What Happens When an Amateur Tries to Play Art Critic

Last evening, I was gazing out the country-wide northerly show window of S B London’s second-story Sunset Boulevard gallery in Silverlake. Gradually elevating your view from the clatter and clutter at street level, your eyes are lushly rewarded with a million-dollar vista of the very best that maximalist Hollywood and minimalist God, not in that order, can design.

I was as mesmerized by the breathtakingly beauteous shape of Father Nature’s artistry as I was the first time I stood there, in the window of Ms. London’s gallery, one fast year ago this week.

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On Sunset at Sunset

Off to the west, the Hollywood Hills resemble an undulating human form in a supine position. My jaw probably slacked at the gaspingly arresting view. You would have to drive to the center of Kansas and shut your eyes to find a matching scene.

Treat yourself to a vision vacation this month, dear reader. If you are as deaf visually to the sensitive tributaries of the art universe as I often am, take the short trip down Highland to Sunset, turn east for about 10 minutes, to 3740 Sunset to the S.B. London gallery.

A Hometown Girl

Ms. London is a graduate of Culver City High School, and her parents, Tony and Sharlene, travel consultants, still live here. This occasion was the opening of Ms. London’s first anniversary exhibit, “EXplants Wearable Forms.”

For those of us who need our hands held when entering a gallery, Ms. London explains that her gallery is “a showroom of industrial art, exhibiting TECHNOcraft objects which inform, inspire and relieve. Simple yet complex forms are created by studying, controlling and abstracting nature’s microscopic geometry. Rapid prototyping and industrial manufacturing techniques are used to analyze and scale these complex structures with precision.”

When it comes to what letters are and are not capitalized, in her exhibit titles and in her definitions, you will have to speak to Ms. London.

When Diane and I skipped up the stairs to the second-story entrance last night, all I knew was Ms. London’s logical preliminary description, that the small, luminescent pieces that are the focal point are defined as “EXplants” because they are worn on the outside of the body as opposed to implants, which are internal.

A Miracle of a Match

Ms. London and her equally creative — but in a different way — husband, Luis F. Herrera, barely had settled in before the first purchase of the night was transacted. This gave me an opportunity to visit with Mr. Herrera, the owner-operator of Design & Build, Inc., a unique, one-stop company on Sunset that takes building projects the full distance, from preconception to design to construction.

Business appears to be good. He doesn’t advertise, and he doesn’t even have a website. “I haven’t had time to build one,” he says.

Two smart and artistic types wed to each other must spawn just about the most fascinating marital relationship in this town where there only are imaginative bondings. Mundanity would not be allowed through their front door.

Parallels

Artistically — as you might expect of a builder/designer — he is concrete in his thinking, she, fluid. His wife, says Mr. Herrera, possesses a keen eye for detail. He is partial to big-picture concepts.

The longer they talked about each other, the more evident it was that there are enough differences between them to create a buzz, yet enough parallels to make their days terrifically stimulating.

Each is young, ambitious and gifted, reclining, what from I could see, fairly luxuriously in the lap of Hollywood.

Straddling the World

Could one person, standing on the crest of life, possibly yearn for more?

When Ms. London’s talent for designing artfulness marries her respect for the environment and her sensitive understanding of the earth, the result is an aesthetic bouquet, dainty but firm, instructive objects that will touch your heart and will tantalizingly appeal to your mind. That, friends, is the Daily Double that few entrepreneurs manage.