LA ART NEWS A R T S A N D C U LT U R E F O R A L L O F L O S A N G E L E S VOLUME 6 NO. 10
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JANUARY 2019
The LAUSD and the First Amendment By Michael S. Overing, Esq. & Edward C. Wilde, Esq. movering@digitalemdialaw.com ewilde@digitalmedialaw.com
Beau Stanton’s mural of Ava Gardner entitled Lady of the Grove “on the outer wall of a public school gym in Koreatown speaks to history. On that score, everyone agrees. But what the artist intended as an homage to the Cocoanut Grove, which once stood nearby, Korean groups say is as offensive to them as a swastika would be to Jews or a burning cross to African Americans.” [https://www.latimes.com/local/ education/la-me-edu-lausd-ava-gardner-mural-20181211-story.html] Due to the offense, the LAUSD determined to remove the mural; but then pressure came from the other direction. For instance, artist Shephard Fairey wrote on his personal webpage, “If Beau Stanton’s Ava Gardner mural is removed from the Robert F. Kennedy school I have chosen to insist that my portrait mural of Robert F. Kennedy be removed also.” [https://obeygiant.com/beau-stantons-ava-gardnermural/] Faced with competing interests and the need to comply with California law respecting the removal of visual art from a building, the LAUSD reversed direction: “Los Angeles school district officials on Monday backed off immediate plans to paint over a mural at a campus in Koreatown as they faced a growing chorus of objections.” [https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-mural-destructionon-hold-20181217-story.html]
The unveiling of Beau Stanton’s mural at Branded Arts’ RFK Mural Festival, 2016 Branded Arts in Partnership with Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, Local District Central, and Los Angeles Unified School District Screen Shot from Branded Arts Documentary Video
This conflict exists not merely at the level of different political interests involved in the message portrayed by the artwork (not to mention the conflict over what message is actually portrayed: we are unaware of any evidence that Mr. Stanton hoped to create sympathy for Imperial Japan). There is also a legal conflict between the rights of a property owner to dispose of its own property and the power of the government to censor speech. This is admittedly not classic censorship action: the City of Los Angeles is not shutting down a newspaper. In fact, the City of Los Angeles – like all owners of visual artwork – has the ultimate power to remove artwork. No one is currently contending that the LAUSD must maintain this gym in place for all time. At some point the building will come down, and with it the artwork. But that does not mean that LAUSD can bring this mural down at this time. There are instances where someone may do something for no reason and yet may be prohibited from doing the same act for a bad reason. For example, California is an at-will employment state. That means that in most instances both the employer and the employee can part ways just because they want to. If you are working in a store, your employer can dismiss you tomorrow because the employer doesn’t have enough money to keep employed (or because the employer suddenly dislikes the color green and you are wearing a green continued on page 5
TEACHERS PREPARE TO STRIKE Music, Arts, Ethnic Studies at Risk
As LA Art News goes to press, Los Angeles public school teachers are preparing for the imminent possibility of a strike. While salary issues have received the most media attention in the dispute between United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), there is more at stake and on the table, including arts and culture issues. At a December 19 press briefing, UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said, “Our bargaining proposals from the beginning of this process 20 months ago have been an attempt to save public education in Los Angeles, to make thriving schools in L.A. for the students of L.A.” At a December 15 march through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles, in which more than 50,000 educators and their supporters participated, Mr. Caputo-Pearl characterized UTLA as “those ready to fight for the music, arts, and ethnic studies classes our students need.” “We have been experiencing 25 years of turmoil,” said Mr. Caputo-Pearl at the press briefing, “because of class sizes that are too large, students who don’t have access to counselors, standardized testing that has gone through the roof—that has ripped music and the arts out of our curriculum; that is turmoil for 25 years.”
50,000+ teachers and their supporters marched through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles December 15.
UTLA-endorsed school board candidate Jackie Goldberg addresses a crowd outside of The Broad Museum (Eli Broad is a major backer of charter schools and contributor to anti-UTLA candidates.) continued on page 3
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LA ART SHOW RETURNS TO CONVENTION CENTER MORE THAN 120 GALLERIES FEATURED
The LA Art Show, one of the largest international art fairs in the United States, returns for a 24th year to the Los Angeles Convention Center January 23-27. This year’s focus will be on the Pacific Rim. Programming at the annual show features row upon row of gallery booths, featuring artists and venues from across The United States, plus Asia, Europe, Latin America, Australia and more. This year, over 120 galleries will show works from 18 countries. A number of galleries are exhibiting for the first time this year. Within the immense space of the Convention Center, exhibits will be grouped in a number of themed areas. CORE will be a dedicated space for 28 galleries recognized around the globe as leading the way in contemporary art with exceptional popularity among avid collectors. Modern + Contemporary will feature the largest section of programming, with painting, illustration, sculpture, and more from all 18 countries represented in the show. DIVERSEartLA will celebrate the City’s position on the Pacific Rim with 50,000 square feet of programming involving donated exhibition space featuring not-for-sale art and an opportunity for connections among international collectors, artists, curators, museums, nonprofits, and residents of Los Angeles. Overall curation will be by Marisa Caichiolo, with exhibitions by Art Share L.A.; Arte Al Limite of Chile; CCK of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Dorian Wood; LACMA; LAUNCH LA; Los Angeles Art Association; MAC Museum of Contemporary Art of Salta, Argentina; MOLAA; Robert E. Holmes Art Collection; and French visual and performance artist Sarah Trouche. As part of DIVERSEartLA,acclaimed Buenos Aires artist Marta Minujin will present two large-scale works. The 1983 return to democracy in Argentina inspired Ms. Minujin to create a metal replica of the Parthenon DIVERSEartLA, a program curated by Marisa Caichiolo in Greece covered with more than 20,000 books, many of which were banned during the dictatorship. The highlighting the works of top Latin American and Hispanic work is presented here as a video installation. “Rayuelarte,” meanwhile, honors writer Julio Cortázar with a participatory artists, will present renowned Argentine artist Marta Minujín. piece inspired by Pictured: The Parthenon of Books. Photo: LA Art Show a popular game. CCK will present “Memories of Mud” by Andrés Paredes. The installation is a participative, multi-sensory experience comprised of clay domes that house fantastical landscapes. Viewers can only see this when they immerse their heads in ports at the bottom of the installation, creating an experience comparable to putting on a VR headset—except this is real. The exhibition utilizes scent, original music, and indirect lighting. LACMA will present “Virtual Futures: XR Showcase,” offering four experiences exploring the breadth, the possibilities, and the accessibility of Virtual Reality in 2019. Pan-Asian Ink Paintings from China, Japan, and South Korea, rarely seen on a large scale outside of Asia, will show how black ink and calligraphic brush painting have evolved through traditional, historic, contemporary, and avant-garde forms. Included will be works by South Korean artist Chuni Park, who traveled the American Southwest for inspiration for his pieces done in black ink derived from pine soot. “The ink painting style from the East is one of the most important movements in art history, but Chuni Park, Black Landscape. Photo: chunipark.com in the West we know almost nothing about it,” says LA Art Show Producer Kim Martindale. “We need to understand ink painting better, and with LA’s position on the pacific rim, we are in the ideal position for it.” The ROOTS section of Art Show LA will honor the voices and movements that came before with dedicated exhibition space for eight galleries that showcase historical works and contemporary artists following in those traditions. Littletopia is an annual highlight of the LA Art Show. Conceived by Red Truck Gallery founder Noah Antieau and Juxtapoz Magazine co-founder Greg Escalante, the section features the best of the lowbrow and pop art movements, accessed through a custom archway. This year’s archway is being created by popular artist duo Dosshaus (Zoey Taylor and David Connelly). This year’s curators are Red Truck Gallery and Caro Beermann of Corey Helford Gallery. Every year Littletopia presents a lifetime achievement award. This year’s award will be presented to Camille Rose Garcia. Ms. Garcia is a Los Angeles-born artist whose broken narrative painting of wasteland fairy tales evoke surrealism, Disney and Fleishcher, while acting as commentary on the failures of capitalist utopias, blending nostalgic pop culture references with a satirical slant on modern society. An exhibit of Ms. Garcia’s work will be presented in Littletopia by Corey Helford Gallery. Camille Rose Garcia at Corey Helford Gallery. Ms. The art show Project Space area will showcase seven solo exhibitions, featuring artists from around the world. Garcia will be honored with a lifetime achievement award Works on Paper will be an area dedicated to showcasing at the LA Art Show. photography and other works not on traditional canvas. LUXURY pbsg will feature exhibitors who specialize in luxury items including jewelry and other accessories. Scott Hove’s cake-themed infinity chamber was a previous hit at the art show. This year, Mr. Hove returns with a large-scale wall installation, presented by Art All Ways. “The Best Days of your Life, an Atlas” involves 36 gallons of acrylic “frosting,” creating an illusion of imminent satisfaction. Gallery programming for 2019 will be very diverse. M.S. Rau of New Orleans will be exhibiting Julius Kronberg’s famous large-scale “Cleopatra” painting from 1883. Australian Aboriginal Art Gallery will feature Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, one of Australia’s premier female Aboriginal artists. bG Gallery will feature installation artist Mike Stilkey, who uses discarded books as his canvas. 5Art Galley will present two sculptures by LA graffiti artist RISK—his Julius Kronberg, Cleopatra, RISK (photo from Beyond the Streets) bisected cop car dipped in formaldehyde and a large shark made of machine parts. RISK’s pairing serves as both commentary presented by M.S. Rau on how police “patrol the hood like sharks” and the Buddhist teaching, “Embrace what you fear.” The LA Art Show Opening Night Gala will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The gala will feature an opportunity to preview the art show and a party. The LA Art Show Los Angeles Convention Center, West Hall 1201 South Figueroa Street, Downtown Opening Night Premiere: Wednesday, January 23 7-11 p.m. Show Hours: Thursday, January 24, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Friday, January 25, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Saturday, January 26, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Sunday, January 27, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Ticket information is available at https://tinyurl.com/LAArtShow2019
Dosshaus at the LA Art Show, 2017. Dosshaus is designing the custom archway for the Littletopia area of this year’s LA Art Show.
