Los Angeles’ Various Small Fires is currently host to Home Office, a solo exhibition by Anna Sew Hoy. Anna taught a workshop and lectured at Snow in the Desert, our gathering for women in the arts at Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs last summer. The show is up through the 18th of May. See David Pagel’s review in the LA Times and see more about Anna’s vision.

…there exist these opulent gardens

With flowers as large as trees, wilting, of course,

Very quickly, if they are not watered with very expensive water. And fruit markets

With great leaps of fruit, which nonetheless

Possess neither scent nor taste. And endless trains of autos,

Lighter than their own shadows, swifter than

Foolish thoughts, shimmering vehicles, in which

Rosy people, coming from nowhere, go nowhere.

Excerpted from Bertolt Brecht’s Contemplating Hell, featured on Literary LA.

Through July, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. celebrates the vast Autopias and Plains of Id of Los Angeles with programs and exhibits like Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940–1990 at the J. Paul Getty Museum. We’ll be around, soaking it all in, meeting some of our new neighbors, and sharing what we see and learn right here.

LOS ANGELES : WOMBLETON RECORDS

Jali Musa Jawra is from the Kankan region of Guinea in West Africa. The Jali (or “Djeli”) prefix on his name means “musician by birth”; both of his parents were jalis as well, you see. Traditionally speaking, Djelis were more or less wandering minstrels in this part of Africa. He is best known for playing the Kora, a 21-string bridge-harp, though he also mastered the balafon, basically a wooden xylophone from the idiophone family of tuned percussion instruments. He plays guitar and sings, too — but doesn’t everyone. Am I right Hollywood?

Moving to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast to play in Mory Kante’s band in the late 1970s put Jawara in a more progressive state of mind. When he split from Kante in ’83 he developed his own, hypnotic and exciting style of modern African Mandinka music. The album this tune was taken from, “Soubindoor”, was recorded in London in 1988 and was released on Island’s Mango imprint.

The song is about how suspicion and mistrust can ruin otherwise loving relationships. So to put it in your frame of reference, Wombleteens, this song is like West Africa’s answer to “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. I’d like to hear what Jawara could do with “Shadowplay” or “Disorder”, wouldn’t you!

AUDIO OF SOUBINDOOR (1988)

- From the selectors at Wombleton Records in Highland Park — all vinyl all the time for all the people.

Fractal Projections is a play on the idea of the cube broken in space to create an interlocking grid system that follows a linear deformation, allowing them to break from the normal grid behavior into a family of fractal surfaces.

Ace Hotel Downtown Los Angeles hangs its shingle later this year, and we couldn’t be happier to share a neighborhood with one of our almae matres, SCI-Arc. This Thursday, we’re looking forward to circling like sharks around Evelina Sausina and Eugene Kosgoron’s installation — the winner of SCI-Arc’s 40/40 competition — at the Farmer’s and Merchant’s Bank building for the Downtown LA Artwalk. 40/40 pays homage to architecture and how SCI-Arc alumni have transformed the school over the preceding four decades. Hats off, neighbors.

The last four letters lasted 26 years, but weren’t included after the sign was refurbished in ‘49.

This is California Hospital in Downtown Los Angeles, at its latest incarnation in 1898. The hospital was founded with the help of John and Dora Haynes — you may recognize the ring of “The Haynes Foundation” from many a public broadcasting sponsor shout-out — an enterprising pair of social activists who uprooted from Pennsylvania to settle where the sunshine shone. Mister was a philosopher, civic entrepreneur, medical practitioner and teacher; Missus was a tireless suffragette and ally. California Hospital — now in its 126th year — is one of the many organizations that still benefit from this childless, eccentric and driven couple’s foundation, legacy and goodwill nearly 75 years after their deaths — not to mention the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, Los Angeles City Historical Society, Los Angeles Public Library, USC, UCLA, public radio stations KCRW and KPCC and any deserving, eloquent and well-referenced applicant who applies for a grant.

The hospital has transformed considerably over the last century and a quarter — you can learn more on their site.