Lifestyle
At 70, she embraced her Chumash roots and helped revive a dying skill
Around 1915, the last known Chumash basket maker, Candelaria Valenzuela, died in Ventura County, and with her went a skill that had been fundamental to the Indigenous people who lived for thousands of years in the coastal regions between Malibu and San Luis Obispo.
A century and two years later, 70-year-old Santa Barbara native Susanne Hammel-Sawyer took a class out of curiosity to learn something about her ancestors’ basket-making skills.
Hammel-Sawyer is 1/16 Chumash, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Maria Ysidora del Refugio Solares, one of the most revered ancestors of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians for her work in preserving its nearly lost Samala language.
But Hammel-Sawyer knew nearly nothing about Chumash customs when she was a child. As a young mother, she often took her four children to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where she said she loved to admire the museum’s extensive collection of Chumash baskets, “but I had no inkling I would ever make them.”
Nonetheless, today, at age 78, Hammel-Sawyer is considered one of the Santa Ynez Band’s premier basket makers, with samples of her work on display at three California museums.
Short, reddish brown sticks of dried basket rush sit in a small basket in Susanne Hammel-Sawyer’s kitchen, waiting to be woven into one of her baskets. The reddish color only appears at the bottom ends of the reeds, after they dry, so she saves every inch to create designs in her baskets. “These are my gold,” she says.
(Sara Prince / For The Times)
She grows the basket rush (Juncus textilis) reeds that make up the weaving threads of her baskets in a huge galvanized steel water trough outside her Goleta home and searches in the nearby hills for other reeds: primarily Baltic rush (Juncus balticus) to form the bones or foundation of the basket and skunk bush (Rhus aromatica var. trilobata) to add white accents to her designs.
All her basket materials are gathered from nature, and her tools are simple household objects: a large plastic food storage container for soaking her threads and the rusting lid of an old can with different-sized nail holes to strip her reeds to a uniform size. Her baskets are mostly the yellowish brown color of her main thread, strips of basket rush made pliant after soaking in water.
The basket reeds often develop a reddish tint at the bottom part of the plant when they’re drying. “Those are my gold,” she said, because she uses those short ends to add reddish designs. Or sometimes she just weaves them into the main basket for added flair.
The only other colors for the baskets come from skunk bush reeds, which she has to split and peel to reveal the white stems underneath, and some of the basket reeds that she dyes black in a big bucket in her backyard.
“This is my witches’ brew,” she said laughing as she stirred the viscous inky liquid inside the bucket. “We have to make our own from anything with tannin — oak galls, acorns or black walnuts — and let it sit to dye it black.”
Hammel-Sawyer is remarkable not just for her skill as a weaver, but her determination to master techniques that went out of practice for nearly 100 years, said anthropologist and ethnobotanist Jan Timbrook, curator emeritus of ethnography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, which claims to have the world’s largest museum collection of Chumash baskets.
“Susanne is one of the very few contemporary Chumash people who have truly devoted themselves to becoming skilled weavers,” said Timbrook, author of “Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California.” “Many have said they’d like to learn, but once they try it and realize how much time, patience and practice it requires … they just can’t keep it up.”
Susanne Hammel-Sawyer adds another row to her 35th basket, working from a straight back chair in her small living room, next to a sunny window and the tiny table where she keeps all her supplies.
(Sara Prince / For The Times)
In her eight years, Hammel-Sawyer has made just 34 baskets of various sizes (she’s close to finishing her 35th), but she’s in no hurry.
“People always ask how long it takes to make a basket, and I tell them what Jan Timbrook likes to say, ‘It takes as long as it takes,’” Hammel-Sawyer said. “But for me, it’s a way of slowing down. I really object to how fast we’re all moving now, and it’s only going to get faster.”
She and her husband, Ben Sawyer, have a blended family of five children and nine grandchildren, most of whom live near their cozy home in Goleta. Family activities keep them busy, but Hammel-Sawyer thinks it’s important for her family to know she has other interests too.
