Originally published on 13 November 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
The Dr. Robert W. Winter Tribute at the Exhibition Hall of the Pasadena Convention Center | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
Dr. Robert Winter, who passed away in February this year, was an inspiration to preservationists and architect buffs for over 50 years. He was hailed as the ‘Father of historic preservation in Pasadena.’ It was his campaign to effect an ordinance to establish a cultural heritage commission that eventually created the Pasadena Heritage. He was an influencer long before the term entered the pop culture lexicon.
To recognize his significant contributions to the Arts & Crafts movement on the West Coast, Pasadena Heritage’s Craftsman Weekend 2019 held on November 1 to 3 incorporated the inaugural Dr. Robert Winter Memorial Lecture and the unveiling of a permanent tribute commissioned by Pasadena Center Operating Company (PCOC) at the exhibition hall of the Pasadena Convention Center.
Author and historian Ann Scheid, who heads the Greene & Greene Archives at The Huntington Library and has co-authored a book about The Gamble House with Dr. Winter, was the first lecturer. She gave a short biography that covered his life and career, his passion for Craftsman homes as well as for martinis. She reminisced about his penchant for performing – whether when taking his Occidental College students on bus tours of architectural landmarks or when giving talks about the history of the Arts & Crafts movement on the West Coast. Her stories brought back happy memories for the audience who had been invited because they had close ties with him. Her lecture ended with a short video of Dr. Winter singing con brio the chorus to a song called ‘In the Land of the Bungalow.’
Patty Judy, Education Director of the Pasadena Heritage, explains, “It’s an old song written in the 1920s. As far as I know, Bob discovered it in his endless research of the Craftsman era and was just delighted with it, learned it, and often performed it just for fun – in classrooms, at lectures, and to close all kinds of presentations when he was asked to speak. As Ann said, he loved being a ‘performer.’ I think the song became tied to him because he sang it so often and so many who heard him speak over the years remember it.”
Participants in the Craftsman Weekend 2019 Show | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
An open reception followed the lecture at the other side of the hall where people milled about and chatted as they enjoyed the drinks and finger foods. Then Dianne Philibosian, former chair of PCOC, alongside her husband Tom Seifert, asked all the guests to assemble for the unveiling of a special permanent display.
Says Judy, “Tom was a dear, close friend of Bob’s. He and Dianne were nearby neighbors who regularly checked in on him and helped out in recent years. The two of them spearheaded the effort to come up with a proper Pasadena tribute to Bob and we worked with them to create this event combining our lecture and the tribute unveiling.”
Philibosian discloses the reasoning for the choice of venue, “I thought the historic exhibition hall would be a really appropriate place to put up a lasting memorial. And in consultation with others, including PCOC Board members, city council members, Pasadena Heritage, and other friends and colleagues of Dr. Winter, we all agreed it was a most fitting location.”
The Pasadena Convention Center’s Exhibition Hall is indeed the perfect venue to house the tribute. It was here that ‘California Design 1910,’ an important exhibition of Arts & Crafts work, was held from October 15 to December 1, 1974. According to a news article published in the Pasadena Star-News on February 27, 2011, ‘California Design 1910’ was organized by Eudorah Moore and California Design, a spin-off from the Pasadena Art Museum. In the exhibition catalog, Moore wrote an introductory essay on ‘California and the Arts and Crafts Ideal’ and Dr. Winter followed with an extensive essay on ‘The Arroyo Culture.’ The author noted that the exhibition catalog is a veritable textbook on the Arts & Crafts peak period between about 1895 and World War I.
It took a village to create what Philibosian and Seifert envisioned. And during the unveiling, Philibosian acknowledged the Pasadena Heritage, the Gamble House, Pasadena Museum of History, and the Blinn House Foundation. She gave special thanks to Dale Brown of Onyx Architects, and graphic designer Scott Garland.
“When Dale Brown of Onyx Architects was asked to produce a tribute to Dr. Robert Winter he assigned Scott Garland, a local graphic designer who was born and raised in Pasadena and a graduate of Art Center College of Design,” Philibosian expounded. “As fate would have it, for 23 years Scott and his wife Karen lived in the 1911 historic landmark bungalow which would become the first historic district of Monrovia. During that time, their home was featured in the American Bungalow magazine and photographed by Alex Vertikoff. Scott even had his own copy of American Bungalow Style co-authored by Dr. Winter and Alex Vertikoff. Not only did Scott’s familiarity with the Arts and Crafts Movement influence his design decision but this project could not have been completed without the cooperation of many who graciously gave their time to be interviewed for this very piece behind us. Their insights and memories of ‘Bungalow Bob’ all contributed to what we hope will be a lasting and fitting tribute to this remarkable man.”
Mayor Tornek speaks of Dr. Winter’s significant contributions | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
Pasadena elected officials, led by Mayor Terry Tornek, were on hand to celebrate the occasion. Mayor Tornek, whom Philibosian introduced as someone who greatly appreciates and promotes art and aesthetics of historic preservation in the city of Pasadena, gave his remarks.
“I’m delighted to see so many people turn out for this – this is really a great event for us (I have notes because Bob would expect no less). Dr. Robert Winter, as you heard in Ann’s wonderful speech, was a Pasadenan of national renown. And if we had a tradition of naming people as historic treasures, I think he would have been among the first to be identified. He was an inspiration, a writer, a mentor, a teacher, an instigator, and he was a dedicated proponent of good architecture and its effects on the community. He was both expert and charming which, I think, helps a lot in promoting a cause.
“We were so fortunate that his primary community was indeed Pasadena. An architectural historian, well-known author, professor of ideas (great title that was) at Occidental for many years, Dr. Winter taught generations how to look at and appreciate historic buildings and places throughout Los Angeles and across the country. In terms of his local impact, Bob was among the first to proclaim that the city of Pasadena needed a historic preservation ordinance to confer landmark status on key buildings, identify critical properties and, most of all, to protect them. He, along with his close friend, L.A. Times columnist Miv Schaaf, who lived around the corner, drafted our city’s cultural heritage ordinance and he served on the board of the first cultural heritage commission. Later he rejoined the commission and served again.
“He also called for an uprising of local residents to champion and support that ordinance and the work of the commission as well as the general cause of historic preservation in the city. And that, in fact, gave rise to the formation of Pasadena Heritage and its mission which has been so effective down through the years and, ultimately, led to my arrival as planning director for the city of Pasadena. I’m afraid that ‘Bungalow Bob’ was responsible for me being here as well.
“So I’m so pleased that the PCOC, with the encouragement of Dianne Philibosian, has taken the time to create this wonderful lasting tribute to Dr. Robert Winter and make it a place where lots of people will come and see it for years to come. We treasure our history in Pasadena – it means a lot to us and it’s responsible in many ways for the kind of community we are. People like ‘Bungalow Bob’ really are the key contributors to making that happen. It’s not just about the buildings, which are important, but it’s really about the sense of community that we’ve developed in Pasadena. So I’m grateful to Bob, I’m grateful to those of you who invested in spending time to remember him and to memorialize him, and I hope that going forward we can be worthy of the causes he championed but also be as good-humored about it as he was.”
Karen Winters Fine Art display booth at Craftsman Weekend 2019 | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
After the tribute was unveiled, everyone raised their champagne glass (not martini, which would have been his preference) to toast Dr. Robert W. Winter, Ph.D.
Seifert declared, “We thank you for your scholarship, your humor, your multiple contributions to so many fields of endeavor. May this wall commemorate your extraordinary legacy to the city of Pasadena.”
Then Philibosian recited Dr. Winter’s trademark song, “And all those who gaze upon it in the land of the bungalow, away from the ice and snow, away from the cold to the land of gold, out where the poppies grow, to the land of the setting sun and the home of the orange blossom, to the land of fruit and honey.” And Seifert ended it with, “In this land of your bungalow to Robert Winter Ph.D.”
Her emceeing duties finished, Philibosian returned to her table to chat with colleagues and other friends of the late Dr. Winter. She capped the evening with a wish, “We’re hoping this will be called the Robert Winter Historic Exhibition Hall – that as things evolve and progress, people will start calling it that.”
Let this mark the start of the fulfillment of that wish.
Originally published on 28 October 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
Shown left to right: Angela Gulner, Geoff Elliott, and Zach Kenney | Photo by Craig Schwartz / A Noise Within
Renowned American playwright, actor, and director Sam Shepard was born on November 5, 1943 at Fort Sheridan, a military base just outside of Chicago, Illinois. His father served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II and continued to serve in the U. S. Air Force after the war. Shepard’s family moved all over the United States and to Guam before eventually settling in Duarte.
While Shepard was attending Duarte High School, he got interested in theatre and writing. And it was in Duarte where his Pulitzer Prize-winning play ‘Buried Child’ began to take shape. This hauntingly absurd play, which A Noise Within (ANW) first produced during their 1997-1998 season is back home once more.
On stage from October 13 through November 23, ‘Buried Child’ is directed by ANW’s Producing Artistic Director Julia Rodriguez-Elliott. It stars ANW’s Co-Producing Artistic Director Geoff Elliott as Dodge, Deborah Strang as Halie, Michael Manuel as Tilden, Frederick Stuart as Bradley, Zach Kenney as Vince, Angela Gulner as Shelly, and Apollo Dukakis as Father Dewis.
Shepard’s powerful masterpiece, set in America’s heartland, details with wry humor the disintegration of the American Dream. When 22-year old Vince unexpectedly shows up at the family farm with his girlfriend Shelly, no one recognizes him. The unraveling of family secrets that follows is a funny, albeit unsettling, look at disillusionment and morality, and how people address and cope with their family’s dysfunction.
Zach Kenney, who’s performing at ANW for the first time, sits down with me at the theatre’s lobby before rehearsal one afternoon. I start our conversation by asking if he’s familiar with Shepard’s play.
“I am very familiar with the play,” Kenney answers. “In fact, it premiered in 1978 in San Francisco – my home town – at the Magic Theatre where I took my first acting class. It’s over by fort Mason which is a beautiful part of the city. In my teenage years, I worked on several productions at the Magic, in association with my training at American Conservatory Theater and in the Young Conservatory. That Shepard debuted ‘Buried Child’ there was memorable for me.
“It’s a story about a family in the Midwest. Shepard himself grew up in Fort Sheridan in Illinois so he knows that feel. All great American playwrights, I think, are essentially asking, in one way or another, ‘What does it mean to be American?’ I think Shepard takes that a step further, he puts a finer point in it, in asking ‘What does it mean to be a part of the American family dynamic?’ So a lot of his plays are about family. This play is definitely so. He’s spoken to the fact that it’s semi-autobiographical in some sense. While it incorporates elements of absurdity and surrealism, it also integrates his relationship with his father and his place in the family. I play a character named Vince who, with his new girlfriend Shelly, is ostensibly from New York and is traveling all this way to try to pick up where he left off after leaving several years ago.”
Zach Kenney | Courtesy photo / A Noise Within
Kenney continues, “Shepard himself had gone away to New York – he was involved in the jazz music scene in New York in the 1970s. Then later in life, he tried to reconcile with his father, with whom he had a very complicated relationship. A lot of what he brought in writing this play was very personal. So I’ve tried to consider some of those elements in my own take on the piece. This is my first Shepard play and this undoubtedly is the play that I’ve always wanted to do. I think it’s one of the great roles for a young American actor to tackle. This role is funny – Shepard once said that the role of Vince has always been problematic for him. All the other characters are fragments – figments of the real thing. But the character of Vince is more true to who he was, it’s the real McCoy. And, like our acting teachers used to say, it’s hardest to play yourself. I think, in that way he had – I don’t want to put too fine a point on it – maybe a shyness about the character of Vince.
“But I don’t have that reticence of revealing myself. For me it’s exciting not only because of what the script has me say but also of what the script has me doing. Vince can’t figure out why no one recognizes him. It’s confusing and haunting but there are moments that are written in where, perhaps, there’s a glimmer of recognition between Vince and his father. That isn’t something that Shepard wrote a big speech about. It’s simply between two actors on stage mostly in silence. And that’s one of his real genius – he created these moments that are alive between actors. He knew it from different angles; having been a playwright, actor, and director himself, he was able to switch those lenses.”
Shepard didn’t really make clear Vince’s circumstances. Kenney describes, “He’s been away for about six years – we don’t really know why he went away and why he decided to make the trip back at this moment. He’s got a young beautiful girlfriend, so perhaps the ambitions of this relationship has brought him back. Those were all the juicy, fun things to figure out together in the room. But it’s not explicit in the play. Not to be hokey about it, but I think Vince, in a lot of ways, embodies the future of America. I think three years after the end of Vietnam and 40 years after the Dust Bowl era, Shepard was looking back on America – the ground we just tread. And he wanted to ask what’s the next generation gonna have? That rings true today, obviously, for the challenges, the changes, and the prospects of the American heartland. It’s self-seeing what’s around the bend in this modern era.”
Did Rodriguez-Elliott give specific directions to him in playing Vince? I query. Kenney replies, “I wouldn’t say she gave me any directions at the outset, in terms of her framework. She has a very generous way with actors – she knows a lot of these folks. Hearing her in the room, getting a feel for her style, wasn’t hard to do. She has a really great way of leading without constricting. ‘Buried Child’ has elements of surrealism, absurdity, metaphor, heightened imagery, and you have to explore those moments, and figure out what’s inside of them and what they’re all about. And that’s how I want to work as well – by playing the extremes; it’s always easier to reel it back in. She’s allowed me to really explore some of the bold moments in this play and take risks because, I think, in the end, that’s what Shepard’s works demand of the artists who tackle them. He said his favorite actors are adventurous, outrageous, willing to jump off the cliff. That’s the kind of attitude and approach you have to bring to this piece.
“Shepard also talked a lot about the rhythm of this play – about how it’s musical, almost like jazz where things are going at a very nice clip and then there’s a long pause, even silence. Reading his plays is fascinating – it’s a really well conducted orchestra and you can hear the rhythm very well in your head, in the text, as you’re reading the play. So having fidelity to that serves us well, because it earns some of those changes in pitch and timbre and melody.”
‘Buried Child’ ensemble | Photo by Craig Schwartz / A Noise Within
Kenney goes on to describe his process, “I like to do a lot of research on the playwright, the time period, all the dramaturgical elements. I wouldn’t normally do such an extensive research into the playwrights and their arc as much as I did with Shepard – he’s such an icon in the American theatre. With his recent passing, and knowing they had wanted to take up this play again for quite a long time, I really wanted to get inside his head and get to know him a bit more.
