Last Saturday January 13, artists Hoshi Hana, Andy Robinson and I attended an art opening at a storefront gallery at Sunset Junction in the boho Silverlake district of Los Angeles. The gallery didn’t have a name, but it was next door and connected to a boutique named Pull My Daisy after a poem written in the late 1940s by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, from which a 1959 film was made. Hoshi Hana took all of these pictures, as my digital camera is on the fritz. Thank you, my dear!
S. Lee Robinson has hung many a show in her 22 year career as a painter, and this retrospective contains one or two paintings from each of her shows.
Meet S. Lee Robinson, as wonderfully warm as she is talented. Hoshi Hana and Andy know her from Gallery at the End of the World, a cooperative gallery of which they are all members.
Hoshi Hana and Andy at the opening.
Me, drinking a Pellegrino and cranberry juice and admiring “Big Boat.”
The DJ played danceable retro music, Bo Diddley, Michael Jackson, the Bee Gees. Only Hoshi Hana and I danced. I’m a baby boomer and can’t help it. Hoshi Hana’s just loose for a Gen X.
A merry throng, admiring the art, nibbling on olives and tomato pesto on baguette slices, sipping wine and soft drinks, laughing and chatting under the icicle lights.
Hoshi Hana’s friend since high school, Sheri Ozeki (in the hat), and a friend of Sheri’s.
The big yellow face got sold in the first hour of the opening! The bull was from an entire show of nothing but bulls, just as the big boat was from a show of all boats.
“Three Kings – Mars,” Andy’s favorite of the paintings in the show.
A drawing titled “Woman.”
The gallery opens into the Pull My Daisy store, offering a tantalizing view of its cloth monster. The shop is famous for its dachshund, Bingo, who cruises Sunset Junction begging for bacon. The photos on the dressing room door are of people in exotic locations around the world wearing Bingo the Dachshund t-shirts.
Alicia Bay Laurel 