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It is anything but a prison. Built over a three-car garage, the studio has southern and western exposures from its terrace and a soaring A-frame ceiling painted orange and black. The color scheme matches a light fixture that Agle assembled from three plastic flea market lanterns. Shag canvases line the perimeter of the room and lean against the white brick fireplace.
On the wall, across from his oversized Herman Miller maple desk designed by George Nelson, is a gallery of inspirational art. There are original jazz magazine illustrations by Gene Deitch, the work of artist friends including a Biskup Japanese monster painting, and Agle's current favorites, two canvases that depict ventriloquist's dummies experimenting with sex and drugs.
Though his work has a cartoon quality, there is usually more of a story on a Shag canvas than meets the eye. Ventriloquist dummies in turtlenecks and medallions lounge like wooden Hugh Hefners in a recent canvas titled "Palm Springs After Dark." Après-ski lodgers wave merrily through a cafe window to a group of skaters heading obliviously to a patch of cracked ice. There is, Agle says, "a lot of subtext to the people and placement of objects in my work. But as Freud says, sometimes a martini glass is just a martini glass."
Shag's work, however, is not a nostalgic portal into some golden age that Agle was denied. "I don't think the world in my paintings ever existed," Agle says. "There are a lot of anachronisms. You might find Napoleon or Louis XV hanging out in Modernist homes or people in tuxedos and cocktail gowns ostensibly existing in this late-'50s environment but talking on cellphones or watching plasma TVs."
During the week, Agle sequesters himself from most 21st century communications and media, working in the studio from 9 to 5 and often well beyond. "My job and my hobby are the same thing," he says with a shrug. In the evenings he will often roll an IKEA table into the living room and paint while the family watches a ridiculously oversized flat-screen TV. "The thing about TVs," he says philosophically, "is they always look a lot smaller in the store than when you get them home."
Agle grew up without the usual pop-cultural stimulation. The eldest of nine siblings, Agle was born in 1962 in Sierra Madre and "raised a strict Mormon." After spending his early childhood in Hawaii, his family moved into a procession of "unexciting tract houses decorated in country-kitchen style, like 98% of America."
When Agle was in high school, his parents bought a "flat-roofed wood-and-glass box by a Finnish architect" in Utah, but he didn't really begin to appreciate the high design and kitsch of midcentury Modern until he discovered demon rum and rock music.
"My parents didn't even have records when I was a kid," says Agle, "so the lure of the forbidden got a hold of me."
At 21, Agle and some newly legal chums made pilgrimages to "the last remaining tiki bars in Southern California, like the Tiki Ti on Sunset Boulevard." Such places drew them in "for the same reason that they appealed to the typical workingman of the early '60s," Agle explains. "You step from the sidewalk into this exotic interpretation of the South Seas. You have these great tropical drinks and if you pay an extra five bucks, you get to keep the tiki mug." Today, he estimates he has more than 300 such souvenirs, lined up in a glass case in his dining room by an Electrohome hi-fi with a domed plastic lid.
Music played an even larger part in defining Agle's Modernist aesthetics. While studying architecture and accounting at Cal State Long Beach in the mid-'80s, Agle stumbled onto the L.A. garage music revival led by groups such as Redd Kross and the Unclaimed. The people in that scene, he recalls, "had apartments with 1964 furniture and pictures on their wall, and they listened to 1964 records on a 1964 stereo."
Impressed by how good a low-budget apartment could look, Agle became an intrepid thrift shopper. One of his first great finds, a high-back bird chair by Harry Bertoia, which Agle had upholstered in purple wool, still occupies a prominent spot in his living room. Then Agle met his future wife, who had come to see him play guitar and sing in a folk punk band called the Swamp Zombies. He also changed his major. " 'Starving artist' is all you hear," Agle says of his career choice. "But I decided to do what made me happiest, regardless of whether I could make a good living at it."
