Melissa Richardson Banks and Christy Addis-Gutierrez

00:02 Melissa Richardson Banks age. Well, okay 51. I confess October 25th 2013 Los Angeles, California and friend and collaborator.

00:16 I'm Christy Addis Gutierrez and this is October 25th 2013 in Los Angeles.

00:27 And we're friends and collaborators.

00:32 Okra save we have to talk about the book.

00:38 This is this has been an amazing experience and we're going to talk about the book and this is the elephant in the room here. So.

00:47 I I met you earlier this year and it's just kind of a the whole experience of the book and I guess we should tell what the book is because no one is here to see the book but you and I the book which of the title that took us forever and ever to get cigarettes really amusing snapshots of the arts district downtown Los Angeles, and it's one that I really never expected to do, but it's really started with you.

01:12 Well, I was a fan of your your blog and had seen your photographs online on Tumblr and had noticed them.

01:24 And can I see so much imagery online, you know how to something stand out but then I kept seeing more and I kept seeing more and then I was walking around downtown and I was seeing the same imagery in front of my eyes that you were seeing in front of your eyes, but I was not seeing what you were saying because I could tell by looking at your photographs.

01:45 That you were seeing a story to going on downtown that I was unaware of and I was so attracted to it and that's what just brought me right in there. But I think there's more than you just finding my photographs. I think the story but I think is most appealing when you emailed me. It was the fact that when I was coming when I came to Los Angeles 20 years ago. I now know you were leaving Los Angeles to Southern girls. You're going back home. I was like Ellie Mae Clampett coming here cuz I just struck oil back into her I didn't have a lot of oil but I struck at my ex-husband and I were like Ellie Mae Clampett. We packed up everybody and came first moved to Beverly or at least downtown LA before it was kind of cool and you packed up a husband. And did you have both kids to get you packed up and went to back to Virginia. I was your guinea.

02:39 So what was interested so you you weren't just so you must have been searching like that for me this year it really the experience of what happens with his photographs to it's been it's been a kind of a search and a soul-searching like for me but I think you were it was marrying something that obviously was happening in your life to we are obviously women of a particular age. We look much younger than we are by the way for those who can't see us but the idea is that I think where I kind of got that Pitbull age when we're reflecting on their lives. Are you sure? Yeah. We'll also I think that that the photographs have an emotional quality to them that I was quite attracted to this sort of a wistfulness is sort of a longing is something going on that is sort of like reading between the lines and it was something I can maybe cuz I'm at the same stage of life because something that I was very attracted to and wasn't something I was single line in other places and I think that's why I kept going back to see more and more and eventually I thought

03:39 Myself these photographs would make a great book and that's what led me to try to put together a layout that I thought might appeal to you. And again, I think I want to go up. If you don't even below the surface of what you're saying said it really isn't about the book even though I started off the saying it's about the book. We got to talk about the book but it's really not among the mug and I think it's really about our stories both together now, but also separate and what really brought us here to Los Angeles what made us leave Los Angeles and what brought us back here and how we met. So what made you decide to choose Los Angeles when you left Texas y Los Angeles well for me, it was does it always start with a husband and his dad and Flour Bluff Texas doesn't sound like a real place.

04:39 No, it's like cake flour. That's even the right there, but it's the way we came out here and and I eventually found my way to the arts district and people that know me now because it's like they hit place in La like why are you here? And how did you come here 20 years ago? And I'm like well when I came here 20 years ago was I was I was kind of the young kid in the block, you know, I'm not really know. What time does it have people been here a little bit stronger than me, but it was it felt like home. I traveled a lot with my ex-husband and when we came out here, I really with longing for a community. I was longing for place. I wanted to have a place a small town feel and and it's so funny when people hear me say that about Los Angeles because I think it's as big huge sprawling Metropolis, but it's like small town USA in the arts district at least are in downtown and back then there wasn't me. They want me to keep falling. Right? Right, I grew up in the machine shop. So it's like that Industrial.

