book sculptures.

Anyone who knows me knows one of the things I love most: art created from books.

Altered Books is a series by the Seattle artist Isobell Ouzman, who fishes out throwaways from the trash and hand-me-downs at thrift stores, then transforms them into wondrous scenes using an exacto knife, glue, pens, watercolors and "a lot of love." She takes commissions through her Etsy Shop.

Altered Books (c) Isobelle Ouzmann via Beautiful Decay

Inspired by fossils and other geological delights, Jessica Drenk's series Reading our Remains features books treated with wax and carved into "objects that feel better suited to a natural history museum than a library."

Books--they're for more than just reading, kids.

Art and images (c) Jessica Drenk

More to love:

Cinefamily is hosting a sneak preview of Welcome to Me, the new Kristen Wiig flick. There's a Q&A with director Shiva Piven, but you have to register.

Café Gratitude has a new location in the Arts District.

"Forbidden Fruit" by Patrick Martinez opens tomorrow night at the New Image Art Gallery, 7 p.m.

Now don't go getting any ideas that I can throw away $5K on a dress, but I sure do love this one. A girl can dream.

And here's your Song of the Day, courtesy of The Tallest Man on Earth. The new album Dark Bird is Home comes out on May 12th.

love photos/love film.

Something I learned this week: William Mortensen was a Hollywood photographer in the first half of the 20th century. While he made a living as a set decorator, costumer and studio portraitist, his own photos depicted a world of the dark, the grotesque and the occult. Long before the age of digital magic and filters, he found ways to manipulate his work, so it crossed the boundaries of photography and illustration. This was considered a no-no by the reigning Modernist movement, and its leading figure Ansel Adams referred to Mortensen as "the Anti-Christ."

Feral House, the Seattle-based publisher that loves everything dark, grotesque and occult-related has released two books about Mortensen, Command to Look and American Grotesque.

Photos by William Mortensen via HuffPost

In conjunction with the books' release, our own beloved Cinefamily is hosting a special event tomorrow (Thursday, March 12th)--The Devil's Photographer: William Mortensen and Hollywood. The night includes a 35mm screening of West of Zanzibar directed by Tod Browning (Freaks), who collaborated with Mortensen on the film. Lon Chaney stars as a paralyzed magician who seek revenge on the man who ran away with his wife deep in the jungles of East Africa.

A live score will be provided by Cinefamily accompanist Cliff Retallick, and Mortensen biographer Larry Lytle will be on hand to sign books. Previously unseen works by the artist will be displayed on the back patio.

Note to Hollywood: the "Magician/Jungle/Revenge" genre needs to happen.

sleepy.

Hello! What have you been up to? Here are a few things I've checked out since I last checked in. It's looking to be a rather sleepy summer...just the way I like it.

Over the weekend, I saw Mud with Matthew McConaughey. My friend Gerry was excited to see it. He was big fan of director Jeff Nichols' first film, Take Shelter. 

Three dudes in a boat in a tree. How did it get there? We'll never know.

Mud is a sleepy, Southern-fried kind of movie. An alternate title would be "Men Love Purely, Deeply and Obsessively for All of Time, While Women are the Devil." I'm kidding. Kind of. That seemed to be the theme for most of the movie, however, it did surprise me and became a bit more complex towards the end, more about an adolescent boy trying to grasp the confusing and often sad nature of love as his own feelings begin to awaken. Mud has an emotional and an action climax, and both were powerful.

I ended up liking Mud a lot, a film that gradually settles in and lingers in your mind after you see it. And I find the renaissance of Matthew McConaughey almost as fascinating as that of Tom Cruise.

The soundtrack to Mud was largely performed by the band Lucero. Lead singer, Ben Nichols, is the brother of director, Jeff. Their mom must be so proud.

 The music in Mud sounds exactly like this photo looks. 
Courtesy of luceromusic.com

I mention Lucero, too, because they are one of the few bands grandma (that's me) has seen live (at the Echoplex) in the last decade. They have the unusual distinction of being one of the few bands I prefer to hear recordings of rather than see live. On stage, they come across as very Lynyrd Skynyrd--all tattoos, cigarettes, whiskey, and lumbering Southern rock. But in recordings, their music has more of a haunting, storytelling depth. Very Southern Gothic, and I love that kind of thing.

Some movies to check out after seeing Mud: Tree of Life (featuring lead actor, Tye Sheridan, who was great), Take Shelter (starring Michael Shannon--love him), and an early McConaughey effort (when he was being touted as the new Paul Newman--ahem), John Sayles' Lone Star.

I also attended Cinefamily's showing of Nobuhiko Obayashi's School in the Crosshairs.

As I've noted, Cinefamily is L.A.'s premier, jolly band of film fanatics. And only the die-hards could sit through this one, a flick that meanders with a touch of plot here and there, until exploding in the last 20 minutes into a bat-shit crazy, psychedelic phantasmagoria.

It was great fun listening to Cinefamily founder and director, Hadrian Belove, discuss what he does to bring these rare films to the screen. Because Blu-Ray and digital prints just won't do for the film nerds, he had the 35 mm reels shipped over from Japan. This costs a pretty penny, kiddos. Then he created his own subtitles from scratch, which he projected onto the print. Wow. That's a lot of work. A lot of love, too.