JANUARY 2019
Mike Stilkey, presented by bG Gallery
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UTA STRIKE
50,000+ teachers and their supporters marched through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles December 15.
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LA ART NEWS
ART OF THE JEWEL
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Sapphires, moonstones, pearls, and black diamonds are just a few of the natural works of art turned into artist-made creations by jewelry designer Paula Crevoshay. Over 50 luxurious pieces of jewelry designed by Ms. Crevoshay are currently on view at the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park. The work is inspired by Ms. Crevoshay’s passion for art, science, and the natural world. Her earrings, bracelets, and brooches take the form of plants, animals, and insects. The Natural History Museum’s exhibit is curated as to lay out the natural process of mineral creation, the characteristics that define a gem, and the art that transforms them into jewels. The Art of the Jewel: The Crevoshay Collection Natural History Museum through May 12 www.nhm.org
Kraken (moonstone) Simba (amber) Gold (Brazil) Gold on Quartz (Eagle’s Nest Mine, Placer County, CA) Sukumalee (sapphire, rubellite, tsavorite)
Nam Lai (moonstone, blue zircon, diamond)
Graphite (Sri Lanka) Blue Ring (black diamond, moonstone) Magie Noire (black diamond, sapphire, diamond) Swallowtail (black diamond, sapphire, spinel, amethyst)
JANUARY 2019
Rose Queen (rose quartz, pink tourmaline, garnet, moonstone) Rose quartz (Brazil) Madam Butterfly (opal, moonstone, blue zircon, aquamarine, garnet, sapphire, tourmaline, diamond)
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STAFF Publisher/ Creative Director Cathi Milligan Managing Editor Margaret Arnold Contributors: Margaret Arnold, Cornelius Peter, Brian Mallman, Amy Inouye, Stuart Rapeport, Cathi Milligan, Jennifer Hitchcock, Jeremy Kaplan, Harvey Slater, Madame X, Larisa Code, Tomas Benitez, Carol Colin, Margaret Rozga LA Art News is published monthly at the beginning of each month. LA Art News is available free of charge. No person may, without prior written permission from LA Art News, take more than one copy of each monthly issue. Additional copies of the current issue are available for $1, payable in advance, at LA Art News office. Only authorized LA Art News distributors may distribute the LA Art News. Copyright No news stories, illustrations, editorial matter or advertisements herein can be reproduced without written consent of copyright owner. How to reach us LA Art News 5668 York Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90042 323-387-9705
2019. JANUARY. LET’S DO THIS. For the first time in 2 years I have hope. It’s not just us in Los Angeles that are opposed to the Trump administration. It’s most of the nation (and the world.) We saw that in November during the mid-term election. Now will see how this plays out. Considering there’s a shut down of the government over that stupid wall, 2019 will be interesting. Now for the immediate attention let me direct you to the LA Art Show. We will have a booth there so please stop by. I love this show. Maybe it’s because I can be immersed in art, good, bad and, we’ll see. I also love that the general public gets to see art on such a grand scale. Besides that show there are many very cool exhibits around town and we have a newly added museum guide to help you find something for everyone. And when you’re not at looking at art, make some. Or make something. Get your creative juices flowing! So Happy New year and let’s do this!! Thanks, Cathi Milligan Publisher LA Art News
Contributions cathi@laartnews.com Calendar information margaretnelaart@gmail.com Sales - cathi@laartnews.com sign up for our newsletter at laartnews.com Where’s Monica?
continued from page 1 shirt). However, your employer cannot fire you because your employer has discovered you practice a religion the employer dislikes.
discrimination with a compelling interest and the least restrictive means of suppression. What are the justifications in this instance?
In the case of Mr. Stanton’s mural, we agree that the LAUSD has the power to ultimately destroy the artwork. And, in most instances, the LAUSD can paint over the mural without legal restraint.
There is no question that the Korean (American) community is entitled to protest images that are offensive to its culture, especially given the horrors at the hands of the Japanese occupiers. Even in the face of denials from the artist about what the mural represents, the Korean community has every right to its sense of betrayal.
But here, the LAUSD is not painting over the artwork because it wants to tear down the building or because the LAUSD wants to change the color scheme of the school. Here, the LAUSD is painting over the building because the LAUSD does not approve of the message being sent. This mural is being singled out due to its content: the government does not like the political statement (allegedly) being sent by the mural. This is similar to the situation where a boss fires someone for practicing a disfavored religion. The law often measures an action not by the action standing alone but rather measures the action based upon the intent of the actor. The LAUSD had no obligation to hire Mr. Stanton to paint any mural anywhere. But once the government decided to go into the speech business, it faces certain constitutional restrictions on how it speaks. Here, the government wants to use its power to stop certain disfavored speech – and thus advance another message. In fact, the mere act of painting over the mural is itself a form of speech: the government is actively communicating a message by destroying the mural. When Justice Kagan was a professor at the University of Chicago she wrote a law review article which raised the issue, “When speech [has] no claim to government promotion or protection, what limitations does the government face in voluntarily advancing some message, but not all?”
That is one of the key constitutional questions posed by the LAUSD’s decision to destroy the mural (or may be not). And now that the LAUSD is considering the issue anew, it arguably faces a constitutional problem if does not destroy the mural: Is maintaining the mural in the face of protest also a form of speech? Is it endorsing a viewpoint by leaving the mural intact? The arguments here have great subtlety, and we do not pretend that this short piece by any means answers any questions, nor do we claim it even addresses all the issues. But what we do know, is that the LAUSD has opened up a hornet’s nest of issues over competing rights to speech, property, education – all of which are now playing out in political arena but may very likely find themselves being addressed by a court. There are public installations of artworks all over Los Angeles. They represent varied viewpoints about our society, what it was, what it is, and what it may become. The decisions LAUSD makes today are every bit about viewpoint endorsement, censorship and the chilling effects of that censorship. Who knows, perhaps one day Justice Elena Kagan will be in a position to answer the question she asked when she was a law professor: “What limitations does the government face in voluntarily advancing some message, but not all?”
When the government decides the question of art based upon politics, it is engaged in viewpoint discrimination. The law already requires the government to justify viewpoint
ART ON THE WALL
MORE ART ON THE WALL
Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions) Originally painted in 1990 Repainted in 2018 MOCA Geffen
LA ART NEWS
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JANUARY 2019
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LA ART NEWS
GOVERNMENT NOTES
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GOVERMENT SHUTDOWN Multiple agencies are impacted by the federal government shutdown. Among those shuttered are arts and culture agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Smithsonian Institution. Meanwhile, although Congress agreed months ago to not only continue funding the NEA and the NEH, that portion of the budget bill has not yet been formally passed and enacted. Dollars being used by current grantees stem from previous appropriations, and activities may proceed without interruption. ASSEMBLY ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS, TOURISM, AND INTERNET MEDIA COMMITTEE ANNOUNCED As the California State Legislature enters a new session, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon has announced new committee assignments. The Assembly’s Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, and Internet Media Committee will Assemblymember Kansen Chu be made up of Assembly Members with a strong history of advocacy for arts and culture. Three of the seven members represent the Los Angeles area. Assemblymember Kansen Chu will continue as committee chair. Assemblymember Chu, a native of Taiwan, is a Democrat, and represents San Jose, Fremont, and surrounding areas. Assemblymember Tyler Diep is the new committee vice chair. He is a Republican from Orange County and is newly elected to the legislature. Assemblymember David Chiu is a Democrat from eastern San Francisco, where he has a history of support for the arts, public affairs technology, Asian American culture, and LGBTQ rights. Assemblymember Steven Choi is a Republican and a native of South Korea. He holds a Ph.D in library and information science and is a former Mayor of Irvine. Assemblymember Laura Friedman is a Democrat representing Burbank, Glendale, La Cañada Assemblymember David Chiu Flintridge, La Crescenta, Montrose, and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Atwater Village, Beachwood Canyon, Los Feliz, East Hollywood, Franklin Hills, and Silver Lake. She has a strong background in film and television production and as an advocate for historic preservation Assemblymember Tyler Diep and arts corridors. Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a Democrat representing communities west of Downtown Los Angeles, including Crenshaw, Culver City, Westwood, and Inglewood, became a member of the legislature in April of 2018. She holds a master’s degree in Arts Management and Public Policy. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, she worked with Rebuild La and the Los Angeles Festival, which used art to help heal the City. She spent 20 years in the nonprofit sector and the entertainment industry. Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian is a Democrat, an Armenian originally from Iran, representing the Hollywood Hills and a swath of the San Fernando Valley, including North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Universal City, and Van Nuys. One of his key areas of focus in the Assembly has been protecting and expanding the film industry. He has been Assemblymember Steven Choi involved issues impacting tourism and has demonstrated support for communityAssemblymember Laura Friedman based arts and youth empowerment.
Assemblymember Sydney KamlagerDove
COUNTY ARTS DEPARTMENT Los Angeles County is moving forward with its creation of an LA County Department of Arts and Culture. The transition of the County’s 71-year old Art Commission to a fullfledged department is expected by July of this year. “When we think about nearly 800,000 creative industry jobs in 2016, $200-billion in economic output, and $9-billion in taxes, we understand the impact of the arts and the creative economy,” Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas said. “With the new Arts and Culture Department, our region’s reliance on the financial output from the many sectors of the creative economy – digital media, sporting and other special events –will be included and enhanced.”
AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY There’s a lot more than books available at Los Angeles Public Libraries. It’s even possible to check out a ukulele. The instruments are available for three-week loans at the following libraries: Arroyo Seco, Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian Chatsworth, Cypress Park, Fairfax, Hyde Park, Jefferson, Junipero Serra, Lake View Terrace, Memorial, Platt, Playa Vista, San Pedro, Sherman Oaks, Venice, Wilmington, and Woodland Hills. The libraries will also be offering three-week ukulele classes for adult and kid beginners.
photo: Los Angeles Public Library
EXPLORE L.A. WITH YOUR LIBRARY CARD The Los Angeles Public Library has launched a program offering library card holders free or discounted tickets to 18 Los Angeles museums and attractions. The program is a partnership between the library system and Discover and Go. Passes are made available online at the beginning of each month. Participating venues include: Autry Museum of the American West, Battleship IOWA, Catalina Island Museum, Chinese American Museum, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Discovery Cube, Los Angeles GRAMMY Museum, The Hammer Museum, Japanese American National Museum, Kidspace Children’s Museum, La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Los Angeles Conservancy, Los Angeles Zoo, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Museum of Tolerance, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and Skirball Cultural Center. More information and passes are available at www.lapl.org/explorela. OUR STATE DINOSAUR California has a state flag and a state flower. It also has a state marine reptile, a state fossil, a state color, and a state dance. And now, with the advent of the new year, it has a commemoration of something very old—a state dinosaur, the Augustynolophus Morrisi, the “duck-billed dinosaur, the remains of which have been found only in California. The designation comes as a result of a measure introduced by Assembly Member Richard Bloom. “Why bother establishing a state dinosaur?”, asks Assembly Member Bloom. “Because, according to paleontologists and other scientists, stuff like this excites young people, sparking scientific curiosity and inspiring them to learn.”
JANUARY 2019
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CA SENATOR BEN ALLEN RECEIVES 2018 PUBLIC LEADERSHIP IN THE ARTS AWARD California State Senator Ben Allen is the recipient of the Public Leadership in the Arts Award conferred by Americans for the Arts and the National Conference of State Legislatures. “Senator Allen is very deserving of this national award given his leadership in support of arts education for the past four years,” said Robert L. Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts. “From authoring the Dance and Theatre Credential bill, which brought back credentials for those subjects after 40 years, to his successful advocacy this past legislative session to fund grants to support arts education in underserved districts. Further, as chair of the Senate Education Committee and Chair of the Joint Committee on the Arts, he is doubly deserving.” “Sen. Allen possesses what any arts education advocate yearns for in an elected official—a deep understanding of the transformative power the arts hold in the life of every student, and the skills, relationships, and determination that can move mountains. We know how lucky we are to have him on our side,” said Joe Landon, Executive Director of the California Alliance for Arts Education. Since being elected in 2014, Senator Allen has introduced four extensive bills to increase access to the arts in schools and help keep entertainment industry jobs in California, including the landmark Theatre and Dance Act (SB 916). He also held an oversight hearing to examine why the visual and performing arts are not widely incorporated into the curriculum as required by state law. The lack of visual and performing arts education is particularly acute in disadvantaged communities. He is leading a robust effort to ensure that all students are exposed to the arts in their school curricula. In his role as chair of the Joint Committee on the Arts, Senator Allen has focused the attention of policymakers on the important role the arts and humanities play in the State’s economy and in the region’s communities. Senator Allen was immersed in the arts at an early age. His mother is a working painter and ceramicist and an arts activist Senator Ben Allen reading a page-turner with in Santa Monica. His father is an English Professor Emeritus at UCLA where he taught great works of literature including residents of his district Shakespeare. “It’s my strong feeling,” said Senator Allen, “that access to the arts should not be a right of geography or privilege. Every student deserves the benefits that only creative expression can deliver. Not only that but we know that a high quality arts education can really be the difference maker between whether a disaffected student drops out or stays in school. So we spend some serious time looking at expanding arts Education access in our state.”
LA ART NEWS
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THE ART OF LETTERS by Margaret Rozga
Bills, advertisements, charitable appeals, yes, these arrive daily. Magazines find their way to my door, a few each month. On a good day the pleasure of an invitation to a wedding or decade-turning birthday celebration is mine. But personal letters, pages long and chock full of updates told with wit and charm? No, not in my mailbox. Not in several years. Not even a pedestrian one pager. Given what the United States Postal Service delivers, or rather doesn’t deliver to me, I felt at first inclined to agree with Cristen Hemingway Jaynes who laments today’s scarcity of handwritten letters. In her recent essay, “A Forgotten Form,” Jaynes cites the “humor and poignancy” in the letters of her great-grandfather, Ernest Hemingway. I also appreciate how his letters give her insight into the man she was born too late to know in person. Then a friend of mine emails me. The job she took last summer required a 650 mile move. She details her struggle to get up to speed in the new job, adjust to motherhood, make friends, set goals. Her future, her future: why is she finding it so hard to see the jumble of her present adding up to the future she dreams of ? To any future at all? Her email makes me feel almost as if she were still just across town, and I’d dropped in to see the baby and chat. Though my friend did not feel the tactile pleasure of “each pass of the ink on to paper” as Jaynes describes it, the result nonetheless was a personal and deeply-written missive. Reading it, I begin to question Jaynes’ assertion of emails “being too clinical for the expression of deeper feelings.” I find myself seeing other evidence that the epistolary form is alive and well. True, a salutation like “My dearest Jessie” has been replaced by “Hi Jessie” or no salutation at all. For the most part, though, what’s changed is not so much the form as the method of delivery. Emailed letters have the advantage of arriving almost instantaneously. When my daughters were away at college, they emailed me, sometimes, maybe most times, with brief updates or requests, but sometimes at greater and enjoyable length, they sent email letters. On another level, letters to editors of magazines and newspapers are now likely composed at a computer and certainly emailed, but the traditional standards for their content hold firm. The letter writer’s knowledge and personal experience are brought into dialogue with the subject matter and approach of a previously published piece in a way that gives an engaging sense of people in thoughtful dialogue. In the same issue of Poets & Writers where Jaynes’ essay appears, the letters to the editor offer such examples of the healthy state of current letter writing practice. These letters expand the range of specifics offered in a previous issue about “Breaking the Rules: When to Ignore Good Advice.” I enjoy and benefit from reading them. They deepen my understanding of writerly rule breaking and help me to know that I am not alone. Texting is more popular than email as way to keep in touch with family and friends. Texts are generally short. My phone’s Smart Reply sometimes anticipates what I might want to say and suggests a next word or phrase. Such brevity and artificial intelligence may help with prosaic communication tasks. Among friends, however, a series of back-and-forth replies, especially the idiosyncratic ones, provide a route to something deeper and more personal, more letter-like. Even on Twitter communication can blossom. I met poet Emilia Phillips when we were both at a U.S. Poets in Mexico workshop. We didn’t talk much there, though when my friend and I fumbled for money to pay the cab driver who took us all to the bus station on the way home, Emilia paid the whole amount and waved away our later attempts to contribute to the cab fare. So I followed her on Twitter. She often posts, sometimes just a phrase about her dog with or without photo, a table setting or the beets on that table, a couple of lines from a poem, or an observation of “parking lot wonder” with a photo of gingko leaves gold on an asphalt surface. So gradually I get the sense of who she is without having known her much at all in person. If we think of electronic communication as ephemeral and therefore not available to future generations the way Ernest Hemingway’s letters are, then we can be reassured by the work of James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress for almost thirty years. Billington acquired the billions of tweets in Twitter’s archive, a digital treasure trove that includes President Barack Obama’s 2008 election-night tweet. Of course, much social media is mundane, but then even hand-written letters can be perfunctory. The letters of Jessie Benton Frémont (1824-1902) I read while doing research for my book Pestiferous Questions: A Life in Poems provide examples. Some of the letters offer a breath-taking glimpse of her inner life, its loneliness and struggles despite her politically powerful family circles. Other letters, however, briskly address the business at hand as does this one: “My dear Mr. Beale, This will introduce to you my young friend Mr. Frank Harte who wishes to make his thanks in person. Very sincerely yours, Jessie Benton Frémont” As Jaynes points out, letter writing allows us to spin a “version of our lives that can have as much somber detail as Grimms’ Fairy Tales, or as much joy and exuberance as Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends.” Like Jaynes, I spin a version of myself every time I write. Mornings when I write in my journal, I also enjoy the tactile pleasure of fine paper and a smooth-flowing pen. That touch of pleasur may be what makes writing come alive and go deep in the process of composing a letter. Equally or more important, I think, is the realization that you are writing to a real person, someone you can visualize, maybe someone who will reply with an understanding of who you are, but certainly someone who will relish your specific details. Writing letters can be a practice by which to learn these tools of voice and detail that bring a sense of immediacy to our larger, more widely aimed writing projects. Typing or handwriting, US mail or email, Twitter or text, affectionate salutation or none: these are all choices and vehicles for the you that wants to connect with a he, she, or them—a person, or persons—important to you. They are all vehicles to practice our art. (Margaret Rozga is currently completing work on a chapbook length series of poems that follow Alice through and beyond the rabbit hole of Wonderland.)
JANUARY 2019
BRINGING ARTISANS TO PASADENA
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The Pasadena Bead & Design Show is bringing artisans from across the country to Hilton Pasadena on Friday, January 18 through Sunday January 20. The show celebrates handcraft and jewelry design and hosts 300 artisan exhibits of handmade beads, artistic jewelry, gemstones, with many original designs offered for the first time. The show also offers an extensive variety of art clothing, designer accessories, textiles, findings, beading and craft supplies, embellishments, decorative fibers, felted hats, leather, artwear, hand-dyed silks, raku beads, hill tribe silver, antique pearls, tribal textiles, painted linen, hand-tooled leather shoes, eco-dyed clothing, fashion design, polymer clay jewelry, embroidery, and woodblock fabric. Artisans and merchants are chosen by invitation and juried application, and include both traditional and contemporary artisans, emerging artists, quality dealers and wholesale suppliers, who will showcase the most exciting and unusual handcrafted products. Everyone is invited to roll up their sleeves and take part in one or more of the 75 workshops that are offered at all skill levels --in categories such as jewelry design, metal work, wirework, crystal setting, electroforming, leather working, bead making, art clay silver, hand knotting, mixed media, etching, chainmaille, alchemy, Viking knit, and kumihimo. Pasadena Bead & Design Show is the first design show of the year and many new and original products are offered for the first time. Show open 10am - 6pm, Friday through Sunday, January 18 through 20. Open to the public, everyone is welcome. Buy direct at excellent prices. $8 advanced tickets, or $10 at the door. Located at Hilton Pasadena, 168 South Los Robles Ave, Pasadena CA. For more information, visit www.beadanddesign. com, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook.