“When you’re older, you have to be able to find a passion, something your children and grandchildren can see you do, not just playing golf or going on cruises, but doing something that matters,” she said. “I wish my grandmother and my father knew I was doing this because it’s a connection with our ancestors, but it’s also looking ahead, because these baskets I’m making will last a very long time. It’s something that comes from my past that I’m giving to family members to take into the future, so it’s worth my time.”
Also, this isn’t a business for Hammel-Sawyer. Her baskets are generally not for sale because she only makes them for family and friends, she said. The baskets at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center belong to family members who were willing to loan them out for display. The Chumash museum does have some of Hammel-Sawyer’s baskets for sale in its gift shop, which she said she reluctantly agreed to provide after much urging, so the store could offer more items made by members of the Band.
For the last eight years, Susanne Hammel-Sawyer has used the same old can lid, punched with nail holes of various sizes, to strip her moistened basket threads to a consistent size.
(Sara Prince / For The Times)
The only other basket she’s sold, she said, was to the Autry Museum of the American West, because she was so impressed by its exhibits involving Indigenous people. “I just believe so strongly in the message the Autry is giving the world about what really happened to Indigenous people, I thought I would be proud to have something there,” she said.
Making a basket takes so long, Hammel-Sawyer said, that it’s important for her to focus on the recipient, “so while I’m making it, I can think about them and pray about them. When you know you’re making a basket for someone, it has so much more meaning. And I’m so utilitarian, I always hope someone will use them.”
For instance, she said, she made three small baskets for the children of a friend and was delighted when one used her basket to carry flower petals to toss during a wedding. Almost any use is fine with her, she said, except storing fruit, because if the fruit molds, the basket will be ruined.
Baskets were a ubiquitous part of Chumash life before the colonists came. They used them for just about everything, from covering their heads and holding their babies to eating and even cooking, Timbrook said. They put hot rocks into their tightly woven baskets, along with food like acorn mush, to bring the contents to boil.
“People think pottery is a higher form of intellectual achievement, but the thing is, baskets are better than pottery,” Timbrook said. “They’ll do anything pottery will do; you can cook in them and store things in them, and when you drop them, they don’t break.”
2
3
1. Tule reeds that grows in the yard in preparation of basket weaving. 2. Susanne Hammel-Sawyer weaves a basket. 3. A basket sits during a break in weaving with tools on a table. (Sara Prince / For The Times)
After Hammel-Sawyer’s first marriage ended, she worked as an assistant children’s librarian in Santa Barbara and met a reference librarian named Ben Sawyer. After their friendship turned romantic, they married in 1997 and moved, first to Ashland, Ore., then Portland, and then the foothills of the Sierras in Meadow Valley, Calif., where they took up organic farming for a dozen years.
Meadow Valley’s population was 500, and the big town was nearby Quincy, the county seat, with about 5,000 residents, but it still had an orchestra and she and her husband were both members. She played cello and he viola, not because they were extraordinary musicians, she said, but because “we played well enough, and if we wanted an orchestra, we would have to take part. I loved how strong people were there. We were all more self-sufficient than when we lived in the city.”
The Sawyers moved back to Santa Barbara in 2013, the year after her father died, to help care for her mother, who had developed Alzheimer’s disease. And for the next four years, between caring for her mother, who died in 2016, and the birth of her grandchildren, family became her focus.
But in 2017, the year she turned 70, Hammel-Sawyer finally had the space to begin looking at other activities. Being she’s 1/16 Chumash, she was eligible for classes taught by the Santa Ynez Band. She had seen several class offerings come through over the years, but nothing really captured her interest until she saw a basket-weaving class offered by master basket maker Abe Sanchez, as part of the tribe’s ongoing effort to revive the skill among its members.
Most Chumash baskets have some kind of pattern, although today people have to guess at the meaning of the symbols, Timbrook said. Some look like squiggles, zigzaggy lightning bolts or sun rays, but the wonder, marveled Hammel-Sawyer, is how the makers were able to do the mental math to keep the patterns even and consistent, even for baskets that were basically everyday tools.
Hammel-Sawyer is careful to follow the basics of Chumash weaving, using the same native plants for her materials and weaving techniques that include little ticks of contrasting color stitches on the rim, something visible in most Chumash baskets. She keeps a good supply of bandages for her fingers because the reeds have sharp edges when they’re split, and it’s easy to get the equivalent of paper cuts.