05:39 I felt like my father was a machine as my mom was a school teacher and it was kind of like it was like almost like Mayberry RFD but with but a twisted one.

05:50 Yeah.

05:52 But you didn't know it was going to be like that when you left Texas, you don't even going to find a community cuz find a community in Los Angeles is very difficult. And I think that's what makes downtown, you know, the arts district special in that way. But when you left you just said I'm going to Los Angeles, but you didn't know you were going to find Community. They're not know I didn't actually it kind of found me in a lot of ways but it's like I think it's like like you were seen with a photograph Sir with what what draws what draws us two things are people are places, you know, it's kind of like you have to really go in deep inside yourself and find with them are for me.

06:30 It just felt right. It's kind of felt like everything that I was I felt like home to me and I can't really quite place it and I think that's why for me. Why are you all so we started document it when it started to change but it really didn't change much until the past few years and then it escalated and it snowballed and and I really wasn't trying to okay. Well, I'm going to take a pretty picture. I just wanted to not forget my capture. I didn't want to forget cuz everyday at walk outside and I always say that they're getting up early has its rewards and you know, that's because I have my dog sudden two cats to dogs and my dogs always drag me out in the morning and it's always an early bird in

07:18 And then I just I get to see everything before it really even anybody else when I get to see you and somebody left the night before and living in a place that's full of artists and creativity. You never know what someone might have pain in the night before a zester. There might be something there and I get to capture it before like early this year. I woke up early on trying again this year has it been a lot of change I decided not to do a great great project that I wanted to do at the time that I love very much and then I broke up with my boyfriend of 6 years and I broke up with things were really inside and I can really tell now because when you gave me the low res images that are fine, but that the most compelling you cancel the one that made me cry or whatever we're like

08:10 They were the ones that were something really happened. And I know right so Valentine's Day was kind of one of those days. I woke up and I went over to Plymouth General store where they do a lot of community wheat pasting and somebody had painted a Target and they shot an arrow through it. It was in the building and it was through a cow's heart. It was a heart that they had gotten it wasn't a painted heart. It was a heart in a literal heart a little heart. They must have gotten it from like a Butchery or something and it was only up for a few more than a little bit because by the time the patrols come out, they pulled it out of the wall with a bull's-eye captions, but it was like

08:56 Cuz I had lost someone I loved, you know.

09:00 So yeah, I get to capture those things and like even as the first one to see him in a lot of cases.

09:08 So it's it's been interesting. So I guess I never would have just not been really been purposeful in terms of going on in documenting. It's been like I don't know like in at the Wonders a favor now that I look at right now and you know, the story behind us Ally IQ can see every morning. Uke I can go by there and then the sky looks beautiful and you get to see the downtown Skyline and and down at the end of the valley is where a lot of street artist will go in though that night will paint something and which changes in the past 2 weeks is been one day the bulldozer showed up and mega toys is witches are now I know a historic Art Deco dust revealed in my neighborhood because they pulled off the paint and now we can see all the things that were there.

09:52 And it just out of rubble pile of bricks and it's kind of like unbelievable really that they would choose to tear that down. I don't know why they wouldn't worry have it. It seems totally worth that process. I think what's interesting is kind of like what the reflection that we have with our lives too and they mentioned it just for me and I think for you to we've had these conversations where I

10:17 It's been our lives have been a change in flux, and it's almost like feeling like okay, so I'm historic am I going to do?

10:30 It's true. Is it going to be just unrecognizable? And then where do I fit in?

10:36 Yeah, so it's not just photos. It's not just booked a bribe the book. It's not just building. It's also kind of reflecting on life and for me and been kind of that personal looking at the reflection of myself so that if the photographs are not with the idea that I'm taking a photograph. It's like I'm capturing a menu memory, but it's also a touchstone or something. That is who I am today, and I just happen to be beautiful.