LA ART NEWS
GAMBATTE
BRINGING THE PAST AND PRESENT TOGETHER AT THE JAPANESE AMERICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM “Gambatte! Legacy of an Enduring Spirit” at the Japanese American National Museum, brings chapters in the lives of Japanese Americans together into a beautiful and unified whole. In the 1970s, Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr learned that renowned photographer Dorothea Lange had photographed his family in 1942, years before Mr. Kitagaki was born, as they waited for a bus in Oakland to take them to the Tanforan Detention Center, where Japanese Americans were being held at the onset of World War II. That was the beginning of what turned into a major project of historic documentation. During the war, such noted photographers as Ms. Lange and Ansel Adams photographed the Japanese Americans in and about to leave for concentration camps. Mr. Kitagaki has conducted years of painstaking research, identifying the subjects of those photos and photographing them or their direct descendants in the present day. “Gambatte” features a great many of these new images, paired with their historic counterparts. Many of the subjects were children or young adults in the original photos. They are now in their late 70s through early 90s. Mr. Kitagaki’s use of black and white images taken with equipment similar to that used in the 1940s further unifies the past and present.
Images for which Paul Kitagaki Jr is searching for identities
“As I examined Lange’s work, I realized that every photograph represented an untold story that was quietly buried in the past,” said Mr. Kitagaki. “I had many questions and few answers. Most importantly, I wanted to know how Executive Order 9066 forever changed the lives of these incarcerees who unjustly lost their homes, businesses, and sometimes, their families.”
George Sumida was 17 when he was photographed by Francis Stewart at Tule Lake War Relocation Center. Now age 90, he was photographed by Paul Kitagaki at his home in Southern California. After the war, he and his wife briefly settled in New Jersey before moving to Los Angeles and opening the Leland Hotel. “Music really helped ease the pain of being in a big camp like that,” said Mr. Sumida.
Many of the subjects of the photographs had spoken little of their wartime experiences. “Gambatte,” therefore, represents not only a visual history, but an important collection of oral history as well. The project to date includes 60 pairings. It is far from finished. The exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum also includes images for which Mr. Kitagaki is still searching for names and an opportunity for museum-goers to provide information and commentary. The Japanese concept of gambatte means to persevere and to triumph over adversity. Gambatte! Legacy of an Enduring Spirit Photographs by Paul Kitagaki Jr. Japanese American National Museum through April 28 www.janm.org Helene Nakamoto Mihara and Mary Ann Yahiro were photographed by Dorothea Lange at Raphael Weill School in San Francisco, California, in 1942.
Yukiko Okinaga Llewellyn (née Hayakawa) was sent to the Manzanar concentration camp with her single mother during World War II. Photo by Paul Kitagaki Jr., Manzanar, California, 2005. Historical photo by Clem Albers, Los Angeles, 1942.
JANUARY 2019
Members of Koyasan Boy Scout Troop 379 were photographed honoring the American flag at Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in 1943 by Pat Coffey. Junzo Jake Ohara, 84, Takeshi Motoyasu, 84, and Eddie Tesuji Kato, 86, were photographed by Paul Kitagaki at Mr. Kato’s Monterey Park home.
INDUSTRIOUS: FOLKE
The Art of Three Generations, One Family “From an early age I knew a creative future was my destiny.” —Artist CJ Metzger Works spanning three generations of a family of artists will be brought together in February for “Industrious: Folke” at the Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock. Members of the Johnstone-Allen family have worked in a variety of media, but they share common bonds of demonstrated skill and expressive use of vibrant color. Linda Johnstone Allen was born and raised in the Glendale & Northeast Los Angeles area. The daughter of artists & art educators, she was encouraged and inspired throughout her childhood and has been fusing her creativity with her love of community. Referred to by her daughters (also artists) as a “true renaissance woman”—Linda has life experiences working as an artist, illustrator, teacher, arts activist and champion to community preservation and redevelopment in her home town of Eagle Rock. Her current medium of choice is clay, and her ceramic masks are strongly feminist and spiritual. CJ (Candace) Metzger is Linda’s daughter. She is a painter, illustrator, writer, and designer. Her paintings and designs are narrative, often revealing sweet, wondrous, and sometimes somber stories of humans and their relationships with animals and the natural environment. She works in acrylics, collage, mixed media, and digital methods and has published a children’s book, released vinyl toys, and created patterns for stationary. She is the mother of a teenage artist. Miss Mindy is Linda’s daughter and CJ’s sister. Her work has been described as “Cartoon Folk Art,” and it is inspired by 80’s Anime, Disney, and Max Fleisher’s Betty Boop cartoons, but especially by her grandmother Mary, whom, she says, “worked as an ink and paint girl at Disney in the 1930’s on Snow White & Pinocchio, wore bright red lipstick and tiny polyester suits.” Miss Mindy creates fine artwork in fluid ink and acrylic paint, has worked in illustration and product design, and is wellknow for her Disney Vinylmation figures, “The World of Miss Mindy/ Disney Showcase Designer Vinyls! Series 1 and 2.” Mary Ellison Allen, paternal grandmother of CJ and Miss Mindy, was a premium inker at the Disney Hyperion Studios in the 1930s, where she worked on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Pinocchio.” Ralph W. and Jeanette Johnstone were the parents of Linda and the maternal grandparents of CJ and Mindy. Their work spanned decades and ranged from WPA art to careers in higher education. Their prodigious output included studio painting, mural art, influential design, crafts, and more. As a whole, “Industrious: Folke” will present representations from almost nine decades of work by one family—including painting, sketches, inkings, sculpture, and illustration. Industrious: Folke Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock 2225 Colorado Boulevard Opening reception: February 1, 6-9 p.m. Life Drawing & Art with Heart workshop, featuring costumed model and Valentine Crafts: February 9, 1-4 p.m. All ages.
LA ART NEWS
NELAart
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On the Secon Elysian Valley, art and eateri the updated l
Northeast Los Angeles Arts Organization, Inc.
January 12, 2019 - 7pm - 10pm
(Individual Gallery Hours May Vary. CHECK Gallery web sites for individual information. Just because a gallery is listed does not mean it’s open this month)
39. Kindness and Mischief 5537 N. Figueroa St. www.kandmcoffee.com
1. Avenue 50 Studio 131 No. Avenue 50 323. 258.1435 avenue50studio.org
20. Toros Pottery 4962 Eagle Rock Blvd 323.344.8330 torospottery.com
2. Bike Oven 3706 No Figueroa
21. Kinship Yoga/Wonder Inc. 5612 Figueroa St.
3. Namaste Highland Park 5118 York Blvd. www.namastehighlandpark.com
22. Tierra de la Culebra 240 S. Ave 57
4. Offbeat 6316 York Blvd www.offbeatbar.com 5.Twinkle Toes 5917 N Figueroa St (818) 395-3454 6. Future Studio 5558 N Figueroa St. 323 254-4565 futurestudiogallery.com 7. Bookshow 5503 Figueroa St. www.bookshow.com 8. The Art Form Studio 5611 N Figueroa St. Suite 2 www.theartformstudio.com 9. Vapegoat 5054 York Blvd. 323.963.VAPE 10. ETA 5630 N. Figueroa St. 11. Adjunct Positions 5041 Coringa Dr. 12. Matters of Space 5005 York Blvd www.mattersifspace.com 323.743.3267 13. Mi Vida 5159 York Blvd. 14. Vintage Tattoo Art Parlor 5115 York Blvd. 15. Antigua Coffee House 3400 N. Figueroa St. www.antiguacoffeehouse.com
25.Oneg Shabbat Collaborative Gallery 5711 Monte Vista Street, 90042 (inside Temple Beth Israel)
48. Rock Rose Gallery 4108 N. Figueroa St. 323.635.9125 rockrosegallery.com
28. The Greyhound 570 N. Figueroa St. 29. Urchin 5006 1/2 York Blvd. 30. Arroyo Arts Collective @ Ave 50 Studio 131 North Avenue 50 arroyoartscollective.org
34. Social Studies 5028.5 York Blvd. 35. Occidental College 6100 Campus oxy.edu
17. Leanna Lin’s Wonderland 5204 Eagle Rock Blvd. www.leannalinswonderland.com
36. The Glass Studio 5668 York Blvd. www.theglassstudio.net
18. The Rental Girl 4760 York Blvd. http://therentalgirl.com
37. Curve Line Space 3348 N. Figueroa St. Los Angeles, CA 90065
19. Mindfulnest 5050 York Blvd. 323.999-7969
38. Highland Cafe 5010 York Blvd. 323.259.1000
45. Portico Collection 5019 York Blvd.
47. Apiary Gallery at The Hive Highland Park 5670 York Blvd. www.thehive.la
27. TAJ • ART 1492 Colorado Blvd. www.tajartinc.com
33. Pop-Hop 5002 York Blvd. www.thepophop.com
44. Vroom Vroom Bitsy Boo 5031 B York Blvd.
46. The “O” Mind Gallery 200 N. Ave 55 theomind.com
26. MAN Insurance Ave 50 Satellite 1270 N. Ave 50 323.256.3151
16. Align Gallery 5045 York Blvd. www.aligngallery.com
JANUARY 2019
43. Sunday Girl 5662 York Blvd. www.sundaygirlstudio.com
24. Huron Substation 2640 Huron Street Los Angeles, CA 90065
32. Vapeology 3714 N. Figueroa St. 323.222.0744
41. Possession Vintage 5119 York Blvd. www.possessionvintage.com 42. The Situation Room 2313 Norwalk Ave.
23. Cactus Gallery @ Treeline Woodworks 3001 N. Coolidge Ave
31. Living Room 5807 York Blvd. livingroomhome.com
40. Civil Coffee 5639 N. Figueroa St.
49. Leader of the Pack 5110 York Blvd. www.leaderofthepackvintage.com 50. Fahrenheit Ceramics 4102 North Figueroa St. fahrenheitceramics.com 51. Checker Hall 104 N. Ave 56 checkerhall.com 52. Green Design Studios 1260 N. Ave 50 53. L34 Group 5622 N. Figueroa St. www.L34group.com
Next Art Walk February 9, 2019
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nd Saturday of every month galleries, businesses, and artists in Highland Park, Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Cypress Park, , and Lincoln Heights open their doors a little later in the evening and welcome visitors. Use this map for locations of ies, grab someone you love, get some dinner, and enjoy some art. Friend NELA Art Gallery Night on Facebook for last minute list.
