It seems only natural to combine our two first loves – art and food. Yet that combination is rarely accomplished in a tasteful manner — that is, until recently.
The artist group Fallen Fruit has pioneered a considerable effort that is changing the way we view Los Angeles’s urban landscape, one tree at a time. Fallen Fruit, founded by Matias Viegener, David Burns, and Austin Young, mapped areas of Silver Lake that have public access to fruit trees — i.e. free, locally grown, organic food. This project continues to connect those with too much and those with too little of that good stuff.
Fallen Fruit’s next big project is at LACMA and is aptly titled EATLACMA. Both today and tomorrow, Fallen Fruit will be giving away free fruit trees to kick off their year-long investigation into food, art, culture, and politics. And keep your ear to the ground as their program unfold seasonally, including the exhibition Fallen Fruit Presents the Fruit of LACMA and day-long event in November.
An apple a day never tasted so good – or so free for that matter.
For more information about Fallen Fruit, click here. For more information about EATLACMA, click here.
During stressful weeks, it is always recommended that you check in with your nearest and dearest psychic(s) at least once if not twice. You’ll never know how to handle your many doting suitors, luxurious travel plans, and multi-million business deals without a little help from your friends.
But, if stepping into darkened, incense infused rooms isn’t exactly your cup of tea, get a healthy dose of insight and art the next time you are in the Miracle Mile. The Craft and Folk Art Museum just opened The Fool’s Journey: The History and Symbolism of the Tarot, an exhibition that draws together the imagery, history, and iconography of tarot cards over time. This show will highlight the 22 cards of the Tarot’s major Arcana – from the Fool to the World — and will present historic and modern examples from stylistically different decks. Also, plan to see how tarot cards have influenced the imagery of other works of art.
See? Isn’t it already making better sense now? At least you have part of your weekend plans squared away.
The Fool’s Journey: The History and Symbolism of the Tarot will close at the Craft and Folk Art Museum May 9th. Please click here for more info.
There are only four days before Thanksgiving. Heaven knows Fine Arts LA has plenty to be thankful for. Let us count the ways!
The Surging Number of Food Trucks — These bad boys (and girls) are making a presence at practically every art event in Los Angeles through Twitter-based campaigns. With delicious cuisine ranging from Indian food to gastro pub food to dessert, we want to thank you for saving us on many Saturday nights after downing one too many Grolsch beers. Thank you, food trucks!
LACMA Film Program – You never fully appreciate something until it’s gone, or until it’s hanging on by a thread just waiting to be cut by the budget police. Thanks to the wonderful people at Save Film at LACMA, we are fortunate to have the rich film program of classic and international films at LACMA away from its grave. And we couldn’t be more thrilled by the fact that through this grassroots effort, we will be sitting pretty watching all of our favorite films, at least until June 2010. Thank you, Save Film at LACMA!
MOCA’s Comeback – One year ago, we were all shocked by the reports that revealed MOCA was teetering on the brink of financial disaster. And look at ‘em now! They are keeping their doors open with the help of philanthropist Eli Broad and the work of countless others. Taking it all in last night at MOCA’s 30th Birthday Party, I was fortunate enough to enjoy a Lemonade red velvet cupcake with the best of them all while catching a preview of their latest show. Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years reveals the best of MOCA’s inventory, the tastes of chief curator Paul Schimmel, and the vision of curators before. Thank you, MOCA and Eli Broad!
The Broad Stage — Speaking of Eli Broad, there is a lovely contemporary gem on the horizon in Santa Monica – The Eli and Edythe Broad Stage. The home of dance, theatre, voice, chamber music, film, and spoken word, it is as if the Walt Disney Concert Hall’s little sister is making its claim on the Westside bringing home the best talents without a trip on the 10 freeway. Thank you, Broad Stage!
Gustavo Dudamel – Even before he arrived, this city was crazed about this talented, young man from Venezuela. As the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel’s personality, playfulness, and passion have been infused into every portion of his program. Making grown women (and men) behave like children and professing their crush at any given moment, Mr. Dudamel has taken this city by storm one concert at a time and has caught the attention of everyone including those unfamiliar with classical music. Bienvenido, Gustavo, y mil gracis!
And finally, we are most thankful for you, dear readers… Without you to check us out daily, to recommend us to your friends, and to Google image search the most oddest things to find our website, we would cease to exist. So thank you!!
