
lights i've lived in























studio pics


























From 1989-1996 I lived at Sunset and Gardner in Hollywood, in the guitar district. I had fluorescent tubes running along the baseboards and I had amber mylar shades made at a shade place on Melrose. I worked in what little theatre there was in Los Angeles and I also worked as an art director for film and tv projects. Those projects paid really well and because of them I could go on unemployment to fund my own art projects. When I moved into this place I was a set designer. When I moved out in 1996 I had become a lighting designer.


that second floor
I experienced a lot of life in that place. Earthquakes. Losing friends to HIV/AIDS. Keeping looters out during the LA Riots. Making a lot of art. On Tuesday nights beginning in 1991 I had what started out as 60 minute parties, from 9:30-10:30. At 60 minutes everyone had to go home or to the club across the street, Trade. It's impossible to get people out of their homes in LA at night, but somehow it would be packed every week. Stars, starlets, theatre and film directors, strippers from Jumbos Clown Room, hustlers and go-go boys, attorneys, club performers, lots of theatre and film workers. I'd supply a case of cheap Keystone beer from the rock-n-roll Ralphs a few blocks down Sunset and people would bring booze and drugs and chips and it was really fun. I'd play videos I made (refilmed images filtered with theatrical gels) and the same videos I made would be playing throughout the club across the street. It was a fun time. Eventually the parties turned into 90 minute events. Then everyone O-U-T OUT.
The next day I'd get out my can of white paint and touch up the walls. Fresh again and ready for another Tuesday night party.
there was no heat

there was a thick plastic cover over that round window and for about 9 months of the year I removed it and the window was just open
I saw so many things out those windows. An endless stream of long hair metal band boys, prostitutes and their pimps, men jacking off in their cars (Hugh Grant was arrested a block away), Aerosmith after they got their Guitar Center sidewalk honors, gorgeous 43 yo Richard Gere parking his baby blue Mercedes under my window to take his guitar lessons next door, a coyote running down the middle of the street late at night with its nails tapping on the asphalt (coyote took a left on Sunset), Elliot Gould and his son Jason making a U-turn, Spike Jonez directing a music video with a running man on fire down on the sidewalk and Michael Jackson leaning way out of a limo window while dozens of fans ran down the street trying to catch up with him (limo took a right on Sunset).













amber
mylar
shades