27 17 20 42 11 35 18
45 12 44 16
41 48 14 31 13
31 43 36 47 25
4 29 34 9 9 3 4 26 33 19 52 38
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8 51 10 46 39 2853 7 6 21 2 2
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Visit us at NELAart.org LA ART NEWS
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NELAART GALLERY NIGHT SECOND SATURDAY DECEMBER 2018
Northeast Los Angeles Wellness Center Holiday Arts & Crafts Sale, at Future Studio
8x8, Silent Art Auction at Avenue 50 Studio
Frank Whipple, Alchemy 7x5 at MorYork
Kay Brown, Arroyo Arts Collective at Avenue 50 Studio
JANUARY 2019
Cidne Hart, Alchemy 7x5 at MorYork
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Brooke Sauer, at L34 Group David Avalos, Dos Fridas Eastside Collective at Avenue 50 Studio
Ruth De Nicola, Alchemy 7x5 at MorYork
Floyd Strickland, What’s a King to a God, at Avenue 50 Studio Betty Wan Hamada, Alchemy 7x5 at MorYork
Alberto Seoane at Vapegoat Joseph Botello at Mi Vida
LA ART NEWS
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INDIAN SPICED BLACK-EYED PEA HUMMUS Now that the heavy-hitting holidays are officially over, it’s nice to lighten things up a bit. This recipe gives consideration to the New Year’s tradition that originated in the south of eating black-eyed peas for prosperity in the New Year. But this offers more versatility. Enjoy this hummus on a sandwich, a top a cracker as an hors d’oeuvre, or even as a dip with raw vegetables, in the event you have already decided to take on a post-New Year’s detox or weight-loss program. I enjoyed it on some leftover sourdough bread crostini along side a baby green salad. 3 + 1 cups cooked and drained black-eyed peas 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice 1/4 cup tahini 3 cloves garlic 1 tsp garam masala 1 tsp. curry powder 1 tsp. sea salt 4 sprigs cilantro Combine 3 cups of the black-eyed peas, along with the lemon juice, tahini, garlic, garam masala, curry powder, and sea salt in the bowl of a Cuisinart. Pulse the ingredients into a fairly smooth mixture that resembles the texture of chunky peanut butter. Add the additional cup of black-eyed peas and cilantro, and pulse just to break up the cilantro and additional peas. This basically provides a little more texture to the hummus. I like being able to see a few pieces of the black-eyed peas, but you can make it as smooth or as course as you’d like. Enjoy immediately or store for later in the refrigerator. Photographed Serving Suggestion: Spread hummus on top of your favorite crostini along with a mixed green salad. Salad photographed is simply tossed with fresh lemon, olive oil, and sea salt. Harvey Slater is a Chef & Holistic Nutritionist, and owner of Harvey Slater Holistic Nutrition & Wellness, located in Pasadena. You can find more healthy recipes like this one on his blog: thewholedishblog.com
THE 5TH ANNUAL HIGHLAND PARK HOLIDAY TREE LIGHTING
December 9, 2018 Sponsored by City Councilmember José Huizar, the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, Highland Park Chamber of Commerce, and Garvanza Improvement Association
JANUARY 2019
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CLASSES IN NELA
Besides being a haven for artists and creative types, Northeast Los Angeles is the home of a fine array of arts classes, especially the industrial arts, but not limited to them. Below is a list of some of the businesses in the area that have classes. Do check with the facility to verify times and prices of their classes. As we find more places we will bring that information to all of you. Adam’s Forge 2640 N. San Fernando Rd. Los Angeles, CA 90065 Adamsforge.org You may email Nancy with questions at blacksmithclasses@gmail.com Please check their web site for a listing of all of their classes and special events. Check out a Discovery class. The Glass Studio 5668 York Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90042 323.387.9705 info@theglassstudio.net Check www.theglassstudio.com for a list of glasses ranging from glass blowing and torchwork to fusing and slumping and jewelry making.
Molten Metal Works 3617 San Fernando Rd Glendale, CA 91204 moltenmetalworks.net Please check their web site for a listing of all of their classes and special events. They’re in a new location next to Community Woodshop. Cool new space! Rock Rose Gallery 4108 N. Figueroa Street Highland Park, CA 90065 (323) 635-9125 www.rockrosegallery.com Visit: Rock Rose Gallery News, Instagram & Twitter Intermediate Ceramics Pottery Class 6 class sessions $240 Check web site for start date
Toros Pottery 4962 Eagle Rock Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90041 323.344.8330
A Place to Bead 2566 Mission St San Marino, CA 91108 626.219.6633 aplace2bead.com
Blue Rooster Art Supply Company blueroosterartsupplies.com blue@blueroosterartsupplies.com 4661 Hollywood Blvd LA, CA 90027 (323) 302-5613
Find a variety of jewelry making classes, including stringing and wirework.
They offer a variety of art classes. Check their web site for more information about their classes and events. Ave 50 Studio 131 No. Avenue 50 323. 258.1435 avenue50studio.org Guitar Lessons. Salsa Lessons too! Check their web site for more information for this and other classes. Center for the Arts Eagle Rock 2225 Colorado Blvd. Eagle Rock, CA 90041 info@cfaer.org (323) 561-3044 www.cfaer.org Check out their web site for a wide variety of fun classes for all ages.
Bullseye Glass 143 Pasadena Ave. South Pasadena, CA bullseyeglass.com They offer a full range of kiln forming glass classes as well as regular free artist talks. Leanna Lin’s Wonderland 5024 Eagle Rock Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90041 323.550.1332 leannalinswonderland.com Check Leanna’s web site for a current list of workshops and events. Fahrenheit Ceramics 4200 N. Figueroa St. Los Angeles, CA 90042 323.576.2052 fahrenheitceramics.com
Community Woodshop 3617 San Fernando Rd Glendale, CA 91204 626.808.3725 www.community woodshopla.com These guys offer a wonderful selection of classes from beginner to advanced, membership, and private lessons. Please check their web site for more information and a list of classes. Stained Glass Supplies 19 Backus Street Pasadena, CA 91107 626-219-6055 Classes are ongoing Barndall Art Park 4800 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90027 323.644.6295 http://www.barnsdall.org Check they’re web site for upcoming classes. Los Angeles County Store 4333 W Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90039 / 323-928-2781 Please check their web site for a listing of all of their classes and special events. Sugar Mynt Gallery 810 Meridian Ave. South Pasadena, CA 626.222.7257 sugarmynt.com Paint and Pinot Twice a month. Check their web site for more detail. Holy Grounds Coffee & tea 5371 Alhambra Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90032 323.222.8884 Check out their workshops!
Welcome to the neighborhood!
SHAN THE CANDYMAN (Shan Ichiyanagi) Oshogatsu Family Festival, 2019 Japanese American National Museum
LA ART NEWS
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION
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by Tomas J. Benitez
It’s that time of the year again. New Year’s Resolutions. Mine are not that much different from yours. Lose weight, exercise more, take better care of my health overall, and spend more time doing the things that makes me happy; (which for me is eating and lazing about, so it’s really just a vicious cycle.) I took a poll on Facebook and discovered the overwhelming majority of friends answering wanted to see a certain party removed from office. That isn’t so much an item on a resolution list as it is on a wish list. The rest of the respondents fell in line with the first three. At my age, I should also think about a bucket list. Some things to do before I kick the bucket, but I don’t really have much thought about that. Honestly, most of the things I have wanted to do in my life, I have done. Except of course, complete the great American novel by a Chicanosaurus Rex. So, that’s what I will be once again working on the rest of the year. And a film script, which came to me one night after too many beers. Oh, and finish editing my stories about East LA. And, yes that poem about playing baseball in multicultural Boyle Heights as a kid, and, well, there you go, spend more time doing the things that make me happy. Writing is that thing. Mark Twain once stated that to become a writer you must write, write some more, and write some more after that. I have never had the discipline to write every day, albeit I have tried and will keep on trying, but in truth I am more of a binge kind of guy. Not waiting around for inspiration, no, that is no longer the problem, it’s finding the right time and place to get lost in the words running around in my head. I have learned to create an outline, and then embellish it with notes that range from Post-Its to 3x5 cards to whatever the hell I have at hand. But to actually get it in order, do the research that is needed, and find that flow, yeah, still the creative challenge. Every damn day. So the purpose of my confession is to confirm that those of us who are blessed with creativity, we still have to work our asses off in order to achieve our goals. I have never met the actor, dancer, visual artist, musician, any other creative person who said, it all came so easy. I do believe we are born to it, as much as I believe that all of us are creative and although most are not blessed with the true talent of artists we have a modicum of artistry within. However, nobody I have ever respected in the arts has ever said it came too easy. Talent is the blessing, and it is natural to some more than others, but with it comes the work, the training, the experimentation, the failures and successes, the discipline, the labor, the spirit to toil and endeavor just to create something from nothing. It also takes courage, determination, invention, and sometimes a little bit of luck. Most of us will become an artist because we find out early in our own journey it is all we can do. Not that we are unskilled in other arenas, but that we are unable to do anything else for long or with any happiness in life unless we are creating something. Grandma Moses may have started when she was eighty, but I bet she was doodling all her life until she finally picked up her brushes. The rest of us grow into becoming an artist in tandem with growing into becoming adults. Sometimes we just quit, it is so damn hard. Most of us however continue to seek the big three, fame, fortune and creativity. For most of us, fame and fortune will never appear, but we are destined to continue to pursue our own creativity. It is what separates us from the rest of the pack. So in the new year, I celebrate the artists! Be resolved, your work has value, keep making your art! (Tomas Benitez was born and raised in front of a TV set in East L.A. His film SALSA: The Movie was produced in 1988. He has also written for Fred Roos, Starz Encore Films, CBS, and several other producers. In recent years he has written extensively about East Los Angeles including an ongoing, online saga about his home life, titled “The Gully”. Several of his stories about East L.A. and The Gully have been published by Blue Heron in an anthology of new American fiction, and he is editing two addition collections to be published in 2018. Tomas is the former Executive Director of Self Help Graphics & Art.)
MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS EMERGE FROM THE TAR PITS There are centuries of history under the feet of Los Angeles residents, and thanks to a local museum, the dramatic story can be witnessed from the vantage point of the present day. “Mammoths and Mastodons: At La Brea Tar Pits” employs life-size models and interactive activities to recreate the past. The exhibit features highlights from a touring exhibit created by Chicago’s Field museum, but the stars of the show include L.A. natives. They are creatures who became mired in the tar at Los Angeles’ famous La Brea Tar Pits, and, although it may have been against their will, had their stories preserved for our education. A highlight is a 13-foot Columbian mammoth. There are also other 3D replicas, as well as interactive exhibits showing how the animals lived and ate, as well as how they evolved into what is familiar to us today. The exhibit is accompanied by a 3D film “Titans of the Ice Age.” The exhibit broadens the experience of the museum, which already housed an awe-inspiring array of artifacts from the Tar Pits as well as the opportunity to watch Fossil Lab technicians at work. And, of course, the actual Tar Pits are still right outside the door. “Mammoths and Mastodons” will be on display for about a year. Mammoths and Mastodons: At La Brea Tar Pits La Brea Tar Pits & Museum www.tarpits.org
A 13-foot Columbian mammoth at the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum
Madam X JANUARY 2019
HOROSCOPES BY MADAME CRAB
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With all the air-headed feel-good fortune telling going on these days, Madam Crab has decided to come out of her seventy-seven year slumber. Starting this month she is here to tell you, good readers, how it really is. You people need to wake up. Madame Crab does not give you any palo santo scented feel-goody intention setting bullshit predictions handed to you on a “ooh can you feel the earths vibration” crystal-y gem-stone platter. I’m going to give you real advice guided by the cosmos. If you can’t handle that, take your organic beard wax and free-range maker-crafted mocha latte butter coffee somewhere else. If you haven’t noticed, it is a New Year. Here are my suggestions steeped in the wisdom of the stars to guide you over the next three hundred and sixty-five days. ARIES: Once you have peeled yourself off the wall from that New Years Eve extravaganza, consider 2019 as the year you get one of those steady job things you hear the rest of us talking about. Paychecks are handy for paying off parking tickets. TAURUS Make this year the one you actually share with others, Taurus. Also, try and keep in mind that talking about all your fineries is NOT sharing. GEMINI This is your year, Gemini. The year the world will finally realize that you are always right about everything. And the year Madam Crab may make one incorrect prediction... CANCER It is 2019, Cancer. A good time to look at your surroundings and admit that “keepsake” and “collector” are just polite words for “junk” and “hoarder.” LEO Guess what Leo? This year you will throw a “surprise” party! For yourself ! Again. VIRGO Try and let go by nurturing your creative side this year. And please note that organizing and labeling all your sanitary wipes, anti-bacterial soaps and house cleaning products does not count as “creative.” LIBRA Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. Except for you, Libra, you have an endless supply of them. Let’s try to clench up our cheeks a bit more this year, and not let out so much dogmatic hot air. SCORPIO Last year was one of many bumps, bruises and near-accidents for you Scorpio. In 2019, Madam Crab suggests only stalking people that live in fenceless houses or ground floor apartments. SAGITTARIUS You will be faced with forces that will try to harness your impulsive, passionate nature this year. Don’t let them. Public transit is the perfect stage to try out your interpretive dance piece. CAPRICORN 2019 is the year you need to live it up. Unbutton that top button! “Forget” to wipe your feet on the mat! Eat pizza sans a fork and knife! Get nuts this year, Capricorn! AQUARIUS That wheel still needs reinventing Aquarius. We’ll wait. PISCES This is the year you get your castle on an island amongst the sea creatures and mermaids, Pisces! If you gaze off into nowhereland hard enough it will happen. Just keep on doing that, the rest of us will take care of things.
BOOK SHOW EVENTS Friday January 4th HOUSE Open Mic Words & Poetry 8pm Sign up 8:30 start Book Show Closed Jan 9th & 10th Tuesday January 15th 7pm sign up Comedy Open Mic Hosted by Sumukh Torgalkar Thursday January 17th 8pm Laughterhouse 5 Stand Up Comedy Show Friday January 18th 8pm Friday Night Poetry: They’re Just Words Hosted by Ingrid Calderone Poetry Open Mic & Featured Poets Saturday January 19th Magic show with the Womens Magicians Association!!! Email bookshowla.com Wednesday January 23rd Historia Storytelling Night 7pm doors Suggested donation Friday January 25th 7:30pm That’s So Ducked Up Queer storytelling
Barton Choy Residence, Silver Lake Drawing by Stuart Rapeport
Saturday January 26th 8pm LMNOP Lesbian Movie Night! “Virgin Machine”
LA ART NEWS
MUSEUM LISTINGS
A Roundup of Arts and Culture Exhibits at L.A. Area Museums A + D Museum www.aplusd.org Disgusting Food Museum through February 17 Dark Mode by P810, new design collection through February 17 Persistent: Evolving Architecture in a Changing World through February 17 Volume by Rios Clementi Hale through February 17 American Museum of Ceramic Art www.amoca.org Building a Collection: AMOCA’s 15th Anniversary Exhibition through March 31 The Artists of Mettlach through July 2020 John Toki: Fault Lines through March 24 The Incongruous Body through January 20 Lasting Impressions: Selections from the Scripps College Permanent Collection January 12-April 7 Annenberg Space for Photography www.annenbergphotospace.org The National Geographic Photo Ark through January 13 Autry Museum of the American West www.theautry.org Investigating Griffith Park ongoing On Fire: Transcendent Landscapes by Michael Scott through July 28 LA RAZA through February 10 Out of the Ashes: Snapshots of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake through June 9 The Banning Museum www.thebanningmuseum.org Fashioning the Fan: Innovations & Materials Within the 19th Century ongoing The Broad www.thebroad.org A Journey That Wasn’t, featuring video installation The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson and 20 artists through February 10 Jordan Wolfson’s (Female Figure) through January 20 Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms ongoing California African American Museum www.caamuseum.org Robert Pruitt: Devotion through February 17 Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush through January 20 California Bound: Slavery on the New Frontier, 1848-1865 through April 28 Los Angeles Freedom Rally, 1963 through March 3 The Notion of Family through March 3 Gary Simmons: Fade to Black through 2019 California Science Center www.californiasciencecenter.org King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh Through January 13 Chinese American Museum www.camla.org Claremont Museum of Art www.claremontmuseum.org Living with Clay: The Julie and David Armstrong Collection January 18-April 20 Craft and Folk Art Museum www.cafam.org Beatriz Cortez: Trinidad / Joy Station January 27-May 12 Beatriz Cortez and Rafa Esparza: Nomad 13 January 27-May 12 Focus Iran 3: Contemporary Photography and Video January 27-May 12 El Segundo Museum of Art www.esmoa.org Matriarchs, works by 12 contemporary womxn Indigenous
JANUARY 2019
22 artists through January 26 Forest Lawn Museum www.forestlawn.com Women of Vision, 11 award-winning female photojournalists from National Geographic through April 7 Fowler Museum at UCLA www.fowler.ucla.edu World on the Horizon: Swahili Arts Across the Indian Ocean through February 10 New Orleans Second Line Parades: Photographs by Pableaux Johnson through April 28 Summoning the Ancestors: Southern Nigerian Bronzes through March 10 Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives ongoing Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art www.arts.pepperdine.edu Richard Diebenkorn: Beginnings, 1942-1955 January 12-March 13
Japanese American National Museum www.janm.org Kaiju vs Heroes: Mark Nagata’s Journey through the World of Japanese Toys Through March 24 Gambatte! Legacy of an Enduring Spirit Through April 28 Kidspace Children’s Museum www.kidspacemuseum.org Artist-in-Residence: Viviana Palacio and Keith Patterson of Cloud Formation Lab ongoing LA Plaza de Cultura Y Artes www.lapca.org Landscapes and Land Dwellers: Photography of Place by Rafael Cardenas through March 25 ¡Ya Basta! The East L.A. Walkouts and the Power of Protest through February 25
La Brea Tar Pits & Museum
The Grammy Museum www.grammymuseum.org Chasing Trane: John Coltrane’s Musical Journey Transcended through March 3 The Prison Concerts: Folsom and San Quentin ( Jim Marshall’s Photographs of Johnny Cash) through February 24
www.tarpits.org
Hammer www.hammer.ucla.edu Hammer Projects: Math Bass site-specific mural through March 17 Hammer Projects: Petrit Halilaj through January 20 Hammer Projects: Shadi Habib through January 20 Dirty Protest: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection January 24-May 19
Peace on Earth
Heritage Square Museum www.heritagesquare.org The Huntington www.huntington.org Architects of a Golden Age: Highlights from the Huntington’s Southern California Architecture Collection through January 21 NASA’s Orbit Pavillion Sound Experience through September 2 Project Blue Boy through September 30 Rituals of Labor: Carolina Caycedo and Mario Ybarra Jr. through February 25 Venice: Real and Imagined through February 25 Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles www.theicala.org B. Wurtz: This Has No Name through February 3 Nina Chanel Abney: Royal Flush through January 20 Italian American Museum of Los Angeles www.iamla.org Italianitá, Italian Diaspora Artists Examine Identity through January 13 J. Paul Getty Museum www.getty.edu The Getty Center: Artful Words, Calligraphy in Illustrated Manuscripts through April 7 Spectacular Mysteries: Renaissance Drawings Revealed through April 28 MONUMENTality through April 21 Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings through February 10 The Renaissance Nude through January 27 Eighteenth-Century Pastel Portraits through October 13 Art of Three Faiths: a Torah, a Bible, and a Qur’an through February 3 LA #UNSHUTTERED: Teens Reframing Life in Los Angeles through January 20 J. Paul Getty Life and Legacy ongoing Greek and Roman Sculpture from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art ongoing The Getty Villa Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife through March 18 Palmyra: Loss and Remembrance through May 27
