January 21, 2012

Moca Store

I was cooling my heels this past week at the Criminal Courts Building in beautiful downtown Los Angeles performing my civic service (aka jury duty). It was a motley crew gathered in a dingy, fluorescent lit holding room for 8 hours a day but it was punctuated by an hour and a half lunch break (which is completely unheard of in my regular life). I decided to take advantage of my proximity to MOCA and headed over to their fabulous store to knock some gifts off my list and see if there was anything I “needed” to have. Turns out there was.

M. Design has just moved into a new office (hooray! we have a dedicated library! and a kitchen!) and I was thrilled to discover that MOCA was selling a series of mugs emblazoned with images of Sister Corita’s punchy, graphic seriographs. Dig it:

After snatching these up, I saw their selection of mugs wrapped in a bevy of Pantone colors and thought this neon yellow would help out on groggy mornings:
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August 9, 2011

Cleveland Art

Today, I was shopping for clients and found myself jonesing for pieces with a little patina and quirkiness to weave into the house. I have always likes the funky, industrial items I have seen on Cleveland Art’s website so I figured it was worth the haul deep into downtown Los Angeles to see what goodies they might have in person. I am very glad I did. The store is chock-full of objects that have served some key purpose in the past and are now being reinterpreted to serve a new one. It’s a terrific reminder of the oft overlooked “reuse” part of recycling (which makes shopping here as green as it is fun…). Sometimes, there is no discernable function for the object but it’s so interesting or beautiful that it becomes art itself. Below is a pu pu platter of what I found inspiring and inspired:

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