“Then I work up the script, break down scenes. I think about the words that are being used and why – I study the text and the language a lot. With this play there are lots of repetition of words and ideas by various characters at different parts of the play. And none in the sense that in your first seeing that might hit you, but after working on the play that can be really useful. Shepard’s so great at getting at the heart of the matter between characters’ relationships so studying the text, becoming an expert on the script can really feed into the rhythm and the power of where he’s trying to get you to go as an actor.”
I ask whether him having seen the play before helped or restricted. Kenney replies, “I wouldn’t go see it now if there was a neighboring production. I saw it when I was 16 – it was a long time ago. What I remember about it are some of the images, the stage pictures. But I don’t recall the line readings, how they said something. So my performance is all fresh and it’s my own take. More than anything, it just grew in me a deep admiration for the play. It was with me through my development as an actor – watching it as a teenager and going through college, then rereading this play and finding it again at this time in my life. I’m really excited to do this because I’ve held it in my heart for a while.”
Then I inquire if there were things he discovered as he delved into the play, which he didn’t know coming in. Kenney says, “There were several revelations that happened. Just in my general experience, a lot of actors don’t like to have too firm of a take on their first reading. And I’m in that school of thought – I want to be open to what the other actors bring into the experience before I set something. In the first couple of weeks, after I have some of that in my ear, I like to go back and spend a lot of time with the script to get a better understanding of what’s going on. I take a particular speech or dialogue exchange between the characters and, almost like a mantra, repeat that and ruminate – let that simmer for a while. Sometimes there’s a stream of consciousness that can give some revelations about what’s going on immediately prior to and subsequent to that exchange. It’s sort of seeing it at 35,000 feet and then doing a swan dive and just sort of really doing a big zoom on everything. Occasionally that helps you detach from little habits that can begin to develop that aren’t necessarily fruitful.
Zach Kenney as Vince | Photo by Craig Schwartz / A Noise Within
“Another thing that I would like to mention is, there’s this speech towards the end of the play that Vince delivers. Shelly, his girlfriend, asked ‘You disappeared. What happened last night?’ Vince went for a long drive, rain was coming down, and he saw himself in the windshield. As he was studying his face in the windshield, that image begins to change into what looks like his father’s face, and continues to change into his grandfather’s face. And it has a profound effect on Vince. I think it’s a beautiful image and the words are really impactful. And I asked myself, ‘What is Shepard saying about what Vince is going through at this moment? And I had a sort of epiphany – this is Vince’s vision quest. I have a deep admiration and affinity for Native American cultures. The idea of a vision quest – a young man going off to either a sacred ground or a place he was unfamiliar with at a point when he was maturing in the family line, having some sort of vision, and often returning and seeking the advice of people back home about what it meant. It has an effect on bringing that person into the family fold. That idea had a big impression on me in terms of inspiring what that journey – that moment – was all about for Vince.
“Shepard liked to discuss the idea of ancestors, heritage, and family line. At one time, he wrote about looking at pictures of some of his relatives from the 1800s – the bone structure and elements of the face were all the same. Even though he presumably never knew these people, he’s inextricably connected to them. That line is inescapable, for better or worse. Again, going back to what I said before about a lot of his work being about the American family unit, that epiphany served me in the rehearsal period.”
Kenney adds, “One other thing I didn’t know when I started this, is that this play was written in neighboring Duarte – which is just a stone’s throw away. He said he wrote it in a trailer at the old ranch house that his family had – it was like an avocado farm or ranch. That was a really cool thing for me. When our audiences come out to see it here, and the lights come up on stage, they’re doing so under the very same sky and landscape as those which Shepard wrote it. That connection of place and history and time, there’s a bond there that will make our audiences, in some way, family. Personally, that’s been the thrill for me about making the drive to Pasadena – seeing this beautiful landscape and thinking of Shepard up in the hills, writing this play.”
Some plays have lessons that the audience can take way. Asked if there’s any in this play, Kenney answers, “There’s much to consider on the drive home from this play as there is during it. This is a play that comes at you in this vivid surge and, not to presuppose, I think on first seeing it when you walk away certainly Shepard would want you to still be considering what questions they were asking of themselves and of each other. This isn’t a play that wraps everything up neatly with a bow, which you digest during the viewing and you take away a couple of little savory nuggets. I think this is a play that works on you over time and that’s one of the masterful things about what he’s created. Again, I think it’s one of the reasons why it won a Pulitzer and why it gets produced as often as it does. One of the impacts it’s had on me is listening from all sides. Every character in this play has strong needs and comes from a very disparate place in their personal journey. And, somehow, they come together and those things get worked out in an interesting way.
“Let me also point out that Shepard claimed he never wanted to leave things nice and neat. He said, ‘As soon as people see my work and feel that they get it or know exactly what it’s all about, that sort of kills it. That weakens it in a way.’ I think one of the many great things he’s crafted is an ending full of possibility but not devoid of everything we just saw. I think there’s hope, but there’s also change and revelation from the characters. Shepard has put together this group of people and starts them at one place, something happens in the middle, and by the end they’re changed. It could only be that way. It’s inevitable. The way in which he gets us there, that’s the awesome thing about this piece. This play doesn’t end as much as it lands in a different place than where it began.”
Originally published on 15 October 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens | Courtesy photo
The year 1919 was significant for so many reasons but none would affect the art scene and cultural life of the San Gabriel Valley more than the founding of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. And we have Henry and Arabella Huntington to thank for bestowing on us their incomparable legacy.
An exhibition called ‘Nineteen Nineteen,’ which opened September 21 and will be on view through January 20, 2020, at the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery showcases 275 items from Henry and Arabella Huntington’s vast collections, some of which have never been displayed.
Co-curators James Glisson, interim chief curator of American art, and Jennifer Watts, curator of photography and visual culture, led a team from the three divisions and went through the institutions massive storehouse of 11 million items. The objects in the exhibition range from posters from the German Revolution, abstract art, suffragist magazines, children’s books, aeronautic manuals, self-help guides for soldiers returning home from World War I, and a book hand-printed by Virginia Woolf at her kitchen table. The thread that ties them all together is that they were all acquired in 1919.
During a preview of ‘Nineteen Nineteen,’ Glisson and Watts walk members of the press around the Boone Gallery to show the items, explain their significance, share their experience, and add their personal insights.
“This project took about two and half years from the very beginning to the end,” begins Glisson. “I went through, probably, 3,000 items, but it could have been more. And a lot of time was spent finding things from 1919 that were interesting, because there were a lot of stuff that weren’t,” he adds with a laugh.
“Or visually compelling,” inserts Watts. “Gathering these things was incredibly labor intensive but fun at the same time. I have to point out, though, that we had research assistants, interns, and grant assistants who did a lot of work – it was a collective endeavor. It involved every curatorial staff across all divisions – the library, the art museum, and the botanical gardens. We knew some things to look for and others were hunches. We asked our colleagues for assistance and they came to bat. They helped us find things we never would have unearthed on our own.”
The ‘1919’ Exhibition at The Huntington | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
Glisson expounds, “Often, it was ‘There’s this great thing, I think it’s from 1919;’ ‘Oh yes, it is.’ This is where the process was different. We knew where we wanted to take it but until we gathered the material together, we couldn’t tell a story. We didn’t know what the story was before we had the material. The verbs came when this checklist was two-thirds through – and we knew what the themes would be and gave it some shape. As Jennifer said before, we had to just be incredibly open to where the material was taking us. It’s like, we see a piece and we say ‘What does this mean?’ Or, sometimes, it’s ‘This is interesting, what is it?’”
“I like to take the analogy of when you look at a centennial and think of the founders, and you put them at the top of your pyramid,” explains Watts. “We decided to invert the pyramid, and put the context and the year at the top. Most of the time, when you’re doing an exhibition, people come up with an idea and they look for the material to support it. We flipped it and said ‘Let’s look at the material and figure out what the bigger ideas and themes are.’”
The exhibition that Glisson and Watts created from that starting point, which Glisson describes as ‘From the global to the local’ is organized around five broad themes – Fight, Return, Map, Move, and Build.
William Allison Sweeney, History of the American Negro in the Great World War, 1919, Cuneo-Henneberry, Chicago | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
Glisson elucidates, “We wanted to harness the large number of 1919-related items here into something provocative, allowing the visitor to interpret the period in a fluid way. Rather than telling a neat, resolved story, we tried to capture the jarring experience of life during a year that everyone understood was an inflection point for world history. Empires had fallen in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Millions had died fighting and in a flu pandemic. Delegates at the Paris Peace Conference tried to sew a tattered world back together. Like today, people felt that irrevocable change was underway. The issues of 2019 – immigrant detention, women’s rights, and the fight for a living – were equally pressing in 1919.”
As detailed in a news release from The Huntington’s Communications Office, the ‘Fight’ section of the exhibit shows that, while the war might have officially ended in 1918, other battles raged on in Los Angeles, the rest of the nation, and Europe. A global influenza pandemic killed millions of people, claiming three percent of the world’s population. Laborers agitated for better pay and safe conditions. Rumors about a Bolshevik plot to upend the U.S. government led to a Red Scare. Violence erupted in a season described as ‘Red Summer’ for its deadly riots and lynchings of African Americans. In 1919, the bill that would clinch American women’s right to vote passed in the Senate, and temperance advocates won their fight for prohibition. Modern artists and writers responded to the tremors of the age, including the carnage of world war, by breaking with convention and tradition.
Items in this section include: German posters related to social and political upheaval; original photographs and materials documenting the flu pandemic here in Pasadena; national strikes and labor unrest; U.S. Marshal records (including mug shots and probation letters from German citizens jailed in Los Angeles during the war); and objects that tell the story of the fight to ratify the 19th amendment.
Victory Loan Flyers, ‘The Spirit of America’ Lithograph, and ‘Americans All’ lithograph | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
The ‘Return’ portion focuses on the immediate aftermath of the Great War, when millions of men and women – including 200,000 African America soldiers – headed for home. Survivors sought to understand and memorialize the war’s events through personal reminiscence and published accounts. Artists, some of whom served overseas, interpreted what they had seen, while others found inspiration in canonical tradition and myth. Popular music and illustrated books also offered safe harbor in tumultuous times.
Materials from this segment comprise: Liberty Loan posters; soldiers’ recollections; a rare Edward Weston portrait of dancer Ruth St. Denis; Cyrus Baldridge’s illustration ‘Study of a Soldier;’ and John Singer Sargent’s ‘Sphinx and Chimaera,’ which depicts a mythological scene.
John Singer Sargent’s ‘Sphinx and Chimaera’ oil on canvas | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
In January 1919, President Woodrow Wilson and Allied heads of state gathered at the Paris Peace Conference to make new maps of a changed world. The carving up of ancient empires created new nations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa, while regional promoters published maps to highlight Southern California’s capacity for growth. High above Los Angeles – at the Mount Wilson Observatory – the world’s largest telescope was on a nightly quest to chart the universe. In a world turned upside down, maps offered a welcome measure of predictability.
What the charting of territory that occurred that year meant and its resulting significance are explored in the ‘Maps’ section. On view is a first edition of ‘Traite de Paix,’ the Treaty of Peace signed at Versailles on June 29,1919, with a map showing new territorial configurations; an album of autograph signatures gathered at the Paris Peace Conference by T.E. Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia; rare maps depicting population, transportation, and demographic data in Los Angeles and the nation at the time; and original astronomical photographs of the moon and constellations.
Huntington was obsessed with maps | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
While working on this project, Glisson and Watts found out that Huntington was obsessed with maps. She says, “If you think about it, it’s not that surprising given that he was probably one of the most influential people in setting the course of how our sprawling city came to be. We discovered the spectacular 39-foot long Pacific Electric linen map that shows the real estate holdings contiguous to the line which is part of Huntington’s development scheme. People may not realize that while the Pacific Electric was a component of the world’s largest transportation network at the time, it really was a loss leader for Huntington. He was most interested in getting people to the communities that he’d developed – Huntington Beach, San Marino, Glendale.
“This is a one-of-a-kind map and has never before been exhibited. It is an incredible document – you could see the level of detail on it. Every redaction, every addition is recorded by him. It would have been something that the engineers – and Huntington with them, because he was very detail-oriented – would be poring over. I like to call this the papyri of transportation. It basically shows the Pasadena short line, which was one of the first lines that Huntington put in to the Pacific Electric system and it goes from Old Town Pasadena all the way to the edge of downtown Los Angeles.”
This Pacific Electric map display also falls under the ‘Move’ portion of this exhibition, which examines the ways 20th century technologies – planes, trains, and automobiles – propelled a society on the go. Henry Huntington’s network of streetcar lines brought Angelenos from ‘the mountains to the sea’ and to far-flung deserts and farms. A burgeoning national road system made automobile travel possible and pleasurable as never before.
Also taking the spotlight in this section is the interstate automobile adventure of five friends, including famed aviator Orville Wright, assembled in a rare photographically illustrated volume titled ‘Sage Brush and Sequoia;’ works by T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press.
The last portion of the exhibition, ‘Build,’ focuses on Henry E. Huntington and the institution he created. In 1919, Huntington announced what some, including his New York librarians, had begun to suspect. He planned to load boxcars with the ‘world’s greatest private library’ – some 120,000 volumes – and send it off to the country’s western shores. By then, the property’s palm, desert, rose, and Japanese gardens were planted under the guidance of William Hertrich, Huntington’s landscaper. The mansion, designed by Myron Hunt, was completed in 1910. With the construction of the library building, the keystone fell into place for what would become the beloved tripartite institution we know today.
The George Washington Wall installation | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
A George Washington Wall – an installation of paintings – is also part of the exhibition. “This little section is an homage to Huntington’s own collecting and what he was doing in 1919,” Watts elucidates. “In 1919, he purchased four stunning portraits of George Washington, including the most famous one by Gilbert Stuart. Why was be buying portraits of George Washington in 1919? Firstly, it was the trend. There were a lot of things coming on the market then and George Washington was the most iconic figure at that stage of America. And, perhaps, because Huntington did this audacious thing of locating this giant institution and collection on the West Coast, for which he took a lot of criticism that he was taking what was considered the cultural patrimony of America and Europe and exporting it to this cultural wasteland of Los Angeles. I think Huntington wanted to ensure this institution took its rightful place in the cultural landscape and who better to do that than George Washington, the first in the hearts of his countrymen? And, of course, it also demonstrates Huntington’s admiration for first founders.”
Beautiful Medieval books | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
In December of 1919, Huntington invited members of the prestigious New York Authors Club to his Fifth Avenue home. At that exclusive event, he shared with them 35 treasures in which he took special pride.
