Photo by lilypenelope

Photo by lilypenelope

A sweet fragrance floating in the air. Vanilla? Repetition. Of rolled leaves. In a cigar store. With my friends Don and Jimmy. Photo by lilypenelope

"Ok Tiger! Listen carefully: I'll be on vacation from tomorrow til the 14th so pleeeeeease, try to be nice while I'm gone. Get in no trouble. Dont eat any shoes. Dont pee on the neighboor's leg please. While with G&C (my parents) be obedient. Dont jump on their bed as I thought you...you can do that only when they are away, and you know they catch you everytime since you leave your black and white hair on their sheets. Then what? Try also not to eat chewing gums you find at every corner since you probably dont really understand how disgusting it is to take out of your mouth. Steal the apples and peaches you'll find on their table because I always tell you they are good for your health...then act like you have no clue of what they are talking about if they ask you if you ate them.
Ok Tiger, No trouble while I'm gone please!"
Not sure if he actually got the point!!! :-))) But still...who cares...he is such an adorable dog!! Unless he eats my shoes....
Photo by lilypenelope

A walk on the beach. The city behind me. The horizon in front of me. Water in-between. The sound-{s} of nature. Thoughts are flying. In space. The end of Land - "Finisterrae", the beginning of a new "state": Imagination. Photo by lilypenelope

The sky is infite. That's what we all are used to say. Where is the line though that divides the limits of the infinite? As you all know I adore staring outside my windows. Not really in a voyeuristic way...really! I just look at the sky thinking "that freak of a weatherman was wrong again". I look outside, I admire the beautiful everchanging color of our everyday roof, the sky. I look at the birds flying, I listen to them sing. I look at the planes flying and I smile trying to imagine where they are going. I dream about me sitting on a plane flying somewhere. Hopefully not next to the old fat lady that made my flight turn into a nightmare. When I found this old picture I took from the top a building in Downtown Los Angeles with my friend Efrem a feeling of joy started running through my body. First of all remembering the adrenaline while we were illegally going onto the roof to shoot some pictures. Then remembering the beauty of the city from a different angle. Ohhh those old billboards!!! Such works of art! There, on top of the roof of a huge building the sky wasn't only above us but right in front of our estatic faces. The billboard was the arrival yet creating a new starting point for our endless imagination. A man made construction in the middle of the sky. In front of us. Sad to realize that from my apt, shifting my eyes from the infinite above to the reality in front of me the line is very visible. Not a line through the infinite. But the line of my bank account going lower and lower. In front of me the taxes Building!
Photo by lilypenelope

Change can happen! Store window along the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles. Shot long time ago, this pic still makes me smile! Photo by lilypenelope

Downtown Los Angeles. A sunny day on top of the Lofts. Photo by lilypenelope

Art creates life. Or is it the opposite? Life creates art? A wall. A message. A work of artistic expression. A wall. Our canvas. The reflection of our life. Yet, the wall, is the symbolic division between public (life) and private (life). A {vertical} line protecting our domestic space. Is this line the embodiment of an artistic verticality? Or simply an absorbent structure of a dual reality? The inner and the outer art? Our mind and our externalization of it? What's behind the wall/canvas? There is where you'll find the answers.

Every face tells us a story. Every face has a history. Interesting faces usually tell us interesting stories. Through ages many painters have represented interesting faces in their work. They externalize emotions. Thoughts. A past that you only can imagine through the feelings their expressions give you.
Something very nice happened to me while I was in LA this past month. I was introduced to the most interesting people I probably ever met in my entire life. Partners in crime: Starbucks, a table next to a fountain and a friend named Don.
Don was my neighbour when I used to live in LA. I haven't seen him for a decade. Then, one morning, thanks to a double espresso urge, I met him at a Starbucks in Marina del Rey. This was last year. We just had few days to catch up. And that was it. This year he was my first thought when I woke up the first morning. I drove to Starbucks and...there he was! LA is no doubt one of the biggest city yet, at that particular "table" life suddently became for me that of the nicest town on earth! Don started to introduce me to all his friends that, day after day would meet there. 1, 2, 3, 4 the group began to grow bigger every day. Every morning I would drive there, and every morning I would meet new people. Their kindness, their positive mood, their histories, their ideas and yes...their faces immediately fascinated me. I would stop every single day. For breakfast and later, after my relaxtion at the beach! Sitting there at "the table" was great. The conversations would be different everyday depending on who was there. Art, architecture, religion, music, literature, food, wine, cigars, world tragedies and world beauties. I have to tell you that listening to their conversations was incredibly inspiring. "The Table" became like a city within a city. And each one of the people sitting around it were the most special characters of the movie called "Everyday Life". Don, Jimmy, Ronnie, Keiko, Elaine, Tom, Emmanuel, Sylvia, Johnny, Mary-Ann...ohhh such wonderful people! With such interesting faces! With such interesting stories to tell! One more year...and I'll be back at the table...eager to be part of this amazing group of people. Listening and anticipating like in any great books: anxious to know what the next page will contain!

