Dispatch From LA

Here I Am

More photos from wanderings with Suzanne.  The peeling graffiti posters are mesmerizing.  Somehow shabby and lush all at the same time. 

Here I am.  Hypnotize me!

 

Some parts of the city are dusty and full of melancholy.  Everything is tired and worn.  The houses and buildings lean towards the streets.  Occasionally a bright unruly bougainvilla rambles up a roof, over a fence, into a tree.  A rose bush blooms on a weed-choked median. 

Something green and frilly is growing high up on a window ledge.  An owl roosts on a sidewalk.  Keeping watch.  If I close my eyes I can imagine wings beating up off the pavement at night and rising into a cloudless sky.

From Istanbul:

To see the city in black and white is to see it through the tarnish of history:  the patina of what is old and faded and no longer matters to the rest of the world.  Even the greatest Ottoman architecture has a humble simplicity that suggests an end-of-empire gloom.

Sunny Saturday 76 Degrees

 

Woe and damnation!  An all day grade-level meeting yesterday.  The dark cloud over my heart lifted as I drove home and into the weekend. 

I continue to join digital frames + streetart.   My romp with Suzanne through the city last weekend is still bringing me lots of pleasure and wonderment.  I notice things in the photos I didn't catch the first time around. 

journal pages from last week

The marriage of digital photos & frames is super simple.  There are 317 different ways to slice this apple.  Even a moron or imbecile can do this.  That is to say...  I, Mary Ann Moss, can do it. 

Here is my method in Photoshop CS.  Elements will work too.  I'm sure there is a more proper way to do this, but as in most things, I employ guerilla strategies for figuring things out. ( I'm not taking questions on the process.  So rude of me I know, but I'm too lazy!)  I defer to google if you need more information.

• open both files - photo & frame
• click inside frame with magic eraser tool to create a transparent center
• drag photo to frame - resize to fit if necessary
• drag photo layer below frame layer in layers palette
• move it around to get it exactly where you want it
• add text if you want
• flatten layers

will need to sew up a new journal soon for more daily recordings!

 

Another of my ROD students, Susie, has made a diminutive journal with a BIG heart.  You'll want to GO SEE. 

Sara also has another lovely journal listed on Etsy.

As does JANE.

If someone I know was having a birthday I would SO NOT be sharing these.

 
 

Strange Narratives

Maybe the graffiti posters are to the streets what that dog-eared book is to your night table.  Strange narratives opening  while you sleep.  All the read and unread parts unfolding, drifting.  Settling in new places. 

This pig for instance.  Where's he flying off to?  I want to know.  A meadow?  A cloud?  A nice muddy pen?

And who will he meet along the way?

 

My book idea is gaining traction.  I'll just let it percolate for now.  While I keep dreaming of wheatpaste and peeling paper.  Talking pigs.

This Is What Stenographers Do In Courtrooms

Driving through the streets and finding one cache after another of decaying posters.  It's like  stumbling on a thick seam of diamonds.  Over and over again.

 

Then small snapshots of the same poster.   I'm hooked!  Small records of the street.  Moments in time.  Reminds me of a little fragment of a larger poem.  Here.  This one..

 

This is what stenographers do in courtrooms, too,

alert at their miniature machines taking down every word.

Where there is a silence they sit still as I do, waiting

and listening, fingers resting lightly on the keys.

Under the music I can hear the rush of cars and trucks

on the highway and every so often the new kitten, Felix,

hops into my lap and watches my fingers drumming out

a running record of this particular June Tuesday

So convinced am I that I have found my vocation,

tomorrow I will begin my chronicling earlier, at dawn,

-billy collins

Narrating The City

I've been on the non-stop train.   And this is what I have to show for it.

From epiphyllums to graffiti posters, just that fast.  Who knew?

Street Art Tour

I'm thinking I should catalogue all of my past & present graffiti poster finds.  In a journal. 

Yep.  That's what I 'm thinking.

Blissed Out On Graffiti Posters

Took Suzanne on a graffiti poster tour today.  

To Stand By A River And Go

A new graffiti poster spotted down the street!  When I saw it I thought of how perfectly it went with yesterday's wildfire mosaic, but today's a new day.  I present to you one of the most popular videos on U-tube.  A message of pure joy...from Matt, who writes:

14 months in the making, 42 countries, and a cast of thousands. Thanks to everyone who danced with me.

And another poem from William Stafford, great Kansas poet, and all around good fellow.

Quo Vadis

Sometimes I choose a cloud and let it

cross the sky floating me away.

Or a bird unravels its song and carries me 

as it flies deeper and deeper into the woods.

Is there a way to be gone and still

belong?  Travel that takes you home?

Is that life?  to stand by a river and go.

Which brings me to my next rambling summer thought on this bright hot Los Angeles day. TREES.  Eucalyptus.  This particular species which most resemble the limbs of humans. These I found soaring up across the street from the graffiti poster.  Sometimes a drifting mind sees beautiful things when you aren't looking for them.

