Manhattan Beach was a very sleepy beach community there were empty lots all over the place.
I guess I was kind of a well kept secret and the idea of living nearthe beach was not nearly as desirable
as it is today, but there were a lot of modest houses, middle-class, very friendly, very simple, laid back
and it's kinda hard to describe a childhood that was so simple and carefree.
The house was built in 1922 and my mother bought in 1945 when my father was in the Navy in Guam.
So she bought it while he was coming home from World War 2 so it's been in our family for seventy years.
So whenwe sold the house we knew it was going to be torn down
because, that's been the trend for the last thirty years in the beach community.
And I was very conflicted and it was very bittersweet that we were selling my childhood home.
So it dawned on me that I actually needed to do something to give it a proper farewell.
I've been working with the theme of nostalgia in my artwork for the last thirty years.
And my father's photography has been an endless source for my work.
I was always inspired by the way he was able to capture and track so many iconic moments of our family.
Moments that were sort of a shared experience of my generation.
There was volume after volume of these photographs, I mean, hundreds of them.
They were all dated in the back I know exactly how old I was throughout this whole process.
And it was hyper chronology of our entire family history.
It was actually a really simple connection just to think of
covering the outside of the house with my father's family photographs.
I've been using a process where they actually print onto MDO board. It's a waterproof longlasting ink jet process.
It is just a remarkable piece of machinery, so it was perfect for what I wanted.
I had to kind of put it together like a jigsaw puzzle.
There's no pre-planning, there's no chronological order, it was all intuition.
I usually don't work that way, I usually have a very specific plan on how something's gonna look.
But this was completely different.
There's a lot of visualization on how this square picture is going to be broken up into this irregular area,
and that's part of the fun is also part of the challenge.
What I wanted to do was pick the photographs that stayed close to home,
I wanted to highlight the house as much as I wanted to highlight the family.
My father was such an active member of the community from as far back as I can remember.
He was the president of the PTA, he was a Cub Scout Pack leader
and he went on to become a city council member for over 20 years
in which time he was mayor two or three times and this is all the time he was a detective in Los Angeles,
and later on open up Sweeney's hardware store. He was just have a remarkable man.
and I don't ever remember a time when he wasn't completely active in the community.
And he just had his camera with them at all times
and he took all the Christmas pictures that you see, first day of school, boy scouts, the league,
any activities we were involved in, he always had a camera with him.
So, after I got the photographs up and I was able to come down off the ladder and
and take a good look at this project, and it struck me and how much of my life this represents.
And I think it also struck me that I was very very lucky,
not only with the family that I had and the place where I grew up,
but I was very lucky to be able to do a project like this, where I could relive my life,
and bring in all my friends and family and I just feel very fortunate that I was able to have that opportunity.
The community has been very supportive and people that knew our family I hope
they leave with a smile on their face and I hope they remember our family with fondness.
And if they don't know us and they don't know who this family is, I hope it triggers memories
of their own childhood and perhaps lets reflect on their youth.
I'm occupying this house through the month of February
and at the end of February I'll take the photographs down and then the house will be gone.
Well, the nice thing is that Manhatten Beach has still managed to maintain a lot of its charm.
For instance, if I walk along the Strand,to my one side there are these brand new homes,
that are absolutely unrecognizable as anything that was there when I was growing up,
but to the other side is the same ocean and the same sunset, and the same pier, and the same beautiful beach,
that I used to see when I was five years old.
That's timeless, that hasn't changed.
The waves come in, the tide comes in and goes out and it actually puts you right back into any time in your life
that you want to be, because it's always going to be the same, so that's really comforting.
And that's the constant here and I don't see how I could ever get tired of it.
I mean the fact is that Manhattan Beach is always going to be my hometown.