Silverlake/Los Feliz

What do you get when you showcase the brightest and boldest of Angeleno performance artists?  GUTTED.  Gutted is the only word to describe Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions’ encompassing performance art-based program, which includes live performance, texts, and objects speaking of, from, and to the body.

GUTTED is Saturday, February 20 at 7:00pm, LACE.  Click here for more info.

The exhibition Actions, Conversations, and Intersections at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park continues to add new participatory projects to its roster.  This weekend, roll up your sleeves and join artists Edward Pine Stevens and Joseph Stuckleman with their installation Make Objects Make Marks or BikeHaus as they bike through Los Angeles as part of Cloud Lines and Chemospheres.

Check out the rest of this weekend’s programming here.

Newly purchased by Quentin Tarantino, the New Beverly Cinema is continuing its program of repertory cinema.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Election will play back-to-back not only once, but twice this Saturday because it is oh so nice.  Save Ferris!  Pick Flick!

The Matthew Broderick double feature starts at 3:20 and 7:30 at the New Beverly Cinema.  Click here for more info.

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.

It was only a little earlier today that the Los Angeles City Council voted down the proposition to eliminate the Transient Occupancy Tax (the TOT), the sole source of governmental funding behind of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA).  This action, had it been carried through, would have effectively shut down 18 cultural centers—including the Barnsdall Arts Center in Hollywood and the Center for the Arts in Eagle Rock, host to the Sony Pictures Media Arts Program for middle school youth—as well as five professional theatre facilities, and an array of classes, programs, and cultural events.

Such a worthwhile institution as the DCA might seem like an easy stronghold in such a creatively centered city as Los Angeles, but it was largely due to incredible advocacy organizations like Arts for LA that the proposition was shot down.  They, along with other activist groups and privately-funded museums such as the Hammer, urged their supporters to write letters to their councilmen, and voice their opinions at the City Council public hearing this Wednesday.  Some handed out stickers with the phrase “Arts Fuel LA,” others toted hand-made signs, and one woman addressed the council in a full-on angel costume.

Lo and behold, these efforts proved successful, and as a website strictly devoted toward promoting the arts, artists, and cultural community of Los Angeles, FineArtsLA would like to sincerely thank both the City Council members, and the hard-working advocacy organizations for their aid and congratulate them on their accomplishment today.

Of course the fight for the arts is never through—the council issue still undecided is whether the current cultural grants will be honored—but in celebration of this week’s victory, may I suggest checking out the DCA-funded Municipal Arts Gallery in the Barnsdall Arts Park.  From January 24th through April 18th, they are hosting an enormous series of participatory exhibitions entitled “Actions, Conversations, and Intersections,” all aimed at enhancing the artistic community of Los Angeles.  In residency this week is Smart Gals Productions, whose patented “Reading Preserve and Speakeasy Collection” features public readings from some of LA’s best authors, including John Albert, Noel Alumit, and Aimee Bender (my personal favorite).

The Smart Gals will toast off their weeklong program on Sunday, February 7th at 2:00pm with the collaborative “Winter Picnic Performance,” a fun mix of music, theatre, fresh bread courtesy of the Bicycle Bread Company, and hot coffee from Cafécito Organico.  So come along, fuel the arts that fuel LA, and if you get the chance, thank somebody.

Curated by Edith Abeyta and Michael Lewis Miller, “Actions, Conversations, and Intersections” runs until April 18th, 2010 at the Los Angeles Municipal Arts Gallery in the Barnsdall Art Park.  For more information, visit www.actionsconversationsintersections.com

The way you start off a new year is very important to the way the new year ends up going for you.  At least that’s what they say.  Put their theory into practice with some of January’s most promising arts events in our fair city – would you like your 2010 to look a little more Bond-like? Would you rather it looked a little more experimental than your 2009?  It’s so tempting to answer those questions with: there’s an app for that, but really your city has got what it takes to kick off your new year just the way you’d like.

