Feb 3,
2011, 2011, Midnight
Anyone can get a bunch of art to hang in their homes, but few people
turn their residences into actual works of art. Gregangelo, who
Sara Faith Alterman
wrote about
a few months back, has a pad that he's spent three decades
turning into a museum (which, by the way, is also called Gregangelo)
with the help of many local artists and folks involved in his
Velocity Arts and Entertainment
crew. On a recent Saturday afternoon, Sara, her fiancee Sam, and I
trekked up to the fancy pants part of West Portal to check out the
Gregangelo Museum. Sam and I had never been inside before, and the
affable Greg (for short) gave us an in-depth, three-hour tour of every
last kitchen nook, crawl space cranny, and secret trap door room, most
of which went far beyond my wildest imagination. (He even showed us his
roller skates, which is his method of choice for getting around the
city).
Each room is in a completely different theme, decorated to the nines
with sculptures and paintings and thousands of knick-knacks. The coffee
table pictured above is from what was technically the third room we
saw. It's covered in a tower of candy, some of it fake and some of it
very real (Greg gave us to-go bags to take sweets away with us.)
Greg is an awesome host. He's a great conversationalist, who seems as
interested in his guests as they are in him, and he knows how to give
good spread. Here's a little tower of yum that he had waiting for us
when we arrived (and that's Greg in there, too).
There's a lot of Ancient Egypt going on at Gregangelo's. There are
pyramids and paintings everywhere, like in this bedroom, where
everything is a different shade of emerald or gold.
When Greg has a color theme in mind, there's no limit to how far he can
saturate a room in this hue. This photo's blurry, but this was one of my
favorite parts of the tour. Everything in this section is orange, and
when you crawl in (literally, like on your hands and knees) Greg can cue
a record player by remote control to play "The Girl From Ipanema." Sam
is holding one of many hundreds of bouncy rubber balls with long rubber
spikes found in the room.
What is this, you ask? A time machine, obviously. Every artist's home should have one.
If I could go back in time, I would like to collect this painting by
Margaret Keane, the famous San Franciscan whose work is all over the
museum. Greg told us a good story about a paint-off between Margaret and
her then-husband, a contest to prove that she was the actual artist
behind the Keane works.
The Gregangelo museum is visited by a lot of kids (and, from time to
time, bachelorette parties, from what we heard). There are so many
little details in each room that children - and those with a childlike
sense of stokedness - have a lot to look at.
My favorite part of the house, though, is up in the attic. That area
represents the cycle of life, and involves a lot of crawling and
spinning around, mirrors, glowing lights, and generally, very
psychedelic stuff everywhere. The last part of this wing is a pyramid
room, where unfortunately none of my photos came out. I can describe it,
though; it's like being in your own private laser light theater. (Which
= sweet!) Greg played some wild new age jams through the speakers and
we were instructed to lie down on pillows as images of stars and planets
were projected in the dark over our heads. It was, like the rest of the
Greganglo experience, completely surreal. I hope we can have a Bold
Italic event at the Gregangelo pad; it's like no other museum in town.
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