{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/t727942k48/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Christina Schlesinger, 5/8/2023"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/497/original/VHM_Aviary_banner.png?1768074560","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["Christina Schlesinger is an artist who was deeply rooted in the Venice Lesbian community of the 1970s. She is a co-founder of SPARC, a non-profit community arts center in Venice Beach."]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["5/8/23 at 4:00 PM"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["Name of interviewee, date; The Venice Heritage Museum Oral Histories Project; Venice Heritage Museum, Los Angeles, CA."]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Venice Heritage Museum"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["Copyright © 2024 Venice Heritage Museum"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["MP4"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["OH_039"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Venice Beach"]}},{"label":{"en":["Access Ss"]},"value":{"en":["access_public"]}}],"summary":{"en":["Christina Schlesinger is an artist who was deeply rooted in the Venice Lesbian community of the 1970s. She is a co-founder of SPARC, a non-profit community arts center in Venice Beach."]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["Copyright © 2024 Venice Heritage Museum"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Venice Heritage Museum"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Venice Heritage Museum"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/497/original/VHM_Aviary_banner.png?1768074560","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/224/800/small/Christina_Schlesinger_.jpg?1713985046","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2416/collection_resources/119590/file/224800","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Christina_Schlesinger_.mp4"]},"duration":903.27467,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/224/800/small/Christina_Schlesinger_.jpg?1713985046","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2416/collection_resources/119590/file/224800/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2416/collection_resources/119590/file/224800/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-veniceheritagemuseum.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/224/800/original/Christina_Schlesinger_.mp4?1713553386","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":903.27467,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2416/collection_resources/119590/file/224800","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2416/collection_resources/119590/file/224800/transcript/67664","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Christina Schlesinger Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2416/collection_resources/119590/file/224800/transcript/67664/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"00:00:05:01 - 00:00:07:10\nChristina Schlesinger, 19.\n\n00:00:07:10 - 00:00:10:06\nI was born November 19th, 1946.\n\n00:00:10:06 - 00:00:13:06\nI moved to Venice in 1971.\n\n00:00:13:08 - 00:00:14:16\nI'd finished college.\n\n00:00:14:16 - 00:00:17:04\nI'd been in Europe for a year.\n\n00:00:17:04 - 00:00:19:23\nThen I came back East and I was in\n\n00:00:19:23 - 00:00:20:17\nHudson Valley.