Watts declares, “This was significant for a couple of reasons – we had very little understanding of what he liked or favored. We know what his collecting interests were but we don’t know what his personal favorites were because he didn’t write or talk about them. This group of objects gives us a little insight as well as showcases his overarching collecting interest. Out of these 35 items, we chose some things that we thought were really outstanding and not generally on exhibition. They include: Benjamin Franklin’s handwritten autobiography; Maj. John Andre’s Revolutionary War-era maps; the first Bible printed in North America in a native language, which is also called the Eliot Indian Bible after the Englishman who translated it; and Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman’s four-part memoir never before examined by scholars. The pages open to the redaction pertaining to his mental illness which ran in his family.”
Rounding up the exhibition are displays related to the make-up of this institution. Says Watts, “One of the things I like to tell people is that in 1907, at the beginning of Huntington’s collecting career, there was a big article in the New York Times about the most important collectors in the country and Huntington appeared nowhere. In 1919, when this institution opened, he was called one of the world’s greatest collectors, having one of the world’s best private libraries. How did Huntington do that? He was a consolidator and amalgamator – he bought huge libraries all at once. He had purchased four of the libraries that were mentioned in the 1907 article. We included several book bills to show the range of people he was dealing with and also the kinds of things he was buying. A favorite of mine is the one from Rosenbach, who was one of his major dealers. He delivered $121,000 worth of Shakespeare’s works to the San Marino estate. That gives you a sense that he purchased aggressively.”
Myron Hunt presentation drawing, ink on linen | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
“Among the many surprising things we learned, we determined that in the early years he was planning on importing all sorts of seeds and plants not as a collector but to landscape his real estate holdings,” Glisson discloses. “He was trying to figure out what would work here and it evolved into a teaching collection, something akin to what Harvard was doing in his botanic garden. The other thing that was really fascinating was that in the beginning he thought he could finance this whole enterprise entirely on citrus. Through all sorts of formulation of various fertilizer and types of trees, Hertrich was able to tell Huntington which are the best varieties and how much they’re making. Unfortunately, citrus isn’t the most reliable revenue source and, on top of that, 1919 was a bad year for citrus. Huntington ultimately had to sell some properties to finance this place. In 1919, Huntington had 600 acres; today his estate has 207 acres.”
Watts leads us to a small section, explaining, “This is a kind of homage to Hertrich. Here we see some of the early photographs of the property that he took and his little notebook with a listing of birds which Arabella loved – there was an aviary here with 500 birds. Hertrich, in addition to overseeing the citrus and the grounds, also had to keep track of all the birds. A favorite of Arabella’s was the toucan and we have an original citrus crate label with a toucan, the only one we know that exists.
“We also found something interesting – the vast labor force that actually made this place come to be was not well represented. Although they didn’t necessarily go around taking pictures and keeping documents of their workers, we were able to find payroll records. We discovered that a third of the work force during the time were Mexicans from Mexico or Spanish, and they were paid significantly less than the European and American work force. It wasn’t surprising, but we’re starting to have scholars weed through and work with those documents that were heretofore unexamined.”
“And what would a show about Huntington be without talking about how much he was worth in 1919? He was worth $69 million that year and we have these preprinted ledgers and balance sheets, which he kept month by month, that showed his assets.”
“I will finish with a picture of Henry and Arabella – seen here as a young woman, not the woman we have come to think of as Arabella Huntington, the dowager wearing a widow’s veil,” pronounces Watts. “She was very much behind the scenes of this enterprise and was, in many ways, a huge force to be reckoned with. Her interests, as you may know, were in French decorative art and British portraiture, which he went on to collect later in time.
“When you exit the exhibition, you’ll see this great quote by Herman Hesse which we felt is emblematic of this project and of the year 1919: Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.”
Asked what he learned about Huntington that he didn’t know coming into this project, Glisson replies, “I haven’t been here that long so I didn’t know a great deal beforehand. In reading reminiscences about him and what people said, my takeaway is that he was someone who believed in trusting other people and he was very optimistic. He was always telling his staff to trust people to do the right thing. I thought that was very significant and interesting for a tremendously successful businessman and it suggests he must have found people he trusted and liked and then let them do their job. And that, to a large degree, is how you run a grand institution. In a sense, he clearly wasn’t that interested in being a book collector in 1905 or 1906 and then he got interested and focused on it. When it came to the grounds, his landscaper Hertrich suggested that they be systematic about it and create a scientific botanical garden like Harvard and he agreed right away. So there’s trust and this openness and a kind of capriciousness that, I think, shaped what we are today – an art museum, a botanical garden, and a library – which is a kind of unlikely combination.”
Displays in the ‘Return’ section | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
I inquire what they want people to get from the exhibition. Watt responds, “I always want people to leave with a sense of curiosity and wonder. For me, it was important that people understand the depth and wealth of our collection, that we’re an active research institution where scholars come in every day to study these materials, and that we have an active, vibrant collection which continues to grow.
Glisson says, “One, I hope that people, particularly those from L.A. and Southern California, come to the show and are surprised. Two, I hope they find something that they want to learn more about. And three, I hope they find something in the show that speaks to their own experience which, I think, is pretty likely because there’s all sorts of materials. Those are my hopes, and the biggest one is just for visitors to be very surprised.”
German Revolution Photos | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
As for his favorite display among all the objects, Glisson reveals, “I love this red poster. Visually, this just jumps off the wall. It’s an incredibly powerful thing. And then there’s the text – Achtung! Stehenbleiben verboten! Auf Zusammenrottungen wird rucksichtslos geschossen – which translates to ‘Warning! Stopping is prohibited! Crowds of rioters will be indiscriminately shot.’ My German isn’t so good and I kept reading it and wondered about it. It turns out that this poster would have been printed during the German Revolution in January 1919, and it was posted on a government building with armed soldiers watching around it. Talk about this poster being a snap shot of history and how improbable that it got all the way from Berlin, maybe from the Reichstag, to Los Angeles.”
That Henry E. Huntington had chosen to establish the institution that would bear his name in the San Gabriel Valley in 1919, when he could have done so anywhere in the United States, was quite improbable as well. It might have been seen by some as a foolhardy decision at the time, but we want to think it proved to be a stroke of genius!
Originally published on 8 October 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
‘Gem of the Ocean’ ensemble | Photo by Craig Schwartz / A Noise Within
August Wilson, a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, wrote a cycle of ten plays collectively called the ‘American Century Cycle’ which he set in a different decade of the 20th century. Each of the plays chronicles the complexities of the changing social and historical landscape of the African American experience over the course of a hundred years.
‘Gem of the Ocean,’ set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where Wilson grew up, is the first play in the cycle. It is the second production in A Noise Within’s 2019-2020 season and is on stage from September 22 to November 16. Directed by Gregg T. Daniel, it stars Veralyn Jones as Aunt Ester Tyler, Evan Lewis Smith as Citizen Barlow, Kevin Jackson as Solly Two Kings, Chuma Gault as Caesar Wilks, and Carolyn Ratteray as Black Mary Wilks.
Ratteray, a resident artist, was previously seen on the ANW stage when she portrayed the role of Beline in ‘The Imaginary Invalid.’ She graciously sits down with me an hour before rehearsal to talk about August Wilson, the play, and her role.
She begins with a revelation, “Gem of the Ocean’ holds a special position because it’s the first play in the ‘American Century Cycle’ even though he wrote it last. I love that he went back to the beginning, to the early 1900s – it takes place in 1904. He wrote in retrospect about how it all started. The date has significance as well. As you’ll read in the program, Aunt Ester is a 285 year-old spiritual advisor for the Hill District Community. If you do the math, the day she was born is 1619 which is the arrival of the first enslaved Africans on the American shores. As she explains in a beautiful monologue, Aunt Ester is a title that was handed down to her and whoever owns that title is the holder of the memories of the African people.
“Aunt Ester’s home address and house of sanctuary – 1839 Wylie Avenue – also has a significance. The year 1839 was the date of the enslaved people’s rebellion on La Amistad, the ship which traveled from West Africa to its final destination, which was supposed to have been Cuba. However, the enslaved people revolted and made the Spanish enslavers go back to Africa. Instead the Spaniards took the ship to the United States where they faced the Supreme Court to decide if they were, in fact, slaves or free people.
“August Wilson left gems of history within his text. By chronicling each play throughout the entire 1900s, he laid down the history of Africans, particularly Africans in the Americas. It was exciting to unpack everything during the first few days of table work. Coincidentally, 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans’ arrival. How meaningful it is to stage this play now! Though I’ve seen some of his work, this is the first play of his that I’ve been part of. It’s amazing to be able to witness his brilliance as a play maker, world creator, and story teller. That’s the great thing about being an actor, each project is a mini history lesson.”
Ratteray explains, “In the play, a man named Citizen Barlow comes to Aunt Ester’s house because he has done a deed for which he feels a guilt and heaviness that he can’t quite shake. And only by getting his soul washed by Aunt Ester can he feel free again. August Wilson has woven a fascinating mythology that the people who didn’t make it across the water created a city of bones underneath the ocean. Aunt Ester has kept the bill of sale, the receipt that proves that she had been bought and sold, which she makes into a paper boat. She gives it to Citizen saying, ‘This is the Gem of the Ocean and you have to get on this boat to go to the City of Bones.’
Shown left to right: Veralyn Jones, Carolyn Ratteray, and Evan Lewis Smith | Photo by Craig Schwartz / A Noise Within
“The Middle Passage is the name given to the route that the ship with enslaved people took from Africa, through the Caribbean, up to the coast of America. Out of every 100 people kidnapped, only 40 lived. Obviously a lot of people jumped overboard when they could and a lot of them died because they were packed like sardines for months. It was a three- or four-month voyage, with no food and no bathrooms. The conditions were horrible. They were allowed a few minutes a day to walk, then they were put back in chains.
“August Wilson positioned this ritual which, I feel, is a call for Africans in the Americas to say ‘We have to honor this Middle Passage, the defining event of our experience here in this country and which has plagued us ever since. We have to lift it up and come to terms with it – we have to grieve, celebrate, and ritualize this Middle Passage. This play is building towards this moment when this man goes to the City of Bones and it’s the big theme of the play – that once you face your past, you can move on to your future.”
Asked to describe her character, Ratteray says, “Black Mary is Aunt Ester’s protégé. She wants to take on this mantle but she is, at the same time, reticent and hesitant, nervous and scared. She wonders what it means to be the holder of all these memories. It’s a daunting task for someone in her 20s. All the characters take a beautiful journey in the play and hers, in particular, starts from a place of being in service to others – Aunt Ester and the men in the household. Her life has been prescribed by the men in her world and by the strong dominating force of Aunt Ester.”
Ratteray, who gives a superb performance, cannot have a more different background from the character she plays. She says, “My dad came from Bermuda and my mother was from Georgia. He was amazing with his family chronology – he has all the papers about our family back to the very first person who bore our last name. They wanted us to know our lineage, to know who we are, and told us to carry that with us. They wanted the best for their kids and they put a huge emphasis on education. I went to a white private school for a good part of my growing up – 4th to 12th grade. My parents knew that it was totally dangerous for me to be in that situation because I could lose my connection to my history and to who I am. But they never let me do that. From a very early age, they told me about our history and gave me the biographies of Malcolm X, Dr. King, and other civil rights activists, to read. They planted seeds and created an environment that later on made me incredibly curious to know what it was like to live in the United States at an earlier time. You have to know your history or you’ll get swallowed by the dominant system. Which is what August wants us to do – to speak our truth and in our language. He wanted to lift the African American vernacular to a place of poetry. It’s amazing, because so often people would say ‘that’s not correct English – you can’t say ain’t’ and if it’s not perfect King’s English you’re somehow less smart or less advanced. It’s seeing your reflection wherever you can see it and having a sense of pride.
Carolyn Ratteray | Courtesy Photo / A Noise Within
I ask Ratteray how she approached her role. She replies, “I always try to find what I have in common with the character. There’s a scene where Citizen tells Black Mary to come to his bedroom that night and she stops him in his tracks, saying ‘What do you have to offer?’ She then goes into this monologue about how men don’t see the fullness of who she is. She’s looking for someone who doesn’t only want what he can take from her but has something to give back to her. She doesn’t want to be used anymore; she wants to be appreciated and valued. She wants to learn how to be seen in this world. She knows she has to be right with herself before she can be right for anybody else. I am awed by the heart with which she says it – she’s been wounded by these men – but she’s still holding on to the belief that she can demand better for herself. She wanted to wait for the right person and wait for herself to bloom so she can be with someone else. That’s such a deep line. It’s brilliant! I read that and I identified so strongly with that value. In my life I have spent a lot of time in self-reflection and constantly asking how I can make myself right, to come to the table with the fullness of myself. That type of grit and force of soul, I saw right away; this was a woman I can know.”
Continues Ratteray, “Soon after that scene, she stands up to Aunt Ester and says ‘I’m going to do things my way if I’m going to stay here.’ And that’s her being right with herself as well. It can be hard to stand up for oneself in this society and speak truth to power. It can be intimidating. But you can see the relief and growth that develops after she says it. That’s something I can relate to.
Although Black Mary doesn’t say outright that she’s ready to take on the role of Aunt Ester, that’s when she demonstrates she’s ready to take the mantle. And Aunt Ester says to her, ‘What took you so long?’ It was as if Aunt Ester was waiting for Black Mary this whole time to come to that realization.
“The dynamics change after that. She makes a very clear choice – she’s aligning with Aunt Ester. In order for Black Mary to take this mantle, she has to let her worldly family – Caesar – go. And that’s the one thing she hadn’t wanted to do; she had been riding this for as long as she can because he was of her blood and giving up on him meant she had nothing left. She walked that line but as events progress in this play, she sees that she doesn’t want to be associated with what he’s doing. She has to break away from him and find her own voice and footing. In the monologue towards the end of the play she says, ‘Caesar, I don’t knew you. You’re not my brother.’ And with that, the tie is broken and she’s fully realized. She becomes Aunt Ester’s successor.”
Chuma Gault as Caesar Wilks with Ratteray | Photo by Craig Schwartz / A Noise Within
In doing this play, Ratteray discovered something she hadn’t known going in, “I knew August Wilson was a genius – he has a Pulitzer and an amazing body of work. But actually understanding how much of a visionary, art maker, and political activist he was, was an eye-opener. The amount of history that he packed in had surely gone over my head the first time. It’s amazing how he built in those first 40 years after enslavement in this play. His lines are so well crafted with poetry, music, and rhythm as well as plain information. For two and a half hours, he told us a story about what this world was like post-reconstruction. The artistry by which he did that is astonishing to discover. At the same time he has painted a universal portrait of humanity. He tells us to live this life with integrity, whatever our race, gender, or orientation. The messages in this play are beautiful reminders of how to be in this world. It’s exciting to hear that every night and getting a history lesson at the same time.”
