With a black base, this instrument reduces all images to charcoals and grays, cooling the retina. Here in Southern California, at the turn of the century, we have seen too much color, and our eyes need to rest. The studio of artist John Rose is located on Santa Fe Street in downtown Los Angeles. It is a Zenlike room, a long rectangle with bare, freshly painted white walls that seem electric when the northwestern light hits them. Six enormous cement columns divide the space, giving it the feel of an Egyptian temple.
Art is stacked in corners.
From his windows John Rose can see two parking lots and the bridges over the Los Angeles River, with its midday dazzle of cement and oasis pockets of weeds and water. I mention the view seems deserted. There's someone coming out from the bushes in the river with a fishing pole. The water's polluted, sewage, but he's fishing anyway. Now most of the queens are HIV positive.