooftops for Santee Court and the Pegasus building.

Successful designs "don't pretend that this is something other than a roof," says developer Gwinn. Pipes and other industrial-looking oddities snake unapologetically among even the fanciest amenities. "They remind you that you're not in a resort, that this is a special 'found place,' that it's something that you've stumbled upon."

Long a prime illustration of a stagnated city center, downtown L.A. "is now becoming an example to other cities which grew quickly and with such disregard for public spaces," Lehrer says. These rooftops "create community in the way that parks create community. A lot of young people here won't be able to have backyards. This is going to be their playground."

Not everybody is thrilled. These rooftops are "private heavens," says Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, chairwoman of the urban planning department at UCLA. "What concerns me is the increasing tendency to take activities which were for hundreds of years part of the public realm, and privatize them. Then we'll have parks only being used by low-income and minority people, and affluent people will use private parks.

"This is not only a moral issue; it is also a practical one. The cost is the vibrancy of the city. The more we segregate cities, the more fear there is that we'll never become a community of citizens, that everybody will follow their own individualistic interests."

Landscape architect Ed Gripp sees the rooftop he's designing for the Pacific Electric Lofts -- slated to include a pool, hot tub, fire pits, cabana areas, gardens, sundecks and a dog run -- as "a way to escape." The lavish space was a major draw for Candice Pascal, 28, who will move downtown from Hollywood when Pacific Electric opens later this month.

"I am very reluctant to walk around here at night, and in some parts, even during the day," Pascal says. She plans on holding monthly rooftop gatherings.

Josh Gray-Emmers, who lives in the Spring Street Towers, grew up in Northridge and thought of downtown as "just some really nice backdrop that Warner Bros. or Paramount use as a set. I didn't know people actually live here." Then four years ago he ventured onto a rooftop party at the Towers, gazed out across the city from above, and felt "absolute awe."

Now the 27-year-old events planner organizes his own rooftop shindigs: 300 friends crowded onto 2,000 square feet last Halloween. It's a simple space -- just Astroturf, tables and chairs, an herb garden, tomatoes in the summer. But, Gray-Emmers says, "It's ours. It's our rooftop community.

"You wouldn't believe how many times I've brought people up here who've spent their whole lives in big mansions in Beverly Hills. You bring them up to the rooftop when the sun's setting, and they're in love."

Downtown is one of the few places in L.A. where this kind of rooftop living is possible, says John Chase, urban designer for West Hollywood. Modernist architecture typical throughout L.A. is ideal for rooftop development, but in Santa Monica or West Hollywood such projects often encounter resistance, Chase says.

Residents worry about noise, neighbors worry about privacy. For the moment, at least, a good majority of Angelenos remain tucked inside their houses instead of frolicking on top of them.

As for downtown, there's no indication of downward motion. Residents and designers fantasize aloud about sky-high bridges that would make rooftops accessible to everyone. References to the Jetsons and the futuristic film "Blade Runner" often follow.

On Saturdays, Hal Bastian stokes the flames. The vice president of the Downtown Center Business Improvement District begins his bimonthly housing tours on the ground, but they inevitably drift upward.

On the rooftops, "mouths are agape," Bastian says. "Even the most dyed-in-the-wool suburbanites say, 'Oh, I can do this.' "

A bridge to tranquillity

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Thursday June 02, 2005

BREATHING ROOM
A bridge to tranquillity

By Steven Barrie-Anthony

Haggard and achy at day's end and still not home. Talk radio blares about another highway shooting, and you think: no wonder. Staring through the windshield, you imagine trading in the car for a helicopter or hovercraft or hot air balloon, anything to avoid the freeways. Anything to float above this. Anywhere but here.

But here you remain. Traffic's not going anywhere. So give in, exit the freeway and park near the Colorado Street Bridge, the graceful concrete arc that traverses the Arroyo Seco at the west end of Old Town Pasadena. Ensconce yourself in one of the span's roomy benches. It's strange to find peace on a bridge, with cars. But there's a Zen tranquillity, a breeze that wafts gently through the columns behind you and smells faintly of honeysuckle.

There's greenery beneath you and on all sides, and mountains to the north, but more eye-catching is the traffic snaking nearby along the 134. It's actually beautiful. And if you lie down on the cool concrete bench, vibrations from passing cars feel like a massage. You might even catch yourself napping.

A life thrown out of balance

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Monday May 16, 2005

FIRST PERSON
A life thrown out of balance
* When vertigo struck, he wanted a precise diagnosis. What he got was frustration.

By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer

At first I dismissed the slight dizziness, nausea and a stuffy feeling in my right ear as an oncoming cold. But walking to my car later that afternoon, the world looked off-kilter: People sped past in a blur, and the sidewalk surprised me by how quickly it rose to meet my feet. I stumbled and hugged a nearby traffic signal pole, intent on finding my bearings. Driving home, the horizon wobbled and everything began to spin.