Walking around the streets of a city it often happens to discover hidden architectural treasures such as this one. The Tower Theatre opened in 1927 with a sneak preview of Warner's "The Jazz Singer". Designed by S. Charles Lee, the Tower was his first major cinema building. A Spanish-Romanesque-Moorish design the building was constructed in a very particular way: long and narrow (only 50 feet wide). 1000 seats and a retail store were contained within the long building. It was the first theatre downtown wired for sound.
Known during the 40's as the Newsreel and later as the Music Hall this theater has been closed for movies since 1988.

The exterior and interior have appeared in many movies such as "Fight Club", "Coyote Ugly", "She's so lovely", "Mambo Kings", "Ed Wood", "Mulholland Drive" (interior), "The Good German" and many other.

It is designated a Historic-Cultural Landmark.

Walking around the most different land/urban-{scapes} of Los Angeles everything becomes apparent. In the end what is the difference between a freeway and a beach? Fluidity is their common denominator.

Yet this is just a poetic statement! The first image was taken with my IPhone while me and my friend Efrem were walking around Downtown LA searching for the perfect spot to shoot some color photos. Chinatown was the first thought. We walked all day. But Chinatown wasn't really colorful. Beside some strange characters we met on our wandering reality was mostly black and white...like me and my friend!!!!!

We found many interesting spots while going back to our car. Same spots as last year...yep...we weren't really creative in the search of something totally new this year, but, obviously something was different. Eventhough we shot many images in the same exact locations as last year the results were brilliantly different. Yes, our point of view, our interpretation, our reading of Downtown (such a fascinating place) was new.

I will post the photographs (those taken with a camera not with a phone!) soon.

But these...these really show two essential details of this city.

Fluidity, movement, horizon-{tality} and yes: colors....!

The city is like a book! It's all about cover/facade. About content. About structure. About stories. About people. About interpretation.

No matter where you are you can read everything that surrounds you the way you want. The way you feel. Walking around the streets/alleys/avenues/boulevards of Los Angeles all of a sudden is like walking in a novel. A continuously changing plot. New characters. Different murderers. Different places. And most of all different interpretations and therefore understandings. Good writers can depitct the city with passion, with carefully structured details. The beauty of a good book is when your imagination and the author's explanation walk hand in hand. You read and yet you dream, adding imaginary pieces to the imaginative process. That's what I call a good book.

And that's what I call a good city: a city where the depicted world, the images that surrounds you, even if clearly presented to you, leave some space for imagination. Your everyday urban novel. A city where walls talk to you. They let you know they are there. A sign telling you "I AM". And you start thinking "Who are you? Who were you? What is your history? What characters gave birth to your story? My story!" But then, after this surreal chat with a sign on the wall you realized that maybe the sign was attempting to tell you something else. You go a little further and then you see something else: it was not I AM but 1 AM.... Now you start it all again. ..."Who are you? What's your story?...."

That's Los Angeles! A city where the images that surrounds you, even if clearly presented to you, leave space to imagination. It's all about reading and interpretation!!

Just a small note/post to tell you I'll be gone til the 14th of august! Finally 2 weeks of pure relaxtion! I really needed it. Happy to go back to my second city. My camera and different lenses are waiting to capture many details, moments, colors, and maybe even imaginary fragrances! I hope I'll be able to record as mach as I can so I can be back with many stories to tell you! I'll be back...like someone else once said!