11:05 But so, you know when I met you and you and I know we were talking a little bit Elsa about identity and who we are and we're both women with two with double last names. Yes. So we've kind of identified ourselves. I think your address is is your father's name my podcast about how keeping in Richardson, of course, it's my father's name and duty at us as your husband's name Banks is my husband's even though he's no longer there but it's been interesting as a look at the idea who we are in terms of identifying identity Who We Are

11:41 And I think that that's one marker kind of an interesting. Yes. Well, I was I kept my maiden name for about the first ten years of our marriage and then Curtis went overseas to China on an artist trip. And this is before there were a lot of peaceful arrangements with touring in China and I just thought this could actually the last chance I ever see him. He could just be in a Chinese prison and he might not ever come home. I mean something good to happen. And so while he was gone, I change my name to hyphenate Addis Gutierrez went to the court went through all the process had my driver's license changed everything with the idea that well if he ever does come home.

12:29 I'll have his name and that will be so like my gift cuz up until that point I had never wanted to have his name is never even occurred to me to add his name when we were children were Gutierrez, but I didn't see any need to add it so when he came home and I told him that's what I had done. He said.

12:50 Well, I finally feel like a man. It actually meant so much to him that I actually felt a little shame that I hadn't thought of doing it sooner. I mean it to me was a gesture but for him it actually have a lot of meaning so

13:08 And what would I like about it now? Is that when you are a - 8 you become kind of singular in that no one else has that combination and names usually

13:19 I'm with your - 8 you become much easier to Google and everything else. I mean, there's not very many other people like that. So that's sort of them.

13:29 Another aspect of it that I kind of like but

13:34 Yeah, that's how we ended up being a combination. It wasn't from our wedding date on my halfway to the way it happened. So in and actually I was originally - 8 - 8 it then it was it was just it was Melissa Richardson. And then the first year I my ex now ex-husband that my husband at the time I was in a car wreck, and he was driving my car at the time. We just got married but still under my name and it was so challenging the insurance company is following us and we couldn't you know, they can never find what is it richest owners are paying for things are Richardson and they looked all over for me. We got to be such a hassle. I'm thinking why did I even make this choice? So I hyphenated it for the time but people still do the duration of my marriage. I was married for twelve years. They kept shortened it to Banks, but when I got divorced which is now been about

14:34 15 years ago now but I insisted that people not drop the banks and I always am sorry about this to my ex-husband, right eyeball. I dropped the bank. So I have to drop it inside the - is so I actually kind of have a tagline now. So it's like it's Melissa Richardson Banks two last names. No hyphen. So I have a tagline so but it's kind of insisting. It's just like you just because there I haven't been able to find another Melissa Richardson pains and it was like an identity. So it's actually kind of Interest became an identity for me and you don't know who I was.

15:14 And I don't have part of your history, even if he's not part of your current life.

15:21 It's all okay. I really feel like any kind of names people Jesus. Okay, and

15:26 Is there a reason to judge anybody about how they choose to do it and some people say well, why didn't you hyphenate your children's names? Well, they can choose to do that if they want to it's a lot of name to carry around. So I'd like to come to loop back to to that idea of identity because one of the things that I discovered it with collaborate on this book with you is that when you we both of our essays I wrote my essay at the end of week when we finalize all the photos but we also submitted are by us at the very end and as I was flipping through and as they look into the back of the book, seriously, I hear some cages here, by the way.

16:06 There was some things cuz I think I told you when I first met you reminded me a lot of my sister you look like my sister or your like soft-spoken like my sister and I'm the big loudmouth, you know, but it's but it was just really interesting because I didn't expect a few things on here because if you're in Los Angeles if I put in your PIN, if a particular age, like like us and making your over 40 Los Angeles, you probably heard of owls bar was closed in 2001. But and but when again I was leaving you were at you were leaving. I was coming. I read this that says here that you basically nights of performing in the arts district much love but now closed out bar and that's leopard like Christie outboard. What were you playing? What were you performing? I guess I should say. Well I was I had moved here to work in the film business and everybody I knew were consumed and everybody I knew had was living with a boyfriend.

