#why Bathrick why

[idledoll]

Both of the hamsters' nails have been looking extremely long lately, so I've been steeling myself to cut them (I'd like to at least give it a go before having to take them to the vets).

I just pulled Egg out of her cage after getting everything ready, scruffed her and flipped her over...only to find her nails are the perfect length. Suddenly. Somehow.

I guess she got tired of them being long and decided to bite them a bit shorter? Who knows, who cares, I'm just glad I don't have to trim them because wow was I dreading it.

Now I just have to wait for Bathrick to wake up and then it's his turn. His nails are way worse -- I have no idea why he doesn't wear his down like hamsters are supposed to -- so I doubt I'll be granted clemency twice. Wish me luck.

[homealone-la-blog]

HOME ALONE at 1356

Work by Michaela Bathrick, Katie Kline and Sophie T. Lvoff investigating the psychic lives of objects, places and situations under a presumed utopian domestic condition.

Exhibition opening Sunday, February 4, 5-9 pm

1356 Winchester Avenue, Glendale, CA

Home Alone at 1356 features three artists whose work reflects on the failed optimism, melancholia, and trauma resulting from a supposed utopian domestic or suburban condition. Michaela Bathrick’s drawings based on modernist bunk bed designs are studies in domestic containment, while her plaster “laundry” sculptures literally contain the mark of monotonous trauma of home labor. Who is being contained and who holds the power of suppression and exploitation are central questions to her practice. Made by performing the folding of laundry, these bodies of the artist’s labor are like weighted vessels, the contents of their history compacted and contained by the ghost of their outer industrial shell.

Sophie Lvoff’s photographs of the Sud Aviation Caravelle display at The Musée de l'air et de l'espace, outside Paris, is part of an ongoing study in utopian technological advancements that are now obsolete. Lvoff’s documentation functions as an indexical record of the failure of modernist idealism, while also implicating the viewer as active participant in celebrating this nostalgia for the defunct modernist project. Similarly, Lvoff’s sound piece Body Double Door (Diana), reflects on the Chemosphere, a modernist home in Los Angeles famous for its Atomic-age domestic architecture. Conceived as a response to Brian De Palma's 1984 film Body Double, the narrative meanders through descriptions of architecture and landscapes, while ruminating on violence and unromantic encounters.

Influenced by her upbringing in suburban Los Angeles and frequent childhood visits to Disneyland, Katie Kline’s photographs document the delicate collision of natural and synthetic materials in the process of utopian development and decay. Exploring the tension between subtle intersections of reality and fantasy, her eye finds moments of natural order under unnatural circumstances. Kline locates cultural situations between the cracks of space and time, creating mysterious and melancholic documents with recurring formal characters.  If objects and sites have emotional lives, bearing the marks of love, trauma, neglect and repair, Kline’s lens offers a glimpse into their psyche.

Michaela Bathrick is a visual artist and writer living in Los Angeles. Her work mainly focuses on the representation of labor. Through sculpture and drawing she seeks to answer why and by what means physical labor and low paying jobs are fetishized as part of the concept of proletariat. Her writing has been published in CARLA and Terremoto and She received a BA in fine arts from UCLA in 2015.

Katie Kline is a photographer and educator living in Los Angeles, CA. She seeks ambiguous markers, manicured landscapes, and man made representations of nature that when combined, create illusion and mystery. She received her BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts and her MFA from Columbia University. She has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and internationally. Since the fall of 2014 she has served as the high school Photography Instructor at Campbell Hall.

Sophie T. Lvoff is an artist using photography, video, text and sound to transmit ideas describing the Sublime, feminism, institutional critique and truth in literature. In addition to a studio approach, Lvoff is an arts worker, curator and educator, focused on artist-run initiatives and publications, arts organizing and alternative pedagogies. Group exhibitions include Prospect.3: Notes for Now, Vendez-Vous 11, ReGeneration2: Tomorrow's Photographer's Today and others. Lvoff holds a BFA from New York University, an MFA from Tulane University and completed the École du MAGASIN curatorial studies program. She is currently in residence at the post-diplôme of ENSBA Lyon (FR).  

1356 is the residence and studio of artist Nina Schwanse. The Spanish-revival bungalow in suburban Glendale was the home of her grandparents and has remained in the family for several decades. In 2018 Schwanse dedicated the front of the house as an exhibition and performance space.

[idledoll]

This is dark because I took this right before going to bed, but here's Bathrick eating some strawberry on top of a grapevine branch. He's pretty good at climbing for a hamster.

But just like a hamster, he is not so great at getting down.

(He didn't fall, that's just how hamsters get down from high places. They jump and hope nothing kills 'em on the way down. Which is why it's important to arrange their cage safely and thoughtfully to prevent falls that could hurt them if/when they happen)