Future Studio and Chicken Boy

Amy Inouye and Stuart Rapeport host Future Studio in their live-work loft. Stuart is an artist who paints, draws, and makes interesting dog sculptures from reclaimed wood. Among other things, Amy is a talented graphic designer, a lover of pugs and Chicken Boy ("too weird to die"), and a collector of just about anything from funky lamps to Dodger Stadium seats. She also operates a gift shop on the premises (see photo) that stocks items ranging from Chicken Boy memorabilia to snow globes to rubber duckies in the image of James Brown. If you want to find out more about Amy's projects you can navigate directly to her Chicken Boy website from the links section of this blog.

A few of my favorite baby pictures from the project

Here are a few of the pictures of me that my grandfather took. I had not seen these in several decades.




This is the caption that we posted on the wall next to the installation:

"Porte bonheur means 'good luck charm' in French. In cleaning out my parents’ house I was lucky to find a collection of slides taken of me by my grandfather, Joseph Thomas, a gifted amateur photographer. I was my parents’ first and only child and my grandparents’ first grandchild. As these photos attest, during my early childhood I was fortunate enough to have been very much adored. Granddaddy and I got along famously and I remember enjoying it as a little girl when he brought out the camera or the slide projector to take pictures or show slides on Sunday evening. Granddaddy later gave me his slide projector and his prized Exacta SLR, used to shoot these slides. I still have the projector and the camera and I am lucky to have rediscovered the slides. I am even luckier to have had such a nice grandfather."

Gallery photos from Estate of Mind

Here are some of the photos I took at the opening party for "Estate of Mind." Suzanne Siegel's assemblages created from lingerie and personal items belonging to her mother formed a grouping inside the door to Future Studio, Amy Inouye's live-work space at 5558 Figueroa in Highland Park.


At the far end of the gallery area, Beth Elliott's sculptures, braided from shredded paper collected from her parents' documents and mail, carry the corner marked by the magenta wall.



My installation, consisting of a collection of "preemie" sized cloth diapers printed with a series of baby pictures of me taken by my grandfather, was located between the two.


Some smaller pieces by Beth and Suzanne were also placed around the gallery.



The kitchen featured quite a spread, including Beth's collection of cakes, baked in a mold of her face (lower right).


Here is Beth, photographing her handiwork.



The show will be up through November 4 -- contact either me or Amy Inouye at Future Studio, 5558 N. Figueroa in Highland Park, to make arrangements to see it (Amy can be reached at 323 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com).

Mrs. O'Rourke's gingerbread recipe

"Estate of Mind" opened Saturday night at Future Studio -- we had a good crowd and the art was well received. In addition to the art on the wall, however, we also put together quite a spread of refreshments in the kitchen. In honor of the occasion, Suzanne, Beth and I decided to make recipes we had gotten from our families. Choosing to avoid the whole issue of 50s and 60s suburban cooking and various strange recipes we encountered as children (for example, Beth revealed that she has a vintage WeightWatchers recipe for chocolate jello that her mother often made), I decided to jump back a generation and bring gingerbread from a recipe I got from my paternal grandmother, Jeane Crawford Thomas. The funny thing about sharing a recipe from Grandmother is that although she got meals on the table for her family for years, she never liked to cook. In fact, Grandmother thought housework was a demeaning activity for any woman with a brain. Her creative solution to the problem of having to cook for her family in any case, was to become as efficient as possible at it. This recipe that she got from her neighbor, Mrs. O'Rourke, in New Brighton, Pennsylvania, wins over mid-century boxed mixes, hands down. It is both easy to make and uses simple ingredients that would have been stocked in any early twentieth-century kitchen. Here is the recipe, plus a photo of my grandmother at her sink.

MRS. O'ROURKE'S GINGERBREAD (from JEANE CRAWFORD THOMAS)

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening (butter can be substituted)
1 cup black strap molasses
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon ginger
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda dissolved in 1 cup boiling water (do this at the last minute)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugar and shortening. Combine with eggs and molasses and beat well. Sift flour with dry ingredients and add to egg mixture. Dissolve baking soda in the boiling water and add to batter. Mix thoroughly (by hand) and pour into a greased, square baking pan. Bake 25 minutes. Cut into cake-like squares when cool and serve with whipped heavy cream, if desired.