Mob Boss

I sure wish I would have had my camera with me this morning as I drove south on Beaudry heading for Wilshire. This is where I hang a right every morning and swing west towards school. The view of downtown is pretty spectacular along this route. I mean, if you don't mind 6 or 12 lanes of merging, crossing traffic. I don't. Plus it's good practice for driving in Rome.
The combination of fog, steel, glass, and light made me gasp. Imagine a lavendar colored fog spinning around the buildings. Shafts of yellow light cutting through the moist air. A cool river of deep buildings and glossy shadows. Morning sun rising up through the shrouded streets as you cruise by. It's visual poetry. Yes it is. My two eyes were the only lense I had, and maybe that was a good thing because my eyes can do what a camera can't. They remember.

I wish I could take a 1 minute video of this part of my drive, this most favorite beautiful slice of my day. 1 minute every day and then replay all of those thousands of minutes when I am 90.

When I reached the school yard the usual suspects galloped out to meet me. Bright with enthusiasm. Eager to help. I hand one my lunch bag, the other my purse. We walk across the long stretch of yard. I point towards downtown. "Look," I say, "Magic."
"Oooooooohhhhhhh," they say, solemnly nodding to me and each other, "Magic."
And it was.

You know what these are. And you know where they came from.
Do I need to say more?

You know how when you start writing down your dreams you start remembering them more and more? And pretty soon you're dreaming these War & Peace epics every night?

It's the exact same thing with graffiti posters.

Who knew?

Gifts. A lovely bird collage from TYN

Tin and wire from PAUL . A necklace for the porch. Stunning. That brothah of mine is a wizard with wire and tin.

Go check out Mother Made at once! I do love to see a baby rolling in paint and...her mama's paintings are beyond fabulous.

9:32 p.m. 64 degrees

Lately on Saturdays, My favorite brothers Tom & Ray on CAR TALK keep me company on public radio while I head out across the long expanse of city. Driving, driving, driving. Trying to remember where I saw the gaping jaws of the graffiti shark and the boombox. Accidently running into Jesus along the way. I hit the motherlode with this one. My shriek of laughter careened off the buildings and bounced down the sidewalks.

Oh look, a bunny!

The shark. Check.

Birdie on a boom box. Check.

Euthanizing vampires. Great Scott!

Cut across a few lanes of traffic near Chinatown to pull over for this snowy scene. Imagine if you will, an abundantly sunny LA, windows down, palms swaying in the balmy breeze and the Swiss Alps looming on the horizon. Here is a city that comes when I call. A place that knows just the right thing to rouse me out of hibernating tendencies.

Then home with energy for the visual journal.

And a box of pirate treasure from eb .

A good day all around. Now let me get back to the important business at hand. A Charlie Brown Valentine Special.

Talk Amongst Yourselves

The photos are going to do all the talking today. More from my treks over bridges and into downtown.

My inner mute button is stuck in the ON position. But the driving tours continue.

Wordier posts may resume sometime in the near future, but I can't say when. In the meantime talk amongst yourselves.

Storm Track!

This is my kind of forecast! Before I batten down the hatches I have a few images I've been meaning to share. An outdoor ornament tree in Silverlake shining in the sun. I was attracted by all of the glittering chaotic oppulence. I'll have an extra large helping of that please.

And maybe a big slice of this succulent & protea wreath.

A clever new graffiti poster caught my eye.

And finally, an unfinished visual journal page. In between bouts of staring into space, puzzling over the coming storm's trajectory & estimated time of landfall, and boarding up the windows of Moss Cottage I barely had any room left over in my crowded mind to wreak any creative havoc. Some days there is more thinking to be done than others.

10:13 p.m. 58 Degrees

Visual journal pages from the past week. And a new art table chair. My other one met with an unfortunate ending last night. Uh...Paul. If you're reading this. No Pilates demonstrations on this chair.

Mailart and a long letter from dear Suzanne in Assisi. I'm vicariously enjoying her months in Italy very very much. I will have to put her on assignment photographing Italian street art for me!

And finally, I took so many photos yesterday on my graffiti bridge excursion that I wanted to share a few more.

See the little waving fellow? Did you know those little stickers were called street logos? I didn't. Here in LA you see them on all sorts of street signs, newspaper machines, electrical boxes, anything metal.

I started reading this book the other day in a bookstore and it was so interesting I had to buy it. If you have any interest at all in graffiti art (mine is mostly confined to graffiti posters and stenciled street art) this book is a fascinating read. R. Gordon at Amazon says it better than me:

This is a great book showcasing those who are on the cutting edge of graffiti art. This is not your typical "tags" graffiti. These folks are pushing the envelope, blurring the lines between cartooning, graffiti, and fine art. Visual artists, do yourself a favor and pick up this book. It's full of fresh ideas and talent that will make your head spin.