She keeps just two baskets at her house — her first effort, which “wasn’t good enough to give anybody,” she said, laughing — and a basket hat started by her late sister, Sally Hammel.
This basket hat was started by Susanne Hammel-Sawyer’s sister, Sally Hammel, but the stitches became ragged and uneven after Sally began treatment for cancer. She was so distressed by her work, she hid the unfinished basket, but after she died, Hammel-Sawyer found it and brought it home to complete it. It’s one of only two baskets she’s made that she keeps in her home.
(Sara Prince / For The Times)
“Sally was an artist in pottery, singing, acting and living life to the fullest,” Hammel-Sawyer said, and she was very excited to learn basketry. Her basket hat started well, but about a third of the way in, she got cancer “and her stitches became more and more ragged. She had trouble concentrating, trouble preparing materials,” Hammel-Sawyer said. “Everything became so difficult that she hid the basket away. I know she didn’t even want to look at it, let alone have anyone else see it.”
After her sister died in 2020, Hammel-Sawyer had a hard time finding the basket, “but I did, and I asked my teacher what to do, and he said, ‘Just try to make sense of her last row’ … So that’s what I did.” She added a thick black-and-white band above the ragged stitches and finished the blond rim with the traditional contrasting ticking.
The hat rests now above the window in Hammel-Sawyer’s living room, except when she wears it to tribal events.
“Sally and I were very close, and I think she’d just be happy to know it was finished and appreciated,” Hammel-Sawyer said. “Even the hard parts … deeply appreciated.”
Brent Poer is certain about one thing when it comes to interior design: Minimalism makes him uneasy.
“When I walk into a minimalist home, I always think, ‘Oh my God, have you been robbed?’” Poer says, standing in his living room underneath a Juliet balcony covered in ceramic plates. “But then, I’m sure a minimalist would feel the [opposite] way about our home.”
From the outside, the 1922 Normandy-style house Poer shares with his husband, Beau Quillian, looks traditional and calm, with steep-pitched roofs and arched windows.
The Normandy-style home in Pasadena was built in 1922 and is preserved under the Mills Act, a state law that offers tax incentives to homeowners who commit to restoring and preserving their historic properties.
But once you step inside, the Pasadena house feels completely different.
Poer says visitors are often surprised when they come inside the space. “It’s either a quick ‘Wow,’ which usually means they don’t like it, or a long, drawn-out ‘Wwwwoooooowwww.’”
Guests also tend to ask the couple about earthquakes.
“Our decorating style is a mix of two perspectives,” says Poer, a 58-year-old advertising executive. “We have similar tastes, but Beau’s style is a bit more Miss Havisham — he likes a hint of decay. What we share is that our [obsessive compulsive disorder] is in overdrive.”
Beau Quillian, left, and Brent Poer with their dogs Otis, Sister and Selene, sit in the stairway in front of a poster that reads “Keep Calm and Call Brent.”
Many Californians avoid Mills Act homes because of strict preservation rules, but the couple enjoys the challenge of restoring and caring for their historic house.
“Thirty-six people toured the house the day I saw it, but no one made an offer because they didn’t want to deal with the government,” Poer says. “If you tell me I need a latch from 1922, I’ll find it. When we had to replace the roof, I brought nine different samples to the Mills Act office downtown — all meeting California code.”
“The house is special if not for the sole fact that the 24-foot ceiling in the living room was just the perfect forum for all of these things,” Poer says.
Inside, the couple has decorated just the way they want, filling nearly every inch of their three-bedroom home with lively collections. As Poer puts it, they enjoy “going down a rabbit hole” when they find something they like.
Their home is colorful and has a touch of “grandma chic,” since Poer’s grandmother, Gigi, left him the contents of her Atlanta home. It’s a playful take on British decor with Victorian-era Tartanware boxes and pre-World War I Black Forest antlers on carved wood plaques that were once used as hunting trophies. They also have English Staffordshire porcelain dog and giraffe figurines, vintage British and French Majolica plates, and lamps and rugs they found on Etsy, EBay and at auctions.
