Excerpt from Vernissage TV page:
"In September 2024, Simchowitz launched a new venue in Pasadena called Hill House. The space was inaugurated with a group exhibition and is now showcasing a solo exhibition featuring new pieces by Los Angeles-based artist Shaina McCoy. However, Hill House isn’t a typical gallery. Instead, it’s a collection of buildings centered around a swimming pool, where each structure offers art and sound in a relaxed, living-room-like atmosphere. There are no traditional “white cube” gallery spaces here. Hill House serves as a versatile venue, hosting exhibitions of emerging contemporary art, high-quality music systems (Simco Audio), artist residencies, and a range of alternative programs.
This video is the second in our series on Hill House (stay tuned for more). After Shaina McCoy guided us through her exhibition, Stefan now leads us on a tour of the property and the exhibition spaces.
Simchowitz Hill House Tour with Stefan Simchowitz. Pasadena, October 20, 2024.Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file."
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Un-edited digital transcript:
S. Simchowitz: How are you? Come say good morning. These guys are going to interview you in a little bit if that's okay. This is Shaina McCoy, the artist, Vernissage TV. This is Shaina McCoy, Heinrich Schmidt and Marco.
Welcome, congratulations. If you could, you look lovely. If you could be so kind at some point later and just sit down with them and do a small interview, it would be great. Great, thank you so much.
So welcome to Hill House. This is a project that I've been working on for four or five years. We ran it as an artist residency at first for a number of years and then we renovated the property using the architect Catherine Tustagan.
There are eight structures on the property. Each structure has a different function and is interchangeable in either an exhibition space, a studio space, a workspace, an audio space and we start off at the front side of the property, show you a little sculpture park where we have a birdhouse by Tyler Mako from Ohio.
We have ceramic sculptures from Stan Edmondson and Sterling Ruby and we have cacti and Sterling Ruby is one of his big bronze pieces coming through here. We'll see our protection of Stan Edmondson's big guy over here.
He keeps away evil spirits and welcomes you to the property. And then we'll come here to the maple forest. So one of the things you'll notice is there's a lot of plant material, a lot of landscaping.
Petra Cortright, artist I've been working with for over a decade now, did the landscaping with me and we designed it to be like a little Huntington Gardens where you have a lot of different kinds of landscaping, cacti, maples and then this is the first of the structures, the smallest and most modest of the structures and what the idea is we have rotating shows in some rooms and semi-permanent shows in other rooms with core artists we work with where we change the material, we refresh it, but artists produce so much work giving them a chance to be seen over a longer period of time. Sergio Attukwei Clottey, children's drawings, his kids obsessively draw on the walls of his house in Ghana and Accra and he loves their work so much that he actually copies their work on canvas.
So it's this sort of play on children's drawings professionalized by a master artist and I think they're amazing, a very good example of one of his collage works made out of plastic materials from Kefir gallons, an amazing little collage which involves material, you know, found in Ghana.
Chadwick Boseman, the late Chadwick Boseman, a beautiful duct tape portrait of Chadwick Boseman, one of his watercolor works of a bellboy and so whoever comes here can experience Sergio's work as we rotate through shows we have a few permanent sort of six-month up artists so really give them a chance to be seen.
Trying to extend the duration of exhibition for artists so that with people's busy schedules there's an opportunity to be seen. We'll come up to the porch because the porch is kind of cool. Justin Lieberman many years ago did a project with me where we produced all these bears.
They've been in storage for quite a while and we just thought in Pasadena because there's so many bears around if they come hang out in the porch we'd give them some friends and and so we have all these bears around.
Stan Edmondson, beautiful little figurine sculptures over here I think they're remarkable and we walk on the porch you'll notice the esplanade of apple trees Petra is very domestic she besides being one of the preeminent digital artists of our time she also loves Martha Stewart in fact she has a collection of all of Martha Stewart magazine so she likes like esplanades of apple trees and lavender bushes and now we'll come to the main exhibition space on the front end of the of the property these pots I just have to point out are beautiful ceramic vessels made by the artist Ken Taylor and they have rose bushes in them and in the back is some trucks so we're gonna come and show you the main show today which is Shaina McCoy aka Wallflower McCoy on Instagram Wallflower McCoy, amazing artist from Minneapolis.
So I met when she was probably 21 years old and Hi, how are you? Nice to see you, Ben. This is Ben How are you? Ben is an amazing photographer who works with us on our creative art partner side and he documents a lot of our projects in creative art partners and he's been working with us for a number of years and we'll discuss CAP in a little bit our Rental business called creative art partners, which is an amazingly innovative product. And this is Shaina McCoy's show So she's very well known for these faceless portraits she does that are based on photographs of her and her family that she collects and this is a Very beautiful intimate show of of of of Portraits she does big paintings and also these really beautiful little gems that you want to look at and And what we've done here is in each space you'll notice We've we've paired music in all the spaces really beautiful You know audiophile grade equipment Making the spaces more active more dynamic more engaging What you find people end up sitting in these rooms for hours and they start looking at the work in a much more intimate way Trying to give people an opportunity to sit with a work with more duration a more intimate setting that is more akin to a More akin to a living space a working space and active space I'm very interested in this idea of living with art and Presenting art as a lived experience as opposed to sort of a situation.
