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Okay, so it’s Halloween tonight, but it’s also a great weekend for art in LA.

Saturday, November 1

Finishing School & Chris Hoff: Little Pharma Meditation Workshop @ Fringe Exhibitions. Chris Hoff, author of the OC Art Blog, will be introducing the public to meditation. Can’t beat that! Noon - 2 PM.

Darren Hostetter: In Our Nature @ Sam Lee Gallery (image at top). Darren is one of the very few artists working with military themes that really has both the background and knowledge to match the subject matter. And the work is beautifully painted. Reception is 6-9 PM.

Eric Johnson: The Maize Project @ Torrance Art Museum. Your last day to see the show, before we meticulously disassemble the resin monstrosity on Sunday morning. Closing reception 1-5 PM.

Lindsay Foster: Strangerly Connection @ Open Gallery. Closing exhibition for a show of photographic works by Lindsay Foster. Noon - 6 PM. Open is at 6375-B N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, 90042.

Sunday, November 2

LEFT, RIGHT AND CENTER: The Art of Democracy @ Old Town Gallery. Political group show, curated by beyond genius master printer, Patrick Merrill. Featuring Diane Abt, Kathi Flood, Nick Gerhard, Michelle Guieu, Steve Greenberg, Dirk Hagner, Lanyi Janos, Joel Josepf, Phillip Laber, Carolyn Liesy, Jennifer Magsino, Emet Martinez, Ryan McJunkin, Jared Millar, Sarah Pavsner, Christie Reynolds, Kimberly Rose, Brigette Schobert, Leslie Sokolow, Tom Stubbs, Zan Trout, Elizabeth Wallace, Chelsea Weiss, Joyce Weiss, Ashlee Weitlauf, Efram Wolff. Reception is 2-5 PM.

McLean Fahnestock: The Very Act @ CSULB Gatov Gallery. McLean has become one of my favourite artists, and I’m very, very interested to see what directions her work goes in following this, her MFA thesis exhibition. She’s also in Formings, a seven artist sculpture exhibition that I’ve curated for Angels Gate that opens on November 16. Reception is 5-7 PM.

Technorati Tags: art, LA Art, Finishing School, McLean Fahnestock, Eric Johnson, Lindsay Foster, Chris Hoff, Darren Hostetter

That’s all folks, vote your asses off on Tuesday.

Technorati Tags: David Rees, Get Your War On, Politics, 23/6

It’s a bit quiet on the arts front (or at least the stuff I’m interested in is napping) so this weekend is mainly movie time.

Friday, October 24

ANAVAN: Tour Kick Off & Release Party @ The Smell. With Hearts of Darkness, Grand Buffet, Captain Ahab and Kyle H Mabsen. Anavan’s last LA show before their European expedition. ANAVAN video, Pregnancy Test, at topStarts at 9 PM.

Kwaidan @ The Silent Movie Theatre. The final film in the Cinefamily’s Japanese Ghost Stories series, Kwaidan is 183 minutes of almost psychedelic colour. Heaped with praise and awards when it was released, this is a “must see on the big screen” opportunity that you shouldn’t miss. Starts at 7:30.

Saturday, October 25

Joy and Misery $ Five Thirty Three. This Ben Shaffer curated group show caught my eye because it features work by Conrail Twitty, Devon Tsuno and the Center for Tactical Magic. Also featured are Christopher Badger, Jackson Fledermaus, Sarah Lowing, Anna Mayer, Deirdre McConnell, Karthik Pandian. Reception is 7-10 PM.

Sunday, October 26

The Hidden & Alone in the Dark @ The Silent Movie Theatre. Presented by Family Books. I’m really just recommending this double feature because Kyle MacLachlan is in The Hidden. I’d watch Kyle do pretty much anything, damn you Twin Peaks. Starts at 8 PM.