The plates in the kitchen are “another example of us liking something and then going deep on that obsession,” Poer says.
-
Share via
“We know it’s crazy,” says Quillian, 54, a freelance fashion editor and wardrobe stylist who has worked for Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire. “But we love searching for treasures.”
Curled up on a vintage sofa they found at a Long Island junk store and refurbished, the couple likes to reminisce about their favorite finds from their 22 years together. These include Hermès dog plates, found in Japan, and circus paintings by Denes de Holesch, whom Quillian calls the “Hungarian Picasso.”
“When the French artist Nathalie Lété created a plate collection for Anthropologie, of course, we went crazy,” Poer says of the wall-to-wall Lété plates in the kitchen, which he describes as “odd and humorous.”
“We choose art that speaks to us,” Poer says.
1
2
1. Polaroids of a photoshoot with model Amber Valletta are on display in the bathroom. 2. A drawing of Poer and his dogs by fashion illustrator Richard Haines.
Artworks line the stairway to the second floor including a print that reads: “We will make it through this year if it kills us.”
When asked how they choose their art, which ranges from a cut paper collage by Los Angeles artist Emily Hoerdemann to street poster art in their bedroom, Poer says, “We purchase things that speak to us, which means we will love it forever.”
For example, when they saw a bird-shaped guerrilla art piece in a Silver Lake Junction store — the same one they had seen scattered throughout New York — the couple, both originally from New York, took it as a sign they were meant to be here.
Although their home sits in the peaceful Historic Highlands neighborhood of Pasadena, the couple has experienced plenty of drama in their space over the years. Once, they brought in a shaman to cleanse the house with sage and cedar during a full blood moon. “And we’re not woo-woo!” Quillian says.
After Poer’s father fell down the stairs, the couple converted their one-car garage into a stylish guest house.
The couple chose the color palette in the guest house because “we wanted the spaces to feel calm and a place that people would want to relax,” Poer says.
Three years ago, Poer’s father fell down the stairs and nearly died. Six months later, a massive oak branch dropped and pinned Quillian for 45 minutes, breaking his leg in four places and giving him double head trauma. Then, last January, the couple had to evacuate during the Eaton fire.
When they got the evacuation order, Poer packed his bags and started taking paintings off the wall, putting them in his truck. “I told Beau to take one last look,” Poer recalls. “‘Is there anything you’d be upset about losing? We have to accept that whatever is in the truck might be all we have left to start over.’”
“When we left, I thought, ‘The house is definitely going to burn because of the winds,’” Quillian says of the January 2025 fires that destroyed parts of Pasadena and Altadena.
In the guest room, the wallpaper matches the drapery fabric and upholstered furniture.
The next morning, their house was still standing just five blocks from the burn line, although looters had already been inside. The thieves didn’t take any of their art, which was a relief, since that’s what is most precious to them. “When we first got together in New York, we slowly started curating much of the art collection together,” Poer says.
Besides the art, each room in the home has its own unique feel. In the guest room, the couple paired the wallpaper with the drapes and the upholstered furniture. The first-floor bedroom is now a cozy den with dark navy blue walls, dog etchings by French artist Leon D’anchin and the Hermès dog plates, and an attached bathroom is decorated with Scalamandré’s famous prancing zebra pattern wallpaper.
In the kitchen, where the couple hosted more than 20 people for a Southern-style New Year’s Day party in January with black-eyed peas, ham and collard greens, they added new counter tops and painted the cabinets a shiny Benjamin Moore Marine Blue. Poer installed all the brass campaign hardware himself. “It just takes a steady hand and the willingness to drill a million little holes,” he says.
Poer fondly remembers the “amazing antique stores on Long Island” where they found their dining-room table for just $300. To which Quillian replies, “You make it sound so proper. Those were junk stores.”
Green and white floral wallpaper in the dining room meets up with prancing zebras in the adjacent bathroom.
Four years after buying the house in 2021, the couple transformed the garage into a stylish guest house with a bathroom, shower and a custom cat box for Mr. Kitty, or “MK,” who came with the house.
“Brent went from telling me ‘Don’t feed that cat’ to designing a custom cat box for him in the guest house,” Quillian says, laughing.