He found he could. "It took me eight years to graduate, I was so busy doing commercial illustration," Agle says. When people asked to buy original pieces, Shag began having shows. To- day his originals sell for $3,500 to $18,000; Whoopi Goldberg and David Arquette are among the Hollywood set who own a Shag. "One of my goals when I started," Agle says, "is that I wanted my paintings in houses by the best architects. I know I've got some [in] Neutras, a John Lautner and a Frank Lloyd Wright."
Except for an early work, a painterly oil composition of tiki heads in greens and purples, there are no Shags on display chez Agle. Besides being too modest, Agle is more interested in decorating this home with sculpture. In addition to the metal wall reliefs he has collected, he plans to design an outdoor waterfall with bronze statuary.
"I embraced Modernism as a reaction to what I grew up with, traditional Ethan Allen style," he explains. "Modernism was smart and inexpensive design that stripped away decoration so that even structural elements were lacking in ornamentation. It is a process of simplification where things become so reduced that you can't go any further."
Seeing so much of that for such a long time, Agle "began to crave something different. Instead of decorating in the stark Modernist style of 1958, I wanted the warmth of interiors from 1964-66." It was a time, he says, when people began to integrate ceramics, woven wall hangings and metalwork from the post-World War II California Craft movement into their living spaces.
In small ways, Agle has always practiced that philosophy, and in a much larger way, the things that he has made for his homes are more precious and resonant than his enviable collection of midcentury furnishings. On an atomic-age wood-and-glass side table in his living room, an "I Love Lucy"-era lamp is crowned by a two-tier parchment shade that he handcrafted "when I had more time than money."
In the kitchen, there's a mirror framed in a vintage TV with hairpin legs and a rabbit-ears antenna that he made in a college woodworking course. And, over the roaring fireplace, perhaps charting his next flight of fancy, there are the birds. "I would love to cast them in bronze," Agle says.
His tastes, he says, are changing. "I love the French Empire style," he says. "My next house, if I had one, would probably be Modernist combined with Greek and Roman elements, like something a 1940s Hollywood starlet would've retired in with swag drapes and huge gold tiebacks, the kind of thing that would've nauseated Charles Eames."
David A. Keeps is a frequent contributor to Home. He can be reached at home@latimes.com.
On the wall, across from his oversized Herman Miller maple desk designed by George Nelson, is a gallery of inspirational art. There are original jazz magazine illustrations by Gene Deitch, the work of artist friends including a Biskup Japanese monster painting, and Agle's current favorites, two canvases that depict ventriloquist's dummies experimenting with sex and drugs.
Though his work has a cartoon quality, there is usually more of a story on a Shag canvas than meets the eye. Ventriloquist dummies in turtlenecks and medallions lounge like wooden Hugh Hefners in a recent canvas titled "Palm Springs After Dark." Après-ski lodgers wave merrily through a cafe window to a group of skaters heading obliviously to a patch of cracked ice. There is, Agle says, "a lot of subtext to the people and placement of objects in my work. But as Freud says, sometimes a martini glass is just a martini glass."
Shag's work, however, is not a nostalgic portal into some golden age that Agle was denied. "I don't think the world in my paintings ever existed," Agle says. "There are a lot of anachronisms. You might find Napoleon or Louis XV hanging out in Modernist homes or people in tuxedos and cocktail gowns ostensibly existing in this late-'50s environment but talking on cellphones or watching plasma TVs."
During the week, Agle sequesters himself from most 21st century communications and media, working in the studio from 9 to 5 and often well beyond. "My job and my hobby are the same thing," he says with a shrug. In the evenings he will often roll an IKEA table into the living room and paint while the family watches a ridiculously oversized flat-screen TV. "The thing about TVs," he says philosophically, "is they always look a lot smaller in the store than when you get them home."
Agle grew up without the usual pop-cultural stimulation. The eldest of nine siblings, Agle was born in 1962 in Sierra Madre and "raised a strict Mormon." After spending his early childhood in Hawaii, his family moved into a procession of "unexciting tract houses decorated in country-kitchen style, like 98% of America."
