Frank O. Gehry, soon to be feted at LACMA with a retrospective shipped in from France, has been busy recently not flipping off the design world. He was downright beaming as he hosted eighth grade students from Hoopa Valley Elementary School at Gehry Partners (FOG).

FOG helped the students as part of the Turnaround Arts program craft projects inspired by his fish lamps.

“I started out as a truck driver in the Valley,” said Gehry as he shared his modest beginnings. “I attended community college and USC at night. A ceramics teacher saw a gleam in my eye when I visited the construction site for his house, by architect Raphael Soriano, and encouraged me to take an architecture class. During that architecture class, the floodgates opened. No one could stop me.”

Well, maybe not so modest after all.