If Los Angeles had a town crier for design and architecture, her name could be Frances Anderton. The writer and radio personality has dedicated her life to both worlds and has ushered in a culture of speaking to what physically surrounds us in Los Angeles. Her show DnA on KCRW has recently boomed into a more active, “multi-platform” space for discussion about what she describes as “who and what matters in our designed world.”
When we meet in the basement studios of KCRW, Frances sits in a recording studio with her back facing an operating board. She has a glass of water and a small bag of mixed nuts with her, two items undoubtedly invaluable for the always working journalist. She wears a comfortable petrol blue cardigan, a worn, early Star Trek shirt, and a block necklace made by her young daughter that spells her name: the outfit is a fitting representation of her intellectual and accessible point of view.
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Steve Chiotakis may be the nicest guy in Los Angeles. He’s lighthearted, he’s funny, and he seems to be in a perpetual state of happiness. He has a bright smile and one of those voices that you know you’ve heard before. You probably have, too: Steve is currently one of KCRW’s news anchors.
He’s fairly new to the position, too: he’s only been at the iconic Los Angeles station for a little over a year. Previously, he was on the Marketplace Morning Report where it was his job to handle (and lighten) serious international financial stories like the late aughts recession and the current state of the stock market. That job is what brought Steve to Los Angeles, too.
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Who said that creative people can’t do business? These two worlds, a world associated with artistry and making and a world associated with numbers and money, appear to have nothing in common. Their marriage is critical though and how you get mega-millionaire success stories: success comes from creative people who are savvy enough to snatch opportunities and spread the scope of their work as they grown. It sounds very simple–but it obviously is very difficult.
Sonja Rasula knows this. She’s the woman behind the now sprawling company, UNIQUE USA, the craftsperson supporting mega-sale that all started from the LA championing Unique LA. Her brand originated as an effort to support a local creative ecosystem and now is sprouting into all sorts of new pursuits around the world. She’s building an incubator space for creatives to work from, meet, take business workshops and basically do everything she can to make them successful: she’s become the creative business guru creatives didn’t know they needed.
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We don’t often place contemporary art and contemporary craft outside of the context of current time: what we make now isn’t viewed as the cultural and intellectual relics we will leave behind. These ways that we express ourselves are markers of history and forms that may outlive us for centuries. Ceramicist and artist Ben Medansky is very aware of this: his work–from slumping planters to arching bowls–are very aware of the baggage the past, present, and future have on them. They are made with an eye at history and a gaze toward what has yet to happen: Ben’s creations are meant to represent his surrounding and point of view in a sophisticated, simple, and tactile way.
“Ceramics lasts forever,” he says, sitting at a table in his studio. “I feel like if I am going to be in charge of the aesthetic history of our society that I might as well make things good and that I am proud of. They’re not going to dig up the Internet, unfortunately.”
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Fleurette West sits on the patio of the house she lives in. She eats a bowl full of fresh fruit as she casually reads over an issue of Slake that she found while cleaning. She doesn’t live far from Figueroa Street in Highland Park and very much enjoys the part of town that she’s found herself in. The neighborhood and city have had a large influence on her work as a painter, too.
“I feel pushed by the city and I feel like my art, in a sense, is pushing the city back. I’m not sure if that’s okay, though,” she says. “I’ve lived in Highland Park for a few years now and, at this point, I feel engaged enough with this community to make art about it. Whereas, a few years ago when I first moved here I felt like I wasn’t quite in that position. I am saying something about these spaces–and it is critical. It is not necessarily negative–but it is critical. As artists, we have a responsibility to make sure we own what we say.”
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