Dwell on Design 2012: Modern fun this weekend

It's time to play: Dwell on Design, the annual expo of furniture, fixtures and finishes for the modern home and garden, is running this weekend at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Staff writer Lisa Boone and producer Dianne de Guzman walked the convention floor on Friday to get some early impressions.

They found Misha Tome sliding down the Cuba playhouse by Play Modern, above. The modular system consists of cubes that can be configured in different ways. Indoor models are made from Baltic birch plywood with a clear finish, and outdoor models are made from marine-grade plywood with a dark finish.

MORE PICKS: Dwell on Design 2012

Above right: Lori Erenberg, left, and Saehee Simmons looked at color samples for Kohler's new sinks in a range of bold hues.

Below right: The BeSpoke Creative console throws some curves, with a sleek white exterior complemented by maple and birch plywood interior.

Vision House in Pacific Palisades opens for public viewing

Green "demonstration" houses loaded with what are touted as the latest in environmentally conscious technology and materials may have ebbed with the real estate crash, but a development-and-design team in Los Angeles is about to revive the idea with the Vision House.

Billed as a luxury green demonstration home, Vision House is a collaboration of Green Builder Media and L.A.-based builder Structure Home, which worked with L.A. architecture firm KAA Design, the Newport Beach firm P2 Design, Calabasas interior designer Jill Wolff and Westlake Village landscape architect MJN Design Studio.

Some of the house's features -- an ultraviolet light air-purification system, mold-resistant shower and duct systems, solar panels, a central vacuum system, Gaggenau appliances that include a countertop steamer and a refrigerator with motorized shelves -- are more about function than design beauty. But decorating fans won't be disappointed.

The kitchen, laundry area and bathroom have dramatic textural wall finishes using Porcelanosa tile, at right. Eco-friendly furnishings from Cisco Home include side tables made from repurposed car parts and light fixtures made from reclaimed blown glass. (Asked if the cotton and linen fabrics were kid-friendly, Wolff said she washed all of the slipcovers, brought them to the house in a garbage bag and put them on -- without an iron.)

Dwell on Design modern home tours begin Saturday

Tickets are still available for Dwell on Design modern home tours this weekend, in advance of the annual design exhibition June 22 to 24 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

The self-guided East Side Modern Home Tour this Saturday includes Simon Storey's 960-square-foot Eel's Nest, shown above and featured by L.A. at Home earlier this year, and designer-developer Jerome Pelayo's sustainable Sunia Home, both in Echo Park. Farther east, the tour will include OKB Architecture + Construction's colorful addition in Pasadena, shown at right, as well as a Buff, Straub and Hensman home in San Marino and Fer Studio's modern update of a 1980s La Cañada Flintridge residence, which we featured back in 2009. 

A Prefab Plus Home Tour on Sunday will highlight a pair of prefabricated town houses designed by Whitney Sanders, Linda Taalman's Back Yard Plug-in Module, a hybrid prefabricated structure using Blue Sky Building Systems in Santa Monica, a Ray Kappe-designed LivingHome in Santa Monica and a Venice residence by Marmol Radziner Prefab. (A West Side Home Tour on June 24 is sold out.). Homes will be open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; tickets are $85 per tour.

Watercolor paintings based on Julius Shulman photos

If the famed architectural photographs of Julius Shulman sketched a story about California, then New York artist Amy Park has added her own chapter, painting color into images that many of us have seen over and over again.

Park creates large-scale watercolors from architectural photographs, and Shulman's images of California homes and other buildings were inspiration for a show that opens Saturday at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.

“His photographs capture such an idyllic time in California,” Park said by phone from her studio. “The landscape, the light. It is magical for someone like me who grew up in the Midwest and now lives in New York.”

The painter, originally inspired by the documentary “Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman,” did not work on site or even visit the buildings. She worked exclusively from Shulman's black-and-white photographs, on loan from the Getty Research Institute. Though Shulman’s archive does include color photography, Park chose black-and-white images as a challenge. The colors in her paintings of the Eames House in Pacific Palisades, for instance, are based on her recollection. 

Artists open studios for Venice Art Walk & Auctions

Venice artists and architects will open their studios and homes to the public this weekend for the Venice Art Walk & Auctions, the 34th annual fundraiser for the Venice Family free Clinic. Artist Jesse Hazelip will be working on "Hearts of Oak," a live painting and mural installation throughout the weekend on the Red Fort, a Venice landmark built in 1922 and located at 901 Pacific Ave. Other painters, sculptors and photographers will be part of a self-guided tour from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. (That's painter Gary Palmer pictured in his studio at the Distillery.)

Painter Isabelle Alford-Lago, known for her human-like gorilla portraits, right, will be featured inside the building at 1320 Main St. The show will include her signature artworks on large oil canvas along with several new pieces.

Alford-Lago's work will be among 400 items donated for a silent auction on Sunday, held at Google Los Angeles, Hampton Drive and Sunset Avenue. The auction runs from noon to 6 p.m. followed by a party until 7:30 p.m.

Self-guided architecture tours run from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. They will highlight homes designed by architects including Neil Kaufman, Steven Shortridge, Molly Reid, Steven Ehrlich, John Frane and David Ritch, whose update of a 1906 bunaglow we featured a few years ago.

