- Видео 83
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Tales of the American Interviews
Добавлен 14 авг 2019
Interview With Oliver Manhattan
Fashion designer Oliver Manhattan came to Downtown L.A. in the 1980s looking for community, which she found at Al’s Bar. She quickly made friends and started booking Monday nights there with acts from around the world. Known simply as Oliver, her creativity and drive fueled a series of guerrilla marketplaces called Sunday Jump, and although she had relocated “by accident” to New Orleans in the early 1990s, she returned often to take part in the “lunacy and beauty” that sprang from the American Hotel and Al’s Bar.
Oliver often uses recycled materials to fabricate her fashions. She is primarily known for creating extravagant, whimsical hats, which she showcases at l’Hatelier in New Orleans. ...
Oliver often uses recycled materials to fabricate her fashions. She is primarily known for creating extravagant, whimsical hats, which she showcases at l’Hatelier in New Orleans. ...
Просмотров: 96
Видео
Interview With Tod Lychkoff
Просмотров 1092 месяца назад
Painter Tod Lychkoff moved to 810 E. 3rd St. in 1987 and maintained a loft on the 4th floor until 2009. In his more than two decades in Downtown Los Angeles, Lychkoff was a prolific member of a community of artists that transformed a sleepy industrial quarter of the city into a vibrant and rapidly growing Arts District. His paintings and scratchboard drawings reflect the beauty, as well as the ...
Interview With Gary Lloyd
Просмотров 612 месяца назад
In the 1970s & ’80s, Gary Lloyd’s “surveillance sculpture” was unlike anything others in the burgeoning Downtown L.A. art community were doing. His coin-clad installations not only raised questions about art’s value, but also about how a person’s worth is measured. The pieces - each equipped with a radio transmitter - listened in on those around them, and broadcast conversations and events over...
Interview With Wild Don Lewis
Просмотров 513 месяца назад
After studying art at Cornell University, Wild Don Lewis returned to Southern California in the late 1970s, settling in Canoga Park. Learning of the creative scene taking root in Downtown L.A., he made forays to the area in search of what he couldn’t find in the “culturally barren” West Valley. Lewis discovered an abandoned industrial zone where “you could do whatever you wanted because nobody ...
Interview With Drew Lesso
Просмотров 1293 месяца назад
Composer Drew Lesso moved to Downtown Los Angeles in the 1970s after hearing of the burgeoning art community taking hold in the warehouses and empty factories of what is now the Arts District. He and a partner leased a whole floor of a building on Los Angeles Street and split it into four units, renting out the extra spaces to subsidize their own expenses and make a small profit. It was just th...
Interview With Gary Leonard
Просмотров 1515 месяцев назад
“People don’t recognize me if I don’t have a camera!” So says the Eugène Atget of Los Angeles, photographer Gary Leonard. For more than 50 years, the independent photojournalist has been capturing moments both epic and intimate for a historical record of the city he loves. In the 1970s and ’80s, Leonard became well-known for documenting the punk scene spreading throughout venues from Hollywood ...
Interview With Mona Lee
Просмотров 656 месяцев назад
Mona Lee had lived all over Los Angeles before she decided to settle in Downtown. While not an artist herself, she enjoyed the creative community that thrived among the warehouses and other old buildings being converted into lofts in the early days of what would become known as the Arts District. While holding down a day job, Lee was a bartender at Bedlam, a speakeasy/art salon on Molino Street...
Interview With Steven Lamprinos
Просмотров 537 месяцев назад
When actor Steven Lamprinos moved into the American Hotel in 1994, the idea was he’d save some money to start his own theater group. Staying for 12 years in the smallest room in the building was definitely not the plan! But Lamprinos has never regretted a minute of it. “Everything I do is formed from this place,” he says. “If I hadn’t gotten engaged in 2007, I’d probably still be here.” Lamprin...
Emery Lambert: A Tales of the American Interviews Vignette
Просмотров 167 месяцев назад
One evening while filming “Tales of the American,” director Stephen Seemayer encountered an artist named Emery Lambert at the corner of Traction Avenue and 3rd Street. Lambert was in a wheelchair drawing pictures of Jesus to sell to passersby. Seemayer, ever ready with his Elph Powershot, filmed this short interview on Feb. 12, 2014, for his documentary feature about the people and history that...
Interview With Lili Lakich
Просмотров 1697 месяцев назад
Neon artist Lili Lakich is an O.G. of the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District, having set up her studio on Traction Avenue in 1980, just as the art community was taking root. She has fabricated her glowing works there ever since, from intimate political pieces to mammoth public installations. Lakich also founded the Museum of Neon Art there and still teaches workshops in “all things neon” to stu...
Interview With Jake La Botz
Просмотров 4448 месяцев назад
As a blues musician from Chicago, Jake La Botz came to Los Angeles in 1996 hoping to kick heroin. When he moved into the American Hotel, he found “the dope spot was just down the street,” and many of the resident artists faced similar challenges. In exchange for a room, La Botz performed downstairs at Al’s Bar for the weekly Unhappy Hour. Eventually, he sought help, and after a few tries at reh...
Interview With Loretta Minjarez Kraft
Просмотров 858 месяцев назад
Loretta Minjarez came to the American Hotel in 1990 when she was hired to manage the tenants, help run the American Gallery, and step in when Al’s Bar needed tending. Even though she was in her early 20s, she “felt like a parent sometimes” in dealing with the diverse creative personalities who called the American home. “I found my people,” Minjarez says, including filmmaker Chris Kraft, who app...
Interview With Faye Konrad
Просмотров 569 месяцев назад
Faye Ochsenreiter grew up in a Pittsburgh household where art was a priority, which made her feel right at home when, in 2001 - while working as an insurance executive - she was introduced to Los Angeles’ burgeoning Downtown Arts District. Ochsenreiter fell in love, not just with the community, but with one artist in particular: painter Emmeric Konrad, who was living at the time in the American...
Interview With Emmeric Konrad
Просмотров 519 месяцев назад
In 1990, Emmeric Konrad was a student at Otis when a visiting artist regaled undergrads with tales of a “wonderland” called Downtown Los Angeles. Konrad found it too promising to resist and rented a loft in what would soon be called the Arts District. His youthful love of comic books blossomed into a successful career, and his paintings - marked by wit and grotesquely cartoonish imagery - are c...
Interview With Alex Koiv
Просмотров 52Год назад
Alex Koiv moved to Los Angeles because it was the city she hated so much that she knew she would be able to focus on her art there. Within days, she was a regular at the Clubhouse and Al’s Bar, where distractions abounded. Changing her medium from painting to metalwork, Koiv “found a home … people like me” in the Downtown Arts District, a community "where you could be completely free." A ferven...