Artists must “imagine how reality could turn out differently,” says Nadya Tolokonnikova.
Not rendering correctly? View this email as a web page here.
Dear DNA Friends,
I hope you’re doing well navigating life's ups and downs. Read on for the fun Design Things To Do.
But before that, art and activism. This past Saturday afternoon, I joined more than 800 people who gathered at the Wende Museum in Culver City to hear from Nadya Tolokonnikova, founder of the Russian feminist performance art group Pussy Riot. Following the death of the heroic Alexei Navalny, she and the museum's management hastily arranged FEAR NOT, a pop-up exhibit created by Tolokonnikova in his memory. Above are two of her 15 artworks, expressing, she said, the juxtaposition of “harsh and radical, cute and feminine, cute and dangerous.”
Tolokonnikova remembered Navalny as a guide and paternal presence for younger activists like herself, who also experienced two years in prison for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." She spoke calmly, forcefully, and with bleak humor about Russia today, the importance of supporting Ukraine, and fighting for democracy (and not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good). She also spoke about art playing a role in critiquing the present and envisioning a better future. As with the Russian Futurists of over a century ago, she said, artists must “imagine how reality could turn out differently.”
Nadya Tolokonnikova surrounded by Fear Not attendees in pink balaclavas. Photo by Frances Anderton
Given Tolokonnikova’s place in the art sphere (she recently married the NFT trader John Caldwell) and her striking persona – she spoke fascinatingly about forging a feminist identity that went from masculine to donning “femininity almost as a drag” – the event attracted a notably stylish crowd. She rounded out the talk by having attendees put on pink balaclavas and stand in front of her artwork for group selfies, sending a collective protest into the universe.
As for the Wende Museum, which laid on extra security for the pop-up, the small museum that started life as a historical archive of the Cold War has become a forum for community engagement. "All our exhibitions and programs take the collections as a starting point to ask critical questions and to make (I hope) meaningful connections between past and present," says chief curator Joes Segal. He added that Tolokonnikova's pop-up also aligns with the themes of the Wende Museum’s Visions of Transcendence exhibition, "highlighting the indomitable power of artistic expression to transcend adversity across various political landscapes.”
Art, activism and fashion fused at Fear Not at the Wende Museum. Photo by Frances Anderton
Design Things To Do
Put a Spring in your Step! The Nowruz Family Festival UCLA's Dickson Court and Royce Hall Sunday, March 10th, 12:00 PM to 5:00 PM; Nowruz Concert, 6:00 PM Royce Hall, UCLA
Fabulous outfits! Spectacle! Singing and Dancing! No, I’m not talking about the Oscars.
Nowruz, or “new day” is on the same day as the Academy Awards. It's the ancient celebration of the vernal equinox by the people of Iran, Afghanistan, Armenia, China, Georgia, India, Tajikistan, Turkey, and other regions. One of the biggest parties takes place at UCLA, where, for the 14th year, the Farhang Foundation will host a daylong program for all ages. Experience traditional music, arts and crafts, dance, food, children's activities, and their signature Grand Haft Sîn display, a lavish arrangement inspired by fertility, rebirth, and prosperity, made with mirrors, eggs, apples, and of course fresh spring flowers.
Free and open to the public. Click here for information. Buy tickets for the evening Nowruz Concert here.
Grand Haft Sîn is among the attractions at Nowruz at UCLA. Image courtesy Farhang Foundation.
Yes, People do Walk in LA A Sidewalk Soirée honoring Deborah Murphy Saturday, March 16th, 5:00 - 8:00 PM Silver Lake Independent JCC, 1110 Bates Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029
Fighting for a crosswalk or removing a driving lane won’t get you sent to the gulag, but it will certainly incur resistance, so props for taking on an entrenched system go to urban designer Deborah Murphy, founder in 1998 of the nonprofit advocacy organization, LA Walks.
Her goal was simple: make the streets less deadly for human beings trying to navigate roads that privilege the car driver (especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods), and do so while emphasizing the pleasures of walking and sharing the streets with fellow pedestrians.
LA Walks pushed for high-visibility crosswalks and other street design safety features. When cicLAvia launched a decade later, they made walking into a fun day out with walkLAvia alongside bicycles. They helped raise awareness of pedestrian deaths on the roads and pushed for the Complete Streets Plan.
