Art for art’s sake

Linda Zazanis has a need and ability to continue producing her nail polish-brushed canvases, knick-knacks and jewelry in the face of obstacles that are discouraging and sometimes outrageous. Those in the community who are aware and supportive of her can recognize the use of color and abstract creations as more than therapeutic.  

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Linda keeps a small black bag containing tiny bottles of many colors, some glittery, and she delights in showing off a new shade of green brought to her by a friend like Gracie in their camp. Her studio, as it were, is under the cover of a tarpaulin that shelters her from the elements. It’s a cluttered place to live and work,  and one that has been torn down and rebuilt more times than I can count in the last year. Few in the camp can put together a shanty like Linda’s.

Late last year, when the city sent a garbage truck to clean up what was deemed as an overabundance of personal property cluttering up a public space, Linda was not on site to salvage or protect her possessions, and along with a lot of other items not considered by her to be expendable were several of her artworks—finished canvases, and most of the jewelry, statuettes and other items she had been collecting. Linda, having survived on the streets for enough years to learn how to balance toughness with grace, is rarely prone to total despair, but during the conversation printed below she became understandably emotionally when explaining how the lost artwork affected her.

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So they took some of your artwork? What happened?

“They took it. They took it all. For two years I’ve been doing my artwork. For two years I’ve been collecting jewelry, so I could open a store. In January, ok, I had two of the counselors from LA Family Housing that were my helpers, that were willing to go and say that I was highly recommended to get this loan. Ok? I was going in January. I was ready for it and sanitation took it all. I mean, took my future. I tried for two years to get up out of here and it’s like now I’m right back where I started. It’s been 15 years, come on, give me a break! A person doesn’t try that hard and work as hard as I have, 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, to try and get out of here if they didn’t want to get out of here, get out of this situation. They wouldn’t do it. They’d say “Hey screw it!”

There was a three-day notice, but I wasn’t in town. And then I had some of my stuff over there and then this police officer comes up to me, and I had five carts sticking out, and he said, “How many carts are you going to take” and I said “Well, I’m gonna take all of my carts.” And he said, “No you’re not. You’re taking two.” You know? I mean who are you to tell me after everything I’ve done for the last two years, to get out of here? Who are you to put me back at the bottom? By taking everything I own that was of value, that meant anything to me”

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Canvases donated by friends and well-wishers have allowed Linda to resume her work.

“ … you know, when you don’t have income… and now at 62 I can’t get a job, because I’m too old. You know? So, I tried… well, you know, somebody said ‘Linda, you know so much about jewelry, and about stones, and about emeralds, and about metals, when it comes to jewelry. Why don’t you try and open up your own store?’ And I have a friend, there’s a couple, that are real good friends of mine, and we all recycle and we have all found, beautiful, wonderful, expensive valuable things. And a lot of them aren’t valuable, but they’re beautiful and they’re still able to be sold. So, I was going to open a store and then that went into the trash. And they put it in a trash truck. A smelly, stinky, dirty trash truck. That goes around down the street and….and puts… you know, empties the blue bins and the black bins, and you know all of the bins that are in front of your house. That’s what they put our stuff in and then they want… you know, they say you have 30 days to go pick it up, by appointment. Get ‘em to answer the phone.”

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Most of the artworks in this last series of photographs were lost…

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“Anyway, she was all white when I got her and I happened to just start, you know, messing around with nail polish and painting, and trying to get a little color on her. And people were commenting and saying ‘Wow that’s beautiful.’ You know? And so I decide to paint her dress all black and I built her hat up to make it look like it had a feather on it. There was a lot and the thing that is so hard… I was gonna have my grand opening at night and I was going to auction her off for a shelter for single women. It was gonna go for good.”