Ratteray adds, “August Wilson wrote a really fascinating historical series about the post reconstruction, into the Jim Crow era. At the most basic level, I hope our audiences enjoy the play; August Wilson is an amazing story teller. Ideally, I would love it if they could see themselves in those characters and hear the messages. The values that are imparted in the story are true to all of us regardless of our ethnicity and gender. Who hasn’t felt that tug of integrity? Who hasn’t asked themselves ‘Should I live my truth or should I hide it?’ ‘Should I align myself with the power structure or should I speak up and make a stand?’ Whether we’re immigrants who voluntarily arrived in this country recently or enslaved people who were forced to come here long ago, whatever the plethora of differences we have, the questions that make this universal and enduring over the years are the same. What is freedom in this day and age? Who am I? How do I become? What does it mean to face a part of your past in order to move forward? How do I live with myself if I don’t have a conscience? Do I have to compromise?
“I hope they don’t think of it only as a play written by a black playwright and it’s a black experience. While it’s specifically about the black experience, it isn’t exclusive to a particular community, it applies to all of us. August Wilson is one of the greatest American playwrights and he’s writing all of our stories. I hope people are moved; I hope people feel the story in their heart. I do love history, so part of me hopes that it makes people want to read about this period in our history – for them to look where we came from and where we are now. If we don’t know more about what happened in the past, we can’t cultivate the foundation of compassion for others – for those who are different from ourselves. I’m glad that we’re continuing to tell these stories. Being a part of this cast and crew, and the beautiful tone that Gregg struck from the beginning of what it means to speak these words and tell this history, is such a beautiful gift.”
Originally published on 3 October 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
There are two lines in Leonard Cohen’s song ‘Anthem,’ that go ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.’ The words inspired an original play by E.M. Lewis ‘How the Light Gets In,’ which is currently having its world premiere at Boston Court Pasadena from September 19 to October 28. Directed by Emilie Pascale Beck, the Literary Manager at Boston Court, it stars Amy Sloan and Ryun Yu in the roles of Grace and Haruki, and features Chelsea Kurtz as Kat and Dieterich Gray as Tommy Z.
‘How the Light Gets In’ is an intimate story about four characters – a travel writer who never travels, a Japanese architect who can’t figure out how to build a simple tea house, a gifted tattoo artist who resists the power of his talents, and a homeless girl who lives under a weeping willow tree in the Japanese garden – who live disparate lives that somehow intersect in the most unexpected way.
That peculiar, yet fascinating mix, is enough to pique anyone’s curiosity. Lewis, during a late morning interview, gladly chats about her start in playwriting, her connection to Boston Court, why she conceived this play, and how the four unlikely characters’ lives in ‘How the Light Gets In’ seamlessly blend into each other’s.
The ‘How the Light Gets In’ ensemble | Photo by Craig Schwartz / Boston Court Pasadena
Lewis begins, “I’m from rural Oregon but I went to graduate school at USC and stayed in Los Angeles for quite a while. This is where I became a playwright and I have a lot of friendships and connections to the theatre community here in Los Angeles. I met Emilie then and we’ve wanted to work on something together since. I was involved with ‘Moving Arts,’ a small theatre company in Silver Lake and they’ve done four of my plays over the years – ‘Song of Extinction,’ ‘Infinite Black Suitcase, ‘The Gun Show’ and the latest one was ‘Apple Season.’
While New York is widely known as where theatre happens, there’s a very active theatre community here. There are amazing actors and people who are passionate about creating stories for the stage who often are making a living on film and television. But they love coming back to the theatre because it’s intimate – there’s a relationship between you and the audience. And I love that, especially when the story is so close to me and I can feel myself breathing what they’re breathing. That’s ideal to me as an audience member and a playwright as, I’m sure, it is what actors and directors want.
Playwright E. M. Lewis | Photo courtesy of Tom Sanders Photography / Boston Court Pasadena
Talking about the play that involves people who seem to be in the wrong profession, Lewis describes, “Grace, the main protagonist, is a smart and capable travel writer who loves to read and enjoys what she does. She took care of her parents who were getting older and when they passed away she finds herself, in the middle of her 40s, a little bit isolated. While she has a satisfying career, she’s unmarried and has no family so her life has no meaning to her. When something happens to her, she’s shocked to find out she has no one to emotionally help her with what she’s physically going through.
“The male protagonist is the architect Haruki who lives in Japan but works internationally; he’s been widowed for ten years. His wife was the world to him and when she died, he lost his heart. He poured all his energy into his work and became solitary. While he is prospering professionally, the personal side of his life has been neglected.”
“So these two people find each other at a moment when he is finally, perhaps, maybe, open to the possibility of something new – although he’s not sure that he’s ready for love – and she is in the midst of a crisis, which is really the most terrible moment to come across someone who is lovely and wonderful. She doesn’t feel like herself and is not sure what’s going to happen. Yet, things in this life don’t happen on a schedule or when you want them to, they happen when they happen. So we’ll see whether or not they allow themselves to seize this opportunity. It’s a little love story; I haven’t written very many. It’s quite joyful to have these two characters in my head and in my ears as I was writing the play, and now to see them come to life. It’s really delightful; I think I should write more love stories,” Lewis chuckles.
Continues Lewis, “Tommy Z, the tattoo artist, is a tough character. He owns the shop where he works which is, basically, an abandoned half-demolished building that he bought for a good price. There’s one entire wall missing, where someone drove through. And so he built a wall out of discarded window frames and windows he salvaged from various garbage sites, which created a quilt of light.
“We learn that his life converged with Kat’s at a hospital emergency room. She had been having a rough time – she had hurt herself yet decided to get help. So she finds herself in the ER late one night and takes the last seat, which happens to be beside Tommy, whose brother has overdosed, and not for the first time. They strike up a conversation and a friendship, proving that in the midst of crisis people connect and find each other. Their story ends up intersecting with Grace’s and Haruki’s because Kat has been living under the willow tree in the Japanese garden. While Tommy’s only connection to the garden is through Kat, he gets woven into the tale because his gift as a tattoo artist turns out to be important to some of the other characters in unpredictable ways.”
Choosing her words deliberately, Lewis explains, “The core of the story is that in a moment of crisis, when you are overwhelmed by something that has happened, you are also in a moment of possibility of remaking yourself. Grace who, until that time, has been doing what she’s always done – writing a travel column – finds out she has a health crisis which knocks her off her feet. She’s trying to figure out what to do and how to handle it. And with the help of these strangers who become family to her, she finds her way out the other side and somehow in a better way. Sometimes a catastrophe pushes you to look at your life and see what’s missing, to consider what you want to be, show you a clock that’s ticking, and makes you realize how important it is to do what you want to do right now.”
Amy Sloan as Grace and Ryun Yu as Haruki, the main characters | Photo by Craig Schwartz / Boston Court Pasadena
Asked how she conceived the play, Lewis responds, “Plays are made out of playwrights. What other stuff do we have to make our work from? The story and the characters are entirely fictional but there’s a lot of Grace’s story that comes from me. I had a health crisis about two years ago, which was both shocking and scary, so Grace’s journey mirrors mine a little bit. I began writing the play while I was going through medical procedures and, as usual, it’s writing that saves me. My characters – who dropped into my head – helped me figure out about myself what I have trouble doing. Hearing their voices made me less lonely as I was going through it. And it’s exciting to see that they’re going on stage in a unexpectedly quick time from when I started writing it.”
The genesis of the title, which could be interpreted in so many different ways, helped Lewis craft the play. She reveals, “Titles are really important to me, they’re part of my conception of the play as a whole and what it wants to be. I can’t remember specifically if it just came into my head from knowing the song, or if I was listening to Leonard Cohen while I was writing it, and I went ‘Ah, that’s a great title!’ as sometimes happens. There is a lot of poetry in it. And that image of how the light gets in, for this character, who is in the midst of so much darkness, that’s definitely the central question of the play. Although it doesn’t only apply to her, but to all the characters and in different ways – more literal in some and metaphorical in others.
Lewis recalls that she was present for callbacks during the casting process. “Because this is a world premiere, these characters have not been fully embodied before. It’s so much an ensemble piece so we don’t have to merely consider them as themselves for the characters, but also how they work with each other. There’s a real human connection between each of the characters – one is a love story between Grace and Haruki. And with Grace and Kat, there are tendrils of a maternal relationship. Tommy has his own friendship that’s unique to him but they have to connect with each other. So casting was important and we put people together in different combinations during that casting period.
“I came back again a month ago for our first week of rehearsal. That’s such a golden time for a new play. Everybody’s sitting together – you don’t know each other, you’ve never worked together before – embarking on a new creation. That’s when a lot of fantastic questions arise especially from really, really good actors, about the play and their characters because they are having to figure out ‘Who is this person who I’m becoming?’ ‘What is their journey?’ And nobody looks at your character as carefully as the actors who will be playing them. We had fabulous table work that definitely inspired writing and rewriting during that week and in the time since. Emilie and I have been in conversation via email, sending little tweaks, adjustments, and rewrites.”
“The actors also had to be about the same age as the roles they’re playing because different things happen to us at various times in our life. And this is about four people who are in different places in their journey. An actress who’s 19 years old would not have the physical looks or the experience to act like someone who’s 40, which is Grace’s age in the play. They don’t have to be the exact age, they only have to be as close to that stage in their life.”
Chelsea Kurtz plays Kat and Dieterich Gray takes on the role of Tommy Z | Photo by Craig Schwartz
“What is important to you when casting the roles for your play?,” I query. Lewis responds, “I was mostly the silent partner, Emilie was leading the auditions. But what I was looking for were truth, vulnerability, and connection. You can feel it when someone is just putting on a façade versus someone who’s sharing their genuine self with you, especially in a small theatre. Vulnerability is also essential because the characters go through some things, and face some things about themselves. They have big questions about the universe and what they’re going through. So these have to be actors who are willing to open up and let us in. And, lastly, connection. This is a play that reaches out to the audience and, more and more, as I write, I find myself wanting to include the audience in the story- telling. I think of theatre as the old-fashioned medium – that what we do today is so connected and similar to people thousands of years ago sitting around the campfire telling each other stories. That was an intimate and connected experience and I want to make the kind of theatre that makes us feel that way – here we are in the darkness and sharing something that takes us through that whole emotional rainbow of feelings. Stories that help us ward off the darkness.”
A prolific playwright, Lewis has written about 13 or 14 plays. She states, “Most of them have been out in the world. I’ve been very lucky to have plays across the country and also in Edinburgh and a few other places. My play ‘Song of Extinction’ was at the Guthrie in Minneapolis. I’ve had plays staged in New York although not on Broadway; it was in Manhattan, though. I have been happily writing full time for the last nine years, which is fortunate because, as you know, the life of a playwright is such a roller coaster. Likewise, I do a little teaching here and there; and I also work on commissions. It’s a piecemeal sort of life and it’s uneven. But how lucky am I to be able to spend my life doing what I love and see my work come to life! It’s amazing to walk into a space and see the people who are figments of my imagination and here they are. I get to hug them. It’s very powerful as well as a big responsibility, in a good way.”
“Plays are a different art from poetry or novels.” Lewis elucidates. “Poets and novelists create the whole world themselves. Whereas a play is meant to be embodied and discovered through other people’s arts. And so to let them in helps you find the mood of the play. I love the part of my work that’s in my garret – alone, scribbling, listening to the voices of my characters in my head. But I love the other half of my life just as much – which is when I get to come to the theatre and work with the actors and directors.
“I’m so grateful to have my play premiering here at Boston Court. When I lived in Los Angeles, back when I was a baby playwright and finding my way, I would come to watch plays here at Boston Court. I thought they had the most stunningly beautiful stage and space. I loved the intimacy of the extraordinary design and their choice of plays that were smart and interesting. So to be able to have my play here with these lovely and smart people is a great gift. They take risks in doing new work and they love the business of helping a playwright find their play. Likewise, I have felt supported and challenged in all the best ways.”
As for the audience takeaway, Lewis says “There is a quote from Winston Churchill ‘If you’re going through hell, keep going.’ When we’re in the midst of a catastrophe, we tend to hunker down and not get out of it. I would like the audience to leave the theatre with a sense of coming out the other side of something, different than when they came in. Sometimes, even in the darkest time, you can be propelled into light and possibility that could nev
Originally published on 3 October 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
Cornell University | Courtesy Photo
The road to college
The road to college involves four years of complicated planning and complex scheduling. High school students are extremely busy – homework, extra-curricular activities in art and sports, campus clubs, all compete for their time. To add to that, they have to make sure they get excellent marks in their courses and on the standardized tests. Their GPAs and SAT/ACT scores have to impress college admissions officers to really consider their application.
I know some parents who enroll their kids in SAT prep courses as early as 9th grade and some independent counselors recommend that students sit for the SAT in 10th grade. However, I feel that taking the SAT this early isn’t necessarily the best course of action – students still have so much to learn and aren’t really ready for this test. Unless there are extenuating circumstances (if the SAT is a requirement for an advanced math course, for instance) that necessitate them to take it, I would suggest waiting a bit. My daughter took her SAT and ACT the summer before her senior year. By then she had accumulated as much knowledge as high school covered.
FRESHMAN
Encourage your children to keep their focus on their schoolwork. By this time, they should have figured out what extra-curricular activities they are interested in pursuing and what sports they want to participate in. Give them guidance as they navigate this new phase in their school life, and support the choices they make.
SOPHOMORE
Depending on your children’s course choices and load, there could be standardized testing required of them. Your children should be taking AP and SAT II exams following completion of the course while the knowledge they gained in class is still fresh in their minds. The best preparation for both AP and SAT II exams is for your children to make sure they understand the subject matter and do well in all tests the teachers give in class. If there is something they don’t understand, they should right away speak to the teacher to ask for clarification or, possibly, find a tutor for additional help. The results of these standardized exams are required for college applications.
JUNIOR
Your children should be aware that junior year is the last complete year of high school performance that college admissions officers will see. They have to put more effort at doing well and getting good marks.
They should register for and take the PSAT, which is also the qualifying exams for the National Merit Scholarship. It is also a good time for your children to meet with their school counselor to make sure they are taking all the courses they need to graduate and apply to college.