"You look fine to me," my internist said that evening, as he stared into my ear canal. "Must be an inner ear infection. Take an antihistamine."

But the antihistamine didn't help, and two days later an ear-nose-and-throat specialist ordered some lab tests. A hearing test confirmed what I had already begun to notice -- a slight hearing loss in my right ear. An MRI ruled out the scariest diagnoses, such as a brain tumor and multiple sclerosis.

Finished with the diagnostic rigmarole, I sat waiting for the doctor to explain why exactly his face was swaying back-and-forth and making me feel seasick. When I'm ill, I yearn for a precise scientific explanation for what ails me. What I got instead was an answer steeped in ambiguity: I had Meniere's disease, my doctor said, a relatively rare inner ear disorder whose diagnosis can be confirmed only by an autopsy.

Meniere's, estimated to affect fewer than eight people per 1,000, is not life-threatening -- although incessant vertigo and nausea can make you wish for that autopsy. To anybody unfamiliar with vertigo: Hold a heavy book in outstretched arms, spin quickly for a few minutes, and stop suddenly. Now imagine that sensation coming on without warning and lasting indefinitely.

I prodded the doctor for medical certainties."So I have Meniere's?"

"I can't be sure you have Meniere's."

"Why do you think I have Meniere's?"

"Your symptoms match, and we've ruled out some other diagnoses."

"But you said earlier that Meniere's patients have ringing in their ears. I don't have that."

"Some have tinnitus, some don't."

Most doctors believe that Meniere's disease is closely related to a condition known as hydrops, an excessive buildup of fluid in the inner ear that causes the membranes to inflate like a balloon and damages delicate hearing and balance systems. It is not known what causes hydrops, but hypotheses include allergies, genetic flaws and autoimmune disease.

There is no single diagnostic test for the illness -- a diagnosis is given when doctors rule out diseases with similar symptoms such as Parkinson's or cardiovascular disease -- so many people go through a labyrinth of misdiagnoses before learning about Meniere's. And even when the diagnosis is given, there's little solace in its predictive power: Some people will experience only one episode of Meniere's while others will have occasional episodes, much like migraines. Or it may become the permanent lens through which you experience life. Meniere's sometimes remains confined to one ear, sometimes affects both. It may lead to deafness in the affected ear or ears, or hearing may fluctuate, or it may return to normal.

As I hobbled away from the doctor's office, my symptoms were my only certainty: nausea that seemed to turn my stomach inside-out and a frightening dizziness and lethargy. It's as if a curtain has descended between you and the world. That you're sick and scared isn't nearly the sum of it -- you're also severely and immediately alone.

I wouldn't have wanted to be on the freeway with me, but I made it home somehow, stopping at a drugstore to fill a prescription for the diuretic the doctor had suggested. A diuretic, or "water pill," combined with a drastically low-sodium diet, is the most common treatment for Meniere's -- a combination intended to lesson fluid buildup in the inner ear. Research suggests that a drug and diet regimen provides some relief in up to 80% of Meniere's patients. A variety of surgeries have shown some promise in terms of lessening vertigo, but an uneven rate of success and potential side effects such as deafness keep many patients off the operating table.

Eating a low-sodium diet is far more difficult than simply chucking the salt shaker. Dining out is especially tricky, because restaurants tend to salt pretty much everything. If you're preparing meals at home -- a difficult undertaking while having dizzy spells -- forget most anything that's processed, prepared or canned. No pouring a drink to calm your nerves: Most doctors advise Meniere's patients to avoid alcohol. No caffeine or tobacco, either. And amid all this, you're advised to try to alleviate stress, which is thought to be a trigger for Meniere's attacks.

By the second week, I was pretty much chained to the couch. Too nauseated and dizzy to read, watch TV or listen to music, I stared at the ceiling for much of the day. When the stucco danced and swayed, I covered my eyes with a blanket, but couldn't for the life of me fall asleep. The second week turned into the third and the fourth.

My answering machine was full -- bosses from work and friends wondering what was wrong. All were unfailingly supportive, but I never knew quite what to tell them. "I have Meniere's," I'd say. That's the easy part, but then they inevitably ask "what's that?" How do I explain something that I myself don't understand?

After a month of waiting passively for things to improve, I decided, like many Meniere's patients do, to seek treatments outside of conventional Western medicine. A friend suggested an osteopath, and I found myself lying on a table in his office, letting his fingers gently work their way around my head and neck. The problem, as the osteopath saw it, was that a bone surrounding the inner ear "isn't moving in alignment with the rest of the bones in your skull."

I spent hours on the phone with a renowned homeopath in Berkeley, talking as much about my physical symptoms as about the complex web of emotions surrounding them. I tracked down a tai chi teacher and met her in a parking lot in Chinatown -- and was pleased to find that my symptoms somehow allowed me to follow along and learn the form. (Exercise is often recommended for Meniere's patients.)

