The Tower Connection
Brentwood Tower 1, acrylic on panel, 7.75” x 7.75”
In the summer of 2016, I spent long, quiet hours painting one of my favorite, little-known, LA landmarks; Brentwood School’s West Campus Tower. It was quiet because all the students were on the East Campus at BWS Summer Adventures and my 18 month old daughter was attending the Little Eagles Faculty/Staff Daycare, still taking two naps a day. It was little-known because it was mostly hidden behind the unmarked gates of the Lower School’s campus. The crenelated walls around its perimeter just barely peaked over the treetops on the eastern edge of the West Campus, saying “hi” to the corner of Sunset Blvd and Saltair, greeting the bells from St. Martin of Tours like an old friend.
Such a peaceful and uncanny haven is created when an elementary school is pupil free and encircled by tree-rifling breezes from the Pacific Ocean. I had time to connect with my surroundings and listen. I began to pay homage to this intriguing form that overlooked our little campus, enchanting us with its castle-like magic. I began to paint the tower’s portrait from multiple views. I connected to it as the children did, imagining that it had supernatural powers and imbuing it, in my mind, with a wistful affection.
The tower was particularly dear to me for many reasons. Over the years, it housed Brentwood’s music room, which was not only home to my dear friend and colleague, Olga Nevin, but also where I met my musician husband, Danny T. Levin. In 2004, he showed up there with an enrichment program called Key to Joy, which entrusted him to the task of teaching trumpet to 4th grade students. I spied his jubilant fro from the adjacent art room as he approached the side entrance on his first day of teaching. I was intrigued by the sensation of strong premonitions from the very beginning. Little did I know that the same tower he approached that day would serve, a decade later, as the West Campus Admissions Office, where I would often retreat to the former Director of Admissions, Mary Beth Barry’s, cozy couch during the exhaustive 1st trimester stage of pregnancy with our daughter! Or that I would hold that toddler daughter’s hand in mine and lead her up the stairs to visit Tamyra Fuller as we learned to count on the narrow staircase leading to the second floor offices. My family seems literally formed with magic from that tower!
Prior to Brentwood’s acquirement, the Tower was a convent for the nuns who ran Marymount Junior School. Mary Beth, who had served as a nun herself prior to her days of teaching, reminded me that she could feel the presence of the Sisters. I felt something sisterly there as well, often choosing to climb all the way to the top to meditate or find a new perspective. The gothic style windows were like serene and wise eyes—portals to my own wisdom, clarity, and truth.
So much so, that when the demolition notices were placed on the doors and windows in 2019, I made a special request to the maintenance crew to save me one of those windows. I now have it mounted on my living room wall so that I have that prophetic symbol to relate to every day. It’s like a special messenger that whispers to me on the way in or out the front door, “Your life has meaning and purpose; you are the one you seek.”
Before the tower gained significance to me, it was a family home. In fact, in 2018, an elderly man who lived in the tower as a young boy brought his scrapbook to Brentwood. I photographed the pages in his book to keep in my own memories, because it was clear that he also felt the same sentiments toward the aging building that some of us at Brentwood did.
It was also believed to have been the office of a real estate company, originally constructed as a marketing strategy to sell homes in the new Brentwood neighborhood. This was the story that was told on the last field day we had before the summer the structure was raised to make way for the construction of the present day Saltair Building.
Though it is no longer physically on campus, it is part of the history of our evolving West Campus, and I carry pieces of it with me in my teaching philosophies and the magic of a familial relationship built into the community that continues to form my family unit. My daughter barely remembers the tower, but she knows the special tie to Brentwood that makes her feel at home on campus. May we hold our days in the esteem of what is irreplaceable. What we do every day is important because our days are priceless.
I have been working with a local printer to make unframed open edition fine art prints of my original acrylic paintings, "Brentwood Tower 1" and "Brentwood Tower 2.” They are printed with archival supplies. The 7.75"x7.75” image is centered on a piece of 8.75" x 8.75" textured paper. I title and sign my prints in pencil below the image just before transferring them to the buyer. If you’re interested in requesting one, please fill out the form below.