Tomorrow evening, we are going to play it like it is 1984 all over again as The Wall Project commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall. Starting at 11:00pm, an 80’ x 10’ wall of art will span Wilshire Blvd. between Fairfax and Spaulding — and guess what? It is going to collapse at 12:00am just like the original wall separating East and West Germany. Join the rest of us tomorrow night after your evening stroll tonight up and down La Cienega catching all the Culver City gallery openings (Tomoo Gokita at Honor Fraser, Noah Sheldon at Cherry and Martin, and Sean Duffy at Susan Vielmetter). History repeats itself at one of its more finer points and even better…it won’t cost you one red cent.
Click here to read Fine Art LA’s piece about The Wall Project. Click here for more details about tomorrow evening.
Halloween has come and gone — you’ve hung up your wigs and put away the sumo wrestler fat suits. It’s high time to return to thinking seriously about the coming months. By seriously, we mean – it’s time to think about all the openings and parties you’ll be heading to through the holiday season.
Lady Gaga isn’t someone you’d readily associate with Los Angeles’ contemporary art scene, but Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli would like to politely disagree. For MOCA’s 30th Anniversary Gala, Vezzoli will put on the first and only performance of his Ballet Russe Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again) starring Lady Gaga and dancers of the Bolshoi Ballet. Also on offer at the gala will be a preview of “Collection: MOCA’s First Thirty Years,” featuring 500 works from the museum’s permanent collection by such luminaries as Jeff Koons, Ed Moses, Nancy Rubins, and Ed Ruscha. The exhibition itself opens to the public on November 15, but you’ll want to see Ms. Gaga’s performance on the 14th, just to see if she still gets dressed in the dark. There is also an Engagement Party event on November 21 for MOCA members featuring My Barbarian’s The Fourth Wall to celebrate the museums second 29th birthday.
Los Angeles Philharmonic has decided to keep things interesting this fall with their “Eureka! West Coast, Left Coast Festival.” A celebration of the culture of California and how it works to inspire musical and artistic masterpieces, the festival will run from November 21 through December 8 and will include such performances as Kronos Quartet led by Leonard Slatkin in a world premiere by film music composer Thomas Newman and multifaceted Mike Einziger in a solo performance with a number of guest collaborators. Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the LA Phil in Esa-Pekka Salonen’s LA Variations and also, the festival will include a slew of multidisciplinary events.
The gallery scene doesn’t disappoint this season either with a number of openings that should fit well in your schedule. Roberts and Tilton in Culver City will bring Delphine Courtillot and her cinematic, almost Californian paintings back for her second exhibit in their space on November 21. On November 7, you can celebrate the opening of Tomoo Gokita’s exhibit “Heaven” at Honor Fraser Gallery in Culver City. Photographer (and Fine Arts LA team member) Gray Malin’s work will be shown at David Streets Gallery in Beverly Hills now through the holiday season. LA><ART will throw their Third Biannual Benefit Auction on Sunday, November 15 featuring participating artists like John Baldessari, Dave Muller, and Allen Ruppersberg.
In case the Luis Melendez exhibit at LACMA has been making you nothing but hungry, November 18 sees a rare chance to head to the museum on a Wednesday (when they’re normally closed). They present “The Art of Wine and Food: Spain in the Time of Luis Melendez” featuring a buffet inspired by what Melendez might have munched on during painting breaks.
Make sure to keep a couple of your Saturdays open. We’ll be back with more where this came from… So stay tuned!
The countdown is truly on to throw together your Halloween costume and plans for the evening. Time’s ticking! We have a few last minute ideas to point you in the right direction in case you have left it to the absolute last minute. Tsk, tsk, tsk…
If you really want to be scared without the fake blood or sound effects, the Natural History Museum presents the Spider Pavilion until the beginning of November. The enclosed habitat that was once the Butterfly Pavilion is transformed into an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare with different species of spiders roaming around for your creeping, crawling pleasure, including the golden silk spider and jewel garden spider. Please know that all spiders are not poisonous and shy away from leaving their webs, but there is no guarantee that they won’t give you a solid case of the willies.