An acupuncturist with a wonderfully optimistic bedside manner informed me that "the ear symptoms are secondary to your feelings of exhaustion." He listened to my pulse, told me that my kidneys were weak. I didn't mind the needles.

I can't pinpoint exactly what helped, but somewhere amid all those treatments I began to feel a bit of energy rising up. And it's entirely possible, of course, that my symptoms just eased with time. A trip downstairs to get the mail no longer felt as if I'd run a marathon. Faces stopped wobbling, and I found I could drive again. Two months after the first symptoms emerged, I returned to work.

I'm not completely better. I still feel dizzy occasionally, and my right ear feels congested. But I went on a 5-mile hike the other day, even stopping to leap from a waterfall into chilly water beneath. I climbed out shivering and ready for disaster, but the world didn't go tilt. I grinned all the way back home.

Wise people have said that illness and suffering bear forth wisdom. Perhaps Meniere's has made me wiser, but I can't tell you how exactly, and maybe that's just it: I've become more comfortable with ambiguity. The likelihood that I'll never know for certain what's going on with my body doesn't terrify me as fully as it once did.

Off the floor, onto the walls

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Thursday May 12, 2005

ARTISANS
Off the floor, onto the walls
* With humble linoleum, block print artist Dave Lefner preserves iconic images from Southern California's past.

By Steven Barrie-Anthony, Times Staff Writer

In the few hours before twilight, you can find Dave Lefner driving slowly through Los Angeles' sprawl, peering from the window of his black Ford Explorer, seeking out shadows. Mostly, it's signs that catch his attention: "Liquor!" and "Cigarettes!" and other exclamations written in the twists and turns of neon tubing. The signs are bright and showy in nighttime, but in daylight, rougher edges emerge -- the rust and graffiti of urban decay. Lefner captures it all through his Canon SLR, jotting down the exact time and place of each shot. Dozens of photos and Post-its litter the cab of his SUV.

Scouting and photographing is just the beginning. Lefner then returns to his 2,000-square-foot loft at the Brewery, a massive complex of live-work artist spaces in downtown Los Angeles, and begins the process of linoleum reduction printing, a century-old technique made famous by Picasso that in recent years has been widely abandoned in favor of large-format digital printing. In fact, few artists or printmakers still do linoleum reduction printing, says Richard Duardo, chairman of the Graphic Arts Council at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and himself a master printer.

"We're a dying craft," Duardo says. "Reductive printmaking is a time consuming, tedious process. In this day and age, people don't have that much patience. Artists turn instead to large-format printers, which are glorified Xerox machines. That's why when I see somebody that has mastered this craft, I'm flabbergasted. Lefner has gone beyond being a master printmaker. He's hands down the best linocut printmaker on the West Coast."

The process is mind-numbingly complex, but on a recent afternoon Lefner laughs and chats his way through a printing and makes it look easy.

"I start with a photo of a sign," he explains. "First of all, I look at the shadows." He copies the image by hand onto a piece of paper, then completes a charcoal tracing and flips it over. He rubs the backward image onto a gray slab of linoleum -- yep, the same stuff used as flooring -- and sprays its surface with fixative. He's ready to carve.

Using just two basic knife tools, one with a blade shaped like a V, the other like a U, Lefner slices away the linoleum, discarding pieces into boxes filled with thousands of cuttings. "The first thing I do is incorporate the white of the paper showing through somewhere," he says as he cuts. "I carve those areas away off the block."

When the first carving is finished, he mixes thick oil-based inks until he finds the right hue, which he rolls across the linoleum. Ink blankets the areas that haven't been carved out, and when Lefner hand-cranks the slab through a press standing a few feet away, ambiguous shapes appear on the heavy, cream-colored paper beneath. He prints the edition, rarely numbering more than five, and then the process repeats, each new layer superimposing upon the last, the image becoming clearer with each go-through. There's no room for error; instead of using a fresh piece of linoleum for each printing, Lefner gauges away at the same block.

After five to eight layers of color and two days of drying between each, he steps back to reveal stunningly detailed portraits of the Los Angeles that most of us forget to appreciate -- classic movie marquees, midcentury motor lodge signs, ornate liquor and drugstore facades that are faded, yellowed, marked by time.

People rarely understand the process at first glance, Lefner says. The prints are so realistic-looking that passersby typically assume either some type of photography, or the kind of mass-produced wizardry that pervades the printmaking world. But eyes widen as Lefner explains the laborious process, and this is part of his intent: to reengage the public's dwindling interest in this art by portraying the artist as imbued with the kind of physical know-how, patience and elbow grease that conceptual art and technology have rendered unnecessary.

