Back for another run... Adams Avenue

Greetings from along time ago…three years and I still don’t write consistently. Once again I will try and push some bemused benighted and perhaps less than benign thoughts.

Last night went to the “Night on Adams” event . Bookstores, art galleries, art supply stores, ice cream shops and most of the other cute places on Adams were open until 9pm and offered deals and special events. Could develop a real Old Town Pasadena vibe if the city would stop throwing all the redevelopment money (not that THAT game can go on for much longer) downtown. But if success would only mean an Urban Outfitters next to Back from Tomboctou - forget about it!

As opposed to any other Saturday night, there didn’t appear to be too much additional activity. But after walking a few blocks east of the 805 bridge clusters of musicians on the sidewalks strumming folky riffs in front of an ice cream store and a pop up store of lady’s apparel in front of Blind Lady Ale House it was obvious that there was a bit more fun tonight.

The real draw was the 20% off sale at Adams Street Books. Found two out of print books by Anthony Blunt (the art historian and soviet spy) on Sicilian Baroque and Borromini. Good times!

Another interest was the exhibit of Tijuana artists at Adams Point Gallery. Called “Tijuana Ahora” it features 11 artists who work in TJ and the gallery claims this is the first exhibit of their work in the US. I wish I had made the opening - group shows are much better with a crowd and more difficult to assess alone, especially if only one piece is included. These brief introductions to the artists are frustrating - not sure how the piece fits in with the rest of their work, if an anomaly (good or bad), or, if unmoved and uncertain what the artist might be trying to do, just not so great.

The group show with a crowd is a bit like sharing tapas - you can quickly find the popular ones and the ones with octopus that some may avoid, but have some unusual combination or flavor. The artist that jumped out at me was Mario Rodriguez. Represented by three densely detailed and overworked pencil sketches, these pieces were like the fever dream of a bored high school student channeling intense and disturbing visions on the back of a school notebook.

Naïve and sophisticated at once, the smudged and then precise pencil shadings open up a world one part de Chirico, one part Dali, a bit of Bosch, maybe some Bruegel. Arcades reminiscent of a Venetian capriccio are haunted by figures watching a black leaden sea that seems to fall off the face of the earth. These could illustrate lost chapters of a Renaissance allegory. The language is gone but the poetry remains.

Less Than Bright

I reference James Wolcott's arch dismissal of the '80s precursor of chick-lit - the phenom of "Bright Lights Big City" and "Less Than Zero" (coke lit?) as a way of setting the stage for the sadly familiar and dusty tropes rolled out at last Thursday's SDMOCA "gallery talk" with Sarah Wookey, Howard Blackson and Michael Stepner.

Sarah Wookey is a choreographer, recently relocated to Los Angeles from the Netherlands via Illinois and Ohio dance degrees. Howard Blackson is a San Diego-based urban planner who has recently left his own firm the join with Stantec, one of the giant octopus AE firms like AEC that are buying up firms all over the states - (this consolidation of smaller and mid size firms into larger corporate hydras is one of the untold stories of current architecture practice), and Michael Stepner, the former City Architect for San Diego (when there was such a position) and general all around point guy for urban studies and land use stuff in San Diego.

There was a moderator, but there was really precious little to moderate. Ms. Wookey earnestly described for us her amazement at arriving in Los Angeles and finding there is a fine grain to the City that is rarely seen in standard descriptions of Los Angeles... that she was intrigued to find these places that were really between the stuff you know about (Freeways, Billboards, Sunset Strip, Venice Beach, the Hollywood sign) and that the stuff was sort of dirty and unkept, and she found that she rather liked that part because she found all this unheralded work by simply walking or, like any good Dutchman, riding her bike! What the fuck is it about people coming from Anywhereinthefnworldistan and insisting on explaining Los Angeles to its benighted residents? I thought these people had been executed during the '84 Olympics.

But I am harsh. The charm and ersatz-worldliness of making one's way through any large city in large part means making your own discoveries and insights that thousands of other wide eyed innocents had previously unearthed long before your peepers took in the scene. Of course the brighter pilgrims would have done some homework and would have read Nathaniel West, Raymond Chandler, Charles Bukowski and Joan Didion. The would know the work of Ed Ruscha, Hockney, Chamberlain, Pettibone, even Millard Sheets. The hater in me wonders why we had to listen to this naif at an Art Museum sponsored lecture instead of surreptiously eavesdropping on the earnest twit with her group of out of town visitors at the Getty Museum coffee shop.

But enough about my problems... Ms. Wookey insisted (at least three times) that her interest in these spaces was romantic and poetic, and that she really couldn't explain how these spaces got this way, exactly why they intrigued her, but that they did and that is what interested her. Well. Maybe that second degree in Economics could help out with that, huh? But she will continue to search these spaces out - her grail to find something significant about Los Angeles outside of freeways, billboards, and one supposes- the taut tan skin of Baywatch lifeguards. Godspeed, Sister! Godspeed!