Finally! I did it!!! I've never thought how a simple "click" could make my day! I work with computers all day long: projects, drawing, emails (personal and office), blog and all the other things I have to deal (or I deal with pleasure) during my daily routine. Work anf fun. Sometimes they are actually one thing. Sometimes not! I click my computer's mouse thousand of times daily. Consciously or automatically. I just do it. Yesterday though one particular click made my day! When the "send" button finally appeared I knew it was a one way thing! I clicked it...and my e-ticket came in 10 seconds later. Los Angeles I am coming back!

So, this is me (sketch by the artist I mentioned in the last post) ...contemplating my horizons! My near future! My trip to LA got me all excited! I will see my friends again, I will be hopefully feel at home for 10 days! Movies, museums, beach, concerts and the insanely junky lovable food I so miss! Tito's Tacos, Johnnie's Pastrami, Pink's, all juicy good stuff I don't find here!

I am looking around frantically! Around with my camera!! How many new details will I discover in my favorite city! LA never stop to impress. The "History of Forgetting" was how Norman Klein described it in a book. It's true. You get used to certain things, visually, perceptually, and even mechanically and then...booooom...one day you wake up and it is no longer there! Almost unbelievable here in Europe! But there...good...something new will always grow. A building, offices, a restaurant or a car dealer. New details=new experience.

So here I am! Waiting to be impressed again! Now that change has come...something new will grow. If it hasn't yet...well...I hope I will grow a little more.

I am into a kicking mood...ah ah ah! To tell you the truth...I have to prepare my taxes...I feel another type of kicking come in!!!

So, here I am! The weekend passed by very fast. Sometimes I wish weekends were actually longer. Went out on friday night, happy hour or happy hourS, dinner and back home at 3am. Did I have fun? No, actually no. Happy hour is always the same thing. Same drinks, same people and same conversations. It's like a copy and paste of reality moments. Small town life. I spend the other 2 days recovering from all of it. From the cheap wine, from the good dinner (that unfortunately made me sick...god... I thought I was going to die!!) and, on top of everything, these past days I tried to recover from the bad and empty conversations I had to take part to. Easy to say "well Lily, change your friends". I know that, I wrote so many posts about the crew that surrounds me!!! Anyway, today back into the same old routine. Work! Work and thoughts. Thoughts and work. I am checking flights on the net. Flights for LA. I am almost positive I'll fly there this summer. I miss the city so much. I miss my friends. I miss having everything outside the door. Movies, museums, food from all over the world, the ocean, the weirdos, places and spaces. Billboards, palm trees, billboards that become like nature itself. Structures and signs. Signs of structures. Ok, back to reality. Outside my window nothing really changed! It's not raining although it's pretty cloudy. The government building is still there. The 3 castles too. The crew that surrounds me is also there. Somewhere. I just hope not too close!!!

I was reading an article on the life of George Simenon the other day. This year is the 20th anniversary of his death. In his life he wrote more than 200 novels 75 of which have the great Commissaire Jules Maigret. I read many of them and still have many to read in my chaotic bookshelves. There is no mystery that I love mysteries and thriller stories. The funny thing though, about Simenon, is that his novels are never too old! Lately I found a book that I bought in LA from another author I love, Raymond Chandler. Unfortunately reading it now, reading about LA wasn't easy. Many buildings, stores, places no longer exist. With your memory you can try to depict this lost heritage of the city but it is harder to keep track of its ongoing path through the everyday. When you read Crais, Woods or Connelly (just to mention some) you are almost there with the characters, you walk on their streets (and I know them), you eat in the same restaurants you maybe went couple of years ago. Yet, talking about history, memory and heritage Los Angeles isn't really a good example since everything is somehow defined in a book called "The history of forgetting" (by my SCI-Arc professor Norman Klein).
With Simenon it's a different thing. Eventhough written between the 30's and the 70's Paris remains the same. Architecture, streets and even some stores! It is easy to be part of a city that, although many years have passed, it gives you the same feelings of the past. The city though it's always depicted as cold, rainy with the windows covered by thin condensation. All of which created a familiar dimension with the reader, maybe his main characteristic of a city filled with mysteries! As historians said, maybe it is because the bad weather is always associated with a refuge, a heater, a pipe that both Simenon and Maigret loved to smoke. The rain and all the shadows of grey become too the main characters of the story. As I always visit Paris when there is the sun it is strange yet fascinating feeling it with rain and fog and yes... murders! I thought that maybe the weather has changed through the years. But maybe not. Is it possible that the dark side of Simenon's novels were dictated by some darkness in his life? Probably. Ultimately you never stop discovering people. As they are like paintings. You see what's presented to you but often not behind. Maybe Paris was really foggy and humid. Or maybe that's how personal feelings were translated.

