The Kaufmanns met Wright in 1934, one month after their son, Edgar Jr. (he preferred to lowercase "junior"), had become an apprentice at Wright's commune-cum-studio at Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wis.
In 1906, handsome and fresh from Livorno, Modigliani settled among other émigré artists in the Montmartre studio commune of Le Bateau-Lavoir, the Shoreditch of its time.
She landed in a Craftsman fourplex in Silver Lake; her neighbors were Roman Alonso, of the then-emerging design studio Commune, who gave her freelance work, and the bag designer Clare Vivier, with whom she went on to share a studio.
During the 70s, after he'd returned to Nigeria from the US, he set up Kalakuta Republic, a commune and recording studio, and declared his band independent from the State of Nigeria.
The original Ben Owen -- 36-year-old Ben Owen III is his grandson -- was a nationally known artist and one of the first potters hired to work at Jugtown Pottery, the pottery studio and commune that was started in the 1920's to preserve and expand the tradition of North Carolina's potters.
Its fanbase built through the 60s and 70s, circulating in squats, communes, labs and studios, anywhere where the idea of global transformation seemed attractive.
It's a leap from an S.R.O. to inexpensive studio apartments and commune-style Tudor homes for young professionals and multigenerational families.
The commune and self-declared republic housed a recording studio and many of the musicians and dancers connected to his band.
"It's not the stereotypical fashion studio, it's more like a hippy commune," he laughs.
Much of the work on the album was undertaken at her house in Los Angeles, in what she called a "commune environment", before it was completed in a rented studio in Hawaii.