Mr. Blackson and Mr. Stepner stepped in on occasion, and considering their urban planning backgrounds, I thought they would have been a bit more "me too" about observing those lost places. Hell, they want to be artists too! But they couldn't make the connection between the interest our intrepid artist felt about those lost and vague spaces inbetween, and (drum roll, please) urban redevelopment. Her nostalgia for what was (a deliciously decayed urban sublime mis-en-scene) and her uncertainty about what they are, appears honestly tempered by her fear that once they are seen -especially by someone with her sensibilities and her privilaged ability to describe them to the hoi polli - they will vanish. Well, those spaces inbetween that our inchoate artist was describing is the very life blood of bohemia and artistic recovered memory- the madelaine fragrance merely replaced by the stench of the sweat of the working immigrant poor and the drying piss of the dispossesed.

If Ms. Wookey was Donald Trump, her observations would be read like an analysts report for the next big opportunity for investors. Just find these areas that artists like - eventually the gentrification process will clean the streets and another dream will arrive on Main Street. Of course that pretty dream will fail as well, as all things do, and the cycle will start again.

Once Mr. Stepner and Mr. Blackson found their voices, it was the voice of redevelopment. Smarter, greener, transit-focused and seriously concerned about the plight of the urban working class, but redevelopment nonetheless. Their partner in this was of course Ms. Wookey. As the advance scout, she, and other artists will continue to inadvertantly tame bohemia for redevelopment.

Mr. Blackson is a self-proclaimed New Urbanist, which on the left coast is not considered cool at all. But one of the odd things about the rearguard aesthetics of the New Urbanists is their reaching back to olden days for sustainable practices, something they share with the Greens. Like Christopher Alexander they are frustratingly consistent and wierdly pragmatic (brick stoops everyhere!). But here is one rule to reconsider: An old agricultural practice of allowing the fields to go fallow for 7 years provides an analogy for our current real estate indigestion. Gorging on unripe fruit and planting in depleted soils - well, pick your own metaphor. Our artist was trying to describe that delicious place of promise, the meeting of what was and what will become. The artist allows that potentiality all its grace and promise. I'm not sure what we architects and planners and developers do with the same opportunity. Leave it alone might work.

Ann Jarmusch Shit Canned!

That may be too harsh, but with the continued blood letting at the UT, several arts writers and staffers have been let go, including the recently more than reclusive Ms.Jarmusch. I really hope she was able to get a buyout offer - it has never been clear if she was a stringer or a staffer.

This is a real bummer for architectural discourse in San Diego as we are the largest US city without a fulltime architecture critic at a major newspaper. Oops, Dallas and Phoenix may not have one either… Great company I guess if you like Texans or Zonies.

I never cared for Ms. Jarmusch’s content, but her writing style was crisp, direct and, when her knickers were in a twist about the Port Commission, confrontational. She also was a shameless shill for the UT when needed. Her bizarre and overheated defense of the Copley Addition to the Baggage Handling Building for the downtown Museum of Contemporary Art praised an unbuilt building with purple prose that would have embarrassed the sadly departed Herbert Muschamp.

Though too numerous for my taste, her pieces on San Diego’s ubiquitous Craftsman neighborhoods were always educational and fun. Her other strength was for Historic Preservation, and though that angle may have made Ada Louis Huxtable a career, the pickings for significant buildings left in San Diego are pretty thin. She totally missed the Mid-Century Modern revival and the destruction of important Tiki restaurants (Islands! What a waste!) .

Which leads to my other gripe - her yearly article on Wayne Donaldson and her yearly article on James Hubble. Both admirable architects, each with a great body of work, but with so few articles about architecture in San Diego being published by the UT, her choices - if indeed they were hers to make - struck me as lazy or disinterested in what was going on around her.

San Diego was transformed while she was on duty at the UT and I don’t ever recall her slapping some of the more egregiously ugly buildings that grace downtown. During the “debate” on the Copley building she took a really unnecessary potshot at Carrier Johnson’s condo across the street. Why pick on that one? What gives?

I spent some time rereading her articles on the Broadway Naval Development... Why couldn't she say it was a cluster fuck and be done with it? Oh, no, San Diego deserves a WORLD CLASS waterfront. Gee, didn't Rob Quigley develop a masterful plan for the entire embarcadero about five years ago? Despite her penchant for history, Ms. Jarmush seems to have selective memory about some development proposals.

Great buildings may be printed in the UT, but the coverage is limited to how cool the building is, what the buzz is, how sophisticated the architect is, what furniture has been used, which countries the clients just traveled to, and all that other shit. No analysis, no opinion on how a building works in the City. Get ready for more AP or New York Times reprints of stories about other cities that actually give a damn about the urban environment.

All in all, I kvetch not so much for her, frankly, admirable and straightforward body of work, but the general lack of discourse in the burg.

I'm Trying to Write Right

I’ve been trying too hard. This blogging thing is going to take me some time to get into… I think I’m so spoiled from my previous career - actually being paid to write - that writing for free - and the corollary that you (dear reader) will get what you pay for - will effect both the length and the format of these entries. The magazine or short essay format will give way to shorter snippets. Once this style and format are more or less mastered, I may return to more reasoned, rational, and potentially “better” written entries.
Obviously I had some kind of writers constipation and the result was the first entry. Trying way too hard to make sense of the world after a three year writing hiatus.