\n\n00:00:20:17 - 00:00:24:19\nAnd then my parents were getting divorced,\rand I hated the East,\n\n00:00:24:19 - 00:00:29:07\nand I realized I was a lesbian,\rbut I couldn't.\n\n00:00:29:09 - 00:00:31:00\nI didn't even know. I knew I was.\n\n00:00:31:00 - 00:00:32:16\nI knew\rthere was something that was different.\n\n00:00:32:16 - 00:00:34:23\nAnd I knew there was no way\rthat I could come out back East.\n\n00:00:34:23 - 00:00:35:17\nAnd I.\n\n00:00:35:17 - 00:00:37:09\nmy father was well known at the time,\n\n00:00:37:09 - 00:00:39:06\nhe worked in the Kennedy administration,\n\n00:00:39:06 - 00:00:43:01\nand, and I had this very interesting, rich\n\n00:00:43:03 - 00:00:46:14\nbackground growing up in Cambridge\rand everyone in my family\n\n00:00:46:14 - 00:00:49:22\nbeing involved with Harvard\rand academics and politics.\n\n00:00:50:00 - 00:00:54:10\nBut anyway, I just had him run, but my\rso my roommate at Radcliffe\n\n00:00:54:12 - 00:00:58:16\nlived in West, Westwood,\rand I came out to California\n\n00:00:58:21 - 00:01:02:10\nfirst, went up to San Francisco,\rthinking that, that L.A.\n\n00:01:02:10 - 00:01:04:07\nwas like the armpit of the nation.\n\n00:01:04:07 - 00:01:06:14\nYou don't end up in L.A.,\ryou go to San Francisco.\n\n00:01:06:14 - 00:01:09:14\nAnd so I so ended up going down\n\n00:01:09:17 - 00:01:13:03\nto Vivi Peter in Westwood,\rand she was my age.\n\n00:01:13:03 - 00:01:14:10\nWe both in our early twenties,\n\n00:01:14:10 - 00:01:18:01\nshe was living with this guy Ted,\rwho she later married a psychiatrist.\n\n00:01:18:03 - 00:01:19:13\nAnd so I was living with them for a while\n\n00:01:19:13 - 00:01:21:14\njust thinking\rit was going to be for the summer.\n\n00:01:21:14 - 00:01:22:12\nThe rains came.\n\n00:01:22:12 - 00:01:27:00\nI moved to Santa Monica.  \rFrom Santa Monica, I eventually moved to Venice,\n\n00:01:27:01 - 00:01:32:01\nand there was a guy named Joe Funk.\rJoe Funk had this big, it was on Rose\n\n00:01:32:03 - 00:01:36:04\nand it was like this big kind of yard\rand this big building\n\n00:01:36:04 - 00:01:37:08\nthat was kind of like a barn\n\n00:01:37:08 - 00:01:40:19\nand you’d walk in and it'd be like,\rart here and artist there.\n\n00:01:40:19 - 00:01:42:08\nAnd he had a printing,  because we did some,\n\n00:01:42:08 - 00:01:45:12\nhe did lithography,\rwe did some etchings together, but\n\n00:01:45:12 - 00:01:48:18\nI think, so that was where I just,\rhe taught pottery.\n\n00:01:48:20 - 00:01:51:03\nI think I learned ceramics.\rI don't know what it was\n\n00:01:51:03 - 00:01:54:00\nit was just this kind of free\rfor all place where you just go\n\n00:01:54:00 - 00:01:55:07\nand hang out and meet people.\n\n00:01:55:07 - 00:01:59:18\nAnd that's where I met this woman,\rSusie and Susie was a, lived on Grand.\n\n00:01:59:18 - 00:02:03:21\nThat was where my first studio was,\rin the living room of her house on Grand Avenue.\n\n00:02:03:23 - 00:02:07:04\nAnd she was an artist\rand she was working at UCLA.\n\n00:02:07:04 - 00:02:10:12\nShe was modeling for Richard Diebenkorn\rwho was teaching at UCLA.\n\n00:02:10:14 - 00:02:11:18\nSo that was on my first jobs.\n\n00:02:11:18 - 00:02:16:19\nI was, I was a nude model in Richard Diebenkorn’s \r UCLA class. \n\n00:02:16:19 - 00:02:19:06\nI don’t know, so we rented a house on Paloma Avenue\n\n00:02:19:06 - 00:02:21:12\nfor the summer,\rand then all these people just showing up.