In the late fifties, the outlines of the Los Angeles art world were narrow by anybody’s standard. Unlike many regional cities of equivalent wealth, the city still lacked an independent encyclopedic museum. Contemporary art was mistrusted. The public ignored it, and conservatives—most vocally, government officials and figurative or “Sunday” painters—demonized it. Even so, an art market existed but just barely.

Off the grid and out of time, artist/filmmaker James Benning constructed two facsimile cabins in the High Sierras: Ted Kaczynski’s former home in Montana and Henry David Thoreau’s retreat at Walden Pond, both poignant replicas of independent American vernacular architecture.

DIY culture, artist-run initiatives, pop-up galleries, and ‘zines have long been essential but often unhistoricized aspects of the art world. What happens when that independent fringe drifts steadily into the mainstream and informal networked culture influences the establishment?

Like clockwork, from 1958 to 1993, the Model Railroaders Club would meet every Tuesday night near San Diego, in a hangar at the Del Mar Fairgrounds on Jimmy Durante Boulevard, and run model trains. The word ‘hobby’, implying the business of amateurs, is surely too moderate for the concerns of these ‘train people’, for whom work and leisure are seemingly indistinguishable.