I followed up the event with my own home screening of Obayahsi's earlier classic, House, or Hausu.

Fantasy, Gorgeous, Kung Fu, Melody, some other girls with trippy names, and Blanche, the cat.

House is volume of the Criterion Collection, and I've always been intrigued by its cover. A Criterion horror movie--what could be cooler? But House is so much more--completely genre-bending and beyond definition.

I can't take credit for this, but I read somewhere that Hausu is too absurd to be horrific, and to horrifying to be a comedy. It's a bit like Sam Raimi's Evil Dead, but it's genre-bouncing nature reminds much of one of my favorite films, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

It's interesting how it was filmed before School in the Crosshairs, yet is a more fully realized vision of Obayashi's art. Freakish and psychedelic, terrifying, disturbing and hilarious, House is not a movie you only watch once. Oh no.

Can you think of any other movies that take a bunch of genres and mix them up in blender? If so, I'd love to hear what they are in the comments. I think that could be a fun blog post.

Moving on. Anyone who follows this blog knows I am completely enamored of the book, The Secret Stairs of Los Angeles. Last weekend, I tested out the Beachwood Canyon hike from Charles Fleming's book. What an amazing walk.

This is how we roll in Hollywoodland.

Climbing deep into the heart of the Hollywood Hills.

The staircases throughout Beachwood Canyon are extremely steep, and the stairs themselves are in pristine condition, built from the same granite rocks as the gates to "Hollywoodland."

As long as I've lived in L.A., as re-donk-u-lous as Hollywood has become, I still can't imagine this being the view from your back yard. Holy moly.

Ah, to live in Fantasyland. Oh wait, I do.

Fairy tale castles are everywhere in the Hills. You always see them in the distance from the 101, driving into Hollywood from the Valley. I've always loved that view.

Behold, Lake Hollywood. Can you believe this is smack 
in the middle of the nation's second largest city?

Guess what? Lake Hollywood is now open to the public. And by "lake," I mean "fenced-in reservoir."

In other news: there is nothing more I love than solving a mystery. And that happened this week...how exciting.

Driving to the Farmer's Market on Sundays, I pass the LOVE ME painted on a building on Fairfax Avenue. You know what I'm talking about. Then about a month ago, while driving through Culver City, I spotted the big love mural painted in the side of a building. I fell in love with it. Ha ha.

This week I find out this is all the work of one Curtis Kulig, a New York photographer and artist. I believe I discovered this after spending a little too much time on Instagram.

Dear L.A., Love me. Love, Curtis Kulig.

But enough about hipster graffiti art. Let's talk music.

 I came upon a couple of cool, new bands, courtesy of 88.5 KCSN. I love this radio station. It's like a slightly edgier, more interesting KCRW. Just one-and-a-quarter turns down the dial.

Behold Clairy Browne and the Bangin' Rackettes. While their name and music are both a bit kitschy, being blatantly in love with the lady soul bands of the 60's, this group still puts out some catchy and delightful tunes. They are from "Down Under." That is slang for "Australia."

Photos via clairybrowne.com

I always find how bands from other nations passionately love American rock music so endearing. A bit of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, a nod to Alabama Shakes and a dash of Janelle Monae, and you've got Clairy Browne.

I don't know if any of that is accurate, but it's what came to my head. While their big video-hit is a tune called Love Letter, I really dig another one called Lean Lanky Daddy, because it reminds me of a song from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. That's the second time I've mentioned that movie in this post. I think it may mean something.

A still from the video for "Love Letter."

I've also been listening to a band called Wake Owl, rekindling my love for alt country. This is what I mostly listened to between 1995 - 2008, until the classical music revival began.

Wake Owl are out of Vancouver, BC. Their sleepy Americana songs could be the score for a movie like..oh, say...Mud.

And now for a little love:

Love the mid-century signs that dot the main drag of Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake. I'm going to take pics of some more and maybe do a little TL write-up. Not necessarily this week, so don't get too excited, but some time before the year ends.

Love this book I picked up a while back at the beautiful Dragon Books rare bookstore when it was still in Bel Air (it's now on Abbot Kinney).

I did a Google image search on it, and this particular cover was nowhere to be found--which kind of thrilled me. Also, Mencken is one of those authors "I really should read." And he has a quote that's always stuck with me: "Misogynist: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another."

Love this photo of Anna Karina. I saw it once, then could never find it again, until it just popped up on Pinterest.

Love jacaranda season. A mystery yet to be solved? How to photograph it in all its amethyst glory.

This is the closest I've come.

Jacaranda blossoms--as close to "snow" as we get in SoCal.

Every blog entry seems to become a bit of an odyssey, but here we are, finally, at the end. Where will our journeys take us next? Only Isabel Archer knows.

See you soon!

transfigured.

Hello! And welcome back. Lot's going on since I last checked in. Let's take a look.

L.A. had a heat wave over the weekend. I wasn't prepared for the 100+ degree temps, and although the sweltering heat makes me crabby, I have to admit it's great for the roses.