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Dori

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When I first met and spoke with Dori last August at the St. Charles Borromeo Church in North Hollywood, the most enduring impression was her cheerfulness in the face of great hardship. As her story printed below testifies, Dori’s life was shattered by a tragic fate, a brain aneurism which derailed her dreams, put her at death’s door, and still affects her physically and otherwise…   

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Revisiting Dori’s story today, after finally locating her cluttered but homey RV (a camper shell) parked for now on a residential North Hollywood street, I’m struck by how little she talked about her early career in music. She had told me about a song she had once written that was included in a high-profile movie soundtrack, but not much more. Today she shared an old CD which contained that song and five other well-written and produced tracks, recorded by the band she sang and played keyboards in. The music is lovely, her voice sweet and strong. As she sang along with the CD, it was still her song, still her voice. Dori also took out an old 11x14 portfolio that held several high-quality black and white portraits of her in those salad days, portraits of a beautiful and sensitive artist. There were also pictures taken with Rick James, Gary Wright and other luminaries of that era. Most surprising, among the memorabilia stuffed in the side pockets of the portfolio, was a card (a love letter really) written to her by Prince. It’s envelope also held a color Polaroid of Dori and the legend, taken sometime in the late-70s before he hit superstardom. She mused about selling it to some collector, but seems to have decided that in spite of her dire straits, it’s not worth it. 

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“Because of my aneurism I might forget some of the things you ask me, My name is Dori, my age is 58. Before I had a brain aneurism, I owned a spa called the Oasis Day Spa in Studio City and we did facials, massage, nails. I had about ten employees and I was working about eight days a week. And I think the stress of it all just got to my head. One night I was working in my studio at home and writing music and then I suddenly started to feel lightheaded so I went down to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and I saw this black blood that was under my skin and I had white circles through my eyes, then I just fainted and then went in a coma from that point.

I was in the hospital when I woke up … I came out of that stroke and was like ‘okay I have to get back to work.’ You know, I was telling everybody I’ve got to get to my spa because I just started it four years prior and I really wanted it to do well. And it was, and I was very busy that day, so my receptionist kept calling me and she said you always answer the phone so what’s the matter with you Dori?  So she came to my house and found me in bed with the two dogs next to the bed lying there and I couldn’t move so she called the ambulance and they took me into the hospital and said that I was experiencing a brain aneurism.

Actually I could talk or think about what people were saying but I couldn’t respond. So that was what the scene was all about for three weeks. They were going to take me off life support and then Greg, my ex-husband, came up to me and said Dori, I want you to know that it’s okay if you go but if you want you can stay. But they are going to take you off life support so you need come to and give me a sign that you are going to come to so I squeezed his hand and he said ‘I think she’s awake come on in,’ and they all came running in saying ‘yep she’s out of the coma,’ so get it out so we can get her going.

Now I didn’t have my business because it had died probably a couple months before I was out of the coma because they just didn’t know how to keep it running you know, which I understand. So that died and then I had a house that was going to have to be put up for sale, which I went bankrupt on. So I went into bankruptcy from that, and then I got an apartment, which I could afford because I was babysitting dogs on the side too as well as getting money from the government.

And then the rents went up and from there I lived in a house on Irvine. For six years I rented a room and he let my dogs in and let me do music and everything so it was fine but then he decided he wanted to sell the house. And when he sold the house, looking at rents and stuff and how much they are, it was so expensive I couldn’t afford it. So I got an RV. And that’s where I live now, in the RV. Since probably, six months now. The police say that neighbors are complaining occasionally because I was living with a guy that we’d fight a lot. And so he’s gone now thank God. I got a ticket the other day for being there for more than three days because the police had come. 

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I love the homeless people that I meet. To me it’s like another family you know, it’s a good family and the food is good that we get too because we can go to different places everyday and get fed. So that’s helpful. I’ve never been homeless, I never ever thought I would even be in this position. I get money from the government. Every month I get like $889 for disability. And then I’ll house-sit on the side and (watch) animals you know, which brings in a little cash. And that’s really what I live on. Six hundred of it is already spent with the storage that I have and that kind of thing.

My family, both my parents died and my sisters, one lives in Nashville and the other one I’m not sure where she lives. They don’t even know. Because I don’t know if they know how expensive rents are …

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Yeah it would be nice if I could write a hit song, that would be good. That’s about what I want to do now. And I have a whole studio setup. I’m trying to get the electricity so I can plug it in and work on my keyboards. But I’ve got 15 songs that I wrote on my own that are pretty good.”

Homeless on Broadway Street, Los Angeles

Homeless on Broadway Street, Los Angeles

iPhoneographic street photography at the Los Angeles Marathon. March 17, 2013….