In September 2024, Simchowitz launched a new venue in Pasadena called Hill House. The space was inaugurated with a group exhibition and is now showcasing a solo exhibition featuring new pieces by Los Angeles-based artist Shaina McCoy. However, Hill House isn’t a typical gallery. Instead, it’s a collection of buildings centered around a swimming pool, where each structure offers art and sound in a relaxed, living-room-like atmosphere. There are no traditional “white cube” gallery spaces here. Hill House serves as a versatile venue, hosting exhibitions of emerging contemporary art, high-quality music systems (Simco Audio), artist residencies, and a range of alternative programs.
This video is the second in our series on Hill House (stay tuned for more). After Shaina McCoy guided us through her exhibition, Stefan now leads us on a tour of the property and the exhibition spaces.
Simchowitz Hill House Tour with Stefan Simchowitz. Pasadena, October 20, 2024.
This video is the second in our series on Hill House (stay tuned for more). After Shaina McCoy guided us through her exhibition, Stefan now leads us on a tour of the property and the exhibition spaces.
Simchowitz Hill House Tour with Stefan Simchowitz. Pasadena, October 20, 2024.
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FunTranscript
00:00Shana, how are you?
00:02Come say good morning
00:04These guys are going to interview you in a little bit if that's okay
00:07This is Shana McCoy the artist, Vernissage TV. This is Shana McCoy, Heinrich Schmidt and Marco
00:16Welcome, congratulations. Thank you. If you could, you look lovely
00:19If you could be so kind at some point later and just sit down with them and do a small interview would be great
00:25Great. Thank you so much
00:30So welcome to Hill House
00:33This is a project that I've been working on for four or five years
00:37We ran it as an artist residency at first for a number of years and then we renovated the property
00:43using the architect Katrin Terstegen
00:46There are eight structures on the property. Each structure has a different function and
00:51is interchangeable in either an exhibition space, a studio space, a work space, an audio space
00:56And we start off at the front side of the property, show you a little sculpture park where we have a birdhouse by Tyler Macco from
01:03Ohio, we have
01:05ceramic sculptures from, we have ceramic sculptures from Stan Edmondson and
01:13Sterling Ruby and
01:17We have
01:19cacti and
01:21Sterling Ruby is one of his big bronze pieces coming through here
01:26We'll see our
01:29protection of
01:33Stan Edmondson's big guy over here, keeps away evil spirits and welcomes you to the property
01:44And then we'll come here to
01:46The maple forest. So one of the things you'll notice is there's a lot of plant material, a lot of landscaping
01:51Petra Courtright, artist I've been working with for over a decade now, did the landscaping
01:57with me and we we designed it to be like a little Huntington Gardens where you have a lot of different kinds of
02:04landscaping, cacti
02:08Maples and
02:09then this is the first of the structures, the smallest and most modest of the structures and
02:15The idea is we have rotating shows in some rooms and semi-permanent shows in other rooms with core artists
02:22We work with where we change the material, we refresh it
02:25But artists produce so much work giving them a chance to be seen over a longer period of time. Sergio Tukwekloti
02:33children's drawings, his kids
02:35obsessively draw on the walls of his house in Ghana and Accra and
02:39He loves their work so much that he actually copies their work on canvas
02:43So it's this sort of play on
02:46children's drawings
02:47professionalized by a master artist and I think they're amazing, a very good example of one of his collage works made out of
02:55plastic materials from kefir gallons, an
02:58amazing little collage which involves material, you know found
03:03in Ghana
03:05Chadwick Boseman
03:07The late Chadwick Boseman, a beautiful duct-tape portrait of Chadwick
03:12Boseman
03:14One of his watercolor works of
03:16a bellboy and so whoever comes here can
03:21Can experience Sergio's work as we as we rotate through shows
03:25We have a few permanent sort of six-month up artists
03:28so really give them a chance to be seen. Trying to extend the duration of exhibition for artists so that
