ART - Transcends time - J. M. W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775-1851 


Today is the day I "cast off" and can walk again. Strange not being able to walk, not being able to go to the market & pick out my own food, go to the movies, visit the museum. Now that we live in a social media world I can keep up with friends there, but what about the ones that don't "do" social? There's text. Hate that for gabbing. Still love the phone. I want to HEAR your voice, is that all right????!!! 

In many ways I have had a fabulous 4 weeks. How often does one stay home for 4 weeks? I'm grateful for: 

Ina Garten & her BAREFOOT CONTESSA Food Network show which I looked forward to every day at 1 p.m. http://www.barefootcontessa.com  and she has a new book out! 

The beauty of ASHLEY WOODSON BAILEY'S website http://www.ashleywoodsonbailey.com/contact/

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES, http://www.tcm.com my favorite cable channel, whose April festival, Mickey Rooney tribute, MGM celebration with a mass of 4 hour pictures, and John Wayne star of the month marathon has delighted and thrilled me more than I can say. 

My favorite authors: Hemingway, Saul Bellow, Alice Munro, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather and a mass of others who have kept me company, as well as that rear window effect into the building across the street; the couple who has dinner at the same time each evening, the newbies in a place with no furniture, just a tv, the photographers studio and the strobe lights going off in the middle of the night and the view onto the twinkling lights of the terrace next door, and beyond to the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Hills, and the soundtrack of Los Angeles traffic and the bells tolling from the Catholic Church each hour, and not least of all The El Royale presiding over the neighborhood and it's letters in green neon lighting up each evening. I'm grateful. 

But mostly I am grateful for my friends - you all know who you are - who have come bearing food, rugs, flowers, books, good cheer, who have FACEBOOKED and TWEETED and LINKED - ME IN, and emailed, especially my distant friends - who emailed and messaged and linked me and called and PINNED, thank you. 

I can't wait to walk again. 
Walk to my car, to get my hair done, buy new shoes, 
eat out, meet people at the museum, visit my favorite Los Angeles interior stores, 
Nickey Kehoe http://www.nickeykehoe.com
Galerie Half http://www.galeriehalf.com/galerie_half/enter.html
Garde https://www.gardeshop.com
Crate & Barrel http://www.crateandbarrel.com

I can't wait to walk from the bathroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the bedroom, from the bedroom to the taxi to the airport to walk along the gardens and coastal paths of the United Kingdom. 

Today is Poem in your Pocket day, America's poetic celebration. Here's a favorite. 

SEA POPPIES 
by H. D. 

Amber husk 
fluted with gold, 
fruit on the sand 
marked with a rich grain, 

treasure 
spilled near the shrub-pines 
to bleach on the boulders: 

your stalk has caught root 
among wet pebbles 
and drift flung by the sea 
and grated shells 
and split conch-shells. 

Beautiful, wide-spread, 
fire upon leaf, 
what meadow yields 
so fragrant a leaf
as your bright leaf? 

ART - Poem in Your Pocket Day

"I know the place.
It is true.
Everything we do
Corrects the space
Between death and me
and you."


 - Harold Pinter



Tomorrow is   -  POEM IN YOUR POCKET DAY.  

Join the Academy of American Poets in celebration of poetry in America.

 http://www.poets.org 


Log on to find a poem you don't know or something to stumble across what you were meant to see. Whether it's Whitman, Dickinson, Bukowski or a short morsel like the one from Harold Pinter I chose print out a few and put them in your pocket. Surprise your new best friends.

Share your poem on TWITTER with #pocketpoem

twitter.com

ART - What emerges from the fractured ankle

Guess what I've been doing? 

Drawing…

my leg… 

in a cast…

for three long weeks 

after one sweet instant 
when I missed a pushed up 
piece of sidewalk from the gnarly tree roots below on a normal afternoon walk that sent me BOOM! - up in the air sunny skies and baby carriages- look out- and rubber snakes in the grass - LITERALLY a snake in the grass -  and me, right down on the cement. Fractured the ankle and therefore the cast. 

I was given a choice of colour, and, you know, colour has infinite implications. If you read the lacy text on my drawing you'll see a few. 

So I've been busy with crutches and motorized scooters (fabulous) and propped up legs and then of course Turner Classic Movies, THANK GOD. http://www.tcm.com  I'd be going to the TCM festival if it wasn't such a hassle. 

So I content myself to heal while watching Ina Garten, the            BAREFOOT CONTESSA http://www.barefootcontessa.com/default.aspx
cook things like parmesan chicken, (that fabulous green arugla & yellow parmesan) and sea bass with prosciutto (claret red on white fish dotted brown - a painting)  and yellow cake with chocolate icing silky and smooth, and white pizza with arugla. What a wonderful show. I look forward to it every day and there are two of them back to back at one o'clock PST so I can eat my lunch & watch Ina at the same time. 

I mean look at this woman - doesn't she look happy? That's because she is doing what she loves - cooking. 

Food wonderful Food. 