Like the den, the walls of the guest house are painted a warm green hue for a relaxing feel. The couple also installed IKEA Pax built-ins and closets and paired them with Billy bookcases with added trim to give them a custom look.
The couple turned the first-floor bedroom into a cozy den with dark blue walls and dog-related decor.
There’s a lot to look at, but the interiors of the home feel cohesive rather than chaotic thanks to the couple’s color choices and how well they work together. Poer likes to joke that he has to get rid of Quillian’s things when he isn’t looking or “he would climb into the trash can and pull things back out.” But their teamwork and shared love of British decor make the home feel sentimental and reflect their long history together living on both the East and West Coasts.
There’s a poster by Lété that Poer and Quillian bought at John Derian in New York when they didn’t have much money, portraits of them and their dogs by Carter Kustera, and at the top of the stairs, the ashes of their previous pets rest in custom-painted dog urns.
On one of their many gallery walls, Poer proudly displays their most prized possession: a recent drawing of him and their three dogs, Selene, Otis and Sister, by fashion illustrator Richard Haines, whom Poer contacted directly on Instagram. “Beau always says the dogs follow me around like a school of fish,” he says. “I gave it to him at Christmas, and he cried when he opened it. He said it’s his favorite thing I’ve ever given him.”
Their friend Georgia Archer says the couple’s home “feels polished without trying to win an argument, beautiful but very cozy and livable, and very much ‘them.’” She recently asked them to help remodel her and her husband Anthony Dominici’s Los Angeles home. “Brent is bolder, and Beau more restrained, which is why they work so well as a team.”
Black Forest antlers on carved wood plaques hang on a wall of the sunroom.
Sister, the couple’s English Springer Spaniel, rests on one of many armchairs available to her in the historic home.
When asked how many items they have in the house, Poer says he’d rather not know, “only because I want to believe there is room for more.”
And if there ever is a major earthquake, he says, they are prepared. Everything is installed on earthquake hangers, “so we aren’t showered in a downpour of porcelain.”
The first time Vivian Tu got “financially naked” in front of her partner — a term she uses to describe “brutally honest conversations” about money — it was out of desperation.
She was just starting her career on Wall Street and living in a roach-infested apartment in New York City. She had to use her savings to break the lease and move out. So she asked her new boyfriend whether she could temporarily stay at his place.
It was an opportunity to get real with him about her financial situation. She told him: “I have no money. I am broke. I have nothing.” That openness ended up strengthening their relationship, she says. Eventually, they got married.
Tu is now an entrepreneur who runs Your Rich BFF, a media company that teaches people about their finances. She says it’s critical for couples to talk about money as soon as they can.
It’s one of the topics of her latest book, published in February, Well Endowed, which offers advice to young people about making big financial decisions, like getting married or starting a family.
“People think love is enough. It’s not. You need to actually know you can build with this person,” she says.
To do that, couples need to be vulnerable with each other about money, she says, just as they are in other aspects of their relationship. In a conversation with Life Kit, Tu share financial questions to ask your partner at every stage. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Financial educator Vivian Tu is the author of Well Endowed.
Left: HarperCollins. Right: Jenny Anderson
hide caption
toggle caption
Left: HarperCollins. Right: Jenny Anderson
What sort of money conversations can you have when you’re first dating?
You can start talking about money on the very first date.
Do it from a place of fun. Ask: “If I gave you $100,000 to plan a perfect two-week vacation, what would that look like?”
Somebody who wants to climb Mount Everest and someone who wants to go to the Maldives and lay on a beach for two weeks — these are two very different people.
Having those fun money conversations early on makes it easier to be, like, “How much do you make?” Because if we’re planning on moving in together, I need to know what the rent can be.
What might you talk about before you become exclusive with a partner?
What are your dreams for your career? Do you want to buy a home? Do you want to live here forever? Are you planning on moving back to your hometown?
These are money conversations that’ll help guide the trajectory of your relationship just to make sure that you’re on the same financial page.
How do they spend their money? If you know they are in a job where they don’t make that much money, but every weekend they’re out blowing money on designer stuff — where is that money coming from? Do they just have crazy credit card debt?