03:35with people's busy schedules
03:38There's an opportunity to be seen. We'll come up to the porch because the porch is kind of cool
03:43Justin Lieberman many years ago did a project with me where we produced all these bears
03:49They've been in storage for quite a while and we just thought in Pasadena
03:54Because there's so many bears around if they come hang out in the porch
03:57We'd give them some friends and and so we we have all these bears around
04:03Stan Stan Edmondson beautiful little figurine sculptures over here. I think they're remarkable and
04:10We walk on the porch you'll notice the esplanade of apple trees Petra is very domestic
04:16She besides being one of the preeminent digital artists of our time. She also loves Martha Stewart
04:21in fact, she has a collection of all of Martha Stewart magazines, so she likes like esplanades of apple trees and lavender bushes and
04:29And
04:31Now we'll come to the the main exhibition space on the front end of the of the property
04:37These pots I just have to point out a beautiful ceramic vessels made by the artist Ken Taylor and they have rose bushes in them
04:46and
04:47In the back is some trucks up
04:49We're going to come and show you the main show today, which is Shana McCoy aka wallflower McCoy and Instagram
04:58Wallflower McCoy amazing artists from Minneapolis who I met when she was probably 21 years old
05:03and
05:06Hi, how are you? Nice to see you Ben. This is Ben. How are you? Ben is an amazing amazing photographer
05:13who works with us on our creative art partners side and he
05:18Documents a lot of our projects in creative art partners
05:21And he's been working with us for a number of years and we'll discuss cap in a little bit
05:26Our rental business called creative art partners, which is an amazingly innovative product
05:31Thank you so much. And this is Shana McCoy show
05:35So she's very well known for these faceless portraits
05:39she does that are based on photographs of her and her family that she collects and this is a
05:48Very beautiful intimate show of of
05:52of
05:53Portraits she does big paintings and also these really beautiful little gems that you want to look at and
06:03And what we've done here is in each space you'll notice
06:06We've we've paired music in all the spaces
06:10really beautiful
06:12You know audiophile grade equipment
06:15Making the spaces more active more dynamic more engaging what you find people end up sitting in these rooms for hours and
06:23They start looking at the work in a much more intimate way trying to give people an opportunity to sit with a work
06:31With more duration a more intimate setting that is more akin to
06:36More akin to a living space a working space an active space
06:40I'm very interested in this idea of living with art
06:44And presenting art as a lived experience as opposed to sort of a situation
06:49So finding that balance where you can curate a beautiful show have it present itself as a as a solo exhibition and presentation
06:56But also give you the idea that art is a very livable thing
07:00This is a beautiful Mickey Mouse ceramic
07:03That is an is is a hangover from our last group show and I loved it so much and thought it was so cute
07:08I didn't think he got in the way of
07:12Shana's show so we left it here and this is of course
07:16Of a small vessel made by an artist I work with for many years from Ghana named Pajo he does these miniatures
07:22And it's a really interesting
07:24painting because
07:26Jonas woods an artist who actually
07:29He commissioned Pajo through me to do a big basketball that you see evident a basketball
07:35Sculpture that's evident in some of his most important paintings today
07:39Jonas loves Madalena
07:40The ceramic artist Madalena, so he did a painting based on the Madalena
07:45Frumkins pot and then Pajo did a vessel of a copy of a Jonas painting of a Madalena Frumkins pot
07:53So it's an appropriation of an appropriation of an appropriation. I
07:56Think this this lamp is also made by an artist. I work with named Frank
08:02Elementi who does these sort of design objects?
08:05This painting is really beautiful
08:07I think it's worth it's worth two minutes of study, and you'll see how Shana builds up the texture of
08:13You know of the of the hair. This is an amazing amazingly beautiful painting in my opinion real masterpiece
08:20Hi, how are you nice to see you?