Tickets to the Art Walk are $50. Architecture tour tickets are $125. Buy online or register at the Westminster School, 1010 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice. For a full schedule of studio and architecture tours, silent auction and family events, consult the Venice Art Walk website.

MORE VENICE ARTICLES:

New Marmol-Radziner house in Venice

Shopper's guide to Abbot Kinney Boulevard

A peek inside a Maya Lin-designed Venice house

A green cube: Venice house planted on three sides

-- Lisa Boone

Photo: Gary Palmer

Painting: "Grandmaster" by Isabelle Alford-Lago

 

Counterpane quilts: L.A. artist goes improvisational

The quilts of Los Angeles artist Pauline Boyd stand out not only for their surprising mix of materials -- remnants of Moroccan silk tunics and African wax prints, Balinese sarongs and Mexican embroidered cotton dresses -- but also for their unconventional, freehand style.

"It really is an improvisational thing," she said of the way she assembles her handcrafted quilts using textiles that traditional quilters might find maddening. Boyd said she has long quilted in her spare time, exploring color and form on the bare floors (significant because many quilters like to compose on sheets of flannel hung on the wall).

She began selling her Counterpane quilts online in January, and the business has been gaining momentum ever since. She was a vendor at the Unique L.A. craft fair in February, and was featured in a gallery show last month in Echo Park. She recently shipped quilts to the boutique Beautiful Dreamers in Brooklyn. 

Venice home tour: A weekend blitz of modern design

The Venice Garden & Home Tour is one of the biggest events on L.A.'s house-snooping calendar, a self-guided walking tour of 30 properties including, this year, the Gregory Ain tract -- an architecturally significant 1947 enclave of modest one-story homes by one of the city's iconic modernists.

Homes will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. If you haven't yet bought a ticket, you can get it for $70 on the day of the tour at 804 Broadway, Venice. Proceeds benefit the Neighborhood Youth Assn.'s Las Doradas Children's Center. Information: (310) 821-1857, www.venicegardentour.org.

Stops on the tour this year include a renovated bungalow with a large indoor-outdoor living room addition, right. A wooden footbridge spans the lap pool between the two structures. The landscape was designed by Rob Jones of Jones and Potak.

Keep reading for a look at some of the other houses on the tour ...

On Venice Garden & Home Tour, old blends with new

The driveway has disappeared, and in its place is a verdant entry garden. Walk past the precast concrete block wall edged with succulents, and cross a diagonal stepping stone path toward a covered veranda. A series of thresholds -- some sheltered, some open to the sky -- draw you in. And only when you reach Santiago Ortiz and Mimi Wheeler's front door do you notice the sunken tropical garden -- a lush surprise.

Their garden-focused retreat will be among 30 properties open to the public Saturday for the annual Venice Garden & Home Tour, concentrated this year in neighborhoods east of Lincoln Boulevard and in the Gregory Ain Tract in Mar Vista.

In 2007, when Ortiz and Wheeler first viewed a 1940s California ranch house in Venice, they were impressed by its generously sized lot with impressive stands of mature trees and shrubs. To Ortiz, a designer who was raised in Medellin and Bogota, Colombia, and educated in architecture and fine arts at Rhode Island School of Design, the 11,000-square-foot property on Appleton Way offered a chance to create a new residence large enough for a growing family and his home-based studio.

Dandelion Ranch's pop-up flower shop at West Elm

Floral designer Clover Chadwick caught our attention last year when she planted  a clever "tire garden" outside of her Jefferson Boulevard workshop, Dandelion Ranch.

On Saturday, Chadwick and the Dandelion Ranch staff will host a pop-up shop at the Beverly Boulevard West Elm. The event is part of nationwide pop-up flower shops hosted by the Brooklyn-based retailer.

The florists will be selling single stems as well as floral arrangements beginning at $10. They also will offer advice on creating your own arrangements at home, such as the design at right. 

Customers can buy vases from West Elm or Dandelion Ranch, which is known for using unusual containers. In the past, Chadwick has repurposed box springs and tool boxes, among other things.

The flower shops will take place on three consecutive Saturdays: April 28, May 5 and May 12. Hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 8366 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 782-9672.

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Dandelion Ranch's recycled tire plantings

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The Global Garden: Amaranth's crimson tide of seeds

Putikmade: Affordable pots made in Los Angeles

A wild new garden at L.A. Natural History Museum

Community gardens: A yearlong L.A. Times series

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credits: Dandelion Ranch

Last chance now: San Marino garden tour

Behind the gates of one St. Albans Road estate in San Marino, past the floss silk tree, the owners have created a backyard “animal garden” for their children, complete with kangaroo paws, lambs ears and lions tails.

Nearby, on Shenandoah Road, the gate opens to a more quintessential California scene: swimming pool, pool house, bath house and outdoor kitchen and fireplace. But it’s the antique garden statue of a woman holding a bouquet of flowers that typically catches visitors' eyes.

Tickets sales close tonight to see these two gardens and three others in a tour Sunday sponsored by the Spiritual Care Guild of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The backyard retreats, all privately owned, are in San Marino neighborhoods close to Lacy Park and the Langham Huntington hotel in Pasadena.