Your children should also be keeping up with their extra-curricular and sports activities. College admissions officers look at several components as they try to assemble an incoming class made up of the best candidates to add to their student body.
Several area high schools hold College Fairs on campus. This is an excellent opportunity for you to see what the different colleges and universities are offering. Your children will get to meet and speak to admissions officers – usually the same people who will be reviewing your children’s application, reading the essay, and sitting around the table – who will be making their case for your children during the all-important decision-making rounds. They have a say on whether your children get accepted or denied admission to the school of their choice.
SENIOR
Eighteen year-olds are intent on getting into the college of their dreams. After all, they have spent four years preparing towards this goal. The cost of a college education may not have necessarily been top of mind for them.
However, with the ever-increasing cost of tuition, books, accommodations, and meals, a college education has become very expensive for a lot of Americans. Many parents can’t afford to send their children to college, necessitating children to take on a student loan. Today student debt is at a staggering $1.5 trillion.
To help parents and students make informed choices, PayScale, Inc., the world’s leading provider of on-demand compensation data and software, released its annual College Salary Report for the 2019-2020 school year. Using data collected from more than 3.2 million college alumni, it provides estimates of early and mid-career pay for 2,646 associate and bachelor’s degree-granting schools in the United States.
An accompanying piece to this is a report PayScale puts out in the spring, called College Return on Investment, which details how much it will cost to attend a particular school and the earning potential of its alumni. These two reports are worth looking at when your children make decisions on what majors to take and what schools to apply to.
Your children should now be in the process of completing the common app, and finalizing their essay topic or personal statement. They should have provided the teachers who are writing their letters of recommendation with stamped envelopes.
Depending on what course your children are applying for, they may be required to send supplementary material (auditions or portfolios) with their application and they need to get those ready. Audition tapes for Arts Performance, for instance, can be uploaded on YouTube for easy access. Your children should check the website of the college or university to which they are applying about supplement material requirements. Your children’s school counselors are also a great resource as they are always in contact with college admissions officers.
If your children’s high school offers interview advice and guidance, they should take advantage of it. Basic information like what clothes and shoes to wear, in addition to how to answer questions, all help towards giving your children confidence. While this is not a professional statement, in most cases, interviewers are not as concerned about the answer applicants give, as they are about their demeanor and how they present themselves. Also, if your children are visiting a campus and an interview with an admissions officer is a requirement for application, they should take the opportunity to schedule the interview at that time. Admissions officers like to see demonstrated interest – a campus visit and interview will be remembered and noted.
Be on top of application deadlines; most schools offering Early Action or early Decision have to receive your children’s application by the 1st of November.
You and your children should be researching scholarships. Some websites include: CollegeXpress (www.collegexpress.com); Fastweb (www.fastweb.com); Free Application for Federal Student Aid (www.fafsa.ed.gov); National Merit Scholarship Corporation (www.nationalmerit.org); Scholarships.com (www.scholarships.com); Scholarships360 (www.scholarships360.org); Student Aid on the Web (www.studentaid.ed.gov). You should also attend the financial workshops being offered at your children’s high school. Most high schools offer on-site guidance, with specialists who can answer your questions.
Your responsibilities as parents are limited to offering encouragement, guidance, and moral support as your children go through this stressful time. But while you need to let your children manage this process, you should also express your concerns and expectations. Communicate with your child, the counselors, and the teachers when you have inquiries.
Be there for your children but learn when to get out of their way. Never try to communicate with the college admission officers as it is the surest way to sabotage your children’s chances for admission. Do not be overzealous about getting your children accepted to their dream university; there is a school out there that’s the right place for them. While this may sound hollow now, the counselors at your children’s school and the admissions officers at the colleges, or universities to which your children are applying, are actually the experts at finding the best fits.
Originally published on 23 September 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
Christ Church College | Courtesy photo
Oxford, England, located in Oxfordshire (51 miles north of London), is best known for its university – the oldest in the English-speaking world and, quite possibly, the most esteemed institution of higher learning on earth. There was some form of teaching there as far back as 1096. Unlike at other university towns, the University of Oxford was there before the area was settled in, so the town was built around the school.
The first time I went to Oxford, 29 years ago, it was during the spring and it seemed like the quintessential college town. This time around, however, the atmosphere was as widely different as night and day.
My two young companions and I arrived in Oxford around 2:45 in the afternoon, having left Cambridge on the 13:30 train from London Kings Cross. Immediately, as we alighted, we felt the contrast between the two cities. Whereas Cambridge was calm even with tourists visiting for a few days and kith and kin descending into town for graduation week, Oxford buzzed with incessant activity and teemed with humanity jostling for space. Dozens of tourist vehicles, double-decker buses, taxis, and cars of all models and makes greeted us when we got out of the station. There were people milling every which way and vendors selling all sorts of souvenir items. It was a veritable circus.
It was also an uncommonly hot summer day for England where it’s usually cold and grey. We happened to be traveling there in one of their rare heatwaves. Thankfully, we were already in Oxford when Cambridge registered a temperature of 38.7C (101.7F), the highest ever-recorded in the U.K. (it beat the previous UK record of 38.5C set in Kent in 2003). But it wasn’t that less hot in Oxford either – it was 37C (98.6F).
But the situation only became worse when we got to the Van Brugh, a boutique hotel which was formerly a residence, and we found out it had no air conditioning (a fact they did not disclose on their website)! The building was ill-equipped for the soaring temperatures and the staff was woefully unprepared to allay the situation. The rooms were 32.7C (90.86F) at night and, for security reasons, the windows wouldn’t open more than a few inches. The electric fans and buckets of ice the staff provided didn’t do much to ease our discomfort.
We stayed outdoors sightseeing for as long as possible but there was no escaping the heat. We walked around town with the big umbrellas the hotel kept in every room, for the downpours that are normally expected, and we used them to shield us from the sun. We must have looked ludicrous. However, we saw several Asian tourists who had the same idea – it was like being back home in the San Gabriel Valley. In fact, it seemed like all the tourists were Asians!
This Thai restaurant on George Street has a bathtub for seating | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
Happily, Van Brugh is located on St Michaels Street, off of George Street, and is central to all the places we wanted to go. We spent that first day meandering and decided to get an early dinner at Cote Brasserie on George Street as we made our way back to the hotel.
Oxford is a very popular tourist destination, with themed ‘Official Walking Tours’ to fit everyone’s interest. There’s the two-hour tour of the university’s most iconic buildings. Fans of the British detective series ‘Inspector Morse Lewis’ and ‘Endeavour’ can take a two-hour tour of the various locations used in the show. And then there are the ‘Official Harry Potter Highlights Tour of Oxford’ and the ‘Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland Official Oxford Tour.’
Opting not to join any official tour, we set out on our own to see the various sights. Our first stop was Christ Church Cathedral and College – paradoxically the largest of Oxford colleges combined with the smallest cathedral in England. While Christ Church isn’t the oldest college (that claim belongs to University College), it is, arguably, the most prestigious.
Christ Church Cathedral and College | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
Christ Church Cathedral’s and College’s architecture, population, and way of life have been a source of inspiration for many authors and filmmakers. Lewis Carroll studied, taught, and lived at Christ Church for 47 years and his ‘Alice’ was Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean at that time. In the Dining Hall, on the left-hand wall, the fifth window from the entrance bears portraits of Alice and creatures from ‘Alice in Wonderland.’
The Quad, Cloister, and Hall Staircase have been used in several films. Harry Potter fans will recognize the tops of the Hall Staircase where Professor McGonagall welcomes Harry, Hermione, Ron, and their classmates to Hogwarts. The Cloister is where Harry is shown the Quidditch trophy his dad won when he was a seeker. The Great Hall was replicated in a studio to become Hogwarts Hall.
Christ Church Meadow Entrance. | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
We entered Christ Church through the Meadow and the Meadow Building bordered by the rivers Cherwell and Thames. The limestone path was lined with glorious blooms and made for an extremely pleasant walk, even on this hot and humid day.
The cathedral, which was originally the church of St Frideswide’s Priory, the patron saint of Oxford, was built in 1120. In 1522, Thomas Cardinal Wolsey selected the priory as the site for his proposed college and founded the cathedral as the college chapel (a dual role that’s unique in the Church of England). The choir has been there since 1526 when John Taverner was the organist and master of choristers. It was refounded in 1546 by Henry VIII when he established the College.
According to the Christ Church Information booklet, much of this ancient priory church was rebuilt between 1170 and 1190. The Cathedral used to extend towards the space where Tom Quad now stands but Cardinal Wolsey knocked down three bays of the name to accommodate the College.
The Jonah Window (made in 1630 by Abraham van Linge) is remarkable in that only the figure of Jonah is made of stained glass – the rest consists of small panels of painted glass, showing the city of Nineveh in minute detail. In the North Transept, the St Michael Window (created by Clayton & Bell in 1870) is the Cathedral’s largest. It contains Victorian glass that shows the Archangel Michael leading his army of angels to defeat the devil, who is depicted as a dragon beneath St Michael’s feet. The window also illustrates a scene from Revelation, the final book in the Bible.
St Michael Window | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
What is believed to be either The Watching Loft or a Chantry Chapel, dating from the 1500s, is an exquisite example of medieval woodwork. Not far from the shrine is the Bell Chapel. It has an altar and a free-standing cross carved from its base made in memory of Bishop George Bell who, in 1942, opposed the bombing of German cities. Near the High Altar is the Bishop’s seat, indicating that this is the mother church of the Oxford Diocese.
The Cathedral’s vaulted ceiling is its chief architectural glory. Its striking ribs splay out from 12 stone lanterns which appear to hang miraculously in mid-air. Small interconnecting ‘lierne’ ribs in the center of the vault create eight-pointed stars, forming an image of heaven.
Located in the northeast corner is the Latin Chapel where the shrine of St Frideswide is found. The oldest monument in the Cathedral, it once held the relics of the saint but was smashed when King Henry commanded in 1538 that all monasteries be destroyed. He was then reburied nearby. The fragments of his shrine were discovered down a well and subsequently pieced together over 350 years later.
In the South Transept can be found the medieval Becket Window, the oldest in the Cathedral. It contains a rare panel illustrating the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket, who died at Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. He is shown kneeling between a monk and the four knights who murdered him. The panel was defaced in the 16th century in order to protect it from Henry VIII’s orders to destroy all images of Thomas Becket; the original face of Becket is now missing.
The Cloister, like the Cathedral, is part of the original Priory of St Frideswide, which stood here before the college was built. Human remains from the time of St Frideswide (8th century AD) were found in the central plot. The olive tree, a traditional symbol of peace, and the fountain are contemporary additions to the Cloister and mark the threshold of the Cathedral’s sacred space.
Christ Church Cathedral | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
We were sitting in the Cathedral for the 12:00 Prayer when the priest asked everyone present to pray for the poor who are suffering from hunger, for refugees who are looking for safe haven, and for those being persecuted for their religious beliefs. And, lastly, he asked that we pray for Boris Johnson, who had just been elected as the new Prime Minister, so that he may find guidance to do what’s right for the U.K. An Oxonian himself (he attended Balliol College, one of the oldest colleges), Johnson was voted President of the Oxford Union in 1986.
How apt that we should be at this very Cathedral, on the 23rd of July, when my daughter’s English husband (who was her fiancé then) found out that the U.K. may indeed be in dire need of the world’s prayers. That he was soon to be wed and immigrating to the U.S. didn’t come as too great a comfort since his entire family lives in England.
From the Cathedral, we went to Christ Church College, which students endearingly refer to as ‘the house’ because it’s their home when they’re in Oxford – it’s where they live, eat, and study. It has several architecturally significant structures, including Tom Tower designed by Sir Christopher Wren, England’s most renowned architect. It is reputed to be the second wealthiest college after St John’s. It counts William Penn (the founder of Pennsylvania), C.L. Dodgson (whom we know as Lewis Carroll), Edward VII (when he was Prince of Wales), and 14 Prime Ministers, among its illustrious alumni.
The Great Staircase | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
We climbed the Great Staircase channeling Harry Potter and company even as we were cognizant of its greater significance. A door at the bottom of the staircase has the words ‘No Peel’ studded into it – a protest against the Home Secretary, Sir Robert Peel, who in 1829 proposed greater freedom for Catholics. Ironically, Peel was a Christ Church alumnus.
The Great Staircase leads into the Great Hall, the center of college life. It is where the academic community congregates to dine every day and where banquets are held on special occasions. Breakfast, lunch (brunch during weekends), and dinner are eaten there so the hall is closed during those times. We were there right after it reopened after lunch and there were still trays, carts, and signage for beverage choices – traces of the meal which had been recently served – which seemed quite mundane in the backdrop of this resplendent space.
The Great Dining Hall | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
There are two dinner sittings: Informal Hall at 6:20 pm and Formal Hall at 7:20 pm and usually consist of a two- or three-course meal. During Formal Hall the academic community wears gowns, an undergraduate student says a Latin Grace at the lectern, and senior members dine at High Table. Wine, beer, and other drinks can be bought before dinner from the adjacent Buttery.
It is the largest pre-Victorian age college hall in either Oxford or Cambridge and seats as many as 300 people. Overhead is a magnificent hammerbeam ceiling and portraits of famous members, including a few of the 14 Prime Ministers educated at Christ Church, adorn the walls. Because Christ Church is a Royal Foundation, the reigning British Monarch acts as the representative of the Founder and is known as its ‘Visitor.’ A bust of her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as well as a portrait of the college’s founder King Henry VIII, can be seen behind the High Table.
As we passed back down the Hall Staircase, we came out onto the Tom Quad, originally called ‘the Great Quadrangle’ because of its grand scale. It is the largest in Oxford, measuring 79.5 x 80.5 meters. It was renamed ‘Tom Quad’ in the 17th century, after the six-ton bell ‘Great Tom’ was installed in Sir Christopher Wren’s new tower.
The Tom Quad – North Corner, the raised walkway around the Great Quadrangle, was meant to be roofed to form an enormous cloister as Cardinal Wolsey envisioned but was never completed. The arch shapes around the walls and protruding bases are all that remain. The new chapel Wolsey intended to build for his college along the north side of the quadrangle was never realized either. For 100 years the north side remained completely open with townspeople and cattle passing by on a muddy lane.
Tom Quad | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
In contrast to the Gothic splendor of Tom Quad lies the classical sophistication of Peckwater Quad. These elegant 18th century buildings lie on the site of a medieval inn, which was run by the Peckwater family. Undergraduate accommodation is available in the symmetrical structures occupying the three sides of the quad. On the fourth side is a stunning library.