I just came back from a trip to a new site. We got a new job for a house renewal. A mess but interesting. But these two words got me thinking about the reality of architecture in our global urban context. The other night I got the chance to watch (again) the movie Sidney Pollack did about Frank Gehry "Sketches of Frank Gehry". I like Gehry for one and only thing, the same reason I also adore Zaha Hadid: they both were able to detach themselves from the ordinary, they were able to, in a way, deconstruct the already deconstructed world of architecture. I do not like everything he does. I believe his experimentations got, somehow stucked. Nice Bilbao but then he did the Disney Hall in LA that is basically an exact copy, conceptually talking. There is a fondamental issue in architecture which is...money. Rich clients and you get your creativity going, you can dare doing whatever your creative moment (always thinking about functionality) is telling you. But clients with money are kind of rare. Especially in the economic crisis we find ourselves in right now. People do not really want to invest and if they do they want to spent very little. You can do architecture, projects with little money but the result is usually very simple. Architecture has to be on top of everything functional and then, differet, not ordinary, beautiful, provoking, readable. Yet it is not. People usually describes things as "ugly" or "beautiful", never trying to read what's behind it. Frank Gehry buildings are beautifully different form anything else in a city. They provoke and create strange feelings. If you stand in front of the Disney Hall you'll see the building changing colors with the sun, with clouds and becomes a total different construction when it's raining. That's what I call architecture. ugly or beautiful it needs to respect what's around it. But good architecture has to talk to you, like with human interactions. When they asked Gehry what is architecture this is what he said: "Architecture is a small piece of this human equation, but for those of us who practice it, we believe in its potential to make a difference, to enlighten and to enrich the human experience, to penetrate the barriers of misunderstanding and provide a beautiful context for life's drama". But still...he got luckier then others!!!

I am laughing by myself! My mind went back in 1995, Los Angeles California. I bought the crappiest VW Rabbit existing in Southern California. It was red and all broken up but it was THE deal. I didn't drive it for a long time since it had a terminal disease and I was able to sell it for more than it was worthed clearly shutting up my mouth about its imminent death! But I had funny experiences driving around the coast. Especially with my dearest friend Rob. He once gave me a book called "Travels in Hyperreality". A book-essay written by Umberto Eco. I remember being new to all those terms such as hyperreal, simulation and simulacra, and we would just drive around and talk about it for hours. About all the examples he talked about in his essay: about Las Vegas being a simulated city (and then eventually go there and discuss about it), about the Madonna Inn, known as the kitschest hotel on earth. The best example though of hyperreal: each room representing a place, a simulation of a place...whatever room you chose you'll find yourself in the jungle, in the desert, even in portugal...but you are in San Luis Obispo yet you have the feeling of being somewhere totally different. Then my dear VW would take us to the beach and we would go in the nicest place on earth to eat: Sloopy's in Manhattan beach! What a wonderful place! In there too you would find yourself projected into an almost surreal place! Why am I thinking about my old Rabbit and postmodernity?? simply because I bought a new VW, not a rabbit and while waiting for it I cherish those old good times!

When I was living in LA I found myself wondering, from time to time, why can't we build in the so called "inbetween spaces". So much space in cities is just left there without knowing how to use it. Space, even if it is the tiniest one, has potentials. Either if you build in it or if you plant some green. Many ideas come to mind when talking about small inbetween space. How can you use it? This image is one solution: a building!! Two belgian architects (Pieter Peerlings and Silvia Mertens) found an interesting solution for an inbetween space in Antwerp. 2.5 meters to fill. And that's what they did. With a building composed by 4 containers. Each one is lit by a specific light during the night differentiating every single space (or container). Idea, space, light. The idea is not new, using container to construct a building, since already others have done it. The bast example is, in my opinion, the Freitag Store in Zurich. But here, in Antwerp, the beauty of the project, is about using a space that is left there with no apparent future.