You've seen my posts on restaurant Marino, http://marinorestaurant.net and La Brea Bakery, http://www.labreabakery.com and Joan's On Third http://www.joansonthird.com  which are a few of my LA favorites, but all right, here I am with my leg up and I'm renewing my appreciation for Ina. 

https://www.facebook.com/InaGarten

I "liked" her on Facebook and she responded. That's Ina, not too busy to watch her social media. 

Don't those muffins look appealing?!! 

Thanks Ina. 

2 weeks to go. Love my food.

#lunch at #joansonthird

Turkey meatloaf on a soft roll with aioli. My favorite.

http://www.joansonthird.com

The female

-  "The female is the one who receives something and, with that, creates. The creative principle is the most marvelous thing in the universe."  - Chu Hsi

#labreakfast

Avalon Hotel. Like a swim in a Hockney painting. Excellent food. Brilliant coffee. Free valet parking. Love that. 

http://www.viceroyhotelgroup.com/en/avalon

#quirkyLA - Or What I happened upon in Santa Monica - Louise & Aziz Farnam's art world

Original * Unique * Fun 

And I am just driving north on 26th Street when I am Gobsmacked by Louise and Aziz Farnam's creation. It started with one tile…13 years and 20 million tiles later they have covered the entire bungalow. I had to stop. So will you. 

Queen Victoria and Photography at The Getty Center lent by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

The Getty
http://www.getty.edu

Arrive and lift your eyes to the sky via #evergreen

And Martin Puryear.

Queen Victoria's passion for photography began in the 1840's.
On view in this magnificent show are rare daguerreotypes, private portraits of the Royal Family, and a selection of prints by early masters of photography. 

 This image defines the British Empire.
Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Portrait
July 1893

There are many photographs on view of which none are permitted to be reproduced which, of course, is correct.
 Please go see this exhibition and delight in the interior view of this family. The Queen produced nine children. 

The lovely bougainvillea arbors.

Central Garden created by artist Robert Irwin.

"constantly changing, always whole"

http://www.getty.edu

Mario MARINO - Adventures in Eating - Part 2 - LUNCH!

MARINO on Melrose is bang in the center of a renaissance in the south Hollywood - Larchmont - Hancock Park area.

There are 3 major condo projects going up between Highland and Wilcox Avenue. There are  dozens of independent film, sound and digital companies in the neighborhood, and Paramount Studios and Raleigh Studios, and a farmer's market on Sunday.

There is Larchmont Boulevard with it's spas and banks and restaurants and retail stores, and there is the beacon  - THE EL ROYALE - the 1927 Los Angeles Icon by architect William Douglas Lee that lights up each night at dusk in green neon script and can be seen from every direction.

Downtown is booming and east of La Brea has it's gold stars: MARINO - It's a great place to have lunch in a quiet setting with delicious food.

This cod swims from the cold Norwegian waters all the way to MARINO'S L.A. table.  But you knew that, I told you in part 1, now I'm busy eating.

 Linguine Pescatore


Mario sources the line caught cold water fish, the grass fed meat and the fresh organic vegetables. Carmelo at Pane Pane delivers the bread as he has for 29 years, and I let Mario choose the wine because he knows so much about it.

Listed on Eater & Yelp & Zagat rated at 25 food and called "a local treasure."

The down side? Never on Sunday.


MARINO - Reservations  323-466-8812

http://www.marinorestaurant.net/index.php

#DVF #journeyofadress Diane Von Furstenberg's #wrapdress turns 40

I want to see Diane Von Furstenberg’s JOURNEY OF A DRESS  exhibition at LACMA, because it takes me right 

back to Cincinnati, Ohio, 1975 when I was working in Shillito’s advertising department as a copywriter, having taken off the fringed suede jacket, the newsboy cap and the bell bottoms, and put on DVF's green and white wrap dress to go to work. So I climb in the mini cooper and motor over. 

I love the walk on the promenade past the Broad Contemporary and the Resnick Pavillion to the old May Company that has been turned into the Furstenberg pop up. It’s a blazing path through red columns and palm trees and soothing places to sit and relax with close ups of Ms. Von Furstenberg’s face. Red lips. Blue eyes.  Oh yes.

Inside, the first thing I see is Diane’s portrait wearing THE dress with the caption: 

                      “Feel like a woman, Wear a dress!” 

then floor to ceiling photographs of Diane wearing the dress, showing the dress to buyers, a letter from Diana Vreeland about the dress when she was the editor at Vogue, and a sculpture of THE wrap dress bang in the middle of the aisle. 

The exhibition is so well presented in not only the dresses, but the walls and floors all geometric patterns and chain linked and leopard papered in a room of 4 or 5 massive bays with 198 mannequins all in The Wrap dress; short, long, printed, solid, stenciled with her face, in florals, in bold stripes, in mod prints of celadon blue, black and white, in diamond patterns of turquoise and black, in muted yellow, gray and white mini pattern next to a black dress with yellow and white daisies. I am in heaven.  I am so excited I hardly have time to take in another room of Chuck Close and Avedon photos of Diane and all her Studio 54 co-horts.

   “the women of the land had gone to work - heigh - ho!” 

 The cell rings and I get an invitation to dinner. 

The down side: No dresses in the gift shop. What? 

I’ve got to go get a dress.