Mammoths & Mastadons through 2019
Lancaster Museum of Art and History www.lancastermoah.org January 26-April 21 Los Angeles County Museum of Art www.lacma.org The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka through June 23 Outliers and American Vanguard Art through March 17 Merce Cunningham, Clouds and Screens through March 31 Rauschenberg: The 1/4 Mile through June 9 West of Modernism: California Graphic Design, 1975-1995 through April 21 Fantasies and Fairy Tales through February 3 Rauschenberg: In and About L.A. through February 10 3D: Double Vision through March 31 To Rome and Back: Individualism and Authority in Art, 15001800 through March 17 Miracle Mile ongoing Metropolis II ongoing Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Flora January 20-April 7 Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust www.lamoth.org Dora: Discovery and Despair January 13-March 29 MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House www.makcenter.org Marciano Art Foundation www.marcianoartfoundation.org Ai Weiwei: Life Cycle through March 3 Museum of Contemporary Art www.moca.org MOCA Grand Selections from the Permanent Collection ongoing MOCA Mural: Njideka Akunyili Crosby ongoing One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art through March 11 Cameron Rowland, D37 through March 11 The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA Zoe Leonard: Survey through March 25 Laura Owens through March 25 Barbara Kruger, Untitled (Questions) (1990/2018) through November, 2020 MOCA Pacific Design Center One Day at a Time: Kahlil Joseph’s Fly Paper through February 24 Museum of Latin American Art www.molaa.org Ink: Stories on Skin
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WINE OF THE MONTH Larisa Code Note: Create joy, one sip at a time. Featured Wine: Hey Malbec Vintage: 2017 Color: Red Varietal: 100% Malbec Price: $22 Origin: Argentina Appellation: Lujan de Cuyo, Uco Valley
For nearly a year I have been trying to convince people how crazy this is, check it out…as a rule, I shop throughout the year for my mom’s X-mas gifts. That way, I always have a ton of gifts for her. So, over a year ago, I picked up a book at a thrift store in Flagstaff, AZ and stashed it away for the future. I forgot about it and didn’t give it to her last Christmas. Then, in late May, while packing to drive to my mom’s house, I found it and packed it up in a bag (I remember doing it). Upon arrival to my mom’s, I couldn’t find it. Well, I drive with my dog and figured it must have fallen out during one of our weird desert stops. Either way, it was gone. When I got home, I did look for it, but to no avail; I let it go and forgot about it. It was no big deal, just like the purchase of it, the loss of it was never mentioned to anyone and honestly, I couldn’t even remember the complete title. In, I believe, late June there was a knock at my door and a UPS guy handed me a package from Amazon (which I don’t use). When I opened it up, yes, you guessed it, there was the book. It was sealed in an amazon envelope, as well as the plastic bag inside that you have to tear to open. There was no paperwork. I was baffled. It was definitely the book, possibly the one I bought…I called Amazon and UPS. No one could tell me who sent it, where it came from, etc. I searched on Amazon and contacted all vendors who sold it, again, nothing. The moral of the story is, weird stuff happens in life, and for me, often…and not always as creepy/baffling. I mean recently, I purchased and thoroughly enjoyed a Malbec! Wait, wait, all you Malbec loving mofos…I like Malbec, but normally, only with food. Here I have discovered a Malbec that I can sip while cooking, which is nice. Also, it didn’t feel like it needed to be served with a giant hunk of rare meat…which I don’t mind, but I appreciate diversity in pairing. Let’s start with the label, which should never matter when selecting wine, but, for the record, it is so good. Riccitelli’s wines seem to always have really great labels. They make a great presentation; no need to wrap that gift. Now, to production: the grapes were planted in the late 1960s. Prior to vinification, there is a handmade selection of said grapes. Seventy percent of the grapes are aged in small concrete tanks, while 30% are aged in French oak barrels. What you get is spectacular. What I really enjoyed were the soft tannins, which made the wine easy to sip sans food (as previously mentioned, but, shit, I am really impressed). It is a mouthful, this wine, complex with black currant, black pepper, and a bit of fig. It is nice. Yes, Malbec plus rare red meat is a perfect match, like a Gemini and an Aries. But, it also goes great with Thai spicy eggplant or a pot of chili. I do think that heavier, saucier foods works best. Even Mason’s pork belly and rice would make a great companion. I want you to salvage all of your poinsettias for the centerpiece, if they aren’t too sad. And the music should be something rough and blues—Dr. John? Yeah, Dr. John. How about for company, choose people you love, people who would eat spicy eggplant or a bowl of chili with as much zeal as a swanky 10 course meal—down to earth people, unless you don’t love down to earth people. Just get the people around you who get you and who you get and enjoy the entire experience—wine, music, poinsettias, laughter, full belly; it sounds like bliss to me. Happy 2019! Let’s be extra kind to each other this year and see if it makes a difference. continued from page 22 through February 6 Judithe Hernández: A Dream is the Shadow of Something Real through February 17 Palpable Objects through February 10 Museum of Neon Art www.neonmona.org Kinetic Energy: Art That Won’t Sit Still ongoing Museum of Tolerance www.museumoftolerance.com Aliyah: The Rebirth of Israel, 25 Lithographs of Original Gouaches by Salvador Dali ongoing Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County www.nhm.org Art of the Jewel: The Crevoshay Collection through May 12 Barbara Carrasco, Sin Censura, Un Mural Recuerda L.A., A Mural Remembers L.A. ongoing Norton Simon Museum www.nortonsimon.org Once Upon a Tapestry: Woven Tales of Helen and Dido through May 27 Titian’s ‘Portrait of a Lady in White,” c. 1561, on loan from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden
through March 25 Pasadena Museum of History www.pasadenahistory.org Something Revealed; California Artists Emerge, 1860-1960 Phase I: through January 13 Phase II: January 19-March 31 Pomona College Museum of Art www.pomona.edu Stories: Selections from the Permanent Collection January 22-May 19 Courtney M. Leonard: Intermodal January 22-May 19 Skirball Cultural Center www.skirball.org Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg through March 10 Sara Berman’s Closet through March 10 Southwest Museum www.theautry.org/visit/mt-washington-campus Torrance Art Museum torranceartmuseum.com Protest, Noun: five Los Angeles-based artists whose works engage urgent political themes January 19-March 9 White Noise: Kerry Skarbakka, photography January 19-March 9
Place Where, Before, In a In: Solo exhibition by Kim Zumpfe in collaboration with Bacabaya January 19-March 9 University Art Museum, California State University Long Beach www.csulb.edu Call and Response, When We Say…You Say January 28-April 14 USC Fisher Museum of Art www.fisher.usc.edu Staged Meaning/Meaning Staged January 15-April 13 Justin Brice Guariglia Earth Works: Mapping the Anthropocene through January 22 USC Pacific Asia Museum www.pacificasiamuseum.usc.edu Vincent Price Art Museum www.vincentpriceartmuseum.org Wang Xu: Garden of Seasons through March 9 Regeneración: Three Generations of Revolutionary Ideology through February 16 Guadalupe Rosales: Echoes of a Collective Memory through January 19
LA ART NEWS
FREE SLURPEE CUP DAY
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Part One of a Short Story by Jeremy Kaplan of READ Books This is the first piece in a serial. When you have read them all, it will make sense; we’re certain. Their mutual understanding was based on a memory they shared of an argument in Brooklyn the previous summer. The brothers didn’t share much— neither friends nor fancies, psychological proclivities nor physical properties—but at that moment, on a winter day in 1982, they shared a look of mutual understanding. They shared a memory and its crux. Mom, so far as the brothers could recall, had never argued with Zayde. She revered Zayde, sometimes feared Zayde, and occasionally criticized her father from afar. The great man had his faults (she’d grudgingly concede the point to her husband): an irascible temper, hard-headed ways, and a certain racial insensitivity in regard to the minorities that had immigrated into his once halcyonic neighborhood. But, as mom understood it, not without reason; All of his faults were the natural, explicable results of certain events that had transpired in his past. Anyway, he was a mensch: A man, handy with fists and hugs, who had surmounted the insurmountable odds, labored extraordinarily hard to build a good life in a new country, and always provided for his family. That he hadn’t perished in Poland was itself a miraculous achievement. Everybody loved Zayde, but none more than his only daughter, Hannah Leiner. Zayde, beneath the weight of crematoria evidence, had decided circa 1940 that the world no longer made sense. His grandchildren, Sam and Saul Leiner, had separately but simultaneously reached a similar conclusion circa 1980, when they saw their mother shout at her father in his Brooklyn apartment. What kind of world is this, they wondered, where the woman who gave birth and raised… nay, what kind of God would preside over a world where anybody would argue with Zayde. He’s Zayde, for crying out loud, and everyone loves/fears Zayde, most of all Zayde’s only daughter, Sam and Saul’s only mother, the heretofore obeisant Hannah Leiner. Yet there it was. “Pa!” Hanna had shouted at him. “Don’t say that word in front of me!” “Schwartzers!” Zayde shouted again. “schwartzers, schwartzers, schwartzers!” “They’re not all bad, pa! Just like Jews. Some good, some…” “Peh! Tell dat to deh vun who heet me and took my vallet! Eh?” “That’s just one creep,” argued mom. “A lot of them are good people, pa!” “Yuh valk arount zeh streets vere I leeve, den you tell me how great deh schwartzers are! Peh!” After Wayde had abandoned his living room and the daughter who’d defied him (and the universe), Saul, the younger brother, had turned to his father with a linguistic query. Professor Ben Leiner, half of his face artificially orange from the lamp beside his chair, looked up from the book he had been reading while his wife and father-in-law were shouting moments before. “Schwartzer? It’s