17:06 Girlfriend I always really very lonely. I mean, I worked all day long hours, but I didn't really have any social life at all outside of work.

17:16 So I needed things to make me feel challenged and excited. So I picked something really scary. And that was to sing in front of strangers in front of people. I mean, I enjoyed singing and I thought I myself thought I could carry a tune but I wasn't in a performer which looking for something in a singer. You can sing all you want. But if you can't perform it that's a whole nother thing gives me a salad and I was really sure I could do that. But I found out that elvar had this thing called.

17:59 Thursday was on Thursday nights.

18:03 Image it was like an amateur night. I forget what they call it. I remember now, Okay, and anybody could get up and do their thing and they would be poets that would get up. I'm at a whole bunch of poets from USC to that process musicians would get up sometimes hold bands sometimes sort of more performance art. Sometimes it would be the same people every week. Sometimes it would be near people and I would try to get down there any Thursday that I wasn't working too late. I would try to run down there and this was at a point in my life where I was no longer drinking and so the Big Town's to me was also not only the singing But singing sober that means getting up there having the nerve to do it. I am anything to calm my nerves and I had to get up there and I was singing acapella because I didn't have I didn't know anybody that could accompany me and eventually I would find like a drummer guitar player and they would accompany me.

19:03 Some of the time when their schedules permit in it, but I never could really could find anybody that was into it that much so it was really just

19:11 Catch can maybe sometimes it would work but most time I get up there and do one or two numbers end up developing a little nickname. I found out later. They were calling me frisky Christi.

19:28 I'll just get up there plant my feet on today just start belt now and you know, the song is only a couple minutes long. So it's not going to kill you to do it, but it was good for me to do because it really got me to try something that was scary and do it anyway, and it push past that inclination to does not do something and the crowd there was very

19:54 Accepting they never booed anybody. They never have told anybody that they there actually a beautiful crowd there. So they didn't like something they might just not sure a lot of interest in might go in the other room in order a beer and just you know, maybe walk away but nobody ever was mean to anybody on the stage. So it really just made it. Okay, and you can get a couple songs or if you really can't tell the crowd didn't like it. You could just get down after 1 so and that happen to me sometimes too. But my biggest Triumph is when I went on stage after this really cute girl sang the theme song I had planned to sing.

20:34 And so I thought why can't sing that song now and some waiting for my turn and waiting for my turn and I thought what the hell I'm just going to sing it anyway, so I felt very proud of myself for for doing that. I really was just born out of loneliness. I really just had nothing to do nothing to look forward to nothing to strive for.

20:56 And it was just a way time. Just get some Focus to those non work hours. You just said, it's almost that's probably why I picked up my not even a camera. I pick up the iPhone. So I think maybe that's where we really have that Bond. We're kind of Ball Z, but we were women with butt out of fear. What I did my whole life has been fighting fear and it's funny cuz people that know me think if he is extroverted and very confident in together, but it's you know every day. I'm about I'm really and introvert by nature and extroverted by force. I have to force myself to be an extrovert in many ways, which is surprising to a lot of people that surprises me too and I love her very good job, but what I love you have the nickname frisky Chris Christie because I am the Texas Tornados. My friend calls me and also twizzle the other one, but but it's the same thing with you know me. I did I refrain from using the word for table.

21:56 Different in Jenna you chastise me often about not. But I I really think of myself as a snap shooter and it's because I'm trying to act like I play a photographer by day, but I'm not really when I kind of like the appointment on TV not in kind of thing and for me that some

22:13 Yeah, I shy away from describing that way. But yet I'm doing that. I'm going to prolific something with like 25000 images just for the Arts District 11 last year and it's time for you to actually go through the ones I did put on line which were several thousand in to call them down to a hundred was pretty substantial an amazing, but I can relate to you being on stage and just kind of just saying I'm going to do that and that's kind of how I was doing it, but I cannot with the intent that I was going to be for 4 minutes, let you know we're doing something I was more about like I said mine was just because I'm a maybe understanding that I'm getting older and I'm worried about losing my mind, but I also know that for me it's kind of like

