Los Angeles native Lesley Marlene Siegel has been captivated by signage her entire life.
She began her series, Apartment Living is Great, in the early '90s, as the photographic documentation of Southern California apartment building names, bringing to light their importance in landscape and community history. It now comprises over 2,300 images. The majority of these buildings are affectionately known as ‘dingbats’, boxy '50s and '60s era apartment complexes, their blank facades adorned with compelling signage.
By juxtaposing images, using her love of wordplay, her appreciation of graphic design elements and details found on these buildings, Lesley creates thematic groupings: Broadway Musicals, Cinema, Desert, Tiki and Palms are but a few. Curiosity about the stories behind the names led her to create ‘docu-histories’, in which her photographs are combined with text from personal interviews with building owners on how the name came to be, and also include cherished family snapshots. Whenever possible, she salvages actual signs from apartment buildings slated for demolition or renovation.
Lesley began showing her work at the Parker•Zanic Gallery (Los Angeles) in a 1991 show titled 1% - A Group Exhibition of Works for Public Spaces. Other shows have included: Urban Scape, Rural Scape at the Downey Museum of Art (1992); Crossing LA: Home, Place, Memory (Los Angeles Festival (1993); and VeraCITY: Challenging Documentary Views, curated by the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies (1995). In 1993, she received the Emerging Artists Grant from the Los Angeles Center for Photographic Studies/Olson Color Expansions.
Her work has been featured on CNN International Headline News (1994), PBS/KCET’s Visiting With Huell Howser (1993), in House Magazine - Simian Issue (House Industries, 2001), The Wall Street Journal (1994), Los Angeles Times (1993), Tiki News (1995) and Outré Gallery Press’s Taboo: The Art of Tiki (1999).
In 2003, Lesley had a solo show and accompanying “Apartment Living is Great” catalog at Outré Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.