basically a racial invective,” answered Professor Leiner. “Schwartzer just means black,” interjected Hannah, transitioning seamlessly from her role as prosecutor to that of defense attorney, “in Yiddish.” She offered her husband a challenging, eyes agape, frown. Riiiiight? Averting his eyes, the professor shrugged. “Not the way your dad just used it.” Hannah made deep, meaningful eye-contact with her younger son. “Schwartzer just means black,” she repeated with feeling. “In Yiddish. That’s all, honey. That is all.” As was his wont when faced with a perplexing event that his parents could not sufficiently interpret for him, six-year-old Saul turned to the third smartest Leiner he knew, his nine-year-old brother Sam, who shrugged in what looked like a laconic homage to his professorial father. Sam said: “Zayde got mugged by a black guy about a month ago. And about a minute ago he called the mugger the N-Word in Yiddish.” He punctuated his sentence with the bookend of a second laconic shrug. “It’s not the same! The word isn’t nearly as bad as…” Hannah glared at her husband. “Happy now? Schmuck.” Professor Leiner returned his attention to his book, a faint hint of a smile forming on his lips, and he shrugged less laconically than his elder son had. “Schnorrer.” Hannah left the room in the same manner as her father before her, cursing in Yiddish. Once more, Saul requested from his father a translation. “Your mother said that she loves me. She loves everybody. Jew, Black…” It was a lot for the two brothers to digest. Racism was bad. It was the worst. Zayde was their hero. He was the best. Their father was a professor. He was the smartest. Zayde the best had said something that Dad the smartest said was racist. The worst. Sam and Saul knew that racism, especially directed at Jews, Indians, or Black people was the worst for many reasons. • Hitler had killed almost all the Jews in Europe. They nearly killed Zayde and Bubbe, but Zayde had been too tough to kill, and Bubbe had been lucky to live. But unlucky to live as well, their parents sometimes said. That part was confusing. But racism was bad. • Americans had killed almost all the Indians. Certainly, there weren’t any Indians in the places Sam and Saul inhabited. None in Illinois or Brooklyn. The only Indians they ever saw were either on posters hanging in their father’s office— sad, old, craggy-skinned chiefs who said remarkably articulate things about human nature (alarmingly bad)— or in the John Wayne movies on TV that their father always cussed at and then turned off. Racism. It’s very bad. • Black people had been slaves in America for a long time, and they were still being treated very poorly in some American places, by some American people. Such racism, explained their father, was highly irrational. Racism did not make rational sense. • Their mother said racism was un-American which, when considering numbers two and three on this list, seemed contradictory to Sam, who wondered how the very things that Americans went around doing could be deemed un-American. Racism was contradictory. • Julius Erving was Saul’s only hero (besides Zayde). Doctor J was (Professor Leiner’s word) nonpareil. Really now. What the hell were racists thinking? • Mom apparently loved Black people. Whenever she saw a Black man on the TV— Muhammad Ali, Sidney Poitier, Johnny Mathis— she’d say, with an oddly triumphant smile on her face: “What a handsome man. Such beautiful, ebony skin.” She was always reading books written by Black people, alternately crying and triumphantly smiling at the words of James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Zora Neale Hurston. And the one time that Saul brought a Black kid home, his mom acted like she was going to kidnap and adopt the kid. What had begun as a proud moment (Mom likes my new friend!) quickly turned creepy (Mom never hugs my new friends, gives them food to take home, and smiles at them like they were Sidney Pointier on the TV. Mom might not be racist, but she’s weird.). His mom’s kooky behavior notwithstanding, Saul would have been happy to bring home more Black kids if only they weren’t so damn scarce. Bryant was the only Black kid his age at school, except for Tanuneka, but she was truly bizarre (i.e. a girl who wore dresses and jewelry). Saul thought it cool how Bryant was really just Brian misspelled and with a “t” tacked on at the end to make it special and Black. He really liked how Bryant’s commodious afro jounced in the autumn wind as he bolted past everybody in P.E. class to score touchdown after touchdown. It was, to Saul’s thinking, like watching a young Doctor J, just outdoors and with the wrong kind of ball. So when winter pushed the P.E. class back where it belonged, onto an indoor court, Saul chose (as he had planned, for everyday of the past month) Bryant first for his team. When Saul grabbed the first rebound of the game, it went almost like he’d imagined in his daydreams with Bryant (the fastest) bolting down court to receive the outlet pass from Saul (the tallest). It was Bill Walton to Lionel Hollins on a somewhat smaller scale. Except that when Bryant caught the pass, he sprinted toward the basket (no dribbling, just sprinting), slid to a halt just short of the rim (travelling squared) and tossed the basketball over the backboard as if it was a goalpost and he was kicking a god-damn field goal. The ineluctable fact that no one had ever taught young Bryant how to play basketball was a shock to Saul’s system on par with the discovery that the best person in the world might also be somewhat of a racist. What next? Gravity is an illusion! Hitler was the greatest pizza chef in the history of the world! Saul lobbed many questions at his father that evening. *
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SUZANNE AND RACHEL SIEGEL AT CHEZ SHAW GALLERY JUDITHE HERNANDEZ AT MOLAA by Carol Colin I’m recommending a trip to Long Beach to see two affecting, rewarding exhibits by northeast L.A. artists. “Home/Away - A Mother & Daughter Exhibition” features work by Suzanne Siegel and her daughter Rachel Siegel, on view at Chez Shaw Gallery through January 31. “Judithe Hernandez: A Dream is the Shadow of Something Real,” on view through February 17, is the first solo show by a Chicana artist at the Museum of Latin American Art. Chez Shaw is a gallery in a private home, and the atmosphere, color and scale reminded me of Monet’s home at Giverny. It’s a welcoming space for this familial show. Suzanne Siegel assembles intimate sculptures, often using found miniature chairs, to which she adds tiny figures, charms, knick-knacks, bits of old family photos, pieces of wire, spools of thread, beads, strips of paper with typed quotations - all sorts of small objects. These are like altars to fleeting thoughts and memories; the precious point is life’s ephemerality. In contrast to the small pieces, Suzanne has made three over-sized butterflies from women’s vintage kitchen aprons. Two of them cling to a kitchen wall. One speaks of the Dreamers. One deals with “mothers and daughters who have been lost to each other in terrorist attacks and disasters.” The third dominates the show from its position on the first wall one sees entering the gallery. It is at once irresistible and somewhat frightening. Called “Emerge”, the piece is made of semi-sheer black fabric printed with pink flowers, stretched and supported in a triangle shape. More black fabric is twisted to form a head and antennae, or possibly the torso and upraised arms of a dancer, in which case the ‘wings’ become her skirt. As you come closer, you see that some of the flowers are actual rose petals and each one has been pinned to the fabric with an unburned kitchen match. In its beauty, this piece contains the means of its potential immolation. The artist told me she thinks of it as a response to the “me, too” movement. In the context of her history as a feminist artist, “Emerge” is a work of peak accomplishment. See similar pieces on her website: suzannesiegelart.com, but see the show in person. Rachel Siegel grew up in N.E. L.A. and is now based in Portland, Oregon, where Suzanne Siegel, installation view, she teaches photography. Her work on view includes single and grouped photo “Emerge”, Chez Shaw Gallery installations - images of skies and clouds, earth from the air, observed couples in public spaces. Some photos are manipulated to include a familiar house shape. Rachel is away and back again, flying above our shared earth, communing with strangers, returning to her mother‘s home. Look at her website, racelsiegel.net, for an expanded context. Rachel and Suzanne share a feminist perspective, and they both collaborate with other artists. This exhibit includes a number of drawing/collages they sent back and forth to work on, with seamless results. Chez Shaw Gallery, 1836 Nipomo Avenue, Long Beach, Ca 90818. Call or text for an appointment: 562-708-3803.
Suzanne Siegel and Rachel Siegel, collaborative drawing/collage, “Meat and Fowl”, Chez Shaw Gallery.
Judithe Hernández’ must-see show is a short distance away at MOLAA. These very largescale pastel paintings of women are stunning, iconic, elegiac, original and unforgettable. Hernandez has had an admirable career and has earned the attention currently being paid to her masterful work. While it is unfathomable that MOLAA, founded in 1996, hasn’t featured a Chicana artist before this, the art of Judithe Hernandez is a perfect beginning. Museum of Latin American Art, 628 Alamitos Avenue, Long Beach, Ca 90802; phone 562-437-1689. Call for information on a panel discussion of this show set for Feb. 9, 2019.
Judithe Hernandez, works from the Juarez Series, Museum of Latin American Art
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THE HOLIDAY SEASON IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES
Krampuslauf (The annual Krampus Run) Dove Biscuit, Merry Rxmas (1,300 pill bottles, 40 syringes, 701 lights) at Last Bookstore
Kodama Taiko, traditional New Year rice pounding demonstration at Japanese American National Museum Cocoa Concert: The Lions at Union Station
Santa Claus sighting on the streets of Downtown
PAUL FRANK AT LEANNA LIN’S Cartoonist, artist, and designer Paul Frank paid a visit to Eagle Rock in December, for an opening of a show of his works. Mr. Frank is the creator of such recognizable characters as Julius the Monkey and Clancy the Giraffe. The Paul Frank Print Show at Leanna Lin’s Wonderland features a collection of rare character prints, along with limited edition accessories and more. The Paul Frank Print Show Leanna Lin’s Wonderland 5024 Eagle Rock Boulevard through January 20 www.leannalinswonderland.com
Paul Frank visits Leanna Lin’s Wonderland Paul Frank and more Paul Frank at Leanna Lin’s Wonderland
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LA ART NEWS