John Lautner, who died in 1994, would have marked his 100th birthday this month. Author Alan Hess looks at the long roster of great Los Angeles architects and says Lautner stands out more than any other as the mirror of this city.

Hess writes that Lautner's work and the city Lautner called home for 56 years share the same rebellious soul. "Both have the courage to be unorthodox and defy conformity, and both have suffered for it," Hess writes. "Critics still skewer Lautner and L.A. alike as undisciplined and self-indulgent."

The truth, Hess writes, can be seen in the Lautner houses, which play out across the Southland as something of a universal dream, a quest for the good life under the California sun.

Commentary: John Lautner, the quintessential L.A. architect

Photo: John Lautner's Chemosphere, perched near Mulholland Drive and reached by hillside funicular.

Credit: Los Angeles Times

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Lights bulbs: the most discussed topic that few still understand? Quite possibly.

Take the bulb on the far left: That's easy, you say. It's a compact fluorescent. But how much energy does it really save compared with a traditional incandescent bulb, and how much can it lower your bill? And how does it compare with the bulb immediately to the right, an LED?

And if that's an LED, how is it different from the bulb that is second from the right, also an LED?

And if the bulb on the far right is a halogen, what the heck is the thing in the center? An incandescent? A halogen? A halogen incandescent (if there even such a thing)?

You can Google "light bulb ban" and spend a couple of hours sorting out the mess, or you can read Times staff writer Susan Carpenter's explainer on modern alternatives to old-school incandescent light bulbs.

Article: energy-efficient light bulbs

-- Craig Nakano

Photo: From the left, a compact fluorescent, an LED from GE, an EcoVantage halogen incandescent from Philips, an LED from Philips that looks yellow in the box but glows white when plugged in, a halogen.

Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

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Can you recycle Ziploc bags? Cereal bags? Wine corks?

The most water-wise house in L.A.?

The Realist Idealist: Green home improvement

When Szu and Dusty Wakeman purchased a neglected 1926 Hollywood Beach house in Oxnard a few years ago, it was advertised as a tear-down set on a prime stretch where Clark Gable and Rudolph Valentino once owned homes.

Szu Wakeman, however, a former set decorator, saw beyond the dark nicotine-stained walls. “I thought it was quirky and charming,” she says of the home’s “Knott's Berry Farm” look, complete with a water wheel out front.

Inspired by Mark and Sally Bailey’s book “Restoration Home,” the Wakemans chose to salvage as much as they could. Instead of demolishing the home, they chose to work with the house's ramshackle charm. “Why throw something in a landfill?” she says of her decorating style.

Today, the three-bedroom weekend retreat is furnished with thrift store finds, bargain buys from the sold-as-is section of IKEA and pieces plucked from the street. “I’m always rescuing old and broken things,” Szu Wakeman says.

Article: Beach house as funky retreat

Photos: Hollywood Beach house

-- Lisa Boone

Top photo: The house exterior, complete with claw-foot tub as planter by the front door.

Bottom photo: Sunny Wakeman peers out from bunks that were original to the house; they were refreshed with white paint, new mattresses and nautical lights.

Credits: Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times

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Los Angeles designer and ceramist Lesley Anton is offering 20% off some of her hand-thrown work through Sept. 1.

The Lesley Anton summer promotion works like this: Purchase 10 tableware items or three accessories and you get the 20% discount.

The sale covers plates, mugs, bowls and decorative objects in eye-catching textures, colors and glazes.

Pictured at right: the 7-inch "circle bowls" with a "sunset glaze" on black mountain stoneware, regularly $38 apiece.

5613 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles; (323) 937-5769.

-- Lisa Boone

Photo: Lesley Anton

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We've given Emily Green a much-deserved week off. Look for her column, The Dry Garden, to resume next Friday.

Until then, you perhaps you'll want to catch up on past installments of Green's posts on sustainable gardening.

Photo: An L.A. hummingbird takes a breather.

Credit: Gabriel Bouys / AFP / Getty Images

Metal sunscreen spray bottles are generally made of aluminum, a highly recyclable metal. Even though they are often topped with a plastic, push-button sprayer top, the bottles can be placed in the blue bin in Los Angeles as a single unit -- as long as the bottles are entirely empty.

Because policies vary from place to place, we asked other municipalities about their policies. Can I recycle an empty metal sunscreen bottle in …

Arcadia: Yes, if empty
Burbank: Yes, if empty
Huntington Beach: Yes
Long Beach: Yes, if empty
Manhattan Beach: Yes, if empty
Riverside: Yes, if empty
Santa Monica: Yes, if empty
Torrance: Yes, if empty
Ventura: Yes, if empty

THE FULL SERIES:

Can I recycle packing peanuts, Ziploc bags, milk cartons, wine corks ... 

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

COMMUNITY GARDENS DISPATCH NO. 39: Growing Experience, Long Beach

The thick hedge at the entrance to the Growing Experience community garden is Mexican marigold, above, a drought-tolerant bush whose scent has touches of lemon and mint. As its name might indicate, it has a yellow-orange flower. Perhaps more important, it has a capacity to repel pests. (Canyon gardeners, take note: Deer in particular dislike it.)