Monday, October 27

The People Under the Stairs & The Serpent and the Rainbow @ The Silent Movie Theatre. Two from Wes Craven, also presented by Family Books. The Serpent and the Rainbow is a great film, one that I manage to keep missing every time it’s playing at a theatre. Starts at 8PM.

Technorati Tags: la, art, film, cinefamily, ANAVAN, The Smell, Five Thirty Three, LA art

I’m always shocked to anything resembling arts coverage in the mainstream news. In the United States, we seem to have collectively decided that the arts are not important, and the above video editorial by CNN’s Campbell Brown shows it. In the above video, Brown disses the taxpayer costs associated with presidential portraits, which range from $7500 to $50000 per portrait for this administration. While I think that a better tribute to many of the Bush administration’s players would be better burned as straw effigies, official portraiture is one of the few areas where the arts and our government actually intersect.

Brown plays the economy card (which is already being used by arts organizations to explain programming cuts, and also by funders as an excuse not to support - it’s the get out of jail free card of 2008), suggesting that a photo would do instead. But what Brown doesn’t know (and why should any major news personality know anything about the art economy, anyways) is just how expensive photo portraits are. You’re not paying for the materials here, you’re paying for the pedigree and talent of the portraitist. Last time I saw a number tossed around a Cathy Opie portrait would go for $30,000, and I can’t imagine how much it would cost to rent Annie Leibowitz or David LaChappele to shoot the Bush cabinet. So what we’re talking about isn’t really “wow, these paintings are such a ripoff. Come on, I just bought this Nagel of a hot chick at the Salvation Army for $5, why is this portrait so damn expensive?” What we’re talking about is whether the government’s resources should be spent on the direct commission of arts in these amounts.

I don’t see arts people telling folks to “fix their own plumbing” just because the economy is bad. No one is saying that Joe the Plumber (who’s a shady, lying shit as far as I’m concerned) should go without work because people can just take a DIY attitude to home plumbing until the current recession ends. No, instead everyone is up in arms that the poor guy might have to pay more taxes if his fictional business made him a pile of money each year.

Why is it that arts workers and their jobs are perceived as disposable and non-essential whenever things get rough, but other professions aren’t? Imagine being a professional portraitist, spending years and tens of thousands of dollars to get that precious, precious MFA, building a business, buying or renting a studio, investing in the tools and materials of your trade, only to be told - we don’t need you anymore, we’ll just replace your skilled, American labour with a snapshot by our in house photographer. What this kind of thinking amounts to is job cuts when people desperately need work to maintain their businesses until the economy gets less harsh. What Brown is really advocating here is an attack on some of America’s hardest working small businesspeople.

When I was a young, yarmulke wearing Hebrew school student, our art teacher was a portraitist who painted one of the official Clinton portraits for the Congress. It was a major commission, that kept her working for most of a year and which certainly made up a great deal of her income. That was her job. I’m sure that the portraitists that I know in LA are hurting in the current economic climate, that they’re afraid that the declining fortunes of their clients will cause a slowdown that will impact their ability to support themselves and their families. Portraitists have every right to employment and income, even during a poor economy.

Even in a failing economy, we have to maintain our cultural traditions and pride. If we’re still buying multi-million dollar jet aircraft equipped with missile shooting lasers of dubious use, then we certainly have the funds in our federal budget to maintain the tiny portion that actually goes to the commissioning and creation of art.

Technorati Tags: Campbell Brown, CNN, art, portraiture, official portraits, painting

If you live in the City of LA, you should be aware that the Department of Cultural Affairs is a struggling organization that’s had it’s budget slashed time and time again and whose mission seems unattainable with the resources it has. I watched the department spin its wheels under Margie Reese’s too-long “leadership”, and since Olga Garay came on the scene as the new department head, I’ve been sitting with crossed fingers, hoping to see someone turn the lights back on in the department. Olga seems to have really returned a positive energy to the department, and to those of us who work with it, or observe it from the outside, we are all hoping that she has the tools and the staff to undertake a transformation of the department, and the City.

