The email from my friend Hildegarde Duane said, “Dear Friends, finally, with the help of my pandemic companion online editors and spirit guide Canelo, here is my walking meditation: Meaning in the Neighborhood.”

Succinctly written and read, her video offers stories resonating from architecture of her neighborhood. Series of connected footage flowing through as the author and her ‘step dog’ walking down the sidewalks of her few blocks of domesticity. She connects the viewer to the city in humanizing pace as the sentimentality of our build environment is told in fade in-fade out verses.

She writes and photographs in urban Los Angeles, sort of illuminating how our lives look and feel like in this kind of a city. How are the histories made and forgotten? Do we know our neighborhoods anymore? Why did the new owners cut the trees? What do those arches mean? What frames architecture? What’s in it for urbanism? These are my questions. She offers no answers.
However, her stories define the poetic depth of Meaning in the Neighborhood.

MITN is also a eulogy to *Canelo, the family dog and an observer of his own.

“Hildegarde Duane attended Barnard College, New York Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and Harvard University’s PhD program in Chinese Art History. She has worked as a museum curator, University lecturer and producing partner with Sir Ben Kingsley. Her works of art are held in collections including  Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid and other galleries and museums worldwide. She is the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts.”
Her films, performances, artwork, and a long time collaboration with artist David Lamelas are widely written about.

 *A personal note: Goodbye Canelo.