\n\n00:02:21:12 - 00:02:24:13\nBut I was talking with my friend\rKaren Rosenhoover,  you’ve got to interview her,\n\n00:02:24:17 - 00:02:26:06\nbecause Karen,\rwe say you'd wake up in the morning\n\n00:02:26:06 - 00:02:29:05\nto be all those\rpeople in the yard and the front,\n\n00:02:29:07 - 00:02:31:18\nyou didn’t know them, it was, like, that was sorta what it was like.\n\n00:02:31:18 - 00:02:32:16\nSo I decided to\n\n00:02:32:16 - 00:02:36:16\napply for the feminist studio project\rbecause it's kind of interesting.\n\n00:02:36:16 - 00:02:38:14\nAnd I thought, well,\rmaybe I should go to school. I don't know.\n\n00:02:38:14 - 00:02:42:11\nSo I got in\rand I started going out to Valencia ,\n\n00:02:42:15 - 00:02:46:14\nwhich is a hell of a long drive in Venice,\ryou know, was like,\n\n00:02:46:16 - 00:02:48:15\nand, I mean, it was kind of interesting.\n\n00:02:48:15 - 00:02:51:06\n Miriam Shapiro, Judy Chicago.\n\n00:02:51:06 - 00:02:51:22\nThere are a lot of people\n\n00:02:51:22 - 00:02:55:21\nthat I met that stayed,\rbut I was just there for one semester,\n\n00:02:55:21 - 00:03:00:13\nand that's when I did the lesbian\rbar piece, I did that project\n\n00:03:00:18 - 00:03:07:02\nwhich I read about, wrote like,\ryou know, I did as a student at Cal Arts with\n\n00:03:07:04 - 00:03:09:12\nJudy Chicago, because she said,\rdo something personal\n\n00:03:09:12 - 00:03:10:16\nand I just moved to L.A.\n\n00:03:10:16 - 00:03:14:17\nand I guess by then I had just met Judy\rbecause\n\n00:03:14:19 - 00:03:16:20\nI asked\rshe and Judy and I, we just drove around\n\n00:03:16:20 - 00:03:19:03\nL.A., went to all the lesbian bars\rwe could find, you know.\n\n00:03:19:03 - 00:03:20:22\nSo I thought, you know, North Hollywood,\n\n00:03:20:22 - 00:03:25:05\nthere were so many, there were like, thirty, forty.\rThere are none now, so\n\n00:03:25:05 - 00:03:27:15\nwhen I, I met Judy, was that\n\n00:03:27:15 - 00:03:31:09\nI guess that summer\rI went to Big Brothers.\n\n00:03:31:10 - 00:03:32:23\nI was like watching the Big Brothers.\n\n00:03:32:23 - 00:03:35:20\nAnd there was this guy named Curtis,\rwho was this black guy\n\n00:03:35:20 - 00:03:39:14\nwho was the bartender occasionally,\roccasionally bartender.\n\n00:03:39:14 - 00:03:41:08\nHe'd like to be bartender\rIt wasn't really a bartender\n\n00:03:41:08 - 00:03:44:16\nHe was actually an aide to Pat Russell\rher name was Pat Russell.\n\n00:03:44:21 - 00:03:49:05\nShe was the council woman, you know how,\n\n00:03:49:06 - 00:03:51:12\nLA is divided up the 13 councilmanic districts.\n\n00:03:51:12 - 00:03:54:01\nShe was the councilwoman\rfrom our district.\n\n00:03:54:01 - 00:03:56:04\nCurtis was her aide.\n\n00:03:56:04 - 00:04:00:13\nCurtis, use to hang out this lesbian bar\rjust for fun. So...\n\n00:04:00:15 - 00:04:03:11\nJudy and he became friends anyway,\rso we all became friends.\n\n00:04:03:11 - 00:04:07:12\nBut Judy came into Big Brothers looking for,\n\n00:04:07:15 - 00:04:10:13\nmural painters,\rwanted to do a history of Venice murals\n\n00:04:10:13 - 00:04:13:13\non the Venice pavilion walls,\rwhich are all long gone.\n\n00:04:13:18 - 00:04:18:15\nAnd so she came into the bar looking for\rmural painters, among other things.\n\n00:04:18:20 - 00:04:21:04\nAnd there I was.\rI said, yeah, I'd like to paint a mural.\n\n00:04:21:04 - 00:04:22:20\nAnd that's how we met.\n\n00:04:22:20 - 00:04:27:04\nAnd so then\n\n00:04:27:06 - 00:04:30:19\nthen later on I didn't I,\rI had all these stupid jobs.\n\n00:04:30:19 - 00:04:35:07\nI was working in a factory in Culver City\rmaking, flocking wallpaper.