Ready For My Close-Up

Ready For My Close-Up

 I saw Nixon in China today. It was a live broadcast from the New York Metropolitan Opera at Frank Sinatra Hall, USC. No doubt it is thrilling in person but the close-ups we got were amazing and I'm sure much more than those in NYC could see even front row center. Peter Sellars himself directed the broadcast and he seemed to have a number of flying cameras at his disposal.

But I digress because this post isn't about opera or Adams but Chase as in Linda Chase. Of course I'm in this too. I'll be your mirror, reflect who you are, in case you don't know. Linda Chase is one of the most chic decorators I've never met. Well, we've met on the phone but really we should meet in person. I know I'm ready for my close-up (look) at Nu-Vignette, Linda's new chic little shop in Summerland.

Linda has a number of my mirror images at Nu-Vingnette and she sent me close-ups (photos) taken in the shop which should whet your appetite for seeing the real thing. If Summerland's too long a drive from where you are go to Amazon or some other bookseller and order Linda's fabulous book on Beidermeier. Yes, she wears a lot of hats. Hats are back, you know?

Is That All There Is?

Is That All There Is?

If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing.

I guess in my case that would be keep painting, although, dancing may well serve as a metaphor for painting or whatever it is you have to do. I think I may have mentioned somewhere in this blog that when I was in art school I avoided painting. It seemed done, effete.

Someone should have told me, yes it's done, it's effete now keep doing it. Of course that could have been me. I could have told myself.

Look at these ridiculous paintings. I can't tell you much about them. They're my copies of some sort of primitive, itinerant, outsider artist's works which I created for a client of Amelia Handegan's. (I'm told they will be installed soon.)

Are they 19th century? 18th? I don't know. Whatever the reference they are now 21st century paintings and they have that kind of exuberance and playfulness that we can't help being attracted to.

Scott Waterman's studio.

Know what I mean?

Going To Extremes

Jefferson Park part of historic West Adams

I'm walking in the dark through my neighborhood (6-6:30 a.m.) most often but on the weekends my schedule gets thrown off like yesterday. Taking advantage of the light I took my camera and went to the extremes. First stop was the Glen Lukens house by Raphael Soriano. It's quite exciting to see progress being made on this bit of architectural history. Someone's restoring it and that's a good thing. Apparently it's the catalyst that gave us stararchitect Frank Gehry.

Glen Lukens

I was taking classes at USC, summer classes in ceramics and art, drawing, art design, and the ceramics teacher -- Glen Lukens at the time -- was having a house designed by Raphael Soriano, and Glen somehow looked at me and said, "I just have another hunch." He said, "I would like you to meet Soriano," and I did, and I watched how Soriano -- a guy with a black suit and a black tie and a beret, you know -- I mean, he was a really funny guy. But there was something about it that excited me, maybe the drama of it, maybe the theater of it, and he knew what he was doing. He was very Miesian. He did very stark things, and that all excited me. Based on Glen's recommendation, I took a class at night in architectural design, and I did really well. I was skipped into second year. (interview)

front of Lukens' Soriano house

two views of Lukens' studio

Lukens house entrance

Now owing to the intent of this blog the question becomes what would I do with this house as a decorative artist, a muralist? What makes sense? I'd need to know more. My commission work is tied to the architecture the setting and the inhabitants. I know Lukens was a potter with a keen interest in ceramic glazes. That's fertile ground for developing a decorative painting scheme but I also thought of the Bauhaus master Oskar Schlemmer who headed the wall painting workshop. Where he was figurative I might substitute plant imagery but I like the general thrust and can see that sort of thing working quite nicely on Soriano's building either inside or outside, perhaps both.

Oskar Schlemmer/Figural Cabinet/version 2/1922

Oskar Schlemmer/Figural Cabinet/1922

Oskar Schlemmer/House of Dr. Rabe/Zwenkau/1930-31

Now walk with me down the street and around the corner to the other extreme, an 1888 farmhouse. It's hard to grasp how little development was here in my neighborhood not to mention Los Angeles when this was built. It was nearly forty years until the much more well known Adamson (dairy farmhouse) was built out in Malibu.

Starr Farmhouse side and cow

Starr Farmshouse facade

two extremes a short walk from my house

It looks like the project is stalled at this point but I serious doubt David is giving up. This house is so plain spoken I'm not sure it could stand a Turkish corner like other houses of the period. Do you see that big window above the front door? That room in there. I'm thinking traditional Japanese. Something plain, minimal, and serene. Otherwise I'm just so afraid this place could turn too Pottery Barnish. Something from the land of the rising sun might be just the thing. 

photo by Pamla J. Eisenberg

What would you do?


UPDATE:


The Oksar Schlemmer idea has been hatched! I painted a children's playroom. Read all about it here:   http://corbuscave.blogspot.com/2011/06/play-room.html

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In This Approximately Infinite Universe

Hammer_lobby.test.03
Originally uploaded by scott_waterman

I am not a number.

Thomas Wright, An original theory or a new hypothesis of the universe,London 1750

Please stand by.

Thank you.

Thomas Wright: An Original Theory or A New Hypothesis of the Universe.
London 1750

Scott Waterman

Walking On Thin Ice

Lake Michigan from the penthouse.

The Navy Pier, another view from the penthouse.

The exterior of 840 Lake Shore Drive.

I might also be dreaming of a boat to help me out of here, a toyboat. Oh, but that's another Yoko Ono song. I'll stick with the thin ice metaphor especially since many of my readers are literally looking at ice and deciding whether or not to walk on it. If you're an artist it's just what you do. Walking on thin ice.

A part of the hall in between my two paintings.
Check it out. (If you can find it!) I'm in Luxe Magazine

My painting in the east rotunda.

The plan view. 

Ok, we're going to Chicago and of course this was winter so all this was ice. Even before I left Los Angeles I knew what I was going to paint but I'd never been to Chicago so I had to go and see the lake. The water, the melting ice, and the fog all blending just as I imagined it. Well, I'm a student of Whistler, don't you know?

My original Photoshop collage proposal.

Warming it up.

My maquette: it was sent to Chicago and returned a little mangled but you get the idea.

Looking into my maquette.

Everyone one of my projects is unique to its placement. I have to think I bring a fresh perspective, an outsider's eyes to the far flung locations where my work resides. Perhaps knowing my time there is brief I quickly distill the essence and serve it up. 

Studio view, Culver City.

The installation process.

On the left, looking east. On the right, looking west.

840 Lake Shore Drive penthouse floor plan.
My work is in the center hallway (in yellow).
My east rotunda painting is the little oval on the right. (see above)
My west rotunda painting is the little circle on the left. (see below)

On the other hand my clients deserve a lot of credit because I'm creating something they've never seen before. That's a leap of faith. Thank you Kara and Jessica! Jessica LaGrange came back to me a second time when her client took the rest of the floor in the building designed by her husband. This time prairie was the inspiration or was it Rothko? 

Prairie

My original proposal for the west rotunda.

My painted maquette for the west rotunda painting

Studio view, Los Angeles. The prairie abstracted.

My installed work, the west rotunda, a Chicago penthouse,
840 Lakes Shore Drive.

See you in the prairie, on the water, and wherever, until next time.