LA Trip Xmas 2007

LA Trip 2007

December 2007 saw my Mom and I up in Los Angeles for a day trip. We went up to see the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA and to take in the Grand Avenue MOCA. The Walt Disney Concert Hall is the one designed by Frank Gehry and looks very futuristic in its billowing stainless steel covering. The LA Philharmonic is rightly proud of their new digs and has it open to the public for free touring throughout the day. Doing that made for a very interesting time.

Pretty cool, eh?

This building looks for all the world like some loosely wrapped present for some giant or perhaps some alien structure from another dimension that got itself plopped into the middle of downtown LA. In any event, the intent of the place was to bedazzle and it did that in spades. A few minutes prior to when this photo was taken we were standing up on the part of the building you can see just above my head here in the photo. The view from there was just as unique.

The building's shape afforded quite a unique views as we walked around its outside.

Gehry Outside 01

This last one above here was taken from out in the Garden on level 3. This is a very well done bit of urban greenery. Aside from trees and plants filling it up, they also had more art there as well.

Porcelain Flower

That's my Mom there. The sculpture behind her was a unique fountain. Its surface is composed of thousands of pieces of broken porcelain containers. It made for a nice effect.

Us at the flower

Another individual taking in the Concert Hall (she's the lady standing behind Mom) was nice enough to take this shot of us.

While Stainless Steel doesn't rust it can be weathered. We found proof of that by looking at a section of the building's exterior which was not directly exposed to the sky and rain. It was far more reflective than the rest of the structure.

Reflections

There's plenty of artwork embedded in the building's structure. This spiral that my Mom is walking on also allowed for the names of donors to be tastefully displayed.

Now, while the outside of the building was very cool and unique looking in its futuristic and metallic way, the inside of the building was just as unique but far warmer and softer than the stainless cladding could allow for outside.

Gehry chose well in using some truly gorgeous wood to fill out the Hall's lobby.

These wood panels really enliven the Hall's interior and they also cover its major beams and vent shafts.

The structure of the Hall has no "standard" windows to it. That is, no rows of windows cut through its billowing steel clad walls. You can see large glass panels between some of the folds of the walls but that's it. Yet, the interior is very well lit with many skylights to bring the outside light inside.

Gehry Skylight 01

Also nicely visible from the inside was the structure of the walls. We caught this view from up on the Fifth level as we wrapped up our self-guided tour. The Hall has a wireless audio tour system available and it works pretty nicely.

From atop this level we also had an excellent view of downtown LA. The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is right next to the Disney Concert Hall and there's a number of other downtown LA landmarks right at hand as well.

Once we were done poking around Gehry's work, we walked on over to the Grand Avenue MOCA and took that in. No photography was allowed inside the museum so I just contented myself with what was available above the museum. First up was this rather large installation. It's a "tree" of junked aircraft parts.

Plane Parts Tree

Just to the right of this "found art" sculpture was another bit of art. This one was of a human figure with his arms outstretched. This, of course, just begged for human interaction.

Mom and Statue

The Grand Avenue MOCA facility is smack in the middle of as city-fied a part of LA as LA gets. Thus the urban cityscape made for some nice imagery.

Looking across the MOCA plaza my Mom spied some aerial urban gardening going on at someone's condo across the way.

Plantings

Note all the white bags neatly lined up along the balcony there.

And that was about it. The art on display in the Grand Avenue MOCA ranged from very impressive to utterly mystifying for me. Newspaper with bird droppings on it really doesn't seem much like art to me. Yet, there it was on display in this museum. Go figure. Anyway, it was a nice and worthwhile trip for us both.