The hedge is a barrier behind which a variety of edibles are being allowed to go to seed for later propagation. Master gardener Manuel Cisneros oversees the half-abandoned community garden as well as the adjoining Growing Experience Urban Farm, discussed in detail in last week's dispatch. With only a couple of part-timers to help harvest and water the 6.5-acre site, Cisneros needs all the help he can get. That includes weeds.

"We let the weeds go to flower to attract the beneficial insects," says Jimmy Ng, right, project manager at the Growing Experience. "Before they go to seed we cut them down and leave them as mulch."

Some weeds have long taproots that will bring minerals to the surface, Ng says. Plus, some weeds just won't go away, so the philosophy at the Growing Experience is: You might as well work with them.

“The mistake people make is that their garden is perfectly weed-free,” says Cisneros, pointing to an overgrown garden plot. “If I remove all the weeds around those onions, I’ll have to water five times as much. The weeds give shade. It’s all about a balance.”

He has a similar attitude about the fruit beetles now starting to go after the ripening plums in the orchard.

“We will have thousands of them soon. They will attack one tree but leave the others alone,” Cisneros says with a shrug and a smile.

Joe Wirtheim showed the latest prints in his Victory Garden of Tomorrow series, on view at the Renegade Craft Fair last weekend.

Inspired by World War II propaganda posters, the artist from Portland, Ore., has been creating his own Victory Garden of Tomorrow posters since 2007 -- something he likes to call "artful advocacy for the modern home front." Decades have passed since the original call for Americans to produce food, but Wirtheim's simple slogans -- "Break New Ground, Plant an Urban Farm Garden" and "We've Done It Before, We'll Grow It Again," among others -- are similar in spirit. 

The limited-edition screen prints are numbered and signed and come on acid-free paper with recycled content. The works range from $12 for an offset-press print to $40 for a hand-pulled screen print. Three-pack bundles are available for $30 on Wirtheim's Etsy shop.

I fell for the illustrations and bought a 12-by-18-inch "Eat Real Food" poster for my kitchen. I placed it in an IKEA birch frame, bringing the total cost to $35 for finished art. 

--  Lisa Boone

Photo credit: Victory Garden of Tomorrow 

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Sarah Bocket's hand-painted wooden bowls, spotted at the Renegade Craft Fair over the weekend, sent me back in time.

Put an ashtray and a glass grape cluster next to the leaf dish above, and you have a coffee table vignette from my family's 1974 living room.

The bowls made me smile, and not just because they made me feel nostalgic. I love what the Los Feliz artist, pictured at right, has done with the thrift store finds: Using a tiny paintbrush, Bocket paints each dish with acrylic, covering them with multicolored dots.

The result is a fanciful mix of past and present, particularly when styled with vintage books or tabletop piece, as pictured at top.

Bocket says the dishes are "lightly food safe," meaning they can be wiped clean with a damp cloth but should not be submerged or scrubbed.

They start at about $40 apiece on Bocket's Etsy shop.

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credits, from top: Sarah Bocket, Francesca Balaguer

Long fascinated by the relationship between San Pedro anthropologist Spencer MacCallum and master potter Juan Quezada, filmmaker Scott Petersen spent three summers documenting their fairy tale of a story in "The Renaissance of Mata Ortiz," premiering Wednesday at USC.

"I was drawn to the cross-cultural aspect of their relationship," Petersen said. "Here is this American guy who goes down to Mexico to meet this Mexican artist, and they end up working together." As the pottery reached new markets and grew in popularity, Mata Ortiz was transformed into a working art colony.

In the documentary, MacCallum shares the well-publicized tale of how he tracked down Quezada after buying three of the self-taught artist's pots in a New Mexico junk shop. MacCallum subsequently encouraged Quezada to experiment and expand his pottery work, and MacCallum marketed the handmade works in America. More than 30 years later, that relationship affected the entire community of Mata Ortiz. (In the photo at right, that's Quezada on the left with MacCallum.)

The film visits the dusty village and its inhabitants, particularly a new generation of artists inspired by Quezada. We watch artist Diego Valles go hunting for clay in a nearby riverbed and cut strands of his young daughter's hair to use as a paint brush for the intricately detailed pottery -- a Postmodern artist using ancient techniques.

"There are a lot of excuses artists can make," Petersen says. "No money. No equipment. And Juan just figured it out on his own through his own talent and perseverance."

The film screens at 7 p.m. Wednesday at USC's Ray Stark Family Theatre, Room 108, George Lucas Instructional Building, University Park Campus, 900 W. 34th St., Los Angeles. Petersen will host a question-and-answer session following the film. Two local traders -- DeSilva Imports and Modern Mata Ortiz -- will sell  pottery before and after the screening. Admission is free, but reservations are requested.

-- Lisa Boone

Photo credits: Scott Petersen

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