About this event
Penny Wolin - Guest Register
Claudio Edinger - Chelsea Hotel
Artist Talk & Book Signing: Friday, January 10th, 6 PM
Please join us for a book signing and conversation with Penny Wolin's Guest Register and Claudio Edinger's Chelsea Hotel !
Two artists working on two coasts and two different hotels share a singular vision that reflects the breadth of humanity that decides to make a hotel their home. The artists, the visionaries, and the dreamers. The in-betweeners, the fresh starters, and the disillusioned. For some, the hotels were a brief rest stop. For others, it became a way of life and only checked out the day they died.
Penny Wolin:
The St. Francis Hotel isn't the dirtiest, the cheapest, or even the most "bottomed out" hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. In the early days of Hollywood, it was a nice hotel, one of the better places to stay in the city. The days of Hollywood are gone now, but some of what remains and more are staying in this hotel.
Stuntmen who were never pensioned for their injuries, child actors whose parents squandered away their money, drunks who would like to lay down on the street and die, but it is illegal; they are all at the hotel.
Middle-aged men divorced from their families, old people who want more independence than a rest home, or can't afford one, people who are considered on the fringes of acceptance by society and young people in search of a future; they too are at the hotel.
People live in this hotel; walking, talking, feeling people.
They all have pasts when they didn't live in the hotel and they all have reasons for living there now. Some have reasons to move on, some have reasons to stay.
We all live at some hotel. Some of us may go to Encino to escape it, but that is no more effective than pulling your blind down to escape your neighbor's turned up radio. We are all here, now. We all make decisions, we all laugh and love and feel, and we all end up somewhere. Think of that the next time you walk past an old hotel.
Claudio Edinger:
The first time I saw the Chelsea Hotel, I disliked it immediately.
It was about 11 PM, and I was escorting my friend Christiane, a French painter, into the lobby. A tide of hookers and leatherboys swirled around us. I thought, wow, what a zoo! I glanced at Christiane and wondered how she could possibly live in such a place. But she was quite at home. “This is a fabulous place for artistes,” she said. “I don’t have to take the gallery dealers to mytiny room - I see them right here in the lobby.” I shook my head, still somewhat confused. “And besides,” she smiled, “it’s cheap.”
My first weeks in the hotel were like the beginning of an unforgettable summer vacation in an exotic retreat full of offbeat, inquisitive people. It seemed that everywhere I went, from the bathroom to the elevators to the lobby, I met a new face and a new story. Even beyond the Chelsea, throughout New York, I met people with incredible tales to tell about the old hotel.
I was reading on my bed one night when a fire alarm sounded. Everyone was dashing for the stairwells, clutching their children, guitars, typewriters, and unfinished paintings. Grabbing my cameras, I joined the parade and began to snap away in the confusion.
It turned out to be a false alarm, but it provided me with the impetus I needed to start.