Artist Who Looks Down on the Valley

You never know where you’re going to find beauty. Some artists are inspired by the French countryside. Or the Swiss Alps. Or an English seashore. Peter Alexander, on the other hand, has a work titled “Van Nuys” at the Orange County Museum of Art.

It’s an aerial view. At night.

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CITY OF STREET LIGHTS: Explanatory notes for the exhibit, titled “Peter Alexander: In This Light,” explain that the artist has a fascination with the “mixture of natural and man-made illumination of a dusky Los Angeles.”

There’s a film noir quality to the grids of blurred light seen from the black sky in “Van Nuys.” I could imagine Harry Bosch, the cop in Michael Connelly’s mystery novels, moving through a pocket of darkness--perhaps in search of a missing witness.

Other aerial paintings at the show by Alexander--who seems to have a love for the suburbs--include “Lawndale,” “LAX XII,” “Alhambra” and “Saugus D.E.P.” (Another work, “Covina,” is not included.)

“What’s magic about being up there,” Alexander is quoted as saying, is the metamorphosis that occurs at night, “with the clouds and the lights and the air. It’s so dramatic. Suddenly there’s no Alhambra. There’s no El Monte. There’s no Venice. It’s all the same stuff!”

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BUT IF YOU ASSUME THERE IS AN ALHAMBRA. . . . This column’s “Slogan for San Gabriel Valley” contest didn’t exactly unleash a tsunami of submissions. But I have received some promising entries, including these from Gary Bolen of Valencia:

“San Gabriel Valley: Gateway to Duarte” and “San Gabriel Valley: Hey! We’re Over Here!”

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MORE INFORMATION THAN WE NEED: Rob Gallardo of Downey noticed that the sales slip from a drugstore contained an eerie notation (see accompanying).

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SACRED ASPHALT: The rarest parking area in L.A. County? It could be the stretch that begins where Hans van Straaten of Hermosa Beach took a snapshot (see photo). It’s only open four hours a week.

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TRY TELLING A CAT TO DO ANYTHING: Claudia Tumas of Santa Monica spotted an apartment sign that read, “No Pets Allowed”--and had a cat perching on top (see photo).

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HOME, HOME ON THE SPORANGE: During the recent song writing discussions in this column (given free of charge), the problem of using “orange” at the end of a line was mentioned. Which prompted George Peck of Canoga Park and Anita Work of Sylmar to send along this revelation from columnist Marilyn vos Savant:

“Surprise, surprise, to everyone who thinks no word rhymes with ‘orange.’ ” Here’s a perfectly good one: sporange. In the science of botany, it’s another word for sporangium, a structure within which spores are produced”

I should have known that. I had a friend in junior high who never washed his socks. I believe his gym locker turned into a sporangium.

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DRIVING GAMES: Over the years, I’ve passed along sightings of L.A. drivers who were simultaneously involved in such activities as guitar strumming, flute playing, keyboard pounding on a laptop computer, balancing a parrot on a steering wheel, etc.

So I’m not surprised that the following joke is making the rounds locally, as related to me by Craig Cryer of Hermosa Beach:

A lady is driving on the highway and knitting at the same time. She’s steering with just her elbows. A cop spots her and pulls alongside. He rolls down his window and shouts, “Pull over!”

She turns to him and replies, “Nope--scarf.”

miscelLAny:

As you may have heard, a company called Pet Sitters International is promoting Friday as “Take Your Dog to Work Day” (cats, you’ll notice, are not included). Alas, the celebration comes too late for former Municipal Judge Noel Cannon. Before she was removed from the bench in 1976, she drew criticism for, among other things, hearing cases while her pet Chihuahua sat in her lap.

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Steve Harvey can be reached by phone at (213) 237-7083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com and by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, Times Mirror Square, L.A. 90053.