Mr. Bond

Friday, January 1 is not likely to be your most shining and perky day.  That doesn’t mean you can’t start on a sleek, technologically advanced, Bond-like bend – from 7:30pm at the Egyptian Theatre there’s a double feature of Dr. No and You Only Live Twice.  You may not be at your sharpest on Friday, but you’ll soon make a better Bond than Mr. Connery.  If you’re less than interested in leaving your house that day, worry not.  Saturday evening (January 2) from 7:00pm, they’ll be screening Goldfinger and Thunderball – if you don’t have a love/hate relationship with villains after a weekend like that, you’re not cut out to be the next Mr. Bond.  And that’s no way to start a new year.

Please click here for the Egyptian Theatre’s full January 2010 calendar.

Barely There

At Sam Lee Gallery, just near Dodger Stadium, you’ll find local artist Jeff Gambill’s exhibit “Barely There,” on through January 23.  His paintings have this generally zen, colorful feeling that convey the transient, transitional message he’s going for.  Fresh from a trip to Japan, you’ll definitely see an East Asian influence in each of his works.  They don’t scream out at you, but they definitely make you want to look closer.  And what better message than looking closer at something that doesn’t shock and awe for a new year?  Time to delve a little deeper, kids.

The Sam Lee Gallery is located at 990 N. Hill Street #190.  Please call (323) 227-0275 or click here for more information.

New Year, New Music

It’s so easy to fall into an all-Mozart (or all-Beyonce) rut.  Take some time in January 2010 to break out of it.  It may not last the whole year, but at least you can say you tried.  On Saturday, January 16 at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Monica,Jacaranda invites you to discover Thomas Ades, Benjamin Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies, George Benjamin, and others.  The concert, called Licorice and Rosin (“licorice” is a slang term for clarinet and rosin is a solid form of resin used on string instruments), will present some of Britain’s more exciting contemporary music from the last twenty-five years.

If a church is the last place you’d like to be, Monday Evening Concerts at the Zipper Concert Hall at the Colburn School kicks off 2010 on January 11 at 8:00pm with a concert called “Mostly Californian.”  Featuring compositions by Clint McCallum, Luciano Chessa, Michael Pisaro, and others, you will hear sounds of contemporary California.  (No, that doesn’t include woeful cries for our current economic situation.) The composers in question present lyrical, theatrical works that won’t sound like anything else you’ve heard before.

Please click here for more information about Jacaranda.  Alternatively, click here for information about Monday Evening Concerts.

Soundtrack for a Revolution

The Grammy Museum just celebrated their first birthday – still haven’t been? Monday, January 11 at 7:00pm they’re presenting Reel to Reel: Soundtrack for a Revolution, a documentary that looks at the American civil rights movement and the unparalleled soundtrack that went along with it.  Filled with archive footage, interviews with civil rights leaders, and a soundtrack of freedom songs sung by modern day R&B, Hip Hop, and Soul legends like Joss Stone, Wyclef Jean, The Roots, and John Legend.  Monday’s screening will be followed by a panel discussion chock full of everyone you’d like to get advice from for a soulful 2010 – Danny Glover, filmmakers Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, producer Dylan Nelson, and music producer Corey Smyth.

For more information, please click here.

So I’ve been writing for Fine Arts LA for almost a year now, and I realized that this affords me one of the greatest of art-reviewers’ honors: the end-of-the-year top-ten list.  As a devout follower of numerous art, theatre, and film writers, I find that it’s often popular to downplay the top-ten tradition, dismiss it as a sad reality of the quick-fix world we live in.  But even in this downplaying, there’s a hint of relish in the writer’s voice, as if he/she felt obligated to somehow contain their own excitement at the prospect of shedding off those hundreds upon hundreds of shows, films, galleries, albums, installations, and happenings they consumed throughout the year, finally to narrow it down to the even, clean number of ten.

I myself haven’t been to hundreds of shows this year.  But as a weekly contributor to Fine Arts LA, I have been privy to some of the best art this crazy city has to offer, and I wasn’t limited to one medium.  I saw plays, movies, photography exhibits, I even flirted with the perils of a natural disaster, and thus… my top ten:

10. “Sam Cherry: Photographs of Charles Bukowski, the Black Cat, and Skid Row”

Representing one half of the double exhibit entitled “Bukowski and Burroughs” that went up in early April at the Track 16 Gallery, this series of simple photographs succeeded in portraying what none of these phantasmagoric, apocalyptic fantasy movies can pull off: it showed an old, self-destructive man, reflecting back on the good times he’s had, proud yet regretful, strong yet weak.

