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Back in America. Still adjusting. Sleep rhythm all cocked up. Can’t seem to find a night swap meet anywhere, here. Feeling rice deficient and craving hot dogs way, way too much. Anyways. There’s always something to do.

Friday, July 18

Texas Chainsaw Massacre @ Roof of School House Structure. I’m recommending this classic, mainly because you can watch it on a roof. I used to do a fair share of 40 oz. drinking on various South Bay roofs as a teen, and in my expert opinon, I can assure you doing something on a roof makes it 10-15% better. Part of the Old Pasadena Film Festival. For those afraid of driving up to Pasadena, supposedly that giant, freeway eating sinkhole has been filled in and everything is fine. Blogging.la’s Mike Winder has a long post on this showing, check there for more details. Show starts at 10 PM and it’s free.

Saturday, July 19

Glow @ Santa Monica Pier. The big dog of the weekend. An all-night party with commissioned art projects. This is intended to be a biennial project. Generally, things that make noise or light up seems to be the theme of the night. Could be interesting, or not. Highlight of the night may be the Ferris Wheel Orchestra, presented by Machine Project. Worth checking out. Dusk to Dawn.

I AM I A KILLER @ Sam Lee Gallery. Sam curates close to my taste and heart, so although I don’t know all the artists, I guarantee goodness. Featuring Phil Chang, Sarah Conaway, Nancy de Holl, Alyssa Gorelick, Nicholas Grider, Ronni Kimm, Helen Levitt, Arthur Ou and Max Warsh. Of these artists, Nicholas Grider (image at top) is definitely one to watch - he’s led a project embedding Cal Arts students with military units as part of their training and I think he’s getting interesting results,as well as navigating some very interesting cultural territory. Reception is 6-8 PM.

Miracle Mile Art Walk @ Miracle Mile (doh!). All the galleries are open and if you use the secret password “Art Walk” at LACMA, it’s free. 1-5 PM (.pdf flyer here).

Bicycle Film Festival @ The Vine Theatre. Bike movies, pretty much all day. Maybe the asshole with the brake-less track bike that I saw swerving through lanes yesterday, near Union Station, will be there, and I can beat him down for making the rest of us cyclists look like assholes. Anyways… Road to Roubaix looks good. Program starts at 1:30 and goes on all day.

Technorati Tags: Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Old Pasadena Film Festival, art, LA art, Glow, Machine Project, Ferris Wheel Orchestra, I AM A KILLER, Sam Lee Gallery, Nicholas Grider, Bicycle Film Festival, Road to Roubiax

The crew at Pink Tentacle have blogged fourth another must see. Sato Jun Ichi has been photographing Japan’s flood control infrastructure since the mid-90’s. His website has an astounding collection of hundreds of images from this series (arranged in sequential sets), and he has also published a book of images from this series.

If you, like me, are a devoted fan of steel and formed concrete, you will love crawling through these. Many of them have a kind of postmodern-medieval castle look to them, that I can’t not love. I was just in Japan about 24 hours ago, on the briefest of layovers, and these kind of make me miss the beautiful, river laced landscape of the region near Narita airport that I only ever see from above.

Technorati Tags: Pink Tentacle, Sato Jun Ichi, floodgates, flood control, infrastructure, Japan, Japanese, architecture

I’m too dazed from eating those Thai danger dogs right now to do anything other than just be an echo here, for what will certainly be the greatest art event to ever take place during recorded time. The LA Art Girls and Phantom Galleries are presenting the LA Art Girls Art Fair Biennale Los Angeles 2008 tomorrow night, July 10, 6-10 PM, during the Downtown Art Walk. I won’t get to be there, but that doesn’t mean you can’t. Here’s the verbatim release:

LAAGAFBLA08 is the LA Art Girl’s world premiere international art show for contemporary works, and will be Los Angeles’ cultural and social highlight for the summer. The exhibition recognizes the individual within this unique artist collective. Work by 26 artists, from our cutting edge generation of emerging stars, will be contained in two spectacular downtown spaces. The exhibition includes the highest-quality paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs, and video.

LAAGAFBLA08 Artists - Stephanie Allespach, Tricia Avant, Allison Danielle Behrstock, Carolyn Castano, Krista Chael, Sydney Croskery, Karen Dunbar, Catherine Daly, Amber Fox, Phyllis Green, Leila Hamidi + Shana Torok , Micol Hebron, Parichard Holm, Ellina Kevorkian, Leigh McCarthy, Claudia Parducci, Nancy Popp, Sarah Riley, Ambika Samarthya, Kim Schoenstadt, Felis Stella, Ten Terrell, Kelly Thompson, Elizabeth Tremante, Shana Torok, Marjan Vayghan.