The most important action the department has undertaken since her arrival is the process to give the department, and the City as a whole, a direction, via a new DCA Cultural Master Plan. So if you live in any of the City’s 15 districts, or make use of the City cultural services that take place in any of them, the City needs your input. The first thing you can do is go here and take this two-page survey (I promise, no endless fields of radio buttons, asking this or that, it’s easy), it’s the least you can do, and it’s at the very least a momentary distraction from surfing the E-waves, looking for the latest crypto-fascist thing to come out of Sarah Palin’s mouth.

But if you’re like me, and you want to make sure they hear your whiny, little voice speak, there is a series of public meetings scheduled, one per district. As a resident of CD 15, I’m slightly miffed that the first notice I received of the meetings was this weekend, via mail, when the sole meeting in my district, CD 15, is being held this coming Thursday, October 23 @ Banning’s Landing at 6PM. So in other words, if you live in Pedro, Wilmington, Harbor City or Watts, this Thursday night is the one and only chance you may have to comment on this process.

As someone who lives in a Council District with a large number of DCA facilities (CD 15 has 5 of the 17 DCA facilities), all of which seem under/misused to me, I can’t begin to state how important it is for anyone in Los Angeles to get involved in this process, even if it’s only as a survey-filler-outer.

Technorati Tags: DCA, City of Los Angeles, Community Meetings, Los Angeles, Cultural Master PlanHere is the schedule of community meetings, which are taking place at the tail end of the project, prior to the draft report. This may be your last chance to give your advice, council, complaint or guidance to a project that’s going to hopefully turn this City’s failing cultural efforts around.

This beef rib was like the size of my face. It was stupid gigantic. Like, those bronto-ribs tipped over my stone age car. And damn, damn good.

It’s from Porky’s BBQ in San Pedro. Finally Pedro has BBQ worth eating. Their beans are good, damn close in goodness to Goode Company & Oklahoma Joe’s.

Technorati Tags: food, food porn, beef rib, Porky’s BBQ, BBQ, barbecue

David Rhees is a genius.

Technorati Tags: David Rhees, Get Your War On, cartoon, animation, politics, 23/6, White Man’s Burden

Busy, and keepin’ it short.

Friday, October 17

Retribution @ The Silent Movie Theatre. This Cinefamily brings us a Kiyoshi Kruosawa directed Japanese ghost story, featuring “a post-industrial Tokyo landscape that would turn-on J.G. Ballard.” Can’t beat that. Trailer here. Starts at 7:30.

Saturday, October 18

Matthew Thomas: Sacred Winds @ Helix Gallery. Peggy Zask’s Helix Gallery is bringing culture to Palos Verdes, one show at a time. I was just in Matthew’s studio yesterday, and some of the work he’s been doing since his Angels Gate mini-retrospective earlier this year is hot stuff. Reception is 7-11 PM. Helix is located at 31248 Palos Verdes Drive West, Rancho Palos Verdes, 90275.

Slab @ Old Los Angels Zoo. A One-day show at the old zoo, featuring Michael Decker, Liz Glynn, Deva Graf, Hilary Graves, George Kontos, Louisa Van Leer, Karen Lofgren, Marco Rios, Ry Rocklen, and Rosha Yaghmai. 4-7 PM.

Sunday, October 19

Authors for Obama @ Track 16.  Following Saturday’s opening for Robbie Conal’s new show, literary minds gather to support our next president.  Featuring Aimee Bender, Susan Straight, Marisa Silver, Percival Everett, Marianne Wiggins and more.  Reception starts at 6 PM, Readings start at 7.  $75 at the door, all funds go to benefit the Obama campaign in the swinging swing state of Nevada.