\n\n00:04:35:09 - 00:04:39:01\nI had a lot of dumb jobs, I had, I the job in UCLA.\n\n00:04:39:03 - 00:04:41:03\nBut Judy said, you really need a job.\n\n00:04:41:03 - 00:04:43:01\nAnd here's the other thing\rthat's interesting about Judy.\n\n00:04:43:01 - 00:04:45:09\nand me, I came from like Cambridge.\n\n00:04:45:09 - 00:04:48:12\nMy father had was a professor,\ryou know, worked in the White House,\n\n00:04:48:12 - 00:04:49:13\nyou know, her father.\n\n00:04:49:13 - 00:04:53:01\nAnd she came from\rlike, Pacoima, you know, like\n\n00:04:53:03 - 00:04:55:02\nthe illegitimate daughter then\n\n00:04:55:02 - 00:04:58:15\nthen the stepdaughter of just, you know,\rthis whole totally, totally different thing .\n\n00:04:58:18 - 00:05:02:03\nWe came from completely different worlds\rand we just like, everything\n\n00:05:02:03 - 00:05:05:04\nwe kind of needed from each other, wanted,\renjoyed about, learned about\n\n00:05:05:04 - 00:05:09:18\nit was just this fabulous connection\rof like, two different worlds.\n\n00:05:09:20 - 00:05:13:20\nAnd that's, out of that came like SPARC,\rCity Wide Mural project and all that stuff.\n\n00:05:13:20 - 00:05:16:13\n“you mentioned SPARC,\rcan you talk about your involvement?”\n\n00:05:16:13 - 00:05:17:01\nOkay.\n\n00:05:17:01 - 00:05:20:17\nWell, that's, we gotta get there.\rThat’s a long ways away. \n\n00:05:20:19 - 00:05:23:19\nFirst of all, we had\rwe created the City Wide Mural project.\n\n00:05:24:00 - 00:05:28:21\nWhat, again, beside pitching this idea\rof using recreation parks\n\n00:05:28:23 - 00:05:33:09\nof buildings to which were covered with graffiti\rto use those as places for murals.\n\n00:05:33:11 - 00:05:39:00\nSo, we sat down at Judy's\rkitchen table on Rialto\n\n00:05:39:02 - 00:05:42:10\nand we sketched out this City\rWide Mural project where we would put\n\n00:05:42:14 - 00:05:46:19\ntwo murals in every council managed district,\rand they would be community murals\n\n00:05:46:23 - 00:05:51:17\nthat would be either at recreation\rand parks or senior centers or whatever.\n\n00:05:51:19 - 00:05:55:10\nAnd we pitched,\rwe took it to Pat Russell, who our friend through\n\n00:05:55:12 - 00:05:59:19\nCurtis, the bartender at Big Brothers,\rand she loved it.\n\n00:05:59:19 - 00:06:02:05\nAnd she pitched it and it got passed.\n\n00:06:02:05 - 00:06:05:11\nSo once the City Wide\rMural project was created, I got a job.\n\n00:06:05:11 - 00:06:07:18\nWell, part of the thing was that\rI became the assistant \n\n00:06:07:18 - 00:06:09:23\nthat Judy was already working\rfor the department.\n\n00:06:09:23 - 00:06:14:18\nI got this job at the Rec and Parks\rDepartment, so then we had to create it.\n\n00:06:14:20 - 00:06:17:23\nWe had to go to every single councilmanic\rand district, identify artists and identity walls.\n\n00:06:17:23 - 00:06:20:00\nHere’s the thing about Judy.\n\n00:06:20:00 - 00:06:23:04\nJudy Baca is a total visionary\rbecause, I don't, like she gets these ideas\n\n00:06:23:04 - 00:06:26:19\nshe said, “let's make, let’s do this, let's spin\n\n00:06:26:19 - 00:06:30:15\noff this fantasy project\rand create our own mural organization.\n\n00:06:30:15 - 00:06:33:02\nAnd so, but let's think of a name.\n\n00:06:33:04 - 00:06:36:03\nSo we're sitting around the table\rthinking of names.\n\n00:06:36:03 - 00:06:37:21\nAnd so I'm thinking about the Weatherman.\n\n00:06:37:21 - 00:06:39:14\nI'm thinking about the Weatherman.\n\n00:06:39:14 - 00:06:44:07\nAnd that quote, they say, “It only takes\ra spark to start a revolution.”