This data-collection period is really when you can be smart and learn something about this person and decide if they’re going to fit into your life. And are there changes you’re willing to make so that you can fit into theirs?
It can be awkward to talk about debt. What’s the best way to bring up the topic with your partner?
Instead of asking, “How much debt do you have?” — which feels like an interrogation — it’s easier to offer something up.
You might say: Oh, by the way, I may be on a little bit of a tighter budget next month because I’m making a large payment to my student loan or on my credit card.
At that point you can ask, because you’ve now offered something: “By the way, do you have any credit card debt? Are there any months coming up that you might be feeling tighter financially that we should keep in mind together?”
What should you talk about if you are thinking about moving in together?
If you haven’t had any money conversations yet, this is a good moment. This is now a point where you can no longer lie.
When you submit your information for a rental application, you have to show bank statements, proof of employment and proof of income. So it’s a really good time to talk about what you make, what you have, what you owe in terms of debt and then what your expenses are every month.
If you can talk about those four categories before moving in together, you should be in a good spot and, frankly, it’ll make other conversations a lot easier.
What about when getting married? What do you absolutely need to talk about before you even plan a wedding?
Avoid financial infidelity. That’s when you make purchases and deliberately hide them. We shouldn’t be hiding bank accounts. We shouldn’t be hiding credit cards. It should all be out in the open, and everybody should be OK with it. If they’re not, that’s a conversation you need to have.
A lot of couples don’t know where to begin when it comes to combining finances. What do you recommend?
I like a “yours, mine and ours” strategy and getting those numbers out in the open. You have your money, I have my money, and then we agree to put a percentage into a joint account consistently to fund our expenses together.
What ongoing questions should you have for your spouse or long-term partner?
Constantly just goal setting. How big do we want our family to be? What’s that going to cost? Where would we like to live long term?
If you want two kids but end up only having one, that changes the calculus. Or if you’re considering moving to where your aging parents live ahead of their retirement, that changes the calculus.
A money conversation is not a one and done. You don’t get to do it and just be done with it. It’s something you have to have throughout life. At the end of the day, this is just a conversation asking: Are you a good partner? Is your partner a good partner? And do you make a good pair?
Not only is Betye Saar a living legend, but the prolific L.A. artist continues to add to her impressive oeuvre day by day.
She’s been creating powerful, thought-provoking artwork since the ’60s and her pieces have been shown at the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and LACMA, as well as museums and galleries around the world.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
As her centennial birthday approaches this July, Saar shows no signs of slowing down. She still routinely creates art and continues to garner headlines and accolades. Last year, she was honored with the distinction of “Icon Artist” at the Art Basel Awards. During the upcoming Frieze Los Angeles art festival, which opens Feb. 26, she will be the subject of the photography installation “Betye Saar Altered Polaroids.” And this May, “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar” will debut at Roberts Projects, the gallery that represents her. The exhibition will feature pieces from her early career as a costume and jewelry designer.
Though she’s skilled at painting and photography, she’s most widely known for assemblage, the art of juxtaposing miscellaneous items to form a single cohesive work. Her dioramas, sculptures and large-scale multimedia installations explore the legacy of American slavery, confront racial injustice and celebrate the strength and resiliency of African American women.
“I work with found objects that had another purpose before they came to my hands,” Saar says while seated at a patio table in her succulent-filled tiered garden. “The hardest part of it is going to a flea market, secondhand stores, an estate sale or even just going behind a store to see what people throw away.”
Over the years, she’s traveled by plane, train and automobile in search of usable materials. Meanwhile, admirers, colleagues and gallery workers have sent her curios from New Mexico, Tennessee, New England and beyond. Her daughters — artists Alison and Lezley, and writer Tracye, their mother’s studio director — also stay on the lookout for objects that might catch her eye.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, so I have quite a collection,” she says.
Indeed, Saar’s multi-level home studio in Laurel Canyon is bursting with dozens of old empty picture frames, discarded window panes, wooden chests, antique chairs and vintage clocks. But there’s always room for more.
Her idea of a perfect Sunday includes foraging for new items (or old ones, as the case may be) to use in her daily art practice. And she’d return to her roots to do it.