Pretty English roses.

So, I closed the door and windows, turned out the lights, blasted the AC and watched a couple of movies I've been wanting to see--Holy Motors and Dark City.

Holy Motors is a film that's all about...film. It's colorful, electric, passionately acted--and doesn't make much sense, in an over-the-top, French auteur kind of way. For film fanatics only--you'll note that's a theme of this post.

Dark City: a grand, empty visual feast. This is the movie that ushered in a decade of dark comic book universes come to life--Sin City, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, etc. They all aspire to be these 40's film noirs set in grim, futuristic worlds--Blade Runner wanna-be's that all fall flat because of drab scripts.

Rufus Sewell--mesmerizing, even when spouting clunky dialogue in an American accent.

What was anything but empty was a performance of Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht by the Salastina Music Society. The piece is one of my top-ten favorites, and Salastina's interpretation of it was thrilling.

Narrated by KUSC's Brian Lauritzen, the first half of the concert was a deconstruction of the piece, relating motifs in Schoenberg's music to the lines of the poem by Richard Dehmel, about a couple who are transformed by a confession during a walk in the woods. Instead of it destroying the relationship, the promise of forgiveness renews their experience with each other and with life. The poem begins:

two people walk through a bare, cold grove

And ends:

two people walk through a lofty, bright night.

After intermission, the opus was performed in its entirety the way it was originally written--for a string sextet (it is often played by a full orchestra, but I feel that it's more powerful as a chamber piece).

Salastina's "Masterpiece Discovery" is a provocative format, breaking down an iconic piece in the first half, performing it in the second. One concert, one piece--a "transfiguring" experience itself. 

Schoenberg painted, too--himself!

I like Salastina Society--now in their third season--very much! I plan to attend their final concert of the season in June, another offering of the Britten 100/LA. Co-creative directors and violinists, Maia Jasper and Kevin Kumar shared the stage with Pacific Symphony violists, Luke Maurer and Meredith Crawford, LACO cellist, Andrew Shulman, and cellist, Rebecca Merblum.

Co-directors Kevin Kumar and Maia Jasper, via Salastina Society.

About a month ago, I took a photo of this mural in Culver City....

...and on my weekly jaunt to the Farmer's Market, I glanced in the window of a jewelry store and spotted the ring below. How crazy! The shop had some lovely artisan jewelry at reasonable prices. I wish I could remember the name. It's the one wedged in between to the two vegetable stalls on the North side.

 
I also had swung by Swingers...ha ha ha. Such a blast from the past. It was the first place I had breakfast when I arrived in L.A 14 years ago. I watched Scott Thompson from The Kids in the Hall eat at the counter. I was officially starstruck.

There was no cooking this past weekend. Too hot. But lots of flowers and picture-taking.

 
My gorgeous, new rug was baptized this weekend, and by "baptized" I mean "barfed on." By the dog. In three separate spots. Sigh.

Still lookin' good.

The big news of the week was that I went to a showing of The Source Family documentary at Cinefamily. All of L.A. was abuzz with the Source Family this week.

So much to talk about! I haven't been to Cinefamily at the Fairfax Silent Movie theater in awhile.

 Sex, drugs, rock n' roll. And God.

I visited the patio and enjoyed the Source Café serving dishes from the original restaurant. Amazing that they were offering vegan and raw delicacies over 40 years ago.

I sampled the raw tacos--so good.

Half the fun of attending a Cinefamily event are the trailers and shorts they preview before the movie. They are always NUTS--again, mostly for those who live only for film and have lost all contact with the real world. I saw a trailer for Nobhiko Obayashi's Schoolgirls in the Crosshairs, aka The Aimed School, which is screening this week, including a special appearance by the director.

Cinefamily's coming attraction: Schoolgirls in the Crosshairs.

The story of the Source Family was fascinating, and the documentary was outstanding. It all started with a man named Jim Baker, who opened what was arguably the first health food restaurant in the U.S on the Sunset Strip, The Source (now the Saddle Ranch Chop House).

Movie stars, rock stars and hippies flocked to The Source. Many, seduced by the charismatic owner, gave up their lives to work there. When Baker re-christened himself "Father Yod," a new movement was born. Father Yod envisioned a Utopian society that was peaceful, spiritual, communal and totally rockin.'
 

All Source Family photos via thesourcedoc.com.

 The film traces the eight-year history of the Family, interviewing its many members. My favorites were Heaven, Sunflower, Orbit and Electra. And of course Isis Aquarian, on whose prolific photographs, films and recordings The Source Family is based.

Father Yod and his bevy of brides.

The movie was followed by a Q-and-A with members of the Family. So much more than a just a screening, The Source Family at Cinefamily offered a full experience of the early 70's Sunset Strip, the kind of counterculture that often flowers in L.A., and the movement's lasting impact--on food and fashion and music. I can totally see The Source Family having the same kind of influence that Grey Gardens has had on popular culture.

American Apparel are big "Yod heads," i.e. Source Family fans.

The Source Family will be in national release this summer, playing here in L.A. at the Sundance Cinemas. Highly recommended for film lovers...of all levels of fanaticism.