You saw the hyped up neo 60’s look the resurrected Orchids and Onions embraced. Perhaps you wondered if they expected- if not a street riot - at least a sit in. Vox populi indeed. A riot between the neo traditional urbanists of North Park and the deconstructivist acolytes of gentrifying Barrio Logan? Or a third wave of late modernist hold outs from Poway fighting in the street? Sadly, the excitement was oversold, and the promise of true dialogue within the design community, and within the larger public remains a pretty dream despite the sincere efforts of the San Diego Architecture Foundation and the AIA.

Those same graphics - a peculiar combination of a ‘60s agitprop featuring a bearded speaker with megaphone and a font style that can only be described as Hello Kitty meets Peter Max- perfectly illustrates the inherent contradiction in this ultimately top down approach to architectural dialogue. Because talking about design is elitist, but everything about the program tried to claim otherwise. It will therefore fail, not at creating controversy, which is very different from dialogue, but at sustaining any interest beyond a couple of cute comments or singling out some particular design gaffe for which everyone who had to good fortune not to be involved with can at least breath a sigh of relief…

Is this program commentary or criticism? Criticism is essentially telling people what you think about things and it's subversive goal is to convince or persuade you (the, uh, informed reader) about what the reader should think about things, or better yet, how to think with ideas rather than unformed opinion - once again these ideas preferably supplied by the kindly writer. Commentary allows one to hide behind "I'm only saying..." and basically get a pass to state half thoughts, half truths and otherwise "offer up for discussion" ideas or halfbaked notions that they (the commentator) doesn't have the guts to claim for his or her own.

Thus, Orchids and Onions. Peeling this "Power to the People" onion was really not fun and really didn't standup to much scrutiny. The erudite readings of today’s cosmopolitan iPhoners or iPodders and Wallpaper subscribers is at serious odds with the opinions of the “man on the street” - particularly when that man is also willing to sign on the Union Tribune’s website in order to vote. The already noted bizarre nostalgia UT- for a time when culture could arise from street action or political action - and equally puzzling ignorance of exactly who those guys behind the megaphone thought they were (Vanguard of the Proletariat, anyone? Shining Path? Red Brigade? Oh, the high jinx! Yes the ‘60s were fun!)illustrates the sincere lack of seriousness. I'm all for cute PR stunts - but this one, especially on the web pages of the UT really rankled. If the program - and the awards ceremony - wants to be, as they use to say back the ‘60s - uh - relevant, they will need to bridge and explore those contradictions instead of relying on recycled revolutionary tropes. Dialogue indeed.

As you might guess, the demographics of the voters must have been skewed towards those who sign their indignant letters to the or the Coronado Eagle with a deservedly proud “U.S.N., Ret.” But no disrespect is intended as the final results were truly skewed by the jury. What? A jury? What about the exalted vox populi? Indeed, the jury posted awards for projects that were not on the original voing website - where did they come from? Where did the jury come from? Who were those people?

While not as sinister as the Magesterium, the good stewards at the San Diego Architecture Foundation apparently wanted to both hedge their bets and sharpen a few political axes. So, in the great tradition of San Diego muddle headedness, they adjudicated on buildings and landscapes with serious headings such as “landscape” or "public art" and left the true vox populi portion of the awards to a single Onion and a single Orchid. I imagine those critical voices were seated somewhere at the AIA’s version of the young peoples’ table at their close to Thanksgiving Day Gala. I should have been there of course. But so what. The buildings are still there, as are the website pictures and though the estimable Keith York from ModernSanDiego.com surely kept the proceedings lively and fun - I suspect that the audience was entirely design professionals intent on congratulating each other. Schmoozateria.

The voting site - which was available only through the Union Tribune’s Sign On San Diego website was unremarkable, unsophisticated and dull. And probably free for the SDAF and the AIA. The UT will do anything to get people to the website and I hope the SDAF realizes it got what it paid for...The single photograph of each project was especially annoying. The good projects look bad and the bad projects look merely dull. There was no context, no stories, no site plans, - nothing other than an isolated image. I mean why not a YouTube video walk around of each building? A bad website is as bad as no website at all, and this one seriously sucked. Not finding any content of interest or information, voters, after logging on (which required UT registration) voters would have fled in boredom to Archinect to complain about the site. The followup article by Roger Showley was as wierd as the entire awards program - I'm still reading it trying to figure out what he was trying to say.

So, with that kvetching out of the way, we'll next review the projects. Projects that are all over the map stylistically, but in retrospect seem to offer some inkling of both the jury's thinking, and what the "people" are thinking. Or not.The SDAF has a tough job. Successfully promoting “architecture” is not the same as successfully criticizing architecture. For that you need a critic.


Labels: Architecture, criticism, orchids and onions, San Diego, san diego american institute of architecture, san diego architecture foundation, union tribune