Murphy brought savvy to the task with her experience in city planning and knowledge of its Byzantine bureaucracy. After all, tackling sidewalk widening, curb ramps, street lights, street trees, bus shelters, and benches involves agencies with jurisdiction over the public right of way including Streets LA, the Bureaus of Engineering, Street Lighting, and Sanitation; also LA DOT, LA City Planning, Cultural Affairs, CalTrans, and LA Metro.
Now she will be honored by the organization at a Sidewalk Soirée on March 16th.
When Murphy founded LA Walks, pedestrian issues were simply not top of mind for many people in urban design and planning. With rising awareness, along with the advent of mass transit and development on the thoroughfares that necessitates more user-friendly streets, they are, and Murphy is a key player to thank.
Click here for tickets. Follow LA Walks on Instagram.
Deborah Murphy, in vivid green, holds LA Walks identity designed by Colleen Corcoran. Image courtesy LA Walks.
Jack Rogers Hopkins: California Design Maverick On view through September 2024 Opening Reception: Sunday, March 10th, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts, 5131 Carnelian Street, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91701
Jack Rogers Hopkins was a highly original artist-craftsman who somehow honed laminated woods into “three-dimensional sculptural furniture” in the post-war decades. Now his life and work are the subject of an exhibition, opening Sunday at the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation in Rancho Cucamonga.
Hopkins trained in early childhood at his father’s furniture workshop and later taught at the Department of Art at San Diego State College. His passion for making was forged by a family tragedy into “mental, emotional and, perhaps, spiritual therapy,” according to his children, writes the San Diego Union Tribune. Following his death, a wildfire destroyed the family home and took much of his output, though Hopkins had taught his students that “any artist who can’t destroy his own work shouldn’t be an artist.”
View some of his extant ceramics, jewelry, furniture, and sculpture in the exhibition, curated by Katie Nartonis. While at the opening on Sunday, view a film about his life and work, also written and directed by Nartonis. If you can’t make the trip, view his work in the catalog with essays by experts on the West Coast maker movement of the 1960s and ‘70s: Glenn Adamson, Jeffrey Head, Dave Hampton, Jo Lauria, and Nartonis.
Jack Rogers Hopkins seated in his 1971 sculpture Womb Room. Image courtesy of Katie Nartonis.
Optimistic Interiors: A Conversation with Oliver Furth Spring Market, PDC, Keynote talk Wednesday, March 20th, 11:00 AM Silver Screen Theatre, 2nd Floor, Green, Pacific Design Center
You know you'll have fun at a design party in LA when Oliver Furth is there with his merry personality, creative flair, and deep knowledge of design that he wears with lightness. All those qualities can be found in the interiors designed by this fourth-generation Angeleno, and AD100 designer. They are now gathered in a Rizzoli book entitled Op! Optimistic Interiors, to be published next month.
Furth will give the keynote talk at the Pacific Design Center’s Spring Market taking place March 20th and 21st. He will share his theories, life, and design as expressed in OP!, which he defines as, "A hopeful and confident attitude about the future. The planning for a life well-lived. Optimism. Joy. Pop."
Oliver Furth models the OP! life. Portrait by Roger Davies.
Artificial Intelligence: Understanding the Impacts of AI in Design Wednesday, March 20th, 2:00 PM Spring Market, PDC 8687 Melrose Avenue, Blue Building, Summit Furniture, Suite B-135, Los Angeles, CA 90069
Are you using AI? And how? Would you like to know more about its benefits and hazards? If so, come hear a talk at PDC’s Spring Market with Brian Pinkett, Principal of Landry Design Group, known for luxury custom homes; Jeffrey Daniels, architect, and director of the architectural design program at UCLA extension; Primo Orpilla, of the interior design firm O+A.
Dezeen magazine reports that almost half of British architects already use AI for tasks ranging from automation of admin-based tasks to creating virtual environments for testing carbon, energy, water, and waste footprints, which can produce a radical reduction in costly physical construction. But will an algorithm ever be able to consider the emotional intangibles—nostalgia, empathy—that a human designer would?
These are just some of the themes raised by AI in connection with design (not to mention the pressing issues of authorship and copyright) that we will discuss in the upcoming conversation that I will moderate.
Click here for information. RSVP to BPPR@gmail.com.