\n\n00:06:44:09 - 00:06:45:11\nThat's where we got the name SPARC.\n\n00:06:45:11 - 00:06:48:03\nSo we looked at SPARC,  it looks like sex\r \n\n00:06:48:03 - 00:06:52:00\nWe took the K off, made it a C\rSocial Public Art Research Center,\n\n00:06:52:01 - 00:06:54:14\nso it came straight from the Weatherman.\n\n00:06:54:14 - 00:06:58:09\nSo we did the history Venice murals\rand they that was a wonderful thing\n\n00:06:58:09 - 00:07:01:09\nbecause there were probably 13\ror 14 artists who worked on that\n\n00:07:01:12 - 00:07:04:01\nthey were in the Venice Pavilion\rat the end of Windward,\n\n00:07:04:01 - 00:07:06:05\nwhich used to have this\rwith that recreation.\n\n00:07:06:05 - 00:07:08:16\nI don't know what they have there now,\rbut there was a recreation center\n\n00:07:08:16 - 00:07:12:12\nand had these  concrete walls all around it\rand they were always getting marked up\n\n00:07:12:12 - 00:07:13:21\nwith graffiti.\n\n00:07:13:21 - 00:07:17:03\nAnd then also because the walls were high,\ryou could peak, \n\n00:07:17:05 - 00:07:20:15\nthere were gang fights\rand stuff like that inside. So they wanted\n\n00:07:20:17 - 00:07:23:17\nJudy was working for the Department\rof Recreation and Parks,\n\n00:07:23:17 - 00:07:26:16\nand so she proposed to the idea\n\n00:07:26:21 - 00:07:31:03\ninstead of having community artists paint murals\rof the history of Venice and the inside\n\n00:07:31:03 - 00:07:35:07\nof the Venice Pavilion.\rI signed up and then that's where I met Catherine.\n\n00:07:35:07 - 00:07:39:05\nI met, you know, Ulysses Jenkins, who's\ra very well-known video artist.\n\n00:07:39:05 - 00:07:41:08\nNow, that's where I met him.\rHe started there.\n\n00:07:41:08 - 00:07:43:09\nArt Mortimer\n\n00:07:43:09 - 00:07:44:15\nThere were just, Galen Von,\n\n00:07:44:15 - 00:07:47:15\nthere were all these different people\rthat we all showed up to paint the murals.\n\n00:07:47:15 - 00:07:49:15\nNobody was paid anything, so,\n\n00:07:49:15 - 00:07:50:08\nTribeca.\n\n00:07:50:08 - 00:07:54:07\nI'm living in Tribeca, and I loft on one\rHudson street, and there was a gallery\n\n00:07:54:07 - 00:07:56:04\nright across the street,\rand I used to look in the gallery.\n\n00:07:56:04 - 00:07:59:15\nSee this guy?He was  working there  ,\rand I was in mine painting. And\n\n00:07:59:17 - 00:08:00:01\nthat's how I\n\n00:08:00:01 - 00:08:03:20\nmet Rick, Rick Barnett.\rRick Barnett and I became very good friends\n\n00:08:03:22 - 00:08:06:22\nand at some point he moved to L.A.\n\n00:08:07:03 - 00:08:10:15\nand he's with his boyfriend,\rEric Gordon, who's still in L.A.\n\n00:08:10:17 - 00:08:13:23\nAnd started working for the Jan Baum gallery\rand this was like\n\n00:08:13:23 - 00:08:16:23\nin the early nineties, and\n\n00:08:17:03 - 00:08:19:18\nthey used to live right behind on Speedway,\n\n00:08:19:18 - 00:08:23:01\nright behind the Israel Levin Center,\rwhich has now the bars,\n\n00:08:23:02 - 00:08:24:12\nright behind it.\n\n00:08:24:12 - 00:08:27:12\nAnd Eric,\rso Eric started working for SPARC\n\n00:08:27:16 - 00:08:31:00\nand Rick was working downtown\rfor Jan Baum gallery\n\n00:08:31:02 - 00:08:35:06\nand they lived, lived right near that wall\rand the Eric would look at it\n\n00:08:35:06 - 00:08:38:05\nand Rick would look, hey, you know,\rthis is great site for a mural.\n\n00:08:38:05 - 00:08:39:15\nMaybe we can get Chrissie,\n\n00:08:39:15 - 00:08:42:17\nthat's my nickname, out here,\ryou know, to paint a mural.