Lesley Wheeler & Wendy Murray, December, 2023
Working with Wendy is hopping onto a train that’s already going, happily. We spent afternoons figuring out how to merge our strengths to create something big. I brought up the research I had done on Paul DeLongpre, a French painter of flowers who lived in Hollywood just as Hollywood became Hollywood. We saw in him mystery—an artist who made a (opulent) living solely from his ability to paint extremely realistic, beautiful flowers, who drew thousands of people to his home and gardens to see where the magic happened. But now, where his mansion once stood is a city block. A parking lot, a coffee shop, an abandoned movie theater. We have plans for how to interact with this site. But, we started with these drawings and writings. Wendy drew a moment or memory from our visit to the block on a sweltering hot summer day, and I wrote in response to her image. All impulse, no revisions on either of our parts.
It Feels Like September
in hollywood, when the smells reach a fever pitch and we approach the parking lot with curiosity of what was, looking for clues under cracked asphalt.
The house of flowers is long gone, was even shortly there -- a flash of roses on dry terrain, a flood of tourists looking for petals rendered perfectly.
Now there's a coffee shop that shutters at five pm, a parking lot empty except for star wagons at rest, a guard booth with no guard, the heat of the day.
emanating upwards. The house of flowers hovers an inch above it all, a ghostly outline of confustin and confident claims to that which was never capturable.
1. It Feels Like September, 5x7in, type text on card
2. Drawing Trash from Memory, 5x7in, ink pen, type text on card
3. The Site, 5x7in, type, ink pen, text on card
4. Roses, 5x7in, type, ink pen, text on card
5. Artifacts, Roses, 5x7in, type, ink pen, text on card
6. I Dream of you, 5x7in, type, ink pen, text on card
Dear Paul
your Legecy lives in two places: a street parallel and a little and a little south of where you walked garden paths each morning, and on the wall of the coffee shop bathroom at perfect viewing height.
they framed a postcard
we have more questions.
7. Der Paul, 5x7in, ink pen, type text on card
2. Drawing Trash from Memory
drawing trash from memory isn’t easy - which branches bore blooms or paper cups?
how did the underwear flop out onto the sidewalk?
this is still life, a document of what blew through.
3. The Site
This is a coffee shop
the idea of gathering
of tending to
this is a tour bus company,
specializing in the past
you can take a good selfie from here
this is the city block ever-changing, a foot before in the now, what will tomorrow say?
4. Roses
They’re less timeless
and more time-full.
5. Artifacts
some artifacts last five thousand years
before turning into dust to be swept
in Hollywood, each day
is longer than the last
what do we leave behind?
6. I Dream of you
hello from
the house of flowers
a garden with every rose
I dream of you.