Taking the Initiative Prince Polymath After A
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Taking the Prince More Than a After a Initiative Polymath Mermaid Fashion P. 06 P. 28 P. 44 P. 86 Original Mercury cover, March 1932 MERCURY Dear Members, Welcome to this year’s Mercury! Early in our Club’s proud history, we adopted the Roman god of sports and athletes as a natural symbol for the LAAC. Mercury was fast, of course, but, as the inventor of the lyre, he also had a creative side. This issue of Mercury focuses on the intersection of sports and the arts. As we delve into the stories of people and programs here at this intersection, we see the higher level of human achievement that comes from pursuing both the competitive and the creative. Basketball star and jazz aficionado Tommy Hawkins epitomized this winning combination. He had a successful career in sports and wrote poetry on the side. After Hawkins retired from the NBA, he mixed his knowledge of professional athletics and his way with words to become a sports broadcaster, communications director, and emcee. Since childhood, Clayton Snyder has been balancing competitive water polo with an acting career. He has gone from being a TV tween heartthrob to helping the Club develop a world-class water polo team. Esther Williams embodied the blend of athletics and aesthetics found in water ballet and synchronized swimming. She made dangerous physical feats appear effortless and beautiful — and made a successful film career out of it. These artistic athletes inspire us to embrace our creative instincts while pursuing physical excellence. The Los Angeles Athletic Club was largely built on this idea. We began filling our physical space with an extensive art collection almost from the outset. In 1913 Harry Marston Haldeman formed the Uplifters based on the idea that an athletic club should not just be about athletics but should also encourage artistic camaraderie. Today’s Uplifters recently established an arts initiative aimed at providing studio spaces and Club memberships to select LA artists — yet another way of joining physical vitality and artistic virtuosity. Historically, the prevailing energy of downtown LA has fluctuated between the competitive corporate world and the creative entrepreneurial world — with the Hollywood social scene dominating during the 1920s, for example, and the businesses of Bunker Hill dominating in the 1990s. Here at the Club, these worlds come together. They enhance and invigorate one another. We find athleticism in the arts and artistry in athletics. We test our physical limits and push our creative boundaries. The ancients Romans valued this well-roundedness. And so do we. — Cory Hathaway 3 20 28 06 44 36 52 MERCURY 68 78 86 VOLUME 108—ISSUE 1 06 Taking the Initiative 52 Starting Gates to Excellence New Artist-in-Residence Program Draws The Histories of America's Seven Oldest from Our Past to Uplift Our Future Athletic Clubs 20 Plunge Café Dives into Specialty 68 The Jazz of Invention: Live and Coffee Swingin' New Poolside Pleasures Include Coffee Three Nights with the Magical Powers by Ben Usen of Music 28 Prince Polymath 78 Making a Splash The Incredible Life of Tommy Hawkins Actor Clayton Snyder Plays a Starring Role in LAAC Water Polo 36 Royal Treatments Just Relax and Say, “Spa-aaaah.” 86 After a Fashion Contrasting Designers Unite for a “Clothes Call” at the Club 44 More Than a Mermaid A Look at the Life, Legacy, and LAAC Story of Swimming Star Esther Williams Editorial Director Cory Hathaway | Creative Director Arpineh Khatchatorians Editor Katie Scrivner | Associate Editor Brian Takao 5 86 MERCURY LIFESTYLE Words by Al Christie Photography by Joshua Spencer Taking the Initiative New Artist-in-Residence Program Draws from Our Past to Uplift Our Future he arts have always been an integral part of art-sports connection, not just at the Club but throughout the Los Angeles Athletic Club. From musical Los Angeles. performances to photography collections to Calling on LAAC’s resources and cachet, The T members Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford Uplifters are establishing residencies and fellowships uniting the artists of the film industry, the Club has for local sculptors, painters, and mixed-media artists of championed the arts since its inception. exceptional talent. This new Arts Initiative constructs In 1913 an exclusive artists’ society formed an a two-way creative conveyor belt between the Los invitation-only club-within-the-club among its group Angeles Athletic Club and an erupting Los Angeles art of creative intellectuals whose stated purpose was “To scene. Cultivating accomplished artists and seeking out Uplift Art and Promote Good Fellowship.” They called lesser-heard voices from LA’s diverse enclaves, the Arts themselves “The Uplifters,” and they often pursued their Initiative