Friend or Foe: How will AI affect urban development in LA? Thursday, March 21st, 2024 Helms Design Center 7:45 AM - 9:30 AM
On Wednesday, March 20th, learn about AI as it relates to architecture and interiors. On Thursday, March 21st, take it up in scale to urban design. The Westside Urban Forum, a group of planners, builders, and designers, will gather at Helms Design Center for a discussion entitled Friend or Foe: How will AI affect urban development in LA?
Could AI technologies take on the “urgent societal challenge” of housing and somehow “accelerate” its development, ask the organizers? Can it help make better-informed choices in urban planning? Is a rapid visualization of design concepts building a stronger community engagement? But what are the potential risks? Arrive early for coffee and the typically delicious breakfast wraps served at WUF’s morning meetings.
Open to WUF members and non-members, though RSVP is required. Click hereto book tickets.
On the docket: Two Events at the Neutra Offices Well at Work: Saturday, March 30th, 10:00 AM ED1: Friend or Foe?: Saturday, March 30th, 10:00 AM 2379 Glendale Boulevard, LA
The former office of the architect Richard Neutra in Silver Lake has become a base for the Neutra Institute for Survival for Design, founded by Neutra and now being sustained by his son, Raymond, an epidemiologist who is very concerned with the connection between public health and the built environment.
I'll share more details in my next newsletter but two great events are coming up later this month. One is a talk about being Well at Work: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace, taking place on Saturday, March 23rd, at 10:00 AM. Click here to sign up.
The other is the following week, Saturday, March 30th, also at 10:00 AM, and takes on ED1, or Executive Directive 1, and its impacts, both good and possibly bad, on housing and the cityscape. It's part of the Awesome and Affordable project I'm working on with FORT: LA and David Kersh, and I'll moderate. Click here to sign up for ED1: Friend or Foe?.
As this newsletter went to press, I learned that Japanese architect Riken Yamamoto has been selected as the winner of the most prestigious global architecture award, the Pritzker Prize. Past Laureate Alejandro Aravena described Yamamoto's homes, schools, university campuses, civic buildings, museums, and a translucent fire station as a "background and foreground to everyday life." In stark, somewhat austere structures, the architect creates, said Aravena, "a blurring of public and private spaces" and "brings dignity to everyday life. Normality becomes extraordinary. Calmness leads to splendor."
This month, the architecture world lost an esteemed designer. Antoine Predock, who died Saturday, March 2nd at age 87, was the Albuquerque-based architect who sought a sense of rootedness to place with buildings designed to express the force of their landscape, with muteness and grandeur. While he lived in (and became associated with) the American West, he worked worldwide at the scale of lone houses to the San Diego Padres’ baseball stadium and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. But his soul was in New Mexico where he lived, taught, and built, prompting Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller to declare June 24, 2021, Antoine Predock Day. His spirit is carried forward by two sons, Jason, a lighting designer, and Hadrian, also an architect, artist and professor at USC, and three grandchildren.
I once asked the style connoisseur Simon Doonan how to age well. Dress to excess, he commanded, especially with oversized eyeglasses. And who modeled this strategy best? His beloved Iris Apfel. The interior designer turned textiles dealer turned late-in-life fashion plate died last week at 102. She personified a life well lived and extremely long, despite having once had a four-pack-a-day smoking habit.
There was much to see at Frieze LA this past weekend, but during my visit, the biggest crowd-pleaser appeared to be this dog and its equally decorative pet parent. I am sure Iris Apfel would have approved of the floral fashion chutzpah.
Sometimes the visitors are as artful as the art. Photo by Frances Anderton
I think that's it for now. Thank you as always for reading this newsletter and keep me posted about news and design events.
.png?upscale=true&width=1200&upscale=true&name=email(600x100).png "email(600x100)")
Deborah Murphy, in vivid green, holds LA Walks identity designed by Colleen Corcoran. Image courtesy LA Walks.
Jack Rogers Hopkins seated in his 1971 sculpture Womb Room. Image courtesy of Katie Nartonis.
Oliver Furth models the OP! life. Portrait by Roger Davies.
AI and the city. Image courtesy of 
%20(17).png?upscale=true&width=1200&upscale=true&name=email(600x74)%20(17).png "email(600x74) (17)")
.png?upscale=true&width=1200&upscale=true&name=email(600x74).png "email(600x74)")