22:59 Let you know this from the essay and I'm going to flip through the book curious if you hear anything going here, but it's like

23:04 It's that last heart that you may remember reading of the essay one and it was basically saying that I started with I just woke up the essay and I it's this is kind of related to have time when I first got married and I found out my husband was an alcoholic and we've been married just a year and it was really a scary time for me. I was young and in my twenties and away from home and didn't know what to expect and so I started writing something because I felt like I was just I was alone and scared and didn't know they were horse. So I wrote and it was back when they had computers. This is going to show my age and it's a for iPhones that used to have the five and a quarter inch floppy Drive Shack TRS-80 is at the somebody will know better than me, but I remember it was my ex-husband was a professor and he was that's what he used for his classes and I put that floppy drive in and I started writing a talk to her book just to kind of purge.

24:04 And it was I just woke up. That's all I remember cuz later on. I lost that computer. I lost a floppy disk. And so when I started writing the essay for this book, I realized it was the way I should start this book because it's a full circle and it really was pregnant. So it's I just woke up mind you I don't try to wake Before Dawn it just happens and I've always been an early bird and then going to go send it this whole thing is that you know, and I talked a little bit about it and how I was feeling but the last part is I or one of them which was for me and my snapshots illustrate. What seems to be my long to buy the lifestyle in a place where I live for quite some time downtown has been my muse for 20 years in the arts district has been my photographic inspiration.

24:51 And you were talking earlier about some of the things with the way that mother photographs go. It's like I photograph what I see and you mention that it's not really you could be at the same place that you don't see what I see. I think that's what makes us unique us as individuals that we all week. We see what we it's right in front of us, but we have a different way of interpreting are we our lives and experience of color is even more than that was getting from it is that I'm missing some I'm missing. It really is something there. She turns the corner. She sees something she put her camera to capture it. I walk right by it. My mind is just dealing with just a little twiddly nothing's of the day. I'm not seeing

25:32 She seems something that I need to Value. What's right there in front of me. I mean you really were bringing home a lot of stuff that I was forgetting and it was more than just a photograph. I was I think that I'm photographed it's coming from a place of pure love because I'm I love where I live in my neighbors and the neighborhood and feeling so much that it's exactly what I was saying that kind of that long. Goodbye. I am I know I'm leaving it's like leaving a lover leaving someone you love very much a place and that's I'm trying to capture all those things and I see them my brain sees everything in saturated color. So I see it and say it's how I want it imprinted. That's how I want to trigger and remember because I know

26:24 It's not going to be the same place in a month from now. It's not going to be the same place next year. I'm watching literally just the past two weeks every day. I'm watching The Bricks fall and it's like my heart drops. I see that happening and I don't you know, it's a lie and in one level it's also going to let me move on. I think it's it's it's kind of indicative or just maybe illustrating what has been happening for many years in my life and inside of me cuz I don't think I could have ever left until everything crumble down and had to crumble literally in front of me before I was ready to go. I was clinging on to it and I think so. That's why I want to capture those those those remnants before

27:09 And so that's why that last paragraph I wrote it over time. I've come to realize my waking up is more than literal. It's figurative even more evident to me during the process of reviewing the Thousand to put it in the butt.

27:23 And it talks a little bit about how each of them every every image that I snap and you know this I'm not sitting I'm not walking around and go to I'm going to take that picture. I'm walking to crazy dogs are sniffing everything. I have to stop I pick up my phone and I'm just snip it and I don't even have time. I don't even know how to use Photoshop. I don't even I can't even go home. I just click

27:47 It goes I have to do the maze on the fly. But but it's just said in this is this is how I really feel about the whole thing. It's just I realized now because of you and because of you coming to me that it was

28:02 That it was kind of like it was this time of reflection in transition. I hadn't really pinpoint it. I hadn't really said this is what's happening. I was just in the midst of it.