Playing it low key, probably the most frightening of locales for tonight’s festivities includes a romp through a graveyard at night. Interested? Cinespia presents another screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery and will be showing John Carpenter’s Halloween. A psychotic slasher film at a cemetery on Halloween? This is nothing short than traumatic. Prepare to have someone tuck you in tonight.
Feeling like playing dress-up? LACMA, Santa Monica Museum of Art, KCRW, and the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre are throwing their own versions of a costume party. LACMA’s Muse Costume Ball is inspired by the exhibition Heroes and Villains: The Battle for Good in India’s Comic and will be including a lot of art, projections, and music throughout the night while patrons dress up as their favorite hero…or villain. I’m looking at you, Cruella Deville. The Santa Monica Museum of Art’s Halla Gala requires a costume or a mask at the very least. Dress as your secret self, or perhaps another personality from a past life. KCRW’s Masquerade Ball at the Park Plaza Hotel includes live performances by Sea Wolf and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros as well as DJs spinning all night long. And finally, there’s only one word that can describe the festivities that will ensue at Cinefamily’s party: Bollywood. Take that and run with it there and all the way home. Happy Halloween!!
This Halloween, there’s bound to be a host of dead actors and actresses milling about the streets of LA – most of whom you’d rather not see again. One has only to walk down Melrose on a fine, sunny day, though, to see a slew of petite, young women donning over-sized sunglasses, cropped pixie hair cuts, and sleek sleeveless dresses to catch a glimpse of an actress as alive in our culture as ever, both in fashion and general demeanor. That actress is, of course, Audrey Hepburn.
She, more than any other actor, actress, or celebrity, haunts the Hollywood unconscious on a day-to-day basis. So it comes as no surprise that LACMA has chosen the Halloween season to present their film series on the legendary starlet, aptly titled “Audrey Hepburn: Then, Now, and Forever.”Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s screened earlier last week, but if you missed those, don’t fret: many of her most memorable roles are still to come. On Friday, Halloween Eve at 7:30 PM is Sabrina, followed by Love in the Afternoon at 9:35 PM. The following weekend, on November 6, catch showings of Charade and Wait Until Dark. Then on November 7: King Vidor’s epic adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. And finally, on November 13, the screening closes with Hepburn’s much-adored musical turn in George Cuckor’s My Fair Lady.
Whether you’re Hepbrun for Halloween or simply Hepburn in everyday life, there’s sure to be some Audrey in you—male or female, young or old, whether you’ve seen her films or not (if you haven’t, your next stop is LACMA on Friday night). Frankly, it’s downright spooky how much of her spirit still enchants Hollywood and its forthcoming starlets.
They say it’s smart to have a niche: find what differentiates you from the pack and run with it. That has been quite true for the owners of Fahey/Klein Gallery on La Brea Blvd. Focusing entirely on the medium of photography has proven quite the challenge what with a new exhibit that must go up every five weeks, but as David Fahey, co-owner of the gallery mentioned, it’s been well worth it. We recently sat down with Fahey to discuss Los Angeles’ art scene, photography, and wild times with Peter Beard. How many other people can you name off the top of your head who can recount stories about Irving Penn, Alfred Stieglitz, Helmut Newton, and Herb Ritts? We can name only one: David Fahey.
On now through December 5 at the gallery is an exhibition of nudes featuring two distinct artists: Ralph Gibson and Rasmus Mogensen. A tried and true genre, according to Fahey, these artists really take their work to a new level of innovation. Gibson’s architectural, piece-by-piece look at the female form implements shadows, light, towels, and stockings to find a host of new, intriguing shapes. On the other hand, Mogensen’s larger-than-life photographs of nude women posing in nothing but high heels are reminiscent of Helmut Newton with a unique Mogensen touch. Called “Perfectly Natural”, each photograph in the series has been altered in some minor way to create the artist’s idea of a perfect woman – look closely at them and you’ll see the Photoshop-ed discrepancies.
Having stayed in the same gallery space for twenty-three years, it’s safe to say the owners of Fahey/Klein Gallery know a thing or two about Los Angeles’ changing artistic landscape. We took a seat and listened to the expert – check out our video to hear what he had to say.
Ralph Gibson and Rasmus Mogensen’s work will be up at Fahey/Klein Gallerythrough December 5, 2009. For more information, please call (323) 934-2250 orclick here.