08:24Good, and then we'll we'll we'll come in through the
08:29Through the main property and you'll see there's a flow through each space
08:34This this space is a workspace and also an exhibition space and
08:40This presents work some addition additions works of Shana. She's done quite a bit of addition work
08:50This is a this is actually a UV dimensional print that that really replicates the texture of the painting
08:57As is this one and and this is a this is a work of her. This is one of her early works
09:05one of the first paintings she did Troy that we did a screen print edition of and
09:11You know so Shana is actually in in five of the spaces today
09:17so you know the you know you really get an idea of the artist presenting in multiple spaces and
09:24When we do events we gather in the in the front of the house in which you'll see there are four
09:31specific structures here of
09:33exhibitions we're going to zip you right to the back and
09:38I think we'll we'll first cover Shana show and then we can sort of cut and then we can do the
09:44rest of it, so
09:47This is red bond one the bigger of the two red bonds where we have a solo presentation of Shana's
09:54Paintings over here. Hi. How are you? Nice to see you
09:58Thank you so much. Thank you very much. And once again, you know presenting art you can sit down and listen to music relax
10:06And
10:13Since you're Swiss Heinrich, we have Swiss speakers for you Swiss power for you. We've got bone a key speakers
10:21w11's nagra power
10:24Lampazada DAC from Poland powering everything and of course Shane is beautiful paintings
10:29And this is such a nice angle to see things from so I think you should this these angles are also
10:36so beautiful and
10:41You'll notice cactus material everywhere
10:44we assembled this material over a couple of years and the idea was to give contrast to the red bonds a
10:53Presentation of work by Ken Taylor and
10:58Also the the Simcoe one speaker, which I'm very proud of which is a speaker manufactured in California by Simcoe
11:06It's a horn speaker
11:08doesn't require much power sounds amazing and
11:12Ken Taylor group show of works on paper and two big paintings and the bull the big bull and
11:20What you'll notice everywhere is turntables with multiple arms and stuff. So we're very much into analog equipment and
11:27So, you know, you can come here listen to music
11:31We can curate a system for you build something esoteric or something simple
11:35and
11:36You know really give you an experience and I love the howling red wolf. Ken is one of my favorite artists we work with
11:47Look how sick that is. That's actually pretty cool. This is a a schick 12-inch tone arm with a
11:53cartridge from a company called mutek kandahaya basu where the
11:58Dynavector 805 from the 1980s
12:00marble head shell of a Dynavector cartridge sold
12:04Great beautiful gear thorace good old German guy point-to-point wiring all handmade extraordinary sounding
12:15And then let's go to the pool house and look at Shana's beautiful little intimate paintings the little portraits here of
12:22You know these small works on paper and painting so you'll see
12:26The the work presents itself in in in multiple ways
12:31and then this is the pool house and
12:35We have we have a series of Shana McCoy paintings here small paintings works on paper really lovely
12:43So you're really presenting the work in a different in in a multitude of ways
12:50Come meet Cal rusty Ola Cal
12:52This is Cal Cal rusty Ola guys. Very important person in my life. How are you? Cal nicely vernissage TV
12:59Okay, Cal Cal runs the Burkle Center at UCLA
13:03which we have a we engage in a partnership with them where we do events at our property and in Los Angeles, which hosts
13:11intellectuals thinkers
13:14Politicians right we just week. Yeah, and
13:17It's an amazing an amazing sort of part of UCLA that
13:22That brings some of the most interesting people to Los Angeles for intimate discussions
13:26And and so again weaving in
13:30ideas thoughts books different kinds of things
13:33Integrating with art with music trying to be interdisciplinary and cross and so cross these these things together
13:40Come to the fantastic host for that. Thank you. I'll be with you in a sec. Come guys
13:46And then this is the music room over here
13:52Come in
13:57Tyler Macco artist from Ohio
14:01Lila bossom possum and then of course these speakers are YG acoustics
14:08Diptyque beautiful things to film
14:12It'll be great if after we do the interview you
14:15Because I think there's a lot of detail here to get so much and there's also the cables the red cables on my own cable
14:22I'll show you and then this room and then there's a of course a giant Shana cable here a giant Shana
14:29painting over here
14:37And you'll see it's unbelievable she makes these balls
14:41He's creates the hair and sees tiny little balls such amazing detailed work