\n\n00:08:42:17 - 00:08:49:04\nSo since Eric was\rworking for SPARC already, he\n\n00:08:49:06 - 00:08:50:05\nwent over to\n\n00:08:50:05 - 00:08:54:04\nthe Israel Levin Center and said,\rDo you want a mural?\n\n00:08:54:04 - 00:08:56:02\nYou know, we can do a SPARC, a mural.\n\n00:08:56:02 - 00:08:58:20\nYou know, and so, you know, they have to pay for it.\n\n00:08:58:20 - 00:09:02:19\nBut, I mean, in those days, I wasn’t paid very much\rfor the original mural,\n\n00:09:02:21 - 00:09:05:03\nso I had, so they\n\n00:09:05:03 - 00:09:07:07\nso they asked\rthey said, yeah, it's a great idea.\n\n00:09:07:07 - 00:09:10:23\nSo, so it was actually Eric who suggested,\rwhy don't you put \n\n00:09:11:02 - 00:09:12:08\nChagall characters on the boardwalk?\n\n00:09:12:08 - 00:09:14:23\nBecause it's a Jewish center,\rJewish painter, blah, blah, blah.\n\n00:09:14:23 - 00:09:15:20\nAnd so they loved it.\n\n00:09:15:20 - 00:09:18:13\nThey liked it. So then,\n\n00:09:18:13 - 00:09:19:20\nso then I came out\n\n00:09:19:20 - 00:09:23:08\nto Venice the summer of  ‘91,\rand I spent that whole summer\n\n00:09:23:08 - 00:09:25:02\nthere, living in Eric and\n\n00:09:25:02 - 00:09:28:17\nand Eric and Rick's apartment\rright behind on the Speedway, \n\n00:09:28:17 - 00:09:28:23\nright there,\n\n00:09:28:23 - 00:09:32:23\nsleeping on this little kind of\ralcove shelf, frankly, getting up at dawn\n\n00:09:32:23 - 00:09:35:19\nevery morning. And my crew was young.\n\n00:09:35:19 - 00:09:40:09\nI had about four or five people that were\rlike UCLA students and different people.\n\n00:09:40:11 - 00:09:41:18\nAnd, you know, the mural on the wall\n\n00:09:41:18 - 00:09:44:13\nwas a whole block long\rand went around the front, too.\n\n00:09:44:13 - 00:09:48:04\nSo we get out there and the wall\rwas in really actually awful condition.\n\n00:09:48:04 - 00:09:48:22\nIt was really rough.\n\n00:09:48:22 - 00:09:51:20\nAnd we had, you\rknow, we'd get up, get up every morning\n\n00:09:51:20 - 00:09:55:08\nwe had to unlock the scaffolding,\rput the scaffolding up, you know,\n\n00:09:55:10 - 00:09:57:11\nI mean, I was so like,\n\n00:09:57:13 - 00:09:58:23\nso, you know, day after day\n\n00:09:58:23 - 00:10:02:22\nand, and the surface was kind\rof crummy and crumbling and, but whatever,\n\n00:10:03:03 - 00:10:07:18\nso we gridded the wall, we transferred\rthe drawing, we start painting.\n\n00:10:07:20 - 00:10:09:21\nAnd as we started painting,\rpeople started coming up.\n\n00:10:09:21 - 00:10:13:15\nAnd for example, this girl,\rSybil Grinnell, came up and said,\n\n00:10:13:17 - 00:10:15:19\nshe's was from Britain, “I'd love to paint murals.”\n\n00:10:15:19 - 00:10:20:13\nSo I said, “Well, you know, why don’t you come back.”\rAnd I gathered,  my crew grew\n\n00:10:20:13 - 00:10:23:15\nas the summer went on and Sybil turned out\rto be a fantastic painter, worked\n\n00:10:23:15 - 00:10:27:11\non my next two murals with me,\rbecame a mural painter in England.\n\n00:10:27:13 - 00:10:32:11\nThere was this homeless guy\rwho added all the angels and he, um,\n\n00:10:32:13 - 00:10:35:08\nBill, and he used to come,\n\n00:10:35:08 - 00:10:38:22\nhe came by one day and he had this little drawing,\rit was this big, of this angel\n\n00:10:38:22 - 00:10:41:02\nbecause these angels were like,\rreal to him.\n\n00:10:41:02 - 00:10:45:09\nThey were all like real people, real\rcharacters in his imagining, whatever.\n\n00:10:45:11 - 00:10:48:09\nWe created a space for him, we gridded,\rand he stood up on there and the ladder\n\n00:10:48:09 - 00:10:52:12\nand he painted his angels\rand all the angels he painted himself.