When Agle was in high school, his parents bought a "flat-roofed wood-and-glass box by a Finnish architect" in Utah, but he didn't really begin to appreciate the high design and kitsch of midcentury Modern until he discovered demon rum and rock music.
"My parents didn't even have records when I was a kid," says Agle, "so the lure of the forbidden got a hold of me."
At 21, Agle and some newly legal chums made pilgrimages to "the last remaining tiki bars in Southern California, like the Tiki Ti on Sunset Boulevard." Such places drew them in "for the same reason that they appealed to the typical workingman of the early '60s," Agle explains. "You step from the sidewalk into this exotic interpretation of the South Seas. You have these great tropical drinks and if you pay an extra five bucks, you get to keep the tiki mug." Today, he estimates he has more than 300 such souvenirs, lined up in a glass case in his dining room by an Electrohome hi-fi with a domed plastic lid.
Music played an even larger part in defining Agle's Modernist aesthetics. While studying architecture and accounting at Cal State Long Beach in the mid-'80s, Agle stumbled onto the L.A. garage music revival led by groups such as Redd Kross and the Unclaimed. The people in that scene, he recalls, "had apartments with 1964 furniture and pictures on their wall, and they listened to 1964 records on a 1964 stereo."
Impressed by how good a low-budget apartment could look, Agle became an intrepid thrift shopper. One of his first great finds, a high-back bird chair by Harry Bertoia, which Agle had upholstered in purple wool, still occupies a prominent spot in his living room. Then Agle met his future wife, who had come to see him play guitar and sing in a folk punk band called the Swamp Zombies. He also changed his major. " 'Starving artist' is all you hear," Agle says of his career choice. "But I decided to do what made me happiest, regardless of whether I could make a good living at it."
He found he could. "It took me eight years to graduate, I was so busy doing commercial illustration," Agle says. When people asked to buy original pieces, Shag began having shows. To- day his originals sell for $3,500 to $18,000; Whoopi Goldberg and David Arquette are among the Hollywood set who own a Shag. "One of my goals when I started," Agle says, "is that I wanted my paintings in houses by the best architects. I know I've got some [in] Neutras, a John Lautner and a Frank Lloyd Wright."
Except for an early work, a painterly oil composition of tiki heads in greens and purples, there are no Shags on display chez Agle. Besides being too modest, Agle is more interested in decorating this home with sculpture. In addition to the metal wall reliefs he has collected, he plans to design an outdoor waterfall with bronze statuary.
"I embraced Modernism as a reaction to what I grew up with, traditional Ethan Allen style," he explains. "Modernism was smart and inexpensive design that stripped away decoration so that even structural elements were lacking in ornamentation. It is a process of simplification where things become so reduced that you can't go any further."
Seeing so much of that for such a long time, Agle "began to crave something different. Instead of decorating in the stark Modernist style of 1958, I wanted the warmth of interiors from 1964-66." It was a time, he says, when people began to integrate ceramics, woven wall hangings and metalwork from the post-World War II California Craft movement into their living spaces.
In small ways, Agle has always practiced that philosophy, and in a much larger way, the things that he has made for his homes are more precious and resonant than his enviable collection of midcentury furnishings. On an atomic-age wood-and-glass side table in his living room, an "I Love Lucy"-era lamp is crowned by a two-tier parchment shade that he handcrafted "when I had more time than money."
In the kitchen, there's a mirror framed in a vintage TV with hairpin legs and a rabbit-ears antenna that he made in a college woodworking course. And, over the roaring fireplace, perhaps charting his next flight of fancy, there are the birds. "I would love to cast them in bronze," Agle says.
His tastes, he says, are changing. "I love the French Empire style," he says. "My next house, if I had one, would probably be Modernist combined with Greek and Roman elements, like something a 1940s Hollywood starlet would've retired in with swag drapes and huge gold tiebacks, the kind of thing that would've nauseated Charles Eames."
David A. Keeps is a frequent contributor to Home. He can be reached at home@latimes.com.
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