“Dave Muller: Proto Typical” exhibit at ArtCenter (Photo – Garrett Rowlan)
Nostalgia, that ever-dormant yet lurking emotion, got a jolt when I visited ArtCenter’s Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery.
By Garrett Rowland
It was there that I saw, or rather experienced, the current exhibit: Dave Muller: Proto Typical. The presentation is centered around the Record Pavilion in the room’s center.
The pavilion is chock-full of musical artifacts—CDs, cassettes, 45 rpms—but what I liked most, and where my nostalgia factor truly kicked in, were the bins of 33 1/3 records, good old-fashioned LPs.
Like many of my generation, I grew up and came into adolescence and adulthood around the institution of the record store, and Muller’s pavilion not only satisfied that memory but allowed me to indulge it as I (as any visitor could) selected and played records from the collection.
In the gallery, the size and shape of a basketball court, I chose, among others, albums by Pat Metheny, Grover Washington Jr., and even both sides of the Greatest Hits LP by the Dave Clark Five, a band from the British Invasion. I played them loud while touring the gallery, taking in the many artifacts and wall-painted records—huge disks in bright acrylic that seemingly floated on the opposing gallery walls like spinning satellites.
I sensed an underlying visual motif in the exhibit: a circular one, not only the shape of the records or the paintings on the wall, but an idea of return, that time can exist on its own turntable, or so I felt listening to music I hadn’t heard in years.
When each record ended, I put on another after indulging in an old and forgotten pleasure: the tactile joy of finger-flipping through bins of records, while I recalled old Pasadena record stores like Big Ben’s Records in Hastings Ranch, Tower Records on Lake, and numerous others that years ago dotted Colorado Boulevard and assorted side streets.
The records even had a nostalgic scent, a faint odor of disintegrating cardboard, redolent of garage sales, compressed time. It’s a reminder of the same feeling I get on occasion when I open a storage cabinet and look through my own modest record collection, which I cannot yet bear to part with.
My ears pleasantly ringing, I left the exhibit after a couple of hours.
I had a feeling one visit wouldn’t satisfy my nostalgic itch, but fortunately the exhibit will remain on view until August 8, from 12:00 – 5:00 pm, Wednesday through Saturday.
Memories of record stores at your fingertip (Photo – Garrett Rowlan)
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