So finding that balance where you can curate a beautiful show Have it present itself as a as a solo exhibition and presentation, but also give you an idea that art is a very liveable thing This is a beautiful Mickey Mouse ceramic.
That isn't is is a hangover from our last group show and I loved it So much and thought it was so cute. I didn't think he got in the way of Shaina's show so we left it here and this is of course a Small vessel made by an artist.
I've worked with for many years from Ghana named Paa Joe. He does these miniatures and it's a really interesting painting because Jonas Wood's an artist who actually He commissioned Paa Joe through me to do a big basketball that you see evident a basketball Sculpture that's evident in some of his most important paintings today Jonas loves Madelena The ceramic artist Madelena, so he did a painting based on the Madelena Frimkis pot and then Paa Joe Did a vessel of a copy of a Jonas painting of a Madelena Frimkis pot So it's an appropriation of an appropriation of an appropriation.
I Think this this lamp is also made by an artist. I work with named Frank Elementi who does these sort of design objects? This painting is really beautiful. I think it's worth it's worth two minutes of study and you'll see how Shaina builds up the texture of You know of the of the hair.
This is an amazing amazingly beautiful painting in my opinion real masterpiece Hi, how are you? Nice to see you? good, and then we'll we'll come in through the Through the main property and you'll see there's a flow through each space this this space is a workspace and also an exhibition space and This presents work some edition editions works of Shaina.
She's done quite a bit of addition work This is a this is actually a UV dimensional print that that really replicates the texture of the painting As is this one and and this is a this is a work of her.
This is one of her early works one of the first paintings she did Troy that we did a screen print edition of and You know so Shaina is actually in in five of the spaces today so, you know the you know, you really get an idea of the artist presenting in multiple spaces and And When we do events we gather in the in the front of the house in which you'll see there are four Specific structures here of exhibitions.
We're going to zip you right to the back and I think we'll we'll first cover Shaina show and then we can sort of cut and then we can do the the rest of it so This is red bond one the bigger of the two red bonds Where we have a solo presentation of Shaina's paintings over here.
Hi, how are you? Nice to see you thank you so much thank you very much and once again you know presenting art you can sit down listen to music relax
And since you're Swiss Heinrich, we have Swiss speakers for you, Swiss power for you.
We've got Boenicke speakers, W11's, Nagra Power, Lampizator DAC from Poland powering everything, and of course, Shana's beautiful paintings, and this is such a nice angle to see things from. So I think you should, these angles are all so beautiful.
And you'll notice cactus material everywhere. We assembled this material over a couple of years, and the idea was to give contrast to the red bonds. A presentation of work by Ken Taylor, and also the Simco One speaker, which I'm very proud of, which is a speaker manufactured in California by Simco.
It's a horn speaker, doesn't require much power, sounds amazing, and Ken Taylor group show of works on paper and two big paintings, and the bull, the big bull. And what you'll notice everywhere is turntables with multiple arms and stuff.
So we're very much into analog equipment, and so you can come here, listen to music, we can curate a system for you, build something esoteric or something simple, and really give you an experience. And I love the howling red wolf.
Ken is one of my favorite artists we work with. Look how sick that is, that's actually pretty cool. This is a Schick 12-inch tonearm with a cartridge from a company called Mutek Kanda Hayabasu, with a DynaVecta 805 from the 1980s.
Marble head shell DynaVecta cartridge. It's all great, beautiful, yeah, Thoress, good old German guy, point-to-point wiring, all handmade, extraordinary sounding. And then let's go to the pool house and look at Shaina's beautiful little intimate paintings, the little portraits here of these small works on paper and paintings.
You'll see the work presents itself in multiple ways. And then this is the pool house, and we have a series of Shaina McCoy paintings here, small paintings, works on paper, really lovely. So you're really presenting the work in a multitude of ways.
Come meet Kal Raustiala. Cal, this is Kal Raustiala, guys, very important person in my life. How are you, Cal? Nice to have Vernissage TV. Cal runs the Berkel Center at UCLA, which we engage in a partnership with them where we do events at our property in Los Angeles, which hosts intellectuals, thinkers, politicians, right?
We just, yeah. And it's an amazing sort of part of UCLA that brings some of the most interesting people to Los Angeles for intimate discussions. And so again, weaving in ideas, thoughts, books, different kinds of things, integrating with art, with music, trying to be interdisciplinary and cross, and sort of cross these things together.
K. Raustiala: Absolutely. Because he's a fantastic host for that.
S. Simchowitz: Thank you. I'll be with you in a sec. Come, guys. And then this is the music room over here. Come in. Tyler Macko, artist from Ohio, Lila, Bossum Possum. And then of course, these speakers are YG acoustics, Diptique, beautiful things to film.
It'll be great if after we do the interview, you because I think there's a lot of detail here to get so much. And there's also the cables, the red cables on my own cable line, I'll show you. And then this room and then there's, of course, a giant Shana cable here, a giant Shaina painting over here. And you'll see it's unbelievable, she makes these balls, she creates the hair into these tiny little balls. Such amazing, detailed work.