The Miracle Mile Art Walk, which happens every third Saturday of the month, has a little extra flavor with The Wall Project this Saturday — the Wende Museum continues its plans to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall. They are preparing to build up the wall to tear it down all over again. Please leave your sledgehammer(s) at home. The LA-style fall won’t happen until next month.
The art walk starts officially at 4:00pm, which will give you plenty of time to survey the gallery scene on Wilshire, including some gems at 6150. At ACME, Jennifer Steinkamp’s new show Orbit is guaranteed to impress and is definitely worth your while to stop by. Last year, her gorgeous scrolling floral digital animations projected on the wall were a definite highlight, so her new show will surely be a treat.
At 4:30, Thierry Noir, who was the first painter of the original Berlin Wall in 1984, and Justinian Jampol, the Wende Museum’s director, will speak at the Wall Along Wilshire as part of the Wall Project. Also, on Saturday, Noir and his LA counterparts, Kent Twitchell, Marie Astrid Gonzalez, and Farrah Karapetian, will be painting the Wall Along Wilshire, which is set to be the longest stretch of the real Berlin Wall outside of Berlin.
The afterparty is over at Phantom Galleries from 8:30 – 10:00. The exhibition GraceBeautyFortitude, curated by Sophia Louisa as part of Sophia Louisa Project, opens on Saturday with work featuring Rebecca Niederlander, Leigh Salgado, and Coleen Sterritt. The preview images look gorgeous. The three qualities — grace, beauty, and fortitude — are presented through sculptures that seems so delicate and ephemeral, but at the same time very strong and resonate.
All will probably head over the Mandrake afterward You know how we do it around here.
Mention the Miracle Mile Art Walk for free entrance into LACMA and CAFAM.
The Miracle Mile Art walk is Saturday, October 17 from 4 – 10. For more information about The Wall Project (5900 Wilshire Blvd.) and Saturday’s events, please click here.Jennifer Steinkamp’s exhibition opens Saturday with an opening reception 6 – 8 at ACME (6150 Wilshire Blvd.). Also, Sophia Louisa Project’s GraceBeautyFortitude (5412 Wilshire Blvd.), opens on Saturday and will host the art walk after party.
There are plenty things we’d all research more if we weren’t too busy toggling between Googling every question that pops into our heads and updating our Facebook statuses. International animation, for example, is at the top of our list (yours too, we’re sure) of things that just fall by the wayside of daily internet research. We are all so lucky, then, to have Jerry Beck. Founder of the site Cartoon Research and host of a monthly animation series at the Silent Movie Theatre, Beck knows more about cartoons than a room full of seven year olds on a Sunday morning.
On Tuesday, October 6 at 8:00pm, he’ll be introducing us to a selection of the silliest and spookiest cartoons the world has to offer just in time to get us in the mood for Halloween costume shopping. These aren’t your kids cartoons, though, and Dora the Explorer will be nowhere in sight. Beck’s selection will feature old and new cartoons with all the usual suspects: “witches, warlocks, goblins, pumpkin-heads, black cats, and friendly (or not so friendly) ghosts.” Some of these ghoulishly inspired animators will be on hand to explain their creations – which might actually take some of the magic out of it. Just like extensive research tends to do…
Jerry Beck’s Animation Tuesdaysare the first Tuesday of every month. This month is Jerry Beck’s Animated Spook-tacular on Tuesday, October 6 at 8pm. For more information, please call (323) 655-2510 orclick here.
There are only four days before Thanksgiving. Heaven knows 
Halloween has come and gone — you’ve hung up your wigs and put away the sumo wrestler fat suits. It’s high time to return to thinking seriously about the coming months. By seriously, we mean – it’s time to think about all the openings and parties you’ll be heading to through the holiday season.
The countdown is truly on to throw together your Halloween costume and plans for the evening. Time’s ticking! We have a few last minute ideas to point you in the right direction in case you have left it to the absolute last minute. Tsk, tsk, tsk…
This Halloween, there’s bound to be a host of dead actors and actresses milling about the streets of LA – most of whom you’d rather not see again. One has only to walk down Melrose on a fine, sunny day, though, to see a slew of petite, young women donning over-sized sunglasses, cropped pixie hair cuts, and sleek sleeveless dresses to catch a glimpse of an actress as alive in our culture as ever, both in fashion and general demeanor. That actress is, of course, 
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