With all the tourists moving about it was hard to remember that students live and study there. I can’t imagine how they can actually study, though, with so much activity and noise going on around them.
There is a Christ Church Picture Gallery, which apparently has one of the most noteworthy private collections of Old Master paintings and drawings in Great Britain. But, alas, we were pressed for time and we wanted to see other places so we skipped it.
Oxford’s Bridge of Sighs | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
We walked by Hertford Bridge, a city landmark, which is a skyway that connects two parts of Hertford College over New College Lane. It is often referred to as the Bridge of Sighs although it resembles not the original Bridge of Sighs in Venice but the Rialto Bridge. (Interestingly, Cambridge also has its own Bridge of Sighs). In one scene in the Harry Potter films, Draco Malfoy says to Harry ‘You won’t last 10 seconds’ under a tree. That tree is inside the grounds of New College and it can be seen from the Bridge of Sighs when you look at a certain angle.
You can’t go to Oxford without going to the renowned Oxford University Press. Besides being the university’s official publisher of all research materials, books, and publications for its academics and students, it also prints more than 6,000 titles globally in a variety of formats. Its range covers English language teaching materials, children’s books, journals, scholarly monographs, printed music, higher education textbooks, and schoolbooks. Its most famous publication, as everyone knows, is the Oxford English Dictionary (or the OED, as it is commonly referred to), the definitive record of the English language.
Inside Oxford University Press | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
We lingered for hours to skim through some of their publications, to marvel at the 20-volumed OED, to buy some books and book bags and, I’m embarrassed to say, to escape the heat.
If you’ve ever been to the U.K. then you would know Tesco, their version of a Von’s or Ralph’s supermarket, except much smaller. I love their jute grocery bags and we stopped there the next day to buy a couple on our way to the Ashmolean Museum. The museum is named after Elias Ashmole, a celebrated antiquary, officer of arms, astrologer, and alchemist. He gifted his collection to the University of Oxford on the proviso that a suitable repository was constructed to house it. It opened its doors on the 21st of May 1683, making it Britain’s first public museum. Originally sited on Broad Street, it was relocated to its present location on Beaumont Street and completely redeveloped in 2009.
According to the Ashmolean souvenir book, it now ranks as one of the world’s great collections of art and archeology with an extraordinary range of objects from prehistory to the present day spanning Antiquities, Western and Eastern art, Coins and Casts. And that assertion is not an exaggeration. Visitors to the museum will be treated to a staggering amount of treasures and wealth found within.
Roman statues at the Ashmolean’s Level 1 | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
On level 1, which explores the past, we beheld displays on Eastern art paintings, India from AD 600, Islamic Middle East, Medieval Cyprus, the Mediterranean world, and Mughal India. Level G is all about the ancient world – the Aegean, ancient Cyprus, ancient Egypt and Sudan, ancient Near East, the cast gallery, China to AD 800, Chinese paintings, European prehistory, Greek and Roman sculpture, India to AD 600, and Italy before Rome.
Level 2 has European ceramics | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
Level 2 is where West Meets East – there are 18th century art, arts of the Renaissance, Baroque art, Britain and Italy, China from AD 800, Dutch and Flemish art, early Italian art, England from 400-1600, European art and ceramics, Japan from 1600-1850, music and tapestry, oil sketches, and still-life paintings.
Level 3’s 19th century art | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
Special exhibitions are held on level 3 but it’s not usually open to the public so we went to level 3M which is dedicated to European art from 1800 to the present day –19th century art, De Morgan ceramics, modern art, Pissarro, pre-Raphaelites, Sickert and his contemporaries.
We spent several hours there and I can’t say that I was able to take it all in. The sheer number of floors to climb, galleries to enter, display cases to peer into, and captions to read, were mind-boggling. It was also laid out rather weirdly – with some collections which seemed to be misplaced. Additionally, there were so many twists and turns in the museum that it was easy for people to get lost.
Looking down onto the street from a Waterstones window seat | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
From the Ashmolean we headed to Waterstones Oxford where it’s called ‘The Bookshop on the Corner’ because it’s inside William Baker House, located on the corner of Cornmarket Street and The Broad. After all the walking we did at the museum, it was a relief to sit down and read in one of the nooks. I found a great window seat on the third floor, from where I watched all the people and traffic below.
The following day was our last full day in Oxford and we squeezed in several sights. First on our list was the Bodleian Library at Old Schools Quad on Broad Street. The world’s largest academic library, it has six million books and one million maps. We met our tour guide at the Divinity School, which is attached to the Bodleian Library. It is a medieval building and room, the oldest surviving structure, and is used for oral exams and discussions on religion. It served as the infirmary in four Harry Potter films, and as the ballroom where Professor McGonagall taught students how to dance in ‘The Goblet of Fire.’
Divinity School | Courtesy photo
Our guide told us to store our handbags and all or belongings in a locked storage place. We were given earphones so we could hear her because, she reminded us, it is a working library and she had to speak at barely above a whisper. It was such a pity that taking photos was strictly prohibited (any device which could take pictures were kept under lock and key); it would have been such a thrill to have photos of places we recognize from watching Harry Potter movies. In fact, she carried a binder that contained laminated photos of the scenes from the films which she showed us.
She then took us to the Duke Humfreys Library, located above Divinity School. The oldest reading room in the Bodleian, it is divided into the original medieval section, the Arts End, and the Selden End, containing maps, music, and pre-1641 rare books. The books in the oldest part are housed in oak bookcases at right angles to the walls on either side. The ceilings are fitted with panels painted with the arms of the university.
Duke Humfreys Library | Courtesy photo
It was named after Humphrey of Lancaster, first Duke of Gloucester, a younger son of Henry IV. A connoisseur of literature, he commissioned the translation of classical works from Greek into Latin. He bequeathed his collection of 281 books to the University of Oxford upon his death in 1447, a generous donation since the university had merely 20 books (!) at the time. Only three of his original books remain in the library today.
The Humferys Library was used as the Hogwarts Library in the Harry Potter films. In ‘The Sorcerer’s Stone,’ Harry, wearing his invisibility cloak, steals into the restricted section at night to look for information about the alchemist Nicolas Flamel.
The Radcliffe Camera | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
After our guided tour of the Bodleian, we walked to the Radcliffe Camera (Camera means ‘room’ in Latin), also known as ‘Rad Cam’ or ‘The Camera.’ It is a stunning structure designed by James Gibbs in neo-classical style built in 1749 to hold the Radcliffe Science Library. It was named after Dr John Radcliffe who donated the funds to build it and is now the principal reading room of the Bodleian.
We stopped in at Weston Library across the street which houses a large collection of rare and antiquarian books. It also has a souvenir shop where one can purchase Bodleian and Radcliffe Camera mementos.
Inside the Sheldonian Theatre | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
The Sheldonian Theatre was our next destination. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren, it was erected between 1664 and 1669, and has been described as one of the architectural jewels of Oxford. It is the ceremonial hall of the University of Oxford where graduations are held and is the venue for other university activities like lectures and concerts. Its most interesting feature is the eight-sided cupola in the center of the roof which has large windows on all sides that provide breathtaking views across central Oxford.
We then walked to the Oxford Covered Market, which reminded me of the Grand Central Market in Downtown L.A. It is where one can find over 50 independent traders selling gift items, clothing and shoes, fashion accessories, fresh flowers, prepared food, various beverages, and fresh produce and meat.
However, we didn’t find anything we wanted to eat or buy so we strolled to the shopping mall and went inside M & S. I hadn’t been to a Marks & Spencer store in almost three decades and thought it would be fun to see if I still remembered what it looked like. Nothing much had changed since except for the prices, which, understandably have gone higher. We had afternoon tea with Victoria sponge cake.
The Old Bank Hotel | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Beacon Media News
For our last evening in town we had dinner at Quod Restaurant and Bar at the Old Bank Hotel on Oxford’s famous High. Formerly a banking hall which was transformed by owner Jeremy Mogford, it boasts a show-stopping onyx bar and a stylish terrace. The delicious food and impeccable service at the Quod are matched only by the impressive and eclectic collection of modern art by young British artists such as Sandra Blow, Craigie Aitchinson, and Damien Hirst that hang on the walls.
It had been a lovely, albeit short, trip to Oxford. And while our visit was marked by extreme heat, it didn’t detract from our enjoyment. It’s a bustling city filled with tourists but when you get inside the colleges, there is that rarefied air you’d expect from an institution as revered as it is. I don’t know that it can ever be replicated. There is, after all, only one university called Oxford.
Her Instagram followers watch her work her magic online in real time. She writes words – names, dates, places – on a blank space and it becomes a piece of art. All in a span of a few minutes. Her calligraphy pieces grace wedding receptions, Hollywood film openings, Grammy events, and the New York fashion scene.
Katrina Centeno-Nguyen was 19 when she opened her eponymous company, Calligraphy Katrina, 12 years ago. She does a brisk business with a pen bought from an art store, and an immigrant’s determination, perseverance, and work ethic. Her journey is a model for everyone who’s arriving in this country to look for opportunities.
Chatting with me one sunny morning from her home in Pasadena, Centeno-Nguyen talks about coming to California as a 13-year-old, being raised by a single mom, and finding her career in the most unexpected way.
“My parents decided to emigrate from the Philippines – my dad arrived in Pasadena in 1997 and my mom followed in 2000. Unfortunately, their marriage didn’t work out and they divorced soon after. So it was up to my mom to find a way to get me and my sister here.
“Immigrating into the U.S. at that time wasn’t as difficult as it is today but it was definitely not an easy process. As comfortably well-off, highly educated, and widely-traveled as we were when we lived in Manila, we were still technically from a third-world country. We were coming here as dependents so that also meant my mom had to show how her children, who were still in the Philippines, were being financially supported. Propitiously, my grandmother (my grandfather had passed away) had income from their family business and rental properties so she made sure we were looked after.
“In time, my mom had obtained gainful employment as an analyst and had enough resources to cover the expenses for the petition process and the means to support us once we got here. I came here in 2001 and my sister arrived in 2005; my brother was born here.”
Continues Centeno-Nguyen, “I had finished 6th grade in Manila; I skipped middle school and went directly to 9th grade at Pasadena High School (PHS). That was quite an interesting cultural transition because I had gone to private schools in the Philippines and suddenly I was in a public school. Not only did it have a large population, students were talking back to their teachers!
“Though I have to say that socially, it wasn’t bad at all. PHS was a diverse school and a lot of students were culturally open because they also came from immigrant families. However, I had friends who weren’t necessarily immigrants. I was quite lucky because the classmates I hung out with were very much like me – we were all in the honors program; we mainly talked about school and homework. We studied and worked on projects in each other’s homes and, at the same time, had good, clean fun.
“Maybe my innocence also shielded me because I didn’t really know if bad things were happening. There might have been students who were doing drugs but I wasn’t aware of it. But the friends I had weren’t doing drugs either so there was no peer pressure. The core of our friendship was academics; it was why we became friends in the first place. We were nerds – we played chess and enjoyed physics class. We were also a good mix – some were in sports or arts; and we were volunteering in the same places. It was all about getting ready for college applications.”
Asked which college she went to, Centeno-Nguyen responds, “I actually didn’t attend college. We were still in the process of getting our residents’ visa; we didn’t become green card holders until 2007. Going to college as a non-immigrant was going to be quite expensive. Besides, I had to try to figure out a way to help my mom. While she had a great post, she had to work two jobs to enable her to support three children – in Pasadena, where it’s not cheap. So I took a full-time job as a nanny while I attended Le Cordon Bleu. It was also at this time that I started ‘Calligraphy Katrina.’”
Being a calligrapher was the furthest thing from Centeno-Nguyen’s mind in terms of a career. She relates that she became one by happenstance, “I’ve always had good penmanship and one day, one of my nanny friends saw me writing my grocery list. She was getting married soon and asked if I could do her envelopes. She informed me that I could make money addressing wedding invitations. So I looked into how pricing worked, invested $10 on a few pens from an art store, and bought a couple of envelope packets from Target. That was how ‘Calligraphy Katrina’ started. I began with two fonts and created new ones as I went. Sometimes I’d make an accidental swish and I’d say ‘Oh, that looks pretty cool. Let’s try that again.’
Centeno-Nguyen was brought up with a discipline and work ethic that made the transition to life in the United States easier. And it proved helpful when she endured a punishing schedule as she was establishing her business.
She recalls, “After I’d been doing wedding invitations for a while, a stationery store called Paper Source in Beverly Hills started taking notice and they asked me to bring my work there. I was still working as a nanny then. I was also in the night class at culinary school and I was doing kitchen work because that was a requirement. My day commenced at 6:30 when I woke up and I was at work by 8:00. Fortunately, the family I worked for lived in Pasadena so it wasn’t a bad commute. I left their house at 5:30 and I was at school at 6:00, where I stayed until 11:00 pm.
“I squeezed the calligraphy project whenever I had the chance. Sometimes I worked on it when the child I was caring for was asleep; I did readings when he was playing. At times I did the calligraphy after school, before going to bed. That was my hustle in those early days. I also did a few hours in the kitchen during weekends because that was important. I had to balance it somehow.
“It was then I decided to give up culinary school. My mom questioned my decision when I had already paid a lot of money for it. But in the restaurant business, it’s either you own an establishment or you’re really brilliant. I was good, but not that good. To get financial backing, you have to know how to run a restaurant already, which I didn’t have any background on. At that time, too, a lot of restaurants were going under. It just so happened that my work was standing on its own and, because Calligraphy Katrina was my baby, I had a deep personal investment in it.”
Centeno-Nguyen recalls, “Facebook wasn’t as widely used as it is now; there was no Instagram. Social media wasn’t a thing yet. There were wedding blogs but the Internet wasn’t that huge so there weren’t as many venues for my work to be seen by a great many people. So I posted photos on Craigslist every week – that was my marketing. Even back then, people were paying $4 to $5 an envelope. I did it in a platform like Craigslist because I was learning how to run it. It didn’t feel ethical for me to charge someone $3 when I didn’t know what I was doing. But I also disclosed to my clients that I was new at this so they knew coming in that it was why I was charging only so much. It was a learning process for me and my clients were hiring me because they just wanted something handwritten. As my artistry and knowledge evolved, I started increasing my prices. But even now, as my experience has broadened, my prices aren’t as high in comparison to what other calligraphers charge.”
