December 2011

Letter From the Editor

VPGlance Magazine is a distinguished magazine about Los Angeles culture. We strive to give readers details about everyday life in Los Angeles. These details range from daily activities, lifestyle, the places to be, and the stars we admire. Glance has had so much of a positive response from readers, that we are extremely content to be able to continue to please our readers.Vanessa Partow Navid, our editor is very proud to work with Glance Magazine. She was born and raised in Los Angeles County. Vanessa is not only the editor for Glance, she is also a graphic designer, illustrator, and a photographer. She went to school at FIDM in Los Angeles and majored in graphic design with a focus on branding. Vanessa got married in February of 2010 to her husband Sina Partow Navid. They met in 2003 while they worked together at Washington Mutual Bank. They did not enjoy working there but they are very glad they met. Vanessa is a very positive person and feels it is crucial to always follow your dreams and to never give up.

Karina Michelle

We grew up watching her on the big screen and hosting the Miss America pageants. Growing within her success,

Karina Michelle is the new face for Cover Girl. She has been assisting Tyra Banks with America’s Next Top Model and the directors for Cover Girl chose her as their new face.

Karina grew up admiring her mother and other woman that were in beauty pageants. This is why she began being involved with the Miss America pageants. Hosting was not easy for her at first. She told us that she was always scared of public speaking. She was usually nervous at school our even at auditions. After meeting with her acting coach, she began to lose her fear and now, one would never know that she would get those butterflies in her stomach.

Her next big film is due to come out next fall. She will be co-staring in a drama that stars Reese Witherspoon. Karina told us that working with Reese was a pleasure. She stated that Reese is very down to earth and that they spent a lot of off screen time together and became close friends. We will see the two new friends on their first interview together on E by the end of the year. More details to come. Karina Michelle is also quite occupied with charity work. Events that she has been working at have raised millions for kids with disabitlies and illnesses. She thinks of others before herself. Glance is very proud to have met with Karina Michelle. We are proud of her success and look forward to seeing her on the red carpet. We will have our eye on her and keep you all posted on all her modeling and movie news.

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Frank Gehry Frank Gehry was born Ephraim

Owen Goldberg in Toronto, Canada. He moved with his family to Los Angeles as a teenager in 1947 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His father changed the family’s name to Gehry when the family immigrated. Ephraim adopted the first name Frank in his 20s; since then he has signed his name Frank O. Gehry.

Uncertain of his career direction, the teenage Gehry drove a delivery truck to support himself while taking a variety of courses at Los Angeles City College. He took his first architecture courses on a hunch, and became enthralled with the possibilities of the art, although at first he found himself hampered by his relative lack of skill as a draftsman. Sympathetic teachers and an early encounter with modernist architect Raphael Soriano confirmed his career choice. He won scholarships to the University of Southern California and graduated in 1954 with a degree in architecture.

Los Angeles was in the middle of a post-war housing boom and the work of pioneering modernists like Richard Neutra and Rudolph Schindler were an exciting part of the city’s architectural scene. Gehry went to work full-time for the notable Los Angeles firm of Victor Gruen Associates, where he had apprenticed as a student, but his work at Gruen was soon interrupted by compulsory military service.

After serving for a year in the United States Army, Gehry entered the Harvard Graduate School of Design, where he studied city planning, but he returned to Los Angeles without completing a graduate degree. Gehry briefly joined the firm of Pereira and Luckman before returning to Victor Gruen. Gruen Associates were highly successful practitioners of the severe utilitarian style of the period, but Gehry was restless. He took his wife and two children to Paris, where he spent a year working in the office of the French architect Andre Remondet and studied firsthand the work of the pioneer modernist Le Corbusier.

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“I tell students, ‘Don’t take life too seriously, don’t plan nothing nohow,”