FAVO post modern roadside ceremony.

FAVO is a former roadside motel that is now being uses in part as artist studios. Once a month on Friday the studios are opened to the public for an art stroll.

In August, one of the studios was opened up as a performance space. The audience sat on church pews lined up on the right wall. A synthetic green grass carpet was on the floor. A plastic or fiberglass basin stool table like on the grass. Chunks of road asphalt were strewn in the basin. Many of the chunks has the road’s yellow center-line on them. Clumps of grass grew between the chunks of asphalt. The scene was illuminated by a large telephone pole street lamp.

Two young women wearing white and black evening gowns and lace head shawls performed a long elaborate chant. If there were words uttered they must have been in Greek. At times they knelt in the grass and bowed their heads.

From a small card in motel room window I discovered that the ceremony had something to do with the motels beginnings as an example of roadside modernism. Originally built as the Davis Park Motel in 1957, it is an example of Googie style architecture. Googie was the name of a coffee shop in Los Angeles designed by John Lautner. These designs have an element of cartoon futurism, as in the Jetsons mixed with mid century modernism.

Frankly I didn’t understand what the ceremony was about, but perhaps that was the point.