“Soon, I quit my job in the kitchen and as a nanny. The calligraphy work was already gaining traction and I was secure enough to focus entirely on it. Still, I was petrified. Obviously, I didn’t really know how it would turn out. My mom and I would go to Beverly Hills every single weekend. She worked a lot so it became our special time together – we’d hang out there and meet the brides that we got from Craigslist at Starbucks.
“At the time, there were only a few people who could be called calligraphers and they were very old school – very traditional. They were master penmen who belonged to a group and they were leery about me. I was 19 and I didn’t get a formal education on the art so I was the outsider. That’s also part of my insecurity as an artist. I once had the privilege of working alongside a full-pledged calligrapher who saw me as a non-calligrapher because my slants weren’t the right size for Spencerian. But I wasn’t doing Spencerian, it was simply my own handwriting. This is why I work at such great speed.”
Centeno-Nguyen works on a mirror project | Courtesy photo / Calligraphy Katrina
“Not to diminish what they do, because it’s brilliant,” Centeno-Nguyen quickly says. “I wish I had that kind of knowledge but that sensibility is what differentiates my company from others. I do volume and I need to make that work. A lot of calligraphers say what I do isn’t calligraphy because I’m diminishing art. Every day, as an artist, I also have to account for my own individuality. Since I’m not conforming to the standard, am I a real artist? Do I feel like an actual calligrapher?
“Most calligraphers do this for the artistry of it. That’s not to say that I don’t, because I most certainly do. But it’s also my primary means of livelihood and I have to meet deadlines. My evolution as an artist is tied into the success of my company. I want to establish a stable business and a successful commercial venture. I have to look at it as ‘How can I make enough to support my family?’ And because I didn’t have the resources to do so, ‘Will I be able to ensure that my child goes to a four-year university?’ And ‘How is this going to increase my income so I can enjoy my family?’ When I become financially comfortable then I can think about my artistry.”
If success were to be measured by one’s popularity on social media then Centeno-Nguyen has definitely attained it. People see her working on huge projects involving pop stars and runway models online. She’s on Reddit and has a loyal following on Instagram, which she finds incredible.
Calligraphy Katrina does a brisk business on envelope addressing for corporate clients | Courtesy Photo / Calligraphy Katrina
Centeno-Nguyen explains that how she got into the Hollywood industry was opportune. “In 2008, a new PR company needed 30 envelopes addressed, not right now but yesterday, and calligraphers in the city gave them a timeline of a week for the project. They called me and I said if they delivered the envelopes that morning, I would have them done by the end of the day. My company officially opened in August 2007 and we did one or two envelope projects a week. By January – February, we were already doing corporate work.
“Because of my pricing, which was like air for a PR company with a large budget, they asked me to do more things like place cards. This was also a young PR company gaining their traction, and it was beneficial to them that I was actually meeting their deadline. That PR company then talked about me to other PR companies. The buzz started from my speed – I could work on the fly. It was my ace and, for a long time, it was what made me stand out. And more corporate work came rolling in.”
Mirror projects make up 50 percent of Calligraphy Katrina’s business | Courtesy photo / Calligraphy Katrina
Just like doing calligraphy work happened unexpectedly, working on mirrors wasn’t by design either. Centeno-Nguyen recounts, “We had a client who owned a mirror company and they were thinking of having a welcome sign for an event at the California Club. We discussed different things we could do on a mirror and we came up with a seating chart. They asked if I knew how to do one on a mirror and I said no but I’d figure it out. I didn’t know how I was going to grid it but being a nerd, I used math to measure it. I did it on site in four hours while they were setting up. I used a chalk and it looked really cool.
“This was ten years ago when I hadn’t seen anyone doing calligraphy on mirrors. No one cared for it because they said it was too hard to read. When I created calligraphy work on giant mirrors, though, everyone took note because it was different. After I did the videos, everybody wanted the mirror.”
“The mirrors are popular with weddings so 50 percent of our business comes from that and 50 percent is from corporate,” divulges Centeno-Nguyen. “We recently bought out a vintage store that carried antique mirrors from France when the owner decided to close shop last year because space rental was too expensive. We needed to have a place to store them so we opened a downtown studio. The way I see it, I’ve spent so much money buying them, I might as well have people come in to look at them. I got lucky because my space is a corner office so I get nice views on two realms. But it’s also very distracting because there’s constant activity outside and I want to see what’s happening. So I still work from home and the majority of my pens are here; that’s also because sometimes I write at 3:00 in the morning.”
Centeno-Nguyen at a recent corporate event | Courtesy photo / Calligraphy Katrina
Calligraphy Katrina operates smoothly with a lean staff, according to Centeno-Nguyen. “I have a house manager who’s also my daughter’s nanny, an assistant, and a driver who does all our runs in the city. This is my assistant’s first week – my previous production manager who worked with me for two-and-a-half years moved on to her dream job as a social worker. She was the one who helped me build this company to where it is now. She was with me during a difficult time. I had a tough pregnancy and I was on bed rest for nine weeks. My daughter was born at 29 weeks; she was 2 ½ lbs. and was at the Huntington Hospital for two months.
“We were also in the middle of a move to this house. I worked while I was bed-ridden and, because it relaxed me, I didn’t realize I was in labor. My daughter was born by Caesarean section at 12:03 in the morning after 26 hours of labor. New York is open at 6:00 am our time and I was on the phone taking notes because we were doing a show. It was much later they found out I was in the hospital. But I wasn’t going to miss that call. Giving birth isn’t an excuse; as long as I am awake I can write.”
Centeno-Nguyen’s reputation as a reliable artist who can get the work done fast is the reason she has long-standing clients. She’s been working with LACMA for almost ten years now and Chanel for nine years. On the morning we met, a delivery from LACMA arrived; there were several boxes of Chanel envelopes in the dining room for her to work on.
Twelve years after Centeno-Nguyen bravely took the leap to establish Calligraphy Katrina, she is a mainstay not only in the luxury bridal market, she’s also sought after by corporate clients including museums, fashion houses, The Grammys, and movie companies, among others.
When queried about which projects she enjoyed most, Centeno-Nguyen replies, “The Chanel fashion show was a fantastic gig. We’ve done a few fashion shows like YSL and Moschino and they were really fun, but the Chanel was doubly so because we were in New York for a whole week preparing for it. We even saw the rehearsal; it was like seeing a production come to life. But the most memorable one will always be my first mirror.”
It’s a sentiment shared by most immigrants – no matter how successful they become and how far they’ve come, they look back with gratitude at where they started.
Originally published on 10 September 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
The Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence, announces the name change during the Centennial Celebration launch | Photo by Ryan Miller / The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
The Huntington in San Marino officially launched its yearlong centennial celebration on Thursday, September 5, 2019. During her welcome speech at Rothenberg Hall, Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence expressed how Henry E. Huntington’s vision and legacy will live on in the next century.
“As I look out at you, the leaders of Southern California’s, and particularly L.A.’s, cultural, academic, and civic institutions, Huntington’s presence is demonstrably in evidence,” began Lawrence. “As the Director of our Botanical Gardens Jim Folsom recently reminded me, almost anything can grow in Southern California. He was correct.
“We brought everybody here today to celebrate the extraordinary fertility and vitality of our region – both a U.S. cultural capital and, as Huntington predicted, the leading edge of the Pacific Rim. Had his visionary red car trolley system been equally as durable, many of you, especially the west-siders, would have an easier commute.”
Continued Lawrence, “So 1919 was a very good year for the birth of L.A. institutions – from UCLA to the L.A. Philharmonic, to the iconic Musso & Frank Grill and Fosselman’s Ice Cream. In celebrating our hundredth, it’s not all about us; it’s about all of us. Because neighbors and partners have always been crucial in the life of The Huntington. As we celebrate the trust agreement in which Henry and Arabella Huntington gave their private treasures – at the time the New York Times called the greatest private library in the world, art and art collection, and expansive gardens and grounds – we also recognize that we wouldn’t be here were it not for George Ellery Hale, the renowned astronomer, who helped develop Caltech and who was the founding director of the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena.
“In the Huntington’s archives, we have Hale’s correspondence with Huntington which shows that from 1906 to 1916, Hale politely badgered Huntington to place his private collection in a trust for the use and benefit of the many. As significantly though, he helped convince Huntington, the wealthy industrialist and collector, to see the value of his collection in a different way – more for the research and scholarship it would inspire than for its accumulation. Hale urged Huntington to establish a public institution; he wrote ‘There is now great need of a strong institution of broad scope, uniting all the intellectual interests of this region and the common folks.’ When he was later asked about the worth of his collection, Huntington replied that its value will be determined primarily by what he produces. Although these two men couldn’t possibly foresee what was produced during those hundred years, it’s a testament to their legacy and Arabella’s, that The Huntington attracts 1,700 visiting scholars in addition to over 750,000 visitors from around the world.
“So today we take a moment to acknowledge this Southern California history as well as to think about our future and the ideas that will propel us all for the next hundred years. For a person turning 100, it’s very natural to look back and reflect on the past. For an institution turning a hundred, a centennial is a moment to be like Janus – looking back and forward at the same time. Today we’re celebrating how far we’ve come and reflect on where we want to go. We’re thinking carefully about our mission and what it means to be among the oldest cultural and intellectual centers in this great region, which itself reflects the dynamic demographic evolution of our city, state, and country. We want to broaden our audiences and to focus on The Huntington’s ongoing role in the cultural fabric of Southern California and beyond.”
Lawrence declared, “The name of an institution reflects its relation to its audiences as well as its mission and ethos. In 1919 we began our journey as the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery. And, over time, we became more commonly known as the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Today I am pleased to announce a change in what we’re calling ourselves, that reflects both the increased breadth and depth of our art collections and their public purpose. We’re changing our name to The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.”
As Lawrence said this, the name displayed on the screen behind her also changed and was met with enthusiastic applause from the audience.
The change from ‘collections’ to ‘museum’ more accurately describes The Huntington’s mission and programs, explained Lawrence. “Our art collections are more than a group of catalogued objects; they are carefully curated, interpreted, and exhibited for scholarship, education, and the broader public. An added benefit to this change is that we become more discoverable, particularly in online searches. This is important as we work to widen our audiences and accessibility.”
The Hammer Museum’s Director, Anne Philbin, talks about ‘Made in L..A. 2020’ | Photo by Ryan Miller / The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
The Centennial Celebration, a yearlong series of exhibitions, public programs, and new initiatives running from September 2019 to September 2020, kicked off with an announcement of a collaboration between The Huntington and the Hammer Museum on ‘Made in L.A. 2020,’ the upcoming edition of the Hammer’s acclaimed biennial. The statement was made by Hammer Director Ann Philbin alongside Lawrence.
Opening June 7 and running through Aug. 30, ‘Made in L.A. 2020’ will take place at both institutions, providing visitors across the region an opportunity to experience the singular exhibition of contemporary art in Los Angeles. The exhibition, sponsored by Bank of America, will debut new installations, videos, films, sculptures, performances, and paintings from Los Angeles–based artists, many commissioned specifically for the exhibition.
‘Made in L.A. 2020’ is the fifth iteration of the internationally lauded Hammer biennial, and the second to take place at multiple venues. The biennial’s inaugural 2012 edition presented artists at the Hammer, LAXART, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Art Park, and the Venice Beach Biennial. The 2020 edition seizes on an opportunity to connect an institution on the west side of Los Angeles with one on the east. It is co-curated by Tunisian-French writer and curator Myriam Ben Salah and Los Angeles–based curator Lauren Mackler. The Hammer’s Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi is assistant curator for performance.
“We are thrilled to be partnering with The Huntington on ‘Made in L.A. 2020’ to bridge the east and west sides of Los Angeles to highlight the works of art created across the region, with an emphasis on emerging and under-recognized artists,” said Hammer Director Ann Philbin. “This expression of our biennial―which spans roughly 25 miles―offers opportunities for discovery and surprise for ‘Made in L.A.’ visitors and gives the curators and artists a new platform for experimentation.”
“Creative collaborations are a hallmark of our Centennial Celebration,” Lawrence disclosed. “We will be engaging with our collections as well as with our audiences in exciting new ways. Joining forces with the Hammer for this remarkable exhibition is a perfect example of what we are setting out to do. ‘Made in L.A.’ celebrates the extraordinary, groundbreaking work of contemporary artists working in Southern California. We are honored to be a part of this year’s exhibition.”
“Los Angeles is the epicenter of the creative economy, with the arts bringing Angelenos together, attracting tourism, generating cultural dialogue, and serving as an economic driver for our region,” declared Raul A. Anaya, Bank of America market president for greater Los Angeles. “It’s why Bank of America invests in the arts and in institutions like the Hammer and The Huntington, and this specific partnership for ‘Made in L.A. 2020’ reflects our mutual commitment to L.A.’s incredibly diverse local artists.”
During the run of ‘Made in L.A. 2020,’ members and visitors to the Hammer will receive passes granting free admission to The Huntington to view ‘Made in L.A. 2020’ in full. There will also be joint programming at both the Hammer and The Huntington during the exhibition.
Looking ahead to the next 100 years, the directors of The Huntington’s three components – Library, Museum, and Botanical Gardens – spoke about the future and how The Huntington’s collections will contribute to their fields.
Sandra Luding Brooke, Avery Director or the Library speaks during The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens Centennial Celebration Launch Event on Sept. 5, 2019, in San Marino, California | Photo by Ryan Miller / Capture Imaging
As the Avery Director of the Library, Sandra Luding Brooke oversees the 11 million items in the library collection. She said, “In 1925 Henry Huntington endorsed a vision for a repository of books and manuscripts of the greatest rarity and value focused on tracing the progress of our English-speaking people. Since then The Huntington’s collection has grown and persisted in more ways than what could have been imagined a century ago.
“Libraries must anticipate tomorrow and try to imagine what future researchers and viewers might want or need to know,” pronounced Brooke. “We must be judicious and imaginative in choosing what we preserve, and be fearless in seeking diverse and provocative voices. Libraries must batten their hatches to protect collections from the vicissitudes that are sure to come – natural disasters, social and economic upheavals, censorship, ignorance, and willful misapprehension. We also want to seize this moment and help our collections speak to current generations because cultivating a love and respect for documented history is the surest route to its survival and, perhaps, our own. So in the spirit of stepping out with optimism into our second century, the Library has made a small acquisition that won’t get on our shelves until just four years shy of The Huntington’s bicentennial. Until then the library’s purchase will be growing in the Norwegian wood. Artist Katie Patterson’s future library is a hundred-year literary artwork of an active indefatigable optimism. Five years ago, Patterson planted a forest of a thousand spruce trees in Norway. This forest will be held in trust until the year 2114 when the trees will be harvested, turned into paper, and provide the stock for the publication of 100 texts, until then held secret, by 100 writers. This little acquisition is a vote of confidence in the future of the environment, of art, of books and the written word, and of libraries. Yes, we are confident our librarian’s successors will not fail to claim The Huntington’s copy of this long-awaited anthology. But between now and 2114, we are equally confident that millions of other texts, images, and objects undiscovered and, as yet, uncurated will cross The Huntington’s threshold to join this great past, present, and future library.”