\n\n00:10:52:14 - 00:10:53:19\nHe was terrific.\n\n00:10:53:19 - 00:10:56:19\nHe added great stuff to the mural.\n\n00:10:56:21 - 00:11:00:14\nSybil came along and then some of the\n\n00:11:00:15 - 00:11:02:21\nand the, front of the mural on the original mural\n\n00:11:02:21 - 00:11:05:21\nthere was a\n\n00:11:05:22 - 00:11:08:21\nthere was, there used to be a synagogue\ron the boardwalk\n\n00:11:08:21 - 00:11:12:12\nand so, this woman from the center came out\rand said, “you know,\n\n00:11:12:15 - 00:11:15:19\nthere was a synagogue, and you should,\rmy parents went there all the time.”\n\n00:11:15:19 - 00:11:16:14\nI said, “Well, that's great.”\n\n00:11:16:14 - 00:11:18:02\nI said, “Why don’t you to put that in there?”\n\n00:11:18:02 - 00:11:20:15\nAnd so she did.\n\n00:11:20:15 - 00:11:25:10\nAnd then later, the second time around,\rshe was still alive.\n\n00:11:25:12 - 00:11:27:09\nAnd then the last time I went there,\rshe had Alzheimer's,\n\n00:11:27:09 - 00:11:31:01\nbut her daughter was there\rand she told me how much\n\n00:11:31:03 - 00:11:34:14\nit had meant for her to her mother\rto be involved in that,\n\n00:11:34:14 - 00:11:37:14\nand then the second time,\rand it was, people loved it,\n\n00:11:37:15 - 00:11:40:02\nyou know, all the seniors were so involved\rin the mural.\n\n00:11:40:02 - 00:11:42:07\nTook us three months to finish the mural.\n\n00:11:42:07 - 00:11:44:23\nAnd it was, it was a wonderful dedication ceremony\n\n00:11:44:23 - 00:11:49:11\nand they gave me this little plaque,\rwhich I still have, and it was great.\n\n00:11:49:11 - 00:11:51:22\nIt was so intimate, you know,\rbecause I sometimes would have\n\n00:11:51:22 - 00:11:54:11\nit was a small,\rit wasn't there weren't that many elderly then,\n\n00:11:54:11 - 00:11:58:05\nI mean, there was real community.\rIt was a quieter time.\n\n00:11:58:05 - 00:12:00:18\nIt wasn't as crowded,\rit wasn't as expensive to live there.\n\n00:12:00:18 - 00:12:01:11\nWe're talking about Venice.\n\n00:12:01:11 - 00:12:04:11\nThe question was about Venice\rand how it changed.\n\n00:12:04:12 - 00:12:06:10\nIt's changed in radical ways.\n\n00:12:06:10 - 00:12:09:02\nAnd, for example, Oakwood,\rwhen we were living in,\n\n00:12:09:02 - 00:12:12:01\nwhen I was living in Venice in my twenties\rand thirties,  it's like,\n\n00:12:12:03 - 00:12:15:00\nso I would walk through Oakwood\rto get to Venice, to get to SPARC\n\n00:12:15:00 - 00:12:20:13\nWhen I was doing the digital mural.\rFirst of all, they said you walked?\n\n00:12:20:15 - 00:12:23:17\nyes, it was not that far,\rbut it was like, but it was Oakwood.\n\n00:12:23:17 - 00:12:26:07\nIts such an up,  \rso it’s totally gentrified.\n\n00:12:26:07 - 00:12:30:13\nI mean, it's like,\reverybody has nice gardens and it was a\n\n00:12:30:17 - 00:12:34:00\nit's a completely different neighborhood\rthan it was.\n\n00:12:34:02 - 00:12:34:23\nThe canals.\n\n00:12:34:23 - 00:12:36:14\nLike, you saw the pictures of the canals.\n\n00:12:36:14 - 00:12:39:21\nIt was like dirt lots,\ryou know, rent was like $90 a month.\n\n00:12:39:23 - 00:12:45:02\nAnd I lived on 2409 Ocean Avenue, but\rthat whole there was this whole stretch,\n\n00:12:45:02 - 00:12:48:07\nI think it was either Howland or Linnie\rthat was just like little shack, \n\n00:12:48:07 - 00:12:48:23\nafter little shack\n\n00:12:48:23 - 00:12:53:10\nand then all the shacks were like lesbians\ror musicians and filmmakers,\n\n00:12:53:10 - 00:12:56:23\nand you just kind of walk down the street\rand, you know,\n\n00:12:57:01 - 00:13:00:14\nsmoked dope, heard music, you know,\rit was like this,\n\n00:13:00:19 - 00:13:02:07\nit was kind of like a little wonderland.