art & design
Fall Into Art: Los Angeles

October 8, 2010

It’s National Arts and Humanities Month. To celebrate, we’ve asked four of our favorite bloggers to share favorite items from their hometown museum gift shops. Here, part one of our four-part series:

blogger: heather john

Like many of us, Heather John loves food. But Heather is also able to write about food in a most artful way. Her blog is about her “love of all things food, wine, fashion, and design,” along with a healthy dollop of family. In addition to creating TheFoodinista.com, Heather John is a contributing editor at Bon Appétit magazine and Herman Miller’s Lifework blog.

museum: los angeles county museum of art

Located on Miracle Mile in Los Angeles, LACMA holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present.

heather’s top museum gift-shop picks

Tony Duquette, a book by Wendy Goodman, Hutton Wilkinson, and Dominick Dunne (foreword), $75 (member price: $67.50)

“Tony Duquette is completely lavish and transporting — a Los Angeles original,” Heather says. “Oddly enough, as a kid I was more familiar with his wife, Elizabeth, whose murals graced the walls of the beauty salon at Bullocks Wilshire. (I used to tag along on shopping trips with my grandmother).”

.

.

.

Pure Beauty Soap, $15 (member price: $13.50)

“Ginger soap equals pure beauty,” Heather exclaims.

.

.

.

Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Fashion in Detail, a book by Avril Hart, $39.95 (member price: $35.95)

“I love that early ’70s corset silhouette from Vivienne Westwood, who was one of the first modern designers to look back to this epic time in fashion,” Heather explains.

.

.

Pen Pen, Crumpled Pencil Cup, $26 (member price: $23.40)

“A friend gave me one of these in white,” Heather says, “but I love the punch of color with the red.”

.

.

shop talk with the foodinista

CP: What is your favorite thing to snack on while blogging?

HJ: Potato chips with horseradish sauce.

CP: Favorite music to listen to while blogging?

HJ: Herman Miller asked me to share my work playlist on their Lifework blog. Here is the link.

Heather’s eclectic playlist includes Tom Waits, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, and Beck.

CP: How do you bring art into your everyday life?

HJ: I think good art is as simple and beautiful as a bowl of freshly picked lemons or a perfectly roasted chicken. In a more literal sense, I have a modest photography collection, the loose theme of which is absence and anonymity. I think I’m drawn to faceless photographs because they lend themselves to projection and imagination. Two of my favorite pieces include a Lee Friedlander “New York City 1966 (Self-Portrait)” in which his shadow appears on a the fur-trimmed coat of a woman walking in front of him, and the fading “Spaceship Wallpaper in a Bedroom in Yoder, Eastern Wyoming,” from Steve Fitch’s haunting series Gone.

In celebration of National Arts and Humanities Month, Ovation is launching its first annual “Fall Into Art” celebration. Throughout the month, Ovation will be supporting arts education initiatives, as well as programs and sponsorships that encourage participation in the arts. At ovationtv.com/fallintoart, Ovation is blogging about arts-related events across the country, and artists and curators are contributing video blogs about how they “fell into art” and sending in ideas for how you can incorporate creative activities in your everyday life.

.

Brett Singer reviews books and CDs for The Onion AV Club, writes about parenting for Time Out New York Kids and AOL ParentDish and is the founder of DaddyTips.com. The art in his life ranges from watching superhero cartoons with the kids to a small but growing collection of artwork acquired on trips to New Orleans, Venice, and London.

Photos:  The Foodinista: Courtesy of Heather John
Products: Courtesy of shop.lacma.org
Museum: Museum Associates/LACMA