So to kill time, we start walking around. Around the corner from the gallery, there's this really cool market place. It has a roof, but is otherwise open...like an old warehouse that cut off the front and back. It was full of all sorts of food. Produce, meats, peppers, dried goods, and all sorts of cooked foods. Lots of Asian cuisine, but mostly fast food. After our 3 hour drive (with traffic) we look for a restroom in this place. We find one and it was "guarded" by this security person who says it's gonna cost a quarter to go in the bathroom. I'm thinking 'this guy's funny and why would he only charge a quarter if a quarter doesn't go far (not even an hour for parking)'. Oh no, but he wasn't kidding. There was a coin taker on the door for quarters ONLY! Can you believe it? Only in America do you pay a quarter to pee!
Bathroom shenanigans aside, we continue to walk around. We stumble upon an ad for the LA Philharmonic orchestra with the conductor Gustavo Dudamel. Eva says she's heard great things. So we buy tickets for the evening's show at the box office. (More to come on this.)
We head back to the gallery which is now open. It's fairly small. The exhibit is on the Mexican Revolution and has about 15 or so pieces ranging from sculpture to video art to sound/video art to canvas. The most striking piece of art to me was a yellow dress in the middle of the room. Each piece had a description by it. This dress was made of Kevlar! It was supposed to represent the typical dress a woman in the Mexican army would wear while fighting. Yes they wore dresses in the army. The Mexican revolution was around 1910 but Kevlar wasn't invented until 1965. So very interesting twist on history meets art.
I'm sure it was a no no to take a picture...but I like to live on the wild side. Who would believe me that I saw a yellow dress made of Kevlar?
So next, we have a quick bite at a sushi place. We share the best spider roll I've ever had and a roll with Kobe beef on it. Steak plus sushi...YUM!
So the next stop is Santa Monica. There were a series of art galleries there in what looked like were OLD industrial buildings/warehouses converted into little galleries (probably around 60 or so).
We only visited a few. The first was of this guy named Vik Muniz. Some of his pieces are made of arranging junk. Like the one below.
Ok, I know nudes..right all art is nude. When you get close to look at the materials used to make this, you find that it is literally JUNK! The artist had a warehouse of space and all this junk. He just arranges it into forms and such and then takes a picture of it. That's so cool! Like the little dots on the people's legs are actually nails and screws and such. There's a shopping cart in here somewhere. As you get associated with the items in the picture, you get a concept of how big this must have been originally!
Ok, so one of the next galleries was JEWELRY. Those who really know me know I LOVE jewelry! There was this stone called moonstone. It caught my eye. There was this beautiful necklace with moonstone on it, but it was running about $3000 with the little diamonds incorporated into it. A LITTLE out of the price range! But simply beautiful. A girl can dream, right?
Gorgeous!
We went to a few other galleries. Not too noteworthy. Although, there was one other gallery that had 4 pieces of art in a series that I'm not sure I will soon forget. They were a bit sexually explicit and made a HUGE statement. They were vases with JESUS written huge across the top and all this catholic symbolism including priests in full robes giving sermons on them. Then on the other side of the vase were images of sex scenes involving catholic priests relating to the whole catholic priests and little boys. The author had a note that it was a neutral position on the subject, but was just using irony in an artform. Very "interesting"! Well, I guess it IS california. It appears quite a bit goes! Sorry, no pics of this art.
Next stop was an early dinner at "The Yard". This is a restaurant opened by Bravo's Top Chef CJ Chris Jacobson. It was a bar like atmosphere that had American style tappas. Eva and I shared a duck confit and skirt steak. Awesome!
Next we head back to downtown LA to go see the LA Philharmonic Orchestra. It took us 1.5 hours to go about 10 miles! I've never seen so much traffic on a Friday night at 6:30!
We finally make it to the show just in time for the 8 o'clock start. First, I don't think there was a bad seat in the house. Not like the Aronoff where nose bleed seats are REALLY bad. You can see just fine from the highest balcony. We were on the side.
Awww, this pic did not turn out the way I wanted. On the right there is this HUGE organ with the pipes surrounded by wood and going in all different directions. Also, there is seating behind the orchestra to maximize good seating. Actually, a good idea! This was an interesting performance. It was the most dissonant sounding set of music I have ever heard. It only harmonized at the end of SOME of the movements and the finale. The Symphony was called Turangalila. It featured an instrument I have never heard of ...the "ondes martenot". So here's a video on youtube that displays some of the sounds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDrypZfUM7c&feature=related. The director, Gustavo, had this crazy curly black hair that would move all over the place as he was directing. He was VERY enthusiastic! I have another youtube video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3nI6iXEjNs&feature=related. It shows him in a rehearsal but his hair flops all over the place and he moves like he has ants in his pants or something. He must be very fun to work with. His reviews are awesome. I just wanted you to get a feel for this enthusiasm that Eva and I experienced at the show.
That was my day in LA. I'm hoping to have more LA trips that include other things like shopping and a visit to Hollywood.
On the way home, which took 2 hours, I noticed a few distinct differences between Cincy and LA/SD: first for all 2hours of driving, there were 4-5 lanes on the highway for the whole way with a carpool lane the entire way, sometimes 2 in some places! Can you imagine driving with traffic for 2 hours...Cincy to Columbus? Strange. Got home at about 11:30pm...a full day!
I hope you enjoy the post. Leave a comment or 2!
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