On Sunday Sam and I went on a mission to hike up to the Hollywood sign after finishing our accounting homework. We parked at the end of the canyon road (the end of public auto access) and hiked over to the Bat Cave first.
After that we went the other way and went up the long trail leading up to somewhere to the West of the Observatory. Kent and I had gotten lost on this trail, but we went down the trail instead of continuing on around the ridge. Good thing too – since getting to the Hollywood sign with a dead end wouldn’t have done much for us. It was kind of interesting walking the same trail/s that Kent and I had frantically ran down all panicked as the sun started to set.
The length of the hike was in dispute online. Some websites say 5 miles, others say 8. I say I have no idea, but it seems longer than you think as the trail takes a very winding way to its destination. And when you reach the destination you feel a bit used. The trail ends with the beginning of the “real” trail to the sign which is quite clearly not open for business anymore. The original “do not enter” sign is so weathered that the city just put up a brand new one warning (again) of citations for crossing. Our instructions said that the end of the trail was “20 feet” below the sign. I think they forgot a zero.
One good thing about the hike on that day was that the rain on Friday gave us a clearer view of downtown/hollywood than normal.
After leaving the park we headed to nearby Thai Town and stopped by the La Luz de Jesus Gallery. I’d heard there was a new exhibit launched earlier this weekend. Here is the best of what is new:
I have no idea who did this – the black frame was actually covering up the artist information (you can see this if you look at the lower right of the photo).
Last of the Merlot by Mark Bryan.
Mark Bryan had a wall of paintings, all in this same 1950s sort of whimsical style, many with robots. I didn’t really like any of them except for this one.
The opposite wall was filled with Daniel Elson pieces. The paintings were okay, and the ornate frames definetely helped, but the piece that really stuck out was a drawing called “The Illusion”
There were still a few JAW Cooper pieces leftover from the show last month. The image below is the painting – the sketch was on display at the gallery.
And my favorite piece, Aimee by Mark Gleason:
This piece was way up high, which was not advantageous, as the lights of the gallery were reflecting off of the canvas heavily. The brushwork (and color) on all of Gleason’s paintings is amazing though, and doesn’t really shine through in photographs.
As we were finishing up our tour I turned around and ran into the President of the United States, or at least the guy that plays him on TV, Fred Armisen. Or more specifically, I should say I ran into ThunderAnt, as I think the woman accompanying him was his artistic partner Carrie Brownstein.
As we left he was asking the shop owner where “more art like this” is in LA. I overheard the owner saying something about Culver City and thought for a moment about running back in and telling him about the Hive (the Culver City art scene is not great – or at least it wasn’t a month or so ago). But I didn’t.
After researching it – turns out that Brownstein played guitar in Sleater Kinney. I actually like All Hands on the Bad One better than anything I’ve seen Armisen do on Saturday Night Live (although he played drums for the Blue Man Group before that – so his music probably isn’t bad either.
