So this is happening practically outside of Fair Finley's bedroom
window right now, and I would be remiss not to share it. Remiss, I say!
The
Craft & Folk Art Museum, which Fair could really see from her
window, if her window wasn't staring straight down at Monty and Gomery
Overboves' bedroom doors, is now covered in 12,000 yarn-based "granny
squares."
The installation is called "CAFAM: Granny
Squared" and it is amazing. Its purpose is amazing, too: To counter the
wrong-headed notion that craftworks, such as knitting and needlepoint,
are somehow lesser forms of art than painting or sculpture.
Many
hands and hearts went into this mega project.
That
concept, to me, is very Wilfair in spirit. Everyone who reads the books or stops
by here makes a little psychic square, or many, that I see going on the exterior of The Wilfair Hotel.
Truth.
It's also kind of perfect for a city neighborhood that I've long thought as magical. I talk a bit about that magic in this article,
one of the few times my not-so-secret fictional life does a merry mash-up
with my working world.
Here's my argument in favor of the LA neighborhood's
whimsical spirit: A yarn square-covered craft museum, the tar pit
mammoths (and mastodon!), the giant levitated 340-ton boulder behind the
art museum, the 202 vintage lamps in front of the art museum, and
Dorothy's ruby slippers (or at least a big photo of them) all exist
within one block of each other.
And neighboring all of that swirly strangeness? A secret not-there-but-kind-of hotel and motel that not too many people know about. But you do!
Love
this pic, provided to me by Yarn Bombing LA. That there's a banner for
"The Shining" -- LACMA currently has a Stanley Kubrick exhibit on --
next to the colorful museum only ups the area's movie-like quality.
