Odds & Ends Around the Valley

Coiled Creations

Since it is Thanksgiving, Tarzana artist Howard Miller will be assisting in the design of a festive dinner, but usually you can find him in his workshop decorating the disembodied inside parts of old cars.

Miller locates, buys, cleans and recycles old car parts into gaily decorated objects of art, like the uniquely designed, colorful menorah on exhibit at the Skirball Museum in Los Angeles.

Miller scours Sun Valley and North Hollywood junkyards for the choice auto innards, and he particularly covets the springs of old Ford Ranchero trucks.

“They have just the right number of coils to make the spiral of life for a menorah so, with some paint and imagination, you can make something nice,” the artist said.

Apparently so, since his gallery representative, Tina Oberman, says she is backlogged on orders for the Miller menorah, which carries a $550 price tag.

“We featured his menorah in a recent mailing and we started getting about 30 phone inquiries a day.”

Oberman said everyone who called to order a menorah wanted the one shown in the mailing, but each of Miller’s menorahs is hand-painted and different. One reason people respond so viscerally to the menorahs is that “they are such a strong representation of Southern California Jewish life.”

“When they come into the gallery to pick up their menorah, you can see they are wondering if they will like it as well as the one pictured in the mailing I sent out,” Oberman said. “The minute they see ‘their’ menorah, they are convinced it is the most beautiful one he’s ever done.”

Miller’s designs are so striking and colorful that they have been shown at the De Vorzon Gallery in the Pacific Design Center, as well as Oberman’s Gallery Judaica on Westwood Boulevard in West Los Angeles.

Each piece is a series of designs and patterns that Miller says just come to him as he sits down with each new recycled piece of metal.

As unique as the finely detailed pieces are, Miller’s method of marketing them is almost as unusual.

“He just came into our gallery carrying one of his menorahs last summer,” Oberman said. “And all of us fell in love with the piece.”

Oberman says she immediately offered to represent the fledgling artist, but she had no idea that his works would have such an immediate impact.

“We have so many requests for his pieces that he has to remind us these each take a lot of time,” she said. “We have a backlog order for seven more menorahs, and more come in every day.”

This experimental art form began when Miller’s wife, Beverly, went to her Sherman Oaks dentist’s office a couple of years ago.

In the parking lot, next to a dumpster, sat a pile of discarded automobile inner springs.

For reasons she has forgotten or is too smart to confess now, she decided to find someone to help her put the discarded car springs in her car’s trunk.

Her reasons probably had something to do with her husband needing something to do after his early retirement and her needing something for him to do.

Any wife left with a recent retiree on her hands understands being married for better or worse but not for lunch.

“When I asked her why she had brought all these dirty old car coils home, she said she thought, since I was artistic, I could find something to do with them,” Miller said.

Miller, a retired retailer, says it was a challenge, “although I’ve always been sort of artistic and doodled around with this and with that. But once I figured out what I wanted to do with the car springs, it was sort of out of my hands.”

Miller says the intricate designs mysteriously come to him once he gets the brush in his hands.

“I never seem to have a notion of what I am going to do until I start to work, and then it just comes,” the artist said.

Oy, Vey

“Learning Yiddish Through Humor” is the newest rage at the Mid Valley Athletic Club in Reseda.

Who could have imagined such a thing?

The club offers the usual state-of-the-art fitness center, with weight training, personal training, aerobics and the like.

But lately, in an effort to meet member needs, it has also offered classes covering co-dependency, assertiveness training, fashion, nutrition and business Spanish, and information about cosmetic surgery.

You do what you must, but program director Ellen Siegel thought that a Yiddish class was out of the question.

“I mean, there are temples and Jewish centers all through the Valley where people can get that sort of thing,” she said.

She knew that she was right when she went to Yiddish instructor Archie Barkan, who said the local centers were lucky if they could get 10 people together for such a class.

Siegel went back to her people and said it just wasn’t possible, but what did she know?

To keep peace in the club, she scheduled a preliminary first meeting Oct. 24. Barkan came to teach, if anyone should show up. Thirty prospective members did, and 20 of those actually signed up, and the Thursday class, according to Siegel, is growing.

“We’re now up to 25 people, and new members are signing up every week.”

Siegel says one of the reasons for the increase is the loud laughing coming from the classroom.

“Archie teaches idiomatic Yiddish through jokes and shtick.”

The class has gotten such a good reputation, Siegel adds, that some Gentiles are starting to sign up.

“Many of them grew up with Jewish friends or in a Jewish ghetto, and they miss the humor and language.”

Here, Kitty

There are eight new adult lions at the Wildlife Waystation in the Angeles National Forest, after a seven-month effort on the part of New Zealand’s World Society for Protection of Animals’ effort.

Martine Colette, president and founder of the 21-year-old wildlife facility, said that the animals came from a bankrupt New Zealand theme park, and that they were sent to her preserve to keep them from being destroyed. Because the animals are part Siberian and part Bengal, they are of no value to zoo breeding pools, Colette said.

After a worldwide search for a home for the cats by the society in New Zealand, it was determined that the waystation was the best place for them.

United Airlines provided transportation for the cats, and they are making a good adjustment to their new home, Colette said.

In addition to the eight lions, three tigers and two young lions will arrive in the next few days.

Colette said the plight of these animals illustrates the international problem of finding suitable homes for “excess” zoo and park animals.

Bombs Away

The Antelopeans love a parade, which is why the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce always looks forward to early December.

That is when the Christmas parade is held.

This year, for some reason, it seems to have offended a lot of people.

That is how it came to be known as the Holiday parade, until that offended other people who demanded that it be changed back.

The highly regarded local event will, as of today, be known as the Christmas/Holiday parade.

Overheard

“What a gorgeous new dress. How could you afford it on your husband?” --A somewhat non-liberated lady lunching with a not-very-pleased friend at the California Pizza Kitchen in Canoga Park