Press release, "Estate of Mind"

Future Studio Gallery presents:

ESTATE OF MIND

art created by Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel and Deborah Thomas
using things belonging to their parents’ estates
curated by Deborah Thomas

October 14 – November 4, 2006
Reception Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 pm

Calendar Listing: ART – “Estate of Mind” – art created by Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel and Deborah Thomas using things belonging to their parents’ estates, curated by Deborah Thomas. Future Studio Gallery, 5558 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park, October 14 – November 4. Opening Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 pm. By appointment: (323) 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com
Who: Artists Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel, Deborah Thomas; curated by Deborah Thomas
What: “Estate of Mind” – art created by Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel and Deborah Thomas using things belonging to their parents’ estates
Where: Future Studio Gallery, 5558 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park, 90042
When: October 14 – November 4, opening reception Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 pm (by appointment after opening – 323 254-4565)
For information: 323 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com


What do you do when your parents get old and turn the tables on you, needing time and care? In addition to taking on their parents’ immediate needs, the three artists whose work is represented in “Estate of Mind,” curated by Deborah Thomas at Future Studio Gallery, make art. Artists Beth Elliott, Suzanne Siegel, and Deborah Thomas have fabricated sculpture, assemblages and installations which are both directly reminiscent of their personal family experiences and, as Elliott puts it, universal “messages from the past moving into the future.”

Suzanne Siegel’s assemblages, created from her mother’s 50s-era lingerie as well as natural objects and domestic artifacts ranging from rose petals to razor blades, carry implicit social commentary and bittersweet emotion. Ordinary items are delicately modified in ways that embody a material vision both whimsical and surreal. Siegel approaches these remains of her mother’s wardrobe as a language to be interpreted; her pieces communicate longing, secrecy and loss reflective of her mother’s personal history. As an artist, Siegel finds it crucial to interpret and contextualize what she reads and engages with in these items of apparel as common to the ordinary experience of many other women and part of a larger socio-cultural picture.

Deborah Thomas finds herself compelled to “time travel” into her family’s past, as she puts it, by working conceptually with family photographs and slides found while cleaning out her parents’ house. Her work is motivated by a desire to re-visit family relationships she remembers from childhood. After selecting images that resonate intimately for her, she maps out formal groupings according to patterns and repetitions only marginally related to any information the photos might convey. What results is a shift in emphasis away from any particular personal content or affect attached to the images to a more suggestive and universal zone of perception neither purely representational nor non-representational.

Beth Elliott, who describes her work as “destruction and creation,” relies on visceral process to cope with the shredded personal papers and junk mail addressed to her parents that continues to arrive in her mailbox. In order to make a universal statement, she shreds and braids the paper into irregular sculptural forms that are dynamic in their materiality yet restrained by means of her hands-on engagement with the paper discards. She produces organic shapes that reveal pre-logical formal qualities as well as an unexpected randomness or lightness of being.

Through their work, each of these artists moves between evocative past and ordered present, transforming highly personal reactions into universally resonant visions of life.

“Estate of Mind” at Future Studio Gallery, 5558 N. Figueroa Street, Highland Park 90042. Reception: Saturday, October 14, 6 – 10 p.m. (part of NELA Second Saturday art walk). Open by appointment (323 254-4565 or amy@futurestudio.com).

Countdown until Estate of Mind

I'm starting to feel back on track again -- my camera is back from the shop and the router is repaired after giving me a week of not being able to go online from my computer. I am working some more on "Estate of Mind." Here is one of the photos I've found. All of the slides are glass-mounted (by hand, by my grandfather) -- trays of them were stored in lovely little leather and fabric boxes. The colors just glow. I am planning an installation of about a dozen or more of them, but I won't say anything more at this point. Amy designed a very attractive card, too.