lassoes message-forward artists who care for serious mission through debaucherous hijinks. their communities, inspire their neighbors, and uplift Today’s Uplifters follow the same motto but with a our future. focus on connecting art and sports. Last year, the group What follows are profiles of the impressive inaugural enacted an exciting new Arts Initiative that promotes this class of the Los Angeles Athletic Club’s Arts Initiative: 7 MERCURY BANK SHOT Before becoming a celebrated club teams, Nike’s “Say No” Camp… project is a four-wall, open-roof artist (with a master’s degree from Halsey didn’t really care about structure with messages and images Yale, artistic residencies in Paris, winning or losing; she just longed carved into large, gypsum tiles. and exhibitions at MOCA), South- to play. “Basketball for me was like These are walls that can talk. They Central native Lauren Halsey was this intuitive dance that my body tell stories. South Central landmarks looking for a job. Relatives suggested was doing,” Halsey recalls. “There share space with carved Egyptian kindly (as relatives do) something was a certain poetry about it.” But pyramids as if to say that even steady, something practical. A career when it became clear that the WNBA locals belong in the historical record. in banking would do the trick. would not be blowing up her iPhone, According to Halsey, her works are Though she was rightfully skeptical, Halsey shifted to art — first at Cal “stores of consciousness… living, Halsey interviewed at a bank catty- Arts and later at Yale. The discipline visual archives of neighborhoods and corner from the Standard Hotel in and rigors of basketball, however, people.” They champion the under- downtown LA. But after a quick trip still fire up the purpose and passion represented voices of Los Angeles — through the revolving glass doors, of Halsey’s artistic pursuits. many from the area where she grew Halsey confirmed that banking was Walls have become symbols of up. not for her. Today, instead of looking division, suspicion, and separation Through her art, Halsey has found up at the steel-and-glass structure in today’s America. But to Halsey her voice — not just as an artist but from the street, Halsey views the walls are vessels of community. Her also as an activist providing hope for U.S. Bank Tower from the comfort of signature works blend architectural the neighborhood that her family has her rooftop artist workshop at the LA form and social activism into a search called home since 1930. “Change is Athletic Club. for meaning in a rapidly changing both good and bad,” Halsey notes Art was really the second- Los Angeles. Her visions for the city about Los Angeles’s constantly stringer on Halsey’s skill-set team. are literally monumental. She has creeping gentrification. Change can Basketball was the focus of her early laid out ambitious plans to construct displace local residents, but it can life. She would practice at every a massive public art piece, The also engender resilience and motivate opportunity, setting up cones and Crenshaw District Hieroglyph Project, people to collectivize for the common blasting through them to sharpen on Crenshaw Boulevard where an good. She invites us to participate in her dribbling skills. Through hours African market used to be. Halsey was both the joys and the responsibilities of daily practice, her father and uncle awarded a grant to build a prototype of a fulfilling neighborhood life. This molded her into a tough, agile point of the work, which was shown at is the Los Angeles home that Halsey guard. She played on school teams, the Hammer museum in 2018. The is building. Bank on it. 9 MERCURY Photo courtesy of Franchise Magazine 11 MERCURY PARTICIPATION TROPHIES Pablo Picasso once observed, Rocklen’s unruly beard and required sophisticated design and “Every child is an artist. The long hair seem to externalize what structural schematics mapped out problem is how to remain an artist is going on inside his head — as if by Rocklen himself. One of the once we grow up.” As kids we drew his brain is being windblown by the project’s pieces, entitled Second to and painted our imaginations onto hurricane of ideas he is chasing down None, secured him a spot in the post- paper, and we handcrafted objets at any one time. Inspiration seems modern gallery of LACMA beside d’art like burgeoning Michelangelos. to come in batches, and a single idea Jasper Johns’s Flag and Jeff Koons’s At some point, though, we were may take new directions and morph Michael Jackson and Bubbles. (Not bad told that daydreams were no into new possibilities. Take his idea company to be in.) An example from longer needed for our success in for Trophy Modern, the project that the show is currently on display (and this world, and we permitted our won him global acclaim at the 2013 in use) in the LAAC lobby.