NoLa alchemy

The Music Box, a now shuttered musical architecture installation in New Orleans, LA. Kaarem Dust Sleeveless Dress in Orchid Leaf Print.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alchemy is at work in New Orleans in the form of a community arts project called Dithyrambalina. Part sonic playground, part performance venue, part conceptual laboratory, Dithyrambalina nurtures musical architecture in NoLa. What is musical architecture? When community arts org New Orleans Airlift first explored the concept through The Music Box: A Shantytown Sound Laboratory, the Smithsonian Magazine offered a defining description: “Rigged by a team of musicians, artists, inventors and tinkers to coax novel sounds from salvaged building materials – musical architecture.” The Music Box embedded instruments within the splintered walls of shacks; imagine playing loose planks like organ keys. The magical miniature village, built by more than 25 artists, electrified the neighborhood: 70-plus world-class musicians played the architectural orchestra, for an audience of more than 15,000 visitors. Critics sung its praises: “A breathtaking feat of DIY engineering, a living, breathing, sound-making member of the neighborhood” (ArtNet); and “Bravo to all of the brilliant builders, musicians and visionaries. The Music Box is many dreams come true” (New Orleans Times –Picayune).

The Music Box has since closed, but this year will see its resurrection in Dithyrambalina, a roving village made up of five playable houses set to visit neighborhoods around the Big Easy and beyond (the ultimate goal: to find a permanent site). The first new house is slated to open by late April, hopefully in time for my first-ever trip to New Orleans. I’m packing this Kaarem dress, a piece channeling the alchemic nature of musical architecture.

Cardboard genius

Shigeru Ban's Cardboard Cathedral. Photo: Stephen Goodenough for the New York Times.  

 

TeslerMendelovitch Rosewood Clutch. Sold on Etsy.com

 

 

 

 

Yesterday, a seismic event happened in the architecture world: Japanese architect Shigeru Ban won the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel of architecture awards, a decisive move away from the celebrity monuments often lauded toward architecture focused on the greater social good.  According to the NY Times article announcing the award, Ban has challenged the notion of “what it means to have a roof over your head” by creating temporary shelters, often using cardboard and paper, in areas devastated by natural disasters. When a 2011 earthquake leveled a 19th-century cathedral in Christchurch, New Zealand, Ban designed a transitional sanctuary with a nave of cardboard tubes. Dubbed the Cardboard Cathedral, the 700-seat church still stands until funds can be raised for a permanent structure. “His work is airy, curvaceous, balletic,” wrote NY Times critic Michael Kimmelman in 2007. “… he is an old-school Modernist with a poet’s touch and an engineer’s inventiveness.” The same could be said of design duo TeslerMendelovitch, kindred innovators of Ban who actually do the inverse by using wood instead of more playable materials in their architectural clutches.

Mountain memorial

Salvation Mountain by Leonard Knight in Imperial County, CA. Photo: Chris Wang Mara Hoffman Waist Cutout Tea Length Dress

In college, I wrote my senior thesis – a collection of interrelated short stories – on self-taught/outsider/naïve artists (all those slashes attest to this spectral category of creativity). Such artists share an irrepressible drive to visually express themselves, an instinct epitomized by Leonard Knight. A Vermont native, Knight had been a welder, handyman, auto body mechanic, guitar teacher and painter before he decamped to Slab City, a squatters’ colony on a former military base several hours east of LA. In this lawless land, he built a three-story monolith to his faith, Salvation Mountain – a terraced rainbow made of adobe, straw and umpteen gallons of paint, cloaked in Bible verses and crowned with a cross. He shared his creation with others; visitors summit Salvation by following a golden path. Knight died last month at age 82. Without him, his mountain may languish; the site requires constant maintenance to combat the harsh conditions of the Colorado Desert. Can words help save Salvation Mountain? In 2002, California Senator Barbara Boxer described it as “a unique and visionary sculpture… a national treasure... profoundly strange and beautifully accessible.” I want to go (in this omniscient dress) and add my voice to its preservation.

Old Havana meets French Quarter

The interior courtyard of the American Trade Hotel in Panama City. Photo: Spencer Lowell. Michelle Clog by A Détacher. Available at Anaïse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not long ago, centuries-old Casco Viejo was a crumbling patch of Panama City. A stucco palace of luxury apartments, built in 1917, had been taken over by five drug gangs, each occupying a floor. After UNESCO deemed Casco Viejo a World Heritage Site in 1997, an intrepid development group led by the palace builder’s great-great-grandson, lawyer Ramon Arias, began preserving properties within the district – gentrification embodied by the palace’s new occupant, the American Trade Hotel, a collaboration with Atelier Ace (of the trendy Ace Hotel chain). Beyond its stately structure (arched windows, interior gardens, red-tile roofs), hip interiors (a blend of Bertoia chairs and Mexican midcentury-inspired pieces) and alluring amenities (coffee bar, jazz club, farm-to-table restaurant), the hotel lives out its community-development creed: developer Conservatorio dissolved local gangs by putting members to work on construction crews, and the hotel staff includes graduates of a rehabilitation program for abused women. “Buildings are more interesting with people,” said Conservatorio’s restoration architect Hildegard Vasquez in a W magazine article. “You can’t just fixture the architecture – you have to fix the people. And in the process, they change you, too.” A room with a view and values.

Marfa lights

The Kozy Coach at El Cosmico in Marfa, Texas. Rio Dress, part of Free People's New Romantics collection, Spring 2014.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With pillows of fresh snow outside, I’m dreaming of the desert – the light, the heat, the sand, the expanse. For years, Marfa, Texas has topped my travel list, but I have yet to go. Familiar with the rustic edges of ranching, I want to see a world where working the land lives in harmony with land-based artists. El Cosmico seems like the perfect place to site my daydreaming with its hammock grove, outdoor bathing and porches aplenty. Choosing between trailers, tepees or tents sounds like a fun breed of free will to me (made all the more fun in this Free People frock).