Let’s meet architecture’s bright light, Kulapat Yantrasast

Architecture & Design
A very cool architecture event upcoming this Sunday, a benefit for the wonderful Veteran’s Auditorium in Culver City — clearly as a community one of the most progressive outposts of urban design in Los Angeles. Architect Kulapat Yantrasast, founding partner and creative director of wHY, will discuss how his firm enriches projects through design conversations and ...

A hillside wonderland: John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in transition

Architecture & Design
We recently spoke to our friend Kim Glann, Productions Marketing Manager at the beloved John Anson Ford Theatres, managed by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. We learned that the landmark amphitheatre is closed, closed, closed for renovations this summer. Warning: if you go there by mistake, you’ll have to carry your picnic basket across ...

TCM & Starline partner for movie lover’s ramble through Los Angeles

Architecture & Design · Film
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There are two in every crowd, and they usually end up sitting near me: the people who keep talking throughout the movie — or, in this case, the Movie Locations Tour. But on a bright spring morning, when I had the rare chance to play tourist in the city where I live, the gabfest behind ...

To Bozeman, with Bernardo

Architecture & Design · Dance · Film
It’s Bernardo, Anita, Riff, Tony and Maria gone waaay west. Looking forward to sharing the ultimate of urban movie-musicals, “West Side Story,” in an unusual location — on America’s real  West side, Bozeman, Montana. The Academy Award-winning musical will screen at the historic Ellen Theatre, a vintage vaudeville house dating to 1919. The restored theater ...

‘Moonlit Modern’ photography captures eerie Palm Springs 1

Architecture & Design · Visual arts
It’s fun perusing night-owl photographer Tom Blachford‘s portraits of classic Palm Springs mid-century residential architecture. The cheerful pancake-flat homes when portrayed (normally) under a full splash of desert sun by moonbeam ray take on a somewhat cold and menacing aspect. Blachford, 27, not only injects a youthful spin in his “Moonlit Modern” series, but the ...

Four walls hold haunting memories in “An Apartment in Berlin”

Architecture & Design · Film
“An Apartment in Berlin” feels like just the right movie to see after our Sunday visit to the Skirball Center’s Light and Noir, a highly affecting exhibit which through multimedia recounts the lives of emigres and exiles who fled European anti-Semitism and wended their way to Los Angeles to contribute brilliantly in the film industry. ...

Michael Hayden neon sculpture to pop once more on Pershing Square 1

Architecture & Design · Visual arts
Generators of the Cylinder , 1982, Michael Hayden. 270′ x 11′, Cylinders: 4′ x 4′ x 2′, Infrared sensors, holographically etched polycarbonate, stainless steel panels and neon lights Michael Hayden’s iconic light sculpture, “Generators of the Cylinder,” an ultra-bright neon rainbow, will be re-lit for the first time in nearly a decade during a special ...

Classical music meets Burmese art courtesy of Jacaranda

Architecture & Design · Music · Visual arts
A beautiful fundraiser had an unusual focus when Jacaranda, the decade-old Los Angeles contemporary classical music series, hosted an exquisite program of chamber music in a super-cool private home on a recent autumnal Sunday. Rarely viewed works of contemporary Burmese art lent visual, cultural, even political, impact to the event. Jacaranda board chairman Thomas Aujero ...

Ted VanCleave’s tough photographic vision of Los Angeles 2

Architecture & Design · Visual arts
I deeply respond to photographer Ted VanCleave’s recent “Concrete Porn ~ Buildings & Bridges” series, a visual homage to that most unyielding of building mediums, concrete. “My love of concrete architecture began when I visited the Pantheon in Rome. I was in awe of the beautiful, massive concrete dome which is still the world’s largest ...

Review: Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre’s “Dancing at Dunbar” 1

Architecture & Design · Dance · Reviews
“It’s site-specific work, so feel free to walk around so you can see,” offered choreographer Heidi Duckler at the outset of Saturday night’s “Dancing at Dunbar” performance by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre. In doing so, she encouraged her audience to remain active during the site-driven dance event. A full spectrum of Duckler fans and curiosity-seekers ...