10 Years: A Benefit

On May 6, 2023, homeLA celebrated it’s 10th year with a benefit and a return to the home in Mt Washington that first launched the project in May 2013.  

10 Years: A Benefit was be an interdisciplinary performance event that set two Californian modernist homes in conversation–the Lefevre Residence (2008) by Fung and Blatt and the Woo Residence (1968)–and honored homeLA’s decade-long history with an evening of dance, art, architecture, as well as an archive exhibition and silent auction of art and experiences to support homeLA’s artistic programming and operations. 

10 Years took place in, around, and in respect to a home and family who have dedicated over a decade of work to supporting artists with GuestHaus Residency (GHR)–an artist residency that, since 2011, has partnered with over 40 LA-based organizations and institutions to provide over 70 housing residencies.  

Designed by Fung+Blatt Architects, the Mt. Washington home maintains the Californian Modernist aesthetics and functionality of indoor/outdoor living that reference the design sensibilities of Schindler and Neutra.  Artists included in the benefit responded to this family home, its modernist architecture, and the history of Mt Washington–one of the first suburbs of Los Angeles-with new site-specific work. This work an the Lefevre Residence was set in conversation with the Woo Residence (1968), across the street, where John K Chan from Formation Association led an architectural tour.

The evening’s program included works by three long-time homeLA artists: Emily Marchand, Odeya Nini and Flora Wiegmann. Marchand and Wiegmann revisited two iconic works originally created for the first homeLA: a cocktail and wine bar in the home’s 1st floor roman tub and a moonlit dance meditation in and around the cavity of a formerly unfinished pool. Voice artist, Odeya Nini, sonically occupied the 3rd floor living room, exploring the acoustics and architecture of space. Artist Susan Barbour Susan Barbour provided one-on-one experience where participants have their armpit "read" and their body's chemical messengers decoded.

 The event introduced the work of younger inspiring dance artists and homeLA education programs alumni Fransheska Martinez, Jessica Sanchez Rae,Jenny Sandoval, and Mercedes Villegas.  In addition to these performances, homeLA honored the work of the hundreds of artists and hosts over the years with an archive exhibition curated by Mara McCarthy of The Box gallery that chronicles homeLA’s past through programs, props, costumes, films, and more. The event will include food and drink creatively conceived by Marchand and DJ sets by DJ Sam Widaman.

Unity all in One
Fransheska Martinez, Jessica Sanchez Rae, Jenny Sandoval, and
Mercedes Villegas

For our 10 year event, we commissioned new specific-specific work by our talented inSITE alums: Fransheska Martinez, Jessica Sanchez Rae, Jenny Sandoval, and Mercedes Villegas. They are all currently enrolled freshmen and sophomores with California State Long Beach’s Dance Department.

Unity All In One recognizes and appreciates all forms of dance not just limited to the European diaspora. With an emphasis on community and connection inspired by the house and our history, personal experience, and culture.

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Flora Wiegmann, Swimming Laps : under construction / re-construction  

Wiegmann re-constructed her performance from HomeLA’s debut event in 2013. With the help of still photos and memory, she revisited her ability to move around the pool.  Then, the pool was not much more than a formed concrete hole and ledge. In anticipation of the pool’s finished state, she lit it (and herself) with fluorescent tube lights. Ten years later, the lights were on, and it was full of water.

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Emily Marchand, Roman Tub

Emily Marchand first served cocktails from this Roman tub 10 years ago, at homeLA’s inaugural event. She returned ten years later to serve up handcrafted herby cocktails inspired by the herbs growing in the garden. This edition features a ceramic fountain by Marchand in the lotus pond adjacent to the tub.

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Odeya Nini, Ode

During Ode, Nini serenaded guests, her voice reverberating throughout the space. Sound is the ultimate embrace of vibrational waves, entering through every pore, wrapping around every organ and joining in the flow of our fluids. Nini's work is rooted in the experience and exploration of the embodied voice as a conduit for sonic energy through the dynamics of expression, timbre and the resonant human song.

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Rebecca Bruno, Mayfair (Film)

Bruno’s Mayfair was a video response to the Lefevre Residence and homeLA’s first performance location. Created in collaboration with video artist, Justin Streichman, Mayfair focused on the spontaneous movements Bruno’s body makes in response to the home in order to contribute to heightening awareness of the environment in which the performer exists. A series of tracings Bruno created based on the lines the performers’ body in the space where they have been recorded (the home) are then animated in an exploration of the interaction and relationship between interiority, proprioception, memory, and architectural forms. By shaping and reconfiguring the void around the dancing body, Mayfair questions the notions of fullness and emptiness, of interior and exterior.

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Susan Barbour, I Smell Human

For Barbour’s I Smell Human, guests were offered the opportunity to have mini readings of their aromatic signature by a professional sommelier, poet, and perfumer. Human scent arises from bacterial by-products of unique fatty acid profiles as well as traces of recent dietary, existential, and environmental influences. The unusual scent descriptors are often metaphorical in nature as the vocabulary for scent is so impoverished in most languages, including English.

Acknowledgments

Host Committee: Timothy Lefevre, Alex Sloane, and Samuel Vasquez

Heartfelt gratitude to~homeLA Advisory Board: Bernard Brown, Rebecca Bruno, Melanie Rios Glaser, Jenny Landers, Mara Mccarthy, Kimberli Meyers, Nicole Robinson, taisha paggett, and  Samuel Vasquez. 

homeLA Team: Chloë Flores, Andrew Mandinach, Samantha Mohr, Jay Carlon, and Vanessa Cruz. 

Our sponsors: Luigi and Carmen Assenti/Assenti’s Pasta, Josh Widaman, Keith and Katie Widaman, and YOLA Mezcal. 

Participating Artists: Susan Barbour, Rebecca Bruno, Fransheska Martinez, Odeya Nini, Jessica Sanchez Rae, Jenny Sandoval, Mercedes Villegas, and Flora Wiegmann.

And to those who provided homeLA with their generous donations: Saliko Adams, Lynn Bathke, Autumn Beck, Meka Burnett, Tina Burnett, John K Chan/Formation Association, Chimney Rock/Elizabeth Vianna, Marci Flores/Blue Owl Promos, Fallen Fruit/David Burns and Austin Young, Nicki Green, Jason Goldman/Bacetti, Anna Sew Hoy, Kaitwan Jackson, Genna Moroni, LA Eyeworks/Gai Gherardi and Brent Zerger, Tim Lefevre, Francis Lefevere, Rita Lefevre, May Lindstrom, Matt Lipps, Luna Luna, Emily Marchand, Grace Oh, Christina Quarles, Roadrunner/ Matt Harrison, Alex Sloane, Robert Stark, Sam Widaman, Samuel Vasquez

homeLA is fiscally sponsored by Fulcrum Arts.