Technorati Tags: art, la, contemporary art, film, Cinefamily, Silent MovieTheatre, Slab

Jenny Hart over at Dinosaurs and Robots went to the Koons exhibition at Versailles.  Apparently it was verboten for the tour guides to talk shit about the art, but they couldn’t help themselves, a feeling that I think anyone in the presence of Koons’ work seems to share.  I can’t recall being in the presence of his work and not hearing someone talk shit, and I’ve never in my entire life heard someone advocate his work.  Even people who work on his projects seem to loathe him.

Hart liked the exhibition, and there’s a whole Flickr set of her shots here.

Photo at top by Flickr user Ted Drake.

Technorati Tags: Your Moment of Apocalypse, Jeff Koons, Versailles, art, contemporary art, Dinosaurs and Robots, Jenny Hart

October 9-13

Freewaves 11th Festival of Experimental Media Arts. Anne Bray of Freewaves’ curatorial and organizational prowess is in full effect this weekend. A ton of stuff in a ton of Hollywood venues.  Check the link for details.

Thursday, October 9

Surface Sounding - Ten Curators - Ten Artists @ See Line Gallery. Given that See Line is probably the smallest and most oddly walled and floored space in LA, I’m curious to see how this show fits into the space. Notable in this group show is the presence of Michael Dee, who does amazing things with plastic cups. Reception is 6-9 PM.

BOOKED: Vintage Mugshot Photography @ Todd/Browning. See old timey people on their worst day ever. Reception is 5-9 PM.

Friday, October 10

Kuroneko @ The Silent Movie Theatre. Hadrian of the Cinefamily emphasised strongly how rare and expensive this print was to get, so see it. It’s a Japanese ghost cat story, “loosely based on The Cat’s Return, a Japanese folktale about two peasant women who, after being raped and killed by a band of samurai, seek revenge as cat-like spirits who lure soldiers in with sex, then pounce and maul them to death.” Trailer here. Starts at 7:30.

Sitting in the Dark with Patton Oswalt: Nighthawks and Commando @ The New Beverly. Patton Oswalt has been allowed to program the New Bev and he’s entirely responsible for this titanic Stallone/Schwarzenegger team up. Bring your own steroids for premium enjoyment. Nighthawks at 7:30 and Commando at 9:35.

Saturday, October 11

Meeson Pae Yang @ SCA Project Gallery. New work by the master of the McMaster-Carr catalog’s tubing section.  Reception is 6-9 PM.

Finishing School: Little Pharma Physic Garden @ Fringe Exhibitions. A participatory installation by the very busy art collective.  Reception is 6-9 PM.

Carol Es: She Dreamed She Remembered @ George Billis. New works on canvas. Reception is 5-8 PM.

Ai Yamaguchi: Hana wa no ni aruyouni (Flowers as they are in the field) @ Roberts & Tilton. featuring a “barrel-shaped room housing a panoramic mural.” Reception is 6-8 PM. (Thanks, Eric Nakamura)

Boyd Rice “Standing in Two Circles” book signing @ La Luz de Jesus. Boyd Rice is one of my OG icons. Engage your red meat, Darwinian backbrain via his new book and the signature of the man. Signing is 6-9 PM and there is an after party at Bordello from 10PM - 2AM.

The Brood @ The Silent Movie Theatre. Legendary drunk Oliver Reed starts in this Cronenberg helmed spectacle, part of their Holyfuckingshit: Evil Children series. Trailer here. Starts at 10:15.

Sunday, October 12

Round One * Art Debates @ Circus Gallery. Three hours of art debating with live music, booze and snacks.  Bring your opinions and your loud mouth.  Sponsored by artillery.  3-6 PM.

Art Spiegelman Presents: Freaks @ The Silent Movie Theatre. Spiegelman, in person, hosting a showing of Freaks, followed by a 45 minute presentation by Art and a trip down the street to Family Books, where Art will be signing his new book. Starts at 2 PM.

Technorati Tags: art, la art, contemporary art, film, Cinefamily, Carol Es, Finishing School, Meeson Pae Yang, Ai Yamaguchi, Boyd Rice, Art Spiegelman, LA Freewaves