She’s a Rainbow
In the artist Alia Penner’s eyes, everything looks better covered in rainbows. Not girly, pastel rainbows, but brilliant acid hues that bring to mind Peter Max and Sonia Delaunay. When the California-born artist isn’t painting rainbow-framed portals into alternate universes, she brings her pop psychedelic sensibility to album covers and posters for L.A. bands and... More
Brian Butler’s Magick Act
For the Los Angeles artist Brian Butler, magic (or “magick,” as the case may be) is as modern as technology. Certain teachings may be ancient, he notes, but that doesn’t make them any less relevant. “In the modern world of computers, the same energies are still operating,” he says.Butler was premiering his film, “The Dove... More
The Untrained Eye
In 1951, Charles Brittin, a mailman and amateur photographer, moved to Venice, Calif., and began to photograph his surroundings: the desolate streets and misty midways, the oil derricks erected by the beach and the vibrant Beat community, with the artist Wallace Berman at its core, that gathered regularly at Brittin’s apartment for impromptu parties. He... More
Just Don’t Call Them Communes
Today we’ve got reality TV stars and struggling actors in superhero costumes, but in the early ‘70s even stranger, more exotic creatures roamed the boulevards of Hollywood: the 100+ members of The Source Family, a spiritual commune led by a man named Father Yod, that made its home in a mansion in the Hills. Dressed... More
All in the “Family”
Devendra Banhart and Lauren Dukoff were walking around the Space 15Twenty gallery in Hollywood, giggling. Friends since they met at Malibu High School 10 years ago, the pair, who call each other Obi (Banhart’s middle name) and Lo, are also artistic collaborators: Dukoff has been photographing the indie folkie-turned-major label star since he spent his... More
Restoring Sharon Tate
Her closet may have been full of designer dresses, but Sharon Tate was a flower child all the way down to her toes. Most comfortable barefoot, she used to skirt the “shoes required” laws in snooty late ’60s Beverly Hills by looping leather string around her toes and across the tops of her feet, and... More
Urban Healers
California’s spiritual tradition is deeply ingrained. The Golden State has long been a magnet for seers and seekers, from yoga swamis to esoteric scholars to psychedelic cult leaders. But if some of those past figures could be considered “out there,” today’s healers are very much right here, addressing the needs of the modern, urban world... More
The High Priest of Los Angeles
Last Sunday evening at the Silent Movie Theater, a clip from the 1938 astrological murder mystery “When Were You Born?” was shown as part of an “Occult L.A.” program curated by the author Erik Davis. In the clip, legendary occult scholar Manly P. Hall, who had also written the movie’s script, appeared on screen to... More
A Home Unlike All Others
Earlier this summer, almost 100 psychedelic music fans, subculture aficionados, students of the occult and local literati climbed the flower-petal-strewn steps of publisher couple Jodi Wille and Adam Parfrey’s Silver Lake home for a salon celebrating the upcoming publication of “The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, YaHoWa 13 and the Source Family” (Process),... More
Witness to the Wit of An Arch and Fiery Spirit
Theresa Duncan worked hard to get out of Lapeer, Mich., where she was born in 1966, and where, last month, she was buried. On her blog, the Wit of the Staircase, the writer and filmmaker compared Lapeer to the small Texas town in Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show.” “You would think it was 1951,”... More
Rebirth of the Cool
In the spring of 2006, the Centre Pompidou in Paris launched the splashiest exhibition of L.A. modern art the world has seen to date, “Los Angeles 1955-1985: Birth of an Artistic Capital,” featuring 350 works by 85 artists. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa flew in for the opening, as did the collector and philanthropist Eli Broad,... More
Back to the Garden
Money may not buy you love, but $2.4 million can buy you prime real estate on “Love Street” – which is the name of a song Jim Morrison wrote about living in Laurel Canyon in the ‘60s. The Doors singer and his girlfriend rented a house near “the store where the creatures meet” (the Canyon... More