Technorati Tags: art, LA art, LA Art Girls, Downtown Art Walk, LAAGAFBLA08, LA Art Girls Art Fair Biennale Los Angeles 2008, Phantom Galleries

That’s, er, me on that 3m x 3m exhibition banner. There’s kind of a long story behind this image, and I don’t really have the time to tell it at the moment, but let’s say, I was surprised to see it. Both Edith and Ian had already seen the proof of this, and knew all about me being on the banner. I kind of figured my face was on it, but not necessarily on the whole thing.

Technorati Tags: banner, Chonburi International Art Exhibition, Marshall Astor, silk, Hollywood, Hollywood sign, art exhibition, Eastern Center for Art and Culture, Bhurapha University

So right as we start installing, Edith annihilated the tape measure that I flew over 10,000 miles to ensure our ability to use our backwards English measurement system. And then we kind of got nervous and prepared to go metric, as our back-up tape measure is that little black square, and it’s only 3 feet long. Then we realized that the metric tape measure at the gallery had both systems on it. Hooray for our practically pre-historic insistence on using a backwards system of weights and measures.

Technorati Tags: Omen, broken, broken tape measure, tape measure, Edith’s fault

Well, of last week, but of any week, really. No reason to post these, other than my continual interest in diagrams and illustrations of all sorts. I think my love of charts, illustrations and diagrams goes back to my father’s enthusiasm for Ross Perot, entirely based upon his enjoyment of Perot’s flip charts. It was the only absurd thing I ever remember him being humorously entertained by.

Phill brought this to my attention. A couple of comics bloggers had a contest to find the most 90’s-ist comic book cover. The 90’s were a rough era for comics. Even as a new wave of quality comics were coming from small publishers, there were 90 car pile-ups of the worst aesthetics that comics have ever known. Kevin Church took the cake with the above. Note the post McFarlane missing feet for the win!

I saw this at Curbed LA, who saw it at Racked LA, who saw it at Lisanti Quarterly. I have no idea if this makes any sense to anyone outside of LA, but I’m so glad I now know the proper terminology for Douchebag Neck shirts. My life is 0.402% better now.

Technorati Tags: illlustration, comics, 90’s, diagram, Blood Hunter, Kevin Church, Curbed.la, Racked, Lisanti Quarterly, Doucheback Neck, fashion

My fellow Los Angeles art blogger, Maxwell, turned me onto this, for which I thank him profusely. Arthur is probably best, most interesting and well written free magazine in LA, and Jay Babcock is doing a great job helming it. Recently they devoted the bulk of their issue to a comprehensive review and discography of Sparks, one of the greatest bands ever, and also one of the greatest mugs ever. Like a dozen pages or something, with a four page interview. That’s something that none of the other free rags can do. They brought Yoko Ono to LA for Arthurfest. They need a little more money to keep the presses running. They’re almost there. Let’s put them over the top.

Technorati Tags: fundraiser, Arthur, Jay Babcock, Lightning History, Sparks, magazine

Apparently that whole Frank Gehry research center hullabaloo that’s been a brewin’ at Art Center has come to a head and Koshalek will not have his contract renewed at the end of 2009. It’s definitely interesting times over at Art Center, A lot of recent graduates from both Art Center and other LA schools I’ve spoken with lately seem unhappy with the direction of the program, and feel that the quality of non-commercial work coming out of the Center is really slipping. This weekend one of those recent grads was describing a confusing and odd re-grouping of programs into new and confusing, and possibly conflicting majors. If that statement sounds vague it’s because what I heard was vague. Sounds like whomever follows Koshalek probably has their job cut out for them.

Seen over at Curbed.la.

Technorati Tags: Richard Koshalek, Art Center, Curbed.la, LA art, Art School

Viva la France! Artists Raphael Uhrwiller and Mayumi Otero show wood and ink who’s the boss. Originally eyeballed over at BoingBoing. According to the comments there this kind of thing gets done all the time, too. How is it that I was totally ignorant of this awesomeness until right now?

Technorati Tags: steamroller, woodblock, woodblock printing, printing, printmaking, art, French art, Raphael Uhrwiller, Mayumi Otero

Flickr teases you with random recent uploads on their front page when you pop in. Sometimes they’re worth looking at. Seeing the above image in Wetsailor_2000’s stream, I initