BEDT I ME S TOR IE S Merry Norris
Merry Norris has made her mark on West Hollywood in very visual ways. As a noted (if not the most notable) art consultant in Los Angeles, she worked with the architect for the West Hollywood Library to commission Shepard Fairey’s “Peace, Freedom and Creativity” mural at the adjacent City Council Chambers building and to install “Platanus Bibliotechalis,” a sculpture by David Wiseman that scales two stories of the library’s stairwell. Norris also has participated in the city’s “Art on the Outside” program. She organized the temporary installation of painted steel sculptures by Peter Shire on the median of Santa Monica Boulevard Hills and coordinated a photo exhibit at the Pacific Design Center entitled “The Japanese Contemporary Architecture.” Norris also has worked with the Andaz hotel, and in 2008, helped commission and oversee the installation of “The Departure,” Jacob Hashimoto’s first exterior public art work. The multi-layered tapestry of 700 painted aluminum tiles was strung on nautical cables and suspended in front of the hotel’s restaurant/lounge. Currently she is working with the Center for Early Education, whose expansion includes the installation of public art. And that’s just West Hollywood.
Norris collects art herself as well as advising collectors. Her house just north of Sunset Boulevard is a museum of its own. There, surrounded by paintings and a stunning new piece of sculpture by Livio DeMarchi, she gets her start each morning reading newspapers—in print! “A typical morning: I go downstairs, make a Keurig coffee, and grab the newspapers that have been thrown near ‘nightymonster’ by Peter Shelton (the Venice-based sculptor) near my front door,” Norris said “I read newspapers in bed,” she said, calling out a list that includes the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Business Journal. “And I love tossing them on the floor as I am finishing them.” Also on her in-bed reading list are magazines such as Artforum, Artillery, Vanity Fair, Form, Angeleno and our own West Hollywood Magazine, on whose advisory board Norris sits. “I am an avid art collector who became an art consultant many years ago,” Norris said. “I love to share my enthusiasms with new collectors for their homes and especially their bedrooms.”
PHOTOGRAPH BY MIKE ALLEN
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