Christina Nielsen, Hannah and Russell Kully Director of the Art Museum | Photo by Ryan Miller / The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Christina Nielsen who, when she took the podium and introduced herself, said that for the past 10 minutes, she has been the director of The Huntington’s Art Museum. She started, “Now that we’re a museum I’d like to spend the next few minute considering what that term means. What it meant to Arabella and Henry, what it means today, and what it will likely mean in the future. Henry Huntington, entrepreneur and futurist, proponent of new technologies; Arabella Huntington, perhaps the greatest gilded-age collector you’ve never heard of – together they stand out among the likes of their peers such as Walters, Morgans, Fricks, and Gardners by bringing together objects from the past to actively shape a future. They founded the first Old Master Collection in Los Angeles which included Asian ceramics, Italian Renaissance pieces, French decorative arts, and British portraits from the 18th century, which allowed for connections across time and place. And they put their historic works in conversation with art from their day by placing sculpture on the grounds from artists of their time, including their daughter-in-law Anna Hyatt Huntington. They also gave us a framework for considering how to move forward, encouraging us to continue making connections across time and place, to invest in new technologies, and to share their collection with the public.
“So now the present moment. And might I suggest that, in many ways, the future is now and the future is here. The definition of ‘museum’ is quickly changing, as is the nature of our work. The International Council of Museums just released a new definition of museum as a ‘democratizing, inclusive, and polyphonic space for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures.’”
“Our collection is indeed a treasure trove to be mined for thinking about making connections across time and place, how trade and exchange shaped objects, lives, and intellectual pursuits,” noted Nielsen. “But which stories do we choose to tell and who tells them? Recent partnerships here at Huntington, such as one with the Vincent Price Art Museum, allowed Carolina Caycedo, one of the great artists in the L.A. area, to produce a new work of art Apariciones/Apparitions which inserts back into the history of our founding narrative people and labor who’ve been lost over time.
“More specifically, ‘Blue Boy,’ our most iconic work, has continued to inspire over time, artists, much more recent than when he arrived in 1921. A young artist on leave from military duty in San Diego came to the Huntington and had an epiphany from the ‘Blue Boy.’ So did a young teenager who would come on visits to The Huntington on Saturday. And so we’re thinking very deeply about how to unlock more epiphanies from our people, in our galleries, and through expanded online resources. How do we share our collections beyond our walls? How do we reach other aspiring artists from South Los Angeles, San Diego, and from other places really far away – like Kansas City, Kosovo, or Kyoto. So in the context of The Huntington itself, what does our art collection mean? This is a multi-disciplinary institution and as the definition of art keeps changing and evolving, I was reminded recently by Jim Folsom that The Huntington itself is the original conceptual work of art.”
Nielsen said further, “This is the hotbed of the artistic world and we are so pleased to be working with the Hammer on ‘Made in L.A.,’ exemplifying what an extraordinary moment this is for our region. But I might suggest that ‘Made in L.A. 2020’ has a really important antecedent and that could be considered ‘Made in London 1770,’ because going back to Gainsborough and his fabulous ‘Blue Boy’ painting, what we’ve recently learned is that in fact Gainsborough, hundreds of years ago, just like the artists in our midst today, was absolutely pushing the envelope of what it meant to be a painter and what the medium could provide. And so I would say it makes absolute sense for us at The Huntington to be working with The Hammer and offering up our resources for artists, writers, performers, dancers, thinkers, in our midst.
“The past is not dead. In fact, as Socrates said, ‘It isn’t even past.’ It’s alive and waiting to be unlocked in the objects in our collection. I can’t begin to predict now how successors of ours a hundred years from now will do that, any more than Henry and Arabella could have predicted us sending rockets to the moon. But they believed in technology; they believed in sharing their collection to the public; and they believed in connections across time and space. I feel that if we hold true to these principles, we will be just fine over the course of the next hundred years. And, in closing, I offer another definition for our museum – that it should be not just a repository of things, but a collection of ideas and a place for sharing them with others.”
James Folsom, Telleen/Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens speaks during The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens Centennial Celebration Launch Event on Sept. 5, 2019, in San Marino, California | Photo by Ryan Miller / Capture Imaging
When it was his turn to speak, Director of Botanical Gardens James Folsom, who noted that he’s the old-timer at The Huntington, stated, “Last year we planted several hundred trees and we intend to plant more this year. We plant trees because during a storm in 2011, 700 trees fell in one evening. We plant because new opportunities arise – wonderful new trees become available. We plant trees because they provide structure to the landscape, which takes years to develop. We plant trees because on the 6th of July last year, the gardens experienced a record-high temperature of 118 degrees Fahrenheit leaving vegetation scorched throughout the landscape.
“We plant trees because that’s what gardeners do – observe, think, plant, cultivate, take our losses, make our moves, plan for change, and invest in energy and resources to create something that would be of worth for future generations. So what is that future, how far is that horizon? For trees, it’s 80 to 100 years – easily to the end of the century. But in all of our actions, even short-term plantings, we should build soil and capacity. Every act can be viewed as an investment. Gardens also plant ideas and inspiration – the beauty and power of life unfolding, the importance of cycles, the value in the glorious smell of fresh water and arable soil. The pay-off in planting is seeing the product of pure physical toil and recognizing the importance of plants as the givers of life and the bases of biodiversity.
“To me, the lessons we learn from gardening are crucial. In a perfect future, I imagine these Huntington gardens and the act of gardening will help form a better world. Fortunately, the structure we need for those lessons exists. The Huntington has collections, displays, beautiful facilities, and staff to see us to our second centennial.”
Originally published on 5 September 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
Bryn Mawr College | Courtesy Photo
The Road to College
It’s after Labor Day and that usually means the end of summer. Classes have begun in mid or late August so your children are settling into the new school year by now.
Before I launch into the college guide, let me touch on a topic that often times causes family discord. Counselors tell their students to follow their passion when it comes to deciding what to pursue in college. That makes a lot of sense because people generally learn better when they’re studying something they are interested in. However, we also hear about researches that find STEM degrees are the most valuable, with the liberal arts the least valuable, to employers. Parents, anxious about their children’s earning potential, career future, and over-all financial stability then discourage their children from taking liberal arts in college and push their children into the STEM field.
On the other hand, employers also emphasize that they’re looking for applicants with excellent communications skills even when the job isn’t STEM-related. The contradictory information is enough to make anyone’s head spin. The one thing researchers and career advisors agree on is that earning a college degree will pay off in the long run. So whether your children are looking to get an engineering degree or are more interested in the humanities, the important thing is for you to support your children’s choice and help them to be ready for college.
My daughter’s high school administrators preached to their students that the college application process doesn’t start until the spring of their junior year and, therefore, they shouldn’t be working on it until then. As our family’s experience belatedly proved, however, the process really begins on the first day of 9th grade. Hence, I advocate that your children start preparing as soon as they get into high school. Doing so makes a world of difference in their college search outcome.
In last month’s college search guide, I said that the College Board is expanding the use of the adversity score to the SAT in an effort to make college admissions more equitable. It had many detractors, however, and the College Board recently announced that it’s dropping the adversity score and will now use what it calls ‘Landscape.’
While it pretty much includes the same factors that were in the ‘Adversity Score,’ the College Board claims ‘Landscape’ is more transparent and provides admissions officers more consistent background information.
In an article published in the Wall Street Journal on August 27, education writer Douglas Belkin, reported that the adversity score (also called environmental context dashboard) was a combination of 15 socioeconomic metrics from a student’s high school and neighborhood.
‘Landscape’ will add six ‘challenge’ factors that provide the ‘summary neighborhood challenge’ and the ‘summary high school challenge indicator.’ The factors are college attendance, household structure, median family income, housing stability, education levels, and crime.
Belkin noted that this is the second time that the College Board has rolled back efforts to reflect students’ socioeconomic backgrounds – it dropped a similar effort 20 years ago due to unfavorable reaction from colleges. And this will most probably not be the last word on the matter. The current admissions process is intrinsically flawed and band-aid solutions can’t make it right.
I still think that adding ‘screening methods’ misses the point. Every student is different and can’t be lumped under a general category. But admissions officers can’t reasonably learn about each one when they have approximately 30 minutes to scan each application. With ever more American students applying and interest among foreign students to study here increasing, the competition will not diminish any time soon.
FRESHMAN
Instill in your children good time management and organizational skills early on. High school is so much busier than what they’ve been through yet. These skills will help them have a happy, productive, and successful four-year experience.
If your children didn’t develop good study habits in lower and middle school, they need to buckle up and be serious about academics. Encourage them to immerse themselves in the culture of their high school and get involved in various extra-curricular activities that support their interests, and which they can carry on into the next three years.
Your children should find the time to meet with their school’s counselor to map out a four-year curriculum that meets all the requirements for graduating and going into college. Most colleges or universities require: four years of English; four years of mathematics; four years of science with advanced work in at least one of the three disciplines – biology, chemistry, physics; four years of a world language; three years of history, including American and European.
They should take the most challenging courses they could handle. If their high school offers Advanced Placement (AP) subjects in ninth grade and your children decide to take the course, they have to be ready to take the exams after they complete it. Colleges usually only recognize 4s and 5s to show competency. Highly selective institutions also expect As on AP courses on students’ transcripts.
Counselors tell their students to follow their passion when it comes to deciding what to pursue in college. That makes a lot of sense because people generally learn better when they’re studying something they are interested in. However, we also hear about researches that find STEM degrees are the most valuable, with the liberal arts the least valuable to employers. Parents, anxious about their children’s earning potential, career future, and over-all financial stability then discourage their children from taking liberal arts in college and push their children into the STEM field. On the other hand, employers also emphasize that they’re looking for applicants with excellent communications skills even when the job isn’t STEM-related. All the contradictory information is enough to make anyone’s head spin. The one thing they all agree on is that earning a college degree will pay off in the long run.
SOPHOMORE
By this time, your children should be fully transitioned into high school. They should be picking up where they left off – taking AP courses, working on extra-curricular activities they had identified in their freshman year, playing sports for their school, etc.
Practice exams for standardized tests are given in your children’s sophomore year so make sure they are registered for the PSAT. Taking these tests will help them identify their weaknesses and study for them. Several companies and organizations offer test preparation courses; your children should register to one if they need help getting ready for these exams (ACT: www.act.org; PSAT: www.collegeboard.com; Educational Testing Service: www.ets.org; Kaplan: www.kaplan.com; National Association for College Admission Counseling: www.nacacnet.org; The Princeton Review: www.princetonreview.com)
It may seem too early to do this, but your children can start looking at colleges that offer courses in their fields of interest. Or they can begin considering all possible options, if they haven’t determined what they are thinking of taking in college.
JUNIOR
This is a very hectic, even stressful, time in your children’s high school life. It is also the last complete year that college admissions officers will see your students’ grades and accomplishments. It is a decidedly important year for them; they need to put the effort to show admission officers that they are capable of doing the work and are qualified for admission to the school to which they will be applying. If your children are thinking of applying to universities through early action/decision, their junior year grades and work will become all the more significant.
Aside from the rigors of school, sports, extra-curricular activities, there are standardized tests to take. Your children should be taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) early next month. I would like to remind parents not to put extra pressure on their children as they get ready for the standardize exams – they are stressed enough as it is and a higher than average SAT score does not guarantee admission to their dream university.
You and your children should be going to College Fairs being held at their high school. They should be gathering information about colleges and universities – courses and diplomas offered; standardized test requirements for admission; deadlines for early action/decision, if being offered, and for regular admission.
SENIOR
It is going to be a marathon for your children! From the moment they get in the doors of the school, they are going to be putting much of their focus on college applications. If your children are applying for early action/decision, they should have taken all the standardized exams required by the university during their summer after junior year.
Make it a point to attend your children’s “Back to School Night” because the counselors would most probably be giving parents information about the college applications that would be starting in earnest.
The organizational skills that I have been talking about since your children entered 9th grade will be put to the test during their senior year. Encourage your children to create a calendar with standardized testing dates, counselor meeting schedules, application deadlines.
Your children should have a binder with separate sections for each college or university and a log of what needs to be accomplished for each, like: required standardized tests (SAT or ACT, SAT II grades; AP test scores, etc.); writing supplement; how many letters of recommendation they require; application fee; how to send the application.
Ideally, you and your children have visited the colleges they are thinking of applying to. One of the first things they have to do is finalizing the list of colleges and universities to which they will send applications – eight was the norm when my daughter was applying. However, students now are sending in 12 or more applications. This new normal, though, has only added to the competitiveness of the process. I would suggest limiting it to12 because applying to more schools doesn’t make a university with a 4% admission rate a more reachable goal.
They should be ready to write their personal statement; they should also have provided stamped envelopes to the teachers giving them recommendations.
One factor that makes the college admissions process really stressful for parents is the feeling of not knowing what’s happening. School counselors generally only have time to meet exclusively with students so parents feel shut out. However, there are books you can read to help demystify this process. A book I would recommend is called “Getting In! the Zinch Guide to College Admissions and Financial Aid in the Digital Age” by Steve Cohen, Anne Dwane, Paulo de Oliveira, and Michael Muska.
The professional guidance and insight the authors of this book provide will give you the ability to help your children navigate this complicated process. Use the book constructively; do not make it another source of stress for yourself and your children.
Over the course of writing a College Search Guide, I have also met a few outstanding independent counselors and I highly recommend them should you feel more comfortable getting regular, face-to-face time with a counselor.
Greg Kaplan is a local independent counselor and can be reached at greg@earningadmission.com and his website is www.earningadmission.com. There is a Boston-based counseling group called College Vine, which offers near-peer mentoring; one of their counselors is an Arcadia High School alumna, who is currently a senior student at Cornell.
If you are applying for financial aid, be aware that the Free Application for Federal Student Aid FAFSA (www.fafsa.ed.gov) submission date starts on October 1st to align with the college application schedule.
It goes without saying that as busy as your children are when they go through the college application process, they should also get the best grades they are capable of. The colleges to which they are applying will require their first quarter grades if they’re looking to gain admission through early action or early decision.
A San Gabriel Valley Inquirer 