“Pasadena is my hometown and I still have a few relatives that live there,” she says.
While visiting her old stomping grounds, she’d embark on a multi-stop shopping spree and wander through a longtime favorite San Gabriel Valley attraction (where her work just so happens to be on display).
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
10 a.m.: Search for hidden treasures
Pasadena Community College Flea Market is something that’s part of “the hunt.” Alison usually drives, sometimes Tracye. Some people are there early to get the deals; we’re not like that anymore. I like to look around and sometimes I find interesting fabrics, scarves to wear and strange-shaped succulents for my garden. I hardly ever find really good antiquing things there, because those are at antique stores and they’re usually pretty pricey. But I bought an old, rusty metal birdcage the seller said was from France. I like rusty stuff for my art. I also found an indigo blue kimono to wear at an art event later this year.
1 p.m.: Replenish with Thai food
I’d go down Fair Oaks Avenue — there’s some secondhand stores. Usually, it’s nothing I can use, but I still can’t say no. I have to go see for myself. Then, lunch at Saladang Garden. I always order chicken sate and the green papaya salad. Last time I went, we tried the Thai corn fritter which was really good and crispy. If food is too spicy, I can’t eat it. But somebody in my party would always have something spicy and I can have a spoonful to add to mine.
2:30 p.m.: More shopping
I am attracted to all the odd things at Gold Bug. Notepads and trinkets, curious vintage-y things with animals or interesting patterns, strange candles. Sometimes I surprise myself by buying something. They have a mixture of things that — whether it’s for the color, or the texture — I feel that I can recycle and fit into an art object that I’m making.
3:30 p.m.: Visit a childhood haunt (with a side of more shopping)
I really like the Huntington’s gardens. I remember the first time I went there was with my mother and a friend of hers, and we walked around. All the paths were dirt, you know, they hadn’t even gotten around to paving it yet. But I just fell in love with it. And I really like their gift shop.
6 p.m.: Head west for a culinary classic
If I go someplace to eat for lunch, I usually have leftovers to warm up. Nothing wrong with leftovers — if you liked it the first time, you’ll like it again! But if I had to go out to dinner, the Apple Pan. I would go there in the ’80s with my daughters. I like their sandwiches, or the hickory burger with cheese, and there’s good French fries.
8 p.m.: Tuck into some wind-down watching
Before bed, I like to watch the news because, otherwise, I don’t know what’s going on. I also like a lot of shows on PBS. “Finding Your Roots,” or dramas like “Sister Boniface Mysteries” and “Call the Midwife,” which has been going on forever!
How Sports Illustrated is getting back in the game after scandal, layoffs
Two ex-New Yorkers embrace more-is-more style in their maximalist Pasadena home
Inside the Pentagon, fears of a disrupted war effort after Army chief’s ouster
Microplastics are everywhere — even in the labs studying them. That’s a problem for research
Three keys for UCLA as it faces South Carolina for an NCAA national championship
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Hamas armed wing says disarmament demands not acceptable
Trump issues fiery new threat against Iran as details of US aviator’s rescue emerge
DHS slams Democrat Sen Chris Van Hollen claim, says illegal alien caused crash while fleeing ICE
Zelenskyy warns US-Iran war could divert critical aid from Ukraine
After the Minnesota surge, ICE is moving to a quieter enforcement approach
-
South-Carolina1 week agoSouth Carolina vs TCU predictions for Elite Eight game in March Madness
-
Atlanta, GA16 hours ago1 teenage girl killed, another injured in shooting at Piedmont Park, police say
-
Vermont1 week agoSkier dies after fall at Sugarbush Resort
-
Movie Reviews3 days agoVaazha 2 first half review: Hashir anchors a lively, chaos-filled teen tale
-
Politics1 week agoTrump’s Ballroom Design Has Barely Been Scrutinized
-
Atlanta, GA1 week agoFetishist ‘No Kings’ protester in mask drags ‘Trump’ and ‘JD Vance’ behind her wheelchair
-
Entertainment4 days agoInside Ye’s first comeback show at SoFi Stadium
-
Politics1 week agoJD Vance says he was ‘obsessed’ with UFOs, believes aliens are actually ‘demons’