Western datebook: Old man with a paint brush
IF ANY one life sums up the turbulence, potential and sheer beauty of the 20th century experience in the American West, it might be Fred Rochlin’s. Born in 1920s Arizona, Rochlin went on to become a leading Los Angeles architect, apprenticing with Lloyd Wright and Charles Eames and then founding his own firm Rochlin & Baran.
Apart from 2,000 projects that he helped build, with his wife, Harriet, he also documented the largely untold stories of Jews in the westward migration in their 1985 book “New Life in the Far West.”
After retirement as an architect, in 1998, Rochlin startled the world of performance art with his World War II memoir “Old Man in a Baseball Cap.”
Now, seven years after his death in 2002, yet another of Rochlin’s talents has been unveiled: Painting. A new exhibit, “Fred Rochlin Watercolors,” will be on show …
The week that was, 11/8-14/2009
A line of scrapers works the ground. No water has been secured for the south metro reservoir, and Western Slope interests are balking at proposals to pump water over the mountains. (John Prieto, The Denver Post)
An armada of giant yellow earthmovers on the prairie south of Denver is racing to dig one of Colorado’s biggest water-supply reservoirs in decades — a hole 180 feet deep across 1,400 acres — designed to wean suburbs off waning aquifers. But the water to fill this reservoir? Not yet secured. — “Reservoir under construction south of Denver but there’s no water to hold,” Denver Post, November 10, 2009…
Western datebook: ‘Beyond Desire’
"The Furry Hub," P. 42-43 of the catalog imagines combining a number of municipal services in one urban center. The chapter asks: "What if you could change trains and habits in the same place?"
“The Fifth Ecology: Los Angeles Beyond Desire” imagines the Los Angeles River re-developed in a way that celebrates and combines wetlands, recreation, transport and recycling. The work of a team of Swedish architects and designers from the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm, the exhibit opens tomorrow at the g727 gallery, formerly the James Rojas Gallery. A handsome catalog is now available online.
This item was spotted on LA Creek Freak, where Joe Linton has an insightful and affectionate essay about the Swedish team.…
Image of the Day: ‘Southwest’
“Southwest,” a show with photographs by Kate Dennis, Sandra Lee, David Pettit and Lynne Pomeranz, opens tomorrow at the G2 Gallery in Venice and runs through January 3rd.…
When life gives you salt water, make subsidies
THIS week, the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California voted a hefty public subsidy for the Poseidon Group, a private company proposing a desalination plant in Carlsbad, CA, near San Diego. To this, Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, CA, has a two-part response in the San Francisco Chronicle. For part one, click here, for yesterday’s part two here.…
« go back — keep looking »
North American Native Plant Societies
After the lawn
Garden blogs