9. Ken Tanaka’s “Maximum Pleasant”

Ken Tanaka is one artist/performer/youtube-phenomenon I was lucky enough to interview.  His show at the Billy Shire Fine Arts Gallery back in May included videos, paintings, drawings, music, and even a fully functional garage sale.  But it neither the media mash-up that impressed me about Ken nor even his possible double identity.  It was his sense of pure pleasure in creation, his contagious childlike sense of comedy that emanates off his pieces, and made for one of the smiley-est art openings I’ve seen in LA.

8. Landscaping the Den of Saints

It’s easy to skip over small, live theatre in Los Angeles, especially when it’s a three-hour meditation on the ideas of success and ambition like Jacob Smith’s recent, original production at the Avery Schreiber Theatre.  But sometimes you miss out on gems, and this play took on the issue of being young and hungry in Los Angeles, and ended up representing the struggle with a sense of playful accuracy.  And actor Sean Fitzgerald deserves some sort of award for his transformative performance.

7. Visioneers

This film, which is now up on Netflix instant-play, began its distribution independently.  And I mean independently.  I saw Visioneers at the Echo Park Film Center, when it was traveling around to any screen that would take it, and I have to say that it stuck with me.  Starring the still-underrated Zack Galifianakis, the movie is about spontaneous combustion in a futuristic, corporate-run society, where giving someone the middle finger is a sign of respect.  Every time I enter an office building, I think of the bearded Galifianakis flicking me off with a smile.

6. Gavin Bunner’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”

Another interviewee, the friendly Mr. Bunner isn’t afraid to dress in a cardboard Moby Dick costume and compete in a public boxing match against a Berenstein Bear.  Sure it seems silly, but it’s emblematic of what this young, promising painter is attempting to capture and celebrate in his work: the absurd convergence of pop and pomp in our Google-ingrained brains.

5. Lie of the Mind

I only saw this play last week, so it might just be a fresh lie of my own mind, but Studio Five Productions’ latest show, which you can still catch until the 19th at the Studio/Stage Theatre, is a brave and forceful retelling of Sam Shepard’s original, 1985 story.  The actors are physical and fierce, the music is haunting, the makeup is extraordinary, and the set is like something Jason Schwartzman’s character would dream up in Rushmore.

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We’d be very surprised if this is true of any of our readers, but it seems that some Angelenos are less than familiar with the art scene in Atwater Village.

Okay, so we are admittedly less than familiar with how to even get to Atwater Village not to mention how we’d start exploring it’s art scene.  The problem is that, well, it’s far.  Then, we don’t know where to go once we’re there – what if we miss the best spot? After all that stress, we’ll surely be hungry and we’re at a loss for where to get a good snack in the neighborhood.  Alas, we tend to just stay in our close environs.

This weekend, November 7-8, however, none of us have a good excuse to skip out on the “spaghetti side” of town, so called because once you get over there, the streets are so windy and confusing, they’re akin to driving around a plate of spaghetti.  The 12th Annual Silver Lake Art Crawl is here again to present you with a whole bunch of things you’d likely not do otherwise: spend time scouring the more eastern side of our fair city, try freshly harvested fish tacos as a result of an art/food experiment, and, well, actually walking somewhere.  There’s also a big celebration at Barnsdall Art Park on Sunday at 1pm, which will feature music, art, dancing, and plenty of food trucks like Cool Haus, Let’s Be Frank, Dosa Truck, Tiago Coffee, and a host of others.

To give us a better idea of all that the Silver Lake Art Crawl has to offer, we recently sat down with the festival’s director Drew Baldwin.  Lucky for you, we taped the whole thing.  Check out our video and definitely head east this weekend – you won’t regret coming across some new local artists nor will you be able to forget the deliciousness that is Lamill Coffee or Café Stella.  Turns out, it’s worth braving the eastbound traffic from time to time.

The Silver Lake Art Crawl is this weekend, November 7-8 from 11am to 9pm both days.  For more information, please click here.