"There was a day when the artist was revered as a craftsman," says Lefner, 35. "But artists don't do work anymore. I want to get back to that. Everything is so forward-thinking that we're losing our reverence for the past. You have to remember that Picasso could still paint like Rembrandt. In order to abstract, he had to learn that, first."

A typical 20-by-26-inch piece sells for about $850, Lefner says. Most people who collect his work are as intrigued by the back story as by the visual element. "What I love about it is the process he went through," says Stacey Shurgin, a New York real estate developer who owns two Lefner prints. "Once he carves and prints a color, there's no going back. It's almost like the opposite of peeling an onion: He's building the onion in reverse. I'm not someone who's into the arts. His piece was the second piece of art I've ever bought. But since then I've become more interested in what I put on my wall."

Shurgin educates her friends about the process. "If someone doesn't explain to you how it was made, you can miss it," she says.

Eric Lynxwiler, an L.A. urban anthropologist who owns a Lefner print, does the same. "People come into my house and say, 'Nice poster!' " Lynxwiler says. "I tell them, 'It's not a poster! It's a linoleum reduction print. I don't put posters in my house.'"

Lefner's work does more than merely embrace an age-old technique, says Matthew Butterick, an art collector and a student at UCLA law school. "Photographers can easily go to Yosemite and shoot 8-by-10 shots, just like Ansel Adams did," Butterick says. "The difficulty lies in taking the established medium and finding something new to depict. That's what Lefner does: He combines a wonderful old technique with a very modern subject matter and sensibility."

Beyond the rare marriage of an ancient process with a modern aesthetic, Butterick says, Lefner's work also serves as a tool for preservation. "You look at his art, and you feel like you've seen these things before. And you have -- everybody has been down Beverly Boulevard and seen the Spanish Kitchen sign." If you want to see it now, though, you'll have to visit the Lefner print hanging in Butterick's piano room. The original is no more: Of the fabled Spanish Kitchen sign, all that remains is "Spa," a reference to the new tenant's line of business. "Lefner chronicles decay," Butterick says, "but in doing so he's also preserving L.A. history."

This is part of the duality that runs through Lefner's art: He labors over linoleum blocks to create prints that are often misconceived as being birthed by a giant ink-jet printer. He searches Los Angeles for the right facade, the right signage, but the images he immortalizes are the things that most people never remember, except in that deja vu moment when spying a Lefner print.

There are echoes of this duality in Lefner himself. The San Fernando Valley native felt the irony of attending private college prep schools "when I knew that I wanted to be an artist. I felt bad." In high school he led one life as a football player on the state champion team, and another as a burgeoning artist and straight-A student. "Football in high school was the antithesis of art," Lefner says.

Even now when you first see him and his muscled physique and short gelled hair, you think: football player. But then you see that his black T-shirt bears the signature of Jean-Michel Basquiat, notice the art books on his shelves, and remember that first impressions rarely tell the entire truth. This is the case with his art, also. It is a critique of consumerism and vice, but it is also a celebration of urban beauty found where we least expect it.

As Lefner prowls twilight L.A., he notices that the "shadows you see don't look like the signs that cast them. Sometimes they almost look like medieval script." He's reminded of Plato's metaphor of the cave: We're all stuck in a cave that is this world, and we see shadows on the walls cast by the unknown "reality" that exists outdoors. If Lefner looks closely enough at the shadows, maybe he can depict their source? That's the idea. So Angelenos, if the black SUV in front of you is driving too slowly and stopping at every liquor sign on Melrose, don't honk.

That's just Dave Lefner, looking.

*

On display

Dave Lefner will display his linoleum reduction prints during the Brewery Artwalk, an open-studios event by the artist community at 2100 N. Main St. in downtown Los Angeles. The event runs 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission and parking are free. Information: www.breweryartwalk.com.

Shortcut to shopping

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Thursday April 14, 2005

MIXED MEDIA
Shortcut to shopping
* LA Furniture SEEN www.furnitureseen.com

By Steven Barrie-Anthony

IKEA's a godsend for people who want affordable modern furniture and aren't troubled by the idea of wandering by mistake into the wrong house and falling asleep in a look-alike bedroom. But Angelenos who can shell out the bucks for cutting-edge modern design -- and want to save time -- can click their way to LA Furniture SEEN, a user-friendly website that transports modern furniture out of L.A. area showrooms and onto your laptop.

Browse through new designs or narrow results with the handy search feature (specify category, lead time, price range and keyword). Then click on your favorites to view photos, read spec sheets and find a showroom.

Looking for something to sit on that has a Modernist pedigree and an unexpected accent? Check out the blue Pocket Chair from In House Furniture. Hankering for furniture that fits together like a puzzle? Try Urbana's Jumble Ottomans. And if you love the modern look but can't figure out how to integrate it into your space, check out the case studies, where you can see how L.A. architects and designers use featured pieces.