About Me
I’m Marshall Astor, and I work as both an artist (occasionally) and arts administrator. I’m currently the Visual Arts Director at the Angels Gate Cultural Center and I was formerly the owner/director of Walled City, until it was besieged by junkies (long story involving gentrification and my neighbor’s meth lab) and we sallied forth to new adventures.
I grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, which is about as bizarre a place as one can possibly be raised. Any detachment from external/objective reality that I’m blessed with today is the result of the strange isolation of that place. Today, I live in San Pedro, CA, which is a slightly surreal microcosm of America, right before it falls into the ocean.
I’m interested in damn near everything, I have, as Bacon, taken “all knowledge to be my province”, which is a know-it-all way of declaring my desire to know it all. But out of everything that is and will ever be, I’ve got little obsessions. Right now they are cycling, naginata, kyudo, martial music, insurgency/counter-insurgency, the history of tools and materials, cooking, traveling and bathing. My focus/interest in art leans towards craft, installation & site specific art, state art and folk/outsider art.
As to why I have this site, what I’m writing about, etc… I enjoy writing and finding opportunities to write. I initially intended this site to be primarily about my projects, but I’ve found that I really enjoy writing about all sorts of things. This is not intended as a “professional artblog” or anything, but then again it is a bit of a professional gig, sometimes.
above - I look sort of like this, only with more lower body.