28:13 And this is the last thing just kind of I wrote this essay by the way, just nonstop. I didn't go back and edit it. Really I just kind of it was just for the last sentence. It's really it's somehow it seems that my longing is preceded my leaving not just this place but where I am I am here, but I'm gone.

28:36 You really in transition in a lot of ways then.

28:41 So it's it's it's kind of what we've been sharing and I don't know why the more I know about you in the more we become friends and now collaborators and I feel like that that's kind of that place and I don't think it's unusual for a lot of us to go to these different times, you know, and especially the sage you here often. I'm this the stereotypical, you know, since when men of our particular age might go get a red fast car and get a shiny new girlfriend and I can now understand that and I where am I? What is that time? Like, you know, how are you?

29:19 I was inspired actually even share my photographs two years ago by a musician.

29:26 By Mike, what is a bass player I love and you probably know him because he's one of the like the icons of the US Punk scene San Pedro cuz you said you lived in San Leandro.

29:43 And when I I saw him at in Venice at the Beyond Baroque a few years ago and he published his book and he has a most amazing lyrics in his songs. I don't know if you remember hearing that he's now with the missing man, but he was with a minute man in and he you know, his some I have to confess just like with Cheech who you know, I work there that I didn't really know Cheech from Cheech and Chong. I knew cheats from the art scene, which I think was surprising to him. It's the same with Mike Watt, you know, I really got to know him because of this book that he did and he does what I do he wakes up in the morning take photos and then he that's kind of his peace and his Solitude and I just think that's the sure. Do you know what let him to make a book the same thing. Someone actually came about and saw his photographs. Yeah, so

30:34 I think it's kind of that same amazing experience in that it touch somebody and I and I'm grateful that.

30:42 It touched you ungrateful.

30:46 You found me I'm glad you found my photographs.

30:51 And I'm really I just really grateful. Well it I'm grateful to because when I first returned here with all the challenges of moving to a new place and return to a place that I experienced as a young person, you know, I wasn't I wasn't loving it wasn't it wasn't the big adventure. Did it had been the first time around and I kind of knew that that was going to be the case. It wasn't like that was a shock or anything, but I needed to find things to love and so this was something that really helped me because one thing you can tell about your photographs is how much you love the arts district and like I said, I was walking by and I was missing what was there but you weren't and so it gave me like a gateway to start saying oh this really is a place there really is stuff happening. They really are people here that I need to pay attention to

31:49 And it's not just a bunch of things to complain about. You know, you got me invested in what's there in order to appreciate it? And so it over my ex? Well, I think you

32:04 You've heard me say this time. I went that it's it is true for me. It's also been about the idea of finding love.

32:12 Big gain in love being out of love and I really felt like the transition May because I'm more experienced in life now and what I really discovered is that it you know what I love now may not always be there and that again the arts district in the neighborhood that change really was that where I thought it was but then I when I really got to experience I realized it was I was actually

32:40 It became something it was embodying what I was doing other parts of my life. And I mean really cuz I was another the love of my work which was changing my love of a person I loved who was gone the love of a neighbor which is changing and now will be gone. And so I realized that really it's all about love. It's reflecting on life and love so I really appreciate so hopefully we'll find more to love we're going to find those things. I think we're on a path of that and and I think for us another thank you for sharing that experience with me and this whole experience. I don't think I would have done this if I help other people I don't help do this. I have never done anything like this, so

33:21 Well, it's hot. It's hard to put yourself out there like that and it's a big it's big hump to get over so usually need other people to help you with that.

33:33 That I think it's the most important part of what we shared together is realizing that we're not alone that we ended in How I Met many people in our lives, so he

33:45 I want to treasure what we have. I'm really looking for it makes me hopeful and I and I and even though I died in the kind of the essay done here, but I'm gone. I think I should add a little at a time here, but I'm gone off to other dentist adventures. And if I had more lovers, I think I think that's for you to so.

34:04 He fell asleep. So so I hope I'm not on the last chapter yet.