The Bones Of The City

I headed out early on my expedition. The graffiti from Meeting of Styles was very visible from both sides of the San Fernando Bridge. In addition to the graffiti murals, where entire teams of spray artists work on one giant image, there are also random tags covering this entire neighborhood. Street gangs look to be ruling the roost down here. I'm not a fan of this dog-pissing type of spray that's all about marking one's territory. But the murals are different. The skill it takes to render these giant images is evident on close inspection. Mostly I inspected with my zoom as you can't actually get down into the wash without considerable effort and agility.

Do me a favor will you? Just go LOOK at all the different kind of caps there are for spraying! Come on, it'll only take you a second. Makes it easier to understand how they can render some of these details.

So there it was and I saw it and it was pretty cool to see that much concentrated stylized graffiti, but........I was even more excited by the little jaunt I took up to the top of the freeway bridge that spans the LA River. It felt to me like I was wandering there among the BONES of the city. Oh, you have to really love a place to think this is something special. The bridge was built in 1937. I could go on and on about the stairs I climbed, the way you can climb up to the northbound side of the 110 and look down on the southbound side. Or the way the tunnels look up close, or how most of the LA River runs in this one deep channel, or the rumbling passenger trains on the adjacent bridge. How narrow the pedestrian walkway is. I stayed up thre awhile staring down at the river and the trains, the bridges. Thinking.

A Dreadful Inconvenience

Enjoying the last week of my luxurious 42 day vacation. As the Spanish proverb goes "How beautiful it is to do nothing and then rest afterward." Which leads me to my next conclusion. That being, that I should really have another 6 weeks off to rest. I do nothing remarkably well. And it really IS terribly tiring this doing of nothing.

What a dreadful inconvenience work is turning out to be. I can imagine all of my little alligators gnashing their teeth and expectantly swinging their reptilian tails. They generally hate all of this boring free time. They'd much prefer to be asking me questions, writing me notes about the horrible crimes their classmates are committing, chasing each other around on the school yard, skinning knees, losing baby teeth, growing big teeth, and listening to me read the ongoing saga of Captain Underpants.

While I was doing nothing last week I worked in my visual journal. Today I cut some more sillouette stencils. I am enjoying those more and more. Will post some of those tomorrow. That is, after I get back from my pre-dawn romp through LA. Monk's Sister is booting me out of the house bright and early. She will not let anyone come between her and her Murphy's Oil Soap. Hopefully in my bleary-eyed confusion my field trip to see the muralled walls of the LA river will be a success. I found out about THIS after the fact from a flyer at the library. It's not far from my Highland Park digs. Hopefully a train won't rumble by when I'm on that bridge. Great photos of Meeting of Styles at the Friends of the LA River (FOLAR) HERE My favorite is the ship on top of the weathervane.

Check out all THESE shades of spraypaint you can order online. Click on paint in the upper left hand corner. Love the different shades of grey. Who knew?

I nabbed these photos off the ARts & Events site, but I'd like to see what I can get myself from the San Fernando Bridge.

More from last week's journal.

If you have a little time to kill you may want to GO HERE NOW and take a look at this interesting fellow's work using toothpicks and nails. Whaaaa? Close your mouth.

Chances are good that you've visited THIS wildly funny blog. JUDY told me about it. Speaking of which, have you seen her encaustic work lately and her amber shellac experiments and her scratching waxy writing and her....HUH? Have you?

From LISA & CARLA'S blogs (both outstanding) I learned about MAIRA
Oh, the never ending spinning blog galaxy. It really is something to see.

48 Hours

Oh Friday, sweet Friday you are the apple of my eye. I've got 48 hours stretched in a long ribbon in front of me like nobody's business. The wild herd of baby horses has been bedded down for the night. Plenty of water and oats and alfalpha and apples and stories to last them until Monday. Now this wrangler can take off the spurs, chaps, and gloves. Empty all the chewed up pencil nubs out of my pocket, unfold all the love letters, and start my itty bitty vacation.

First on the agenda? Reworking this cardboard into another Spraypaint Manifesto Portfolio Thing (with the help of some red duct tape). I added a few more stencils and masks.

On my way home this GIANT graffit poster/stencil caught my eye. RIDICULOUS!
Don't you think an older female companion in red looking his direction would be cool on the other side of this metal box?

Or maybe this densely patterned poster, uh I mean paper, would look nice near the masked man.

Okay, enough of that tomfoolery. Get over to this blog this instant and tell me you don't want to stay awhile. Elizabeth Bunsen really knows how to sass up a blog. For one thing her photos are seriously big. I am a big fan of not having to squint to see detail. For another thing.......oh hell, just get over there and see for yourself already.

I just connected with another visually appealing blog last week. Rodrigvitz Style is way past cool. And look at these aprons! Who doesn't love bright splashy oilcloth?

Finally, I just bought a gorgeous piece of art from YALLENA I am smitten with these botanically minded beauties. You better scoot on over and have a look for yourself.

Now isn't that a nice way to start your weekend?