Beans and worms wriggling inside the aquarium-like interior of a refurbished gas station may seem an unlikely calling card for a well-credentialed young architect whose journey began as a chemistry major.
“They’re very squishy,” says LA-based artist Mandy Palasik of “Soft Surrealism,” her current installation in a retro gas station in Glendale. “In their last incarnation, they were christened beans and worms,” she says with an airy giggle.
Baltimore-born Palasik says that she loved art in high school and “had no idea that architecture was even a career. An art teacher saw my drawings and said I had a good eye, and that I should be an architect. When I told my family this, my father said that you have to be really smart to be an architect, and you have to be good at math, and therefore I should be a pharmacist. I’m so stubborn; it was like, okay, the challenge was accepted. I went in blind.”
Her current installation is on display at the Adams Square Mini Park Gas Station, 1020 East Palmer Avenue in Glendale, through April 18, 2025. The Glendale Arts and Culture Commission generously sponsors this temporary art installation through funding from the Urban Art Program, and support from Glendale Library, Arts & Culture, Glendale Community Services and Parks, and the Adams Hill Neighborhood Association.
The venue is as goofy-relevant as Palasik’s art. Her 50 or so inflatable vinyl beans and worms –they also resemble weightless crookneck squashes–bob, boop and cluster like cartoonish lost souls inside the historic 1936 Streamline Moderne Gas Station that the City of Glendale fought hard not only to save, but to celebrate as the centerpiece of a much-needed public green space in the center of a densely populated business district.
The effect suggests a post-psychedelic fish tank occupied by curvaceous creatures that peer curiously through the glass or squiggly lifeforms writhing under a microscope’s lens.
For some of us, their biomorphic shapes, wet-look shine and black-light colors also trigger patchouli-scented flashbacks of San Francisco light shows, and squeaky, see-through inflatable furniture and pillows of dorm rooms past. They’re as glossy and confectionery as jellybeans, with the exception of the rose pink forms.
“I had to have that color,” explains Palasik, “but the manufacturer did not produce pink vinyl, so that color had to be printed onto the form. That gives the pink inflatable more of a satin-matte finish.”
She adds, “One of the pink beans has googly eyes. You can’t always see them. It depends on how the forms are arranging themselves. I love hearing the peals of laughter when someone discovers them.”
The artist’s interest in science is congruent with her retro pop culture taste, since tech and medical breakthroughs of the 1960s shaped many of the visual arts, especially futurist architecture—one need look no further than the landmark LAX Theme Building. Car culture and jet travel, experiences deeply embedded in Southern California’s DNA, led to the flourishing of Googie and Atomic Age styles, as well as the once-ubiquitous kidney-shaped swimming pool. In historic terms, the Streamline period, which produced the gas station, may be considered the genesis of these iconic design trends.
Palasik somehow captures the giddy pairing of seeming science and pure whimsy, reminiscent of the extraordinary (for the time) visuals of the 1966 kitsch classic—witness Raquel Welch in a skin-tight white vinyl wetsuit, attacked by a blizzard of human antibodies—“Fantastic Voyage.”
This work may seem a nod to the obvious: Jeff Koons, an influence also present in the darkly witty balloon sculptures of DJ Morrow.
Mindful of the proposition that some plastics may literally last 1,000 years, Palasik expresses some ambivalence about using vinyl and builds “reincarnation” of materials and elements into her project plans. Prior to their arrival in Glendale, the beans and worms were commissioned as a “site-responsive” interactive Community Arts project by the City of Tempe, AZ. In that venue, the inflatables were uncaged and mingled freely with humans. In that hands-on setting, participants (mostly kids) responded to the inflatables as truly architectural, co-creating dwellings, tunnels, and arches.
Magnets embedded into the forms connect them at what Palasik calls nodes, fitting them together “sort of like a puzzle.” She describes the inflatables as resembling “blow-up Legos” that do shrink and expand with changes in temperature, and deflate slowly, necessitating periodic “doctoring up,” as she calls it. From Palasik, “I figured out that I’d need an air compressor pretty early on. Doing it with a bicycle pump would take forever.”
She says nighttime is the best time for viewing “because they glow.” The venue is open to the public 24/7.
In spite of latex’s durability, Palasik describes her work as “temporal.” Much of her professional life is dedicated to residential and commercial design, and in light of our region’s recent fires, she says, “The feeling of home is so precious, and it’s so heartbreaking to work with clients who have just had all of that ripped away. The pain is unfathomable, but now we’re creating new spaces for a new life, new memories.”
As for the beans and worms, whither next?
“My dream,” says Palasik, “is to find them a home as part of the choreography of a synchronized swimming performance. Because, after all, they really are just pool floats with attitude.”