\n\n00:13:02:07 - 00:13:06:10\nI mean, for,  for I couldn't have chosen\ra better place to come out as a lesbian\n\n00:13:06:13 - 00:13:09:13\nin 1971 than Venice, California,\n\n00:13:09:13 - 00:13:11:19\nat that time, because it was just\n\n00:13:11:19 - 00:13:15:04\nit was so supportive\rand it was so, you know, it\n\n00:13:15:05 - 00:13:18:23\nit was a real community, I guess\rmaybe it was small enough in scale,\n\n00:13:18:23 - 00:13:22:09\nbut it was a real community\rin terms of women, in terms of artists.\n\n00:13:22:11 - 00:13:25:11\nThere was like the Piano Man\rand you had a piano and wheels and rolled.\n\n00:13:25:11 - 00:13:28:11\nA lot of that is in that original mural\rthat Judy and I did\n\n00:13:28:11 - 00:13:33:04\nof Venice in the sixties and seventies,\rbecause that caption we were capturing\n\n00:13:33:04 - 00:13:36:15\nwhat was going on,\ryou know, the yoga classes that there was\n\n00:13:36:20 - 00:13:39:20\nI mean, everything was just in a smaller,\rmore innocent scale, I guess.\n\n00:13:39:20 - 00:13:40:18\nI guess that's the main thing.\n\n00:13:40:18 - 00:13:45:12\nMuscle Beach, it was all there, but\rit was just tinier,  it was a really magic,\n\n00:13:45:12 - 00:13:47:11\nit was a very important time in my life.\n\n00:13:47:11 - 00:13:50:11\nAnd I made lasting friends.\n\n00:13:50:15 - 00:13:53:18\nI mean, to this, you know, I\n\n00:13:53:20 - 00:13:55:20\nmy dearest friends in California,\n\n00:13:55:20 - 00:13:58:20\nall the friends I made in Venice\rwhen I was in my twenties and thirties,\n\n00:13:58:22 - 00:14:00:21\nand we've all stayed in touch\rall that time.\n\n00:14:00:21 - 00:14:02:22\nAnd everybody.\n\n00:14:02:22 - 00:14:03:07\nYeah.\n\n00:14:03:07 - 00:14:07:04\nAnd I think I think there was an energy\rabout Venice that drew people.\n\n00:14:07:04 - 00:14:10:14\nLike I said, when we started off\rabout the back stories of the people that\n\n00:14:10:16 - 00:14:12:06\nI mean that, that's a book in itself.\n\n00:14:12:06 - 00:14:15:15\nWhat drew all of us to Venice\rat that time, except that there was\n\n00:14:15:15 - 00:14:20:07\nthis very positive, there was this feeling\ryou could be yourself that nobody,\n\n00:14:20:07 - 00:14:23:20\nI mean, nobody knew had done anything\rabout my family or Cambridge or Harvard.\n\n00:14:23:20 - 00:14:25:21\nWho cares? I mean, that was like nothing.\n\n00:14:25:21 - 00:14:29:11\nIt was like\rwho you were at the moment, you know, like\n\n00:14:29:13 - 00:14:32:06\nwho you were and what you wanted to do.\n\n00:14:32:06 - 00:14:35:11\nAnd the you know, you wanted to paint,\ryou wanted to make videos,\n\n00:14:35:11 - 00:14:36:18\nyou wanted to make music.\n\n00:14:36:18 - 00:14:38:03\nI mean, there are dark sides to it, too.\n\n00:14:38:03 - 00:14:43:11\nBut but in general, I just feel like\rit was a kind of innocence and generosity\n\n00:14:43:11 - 00:14:47:03\nthat that was very,  and a real, a sense of community\n\n00:14:47:03 - 00:14:48:21\nthat was very lovely.\n\n00:14:48:21 - 00:14:50:22\nIt was very wonderful to be part of.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://veniceheritagemuseum.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2416/collection_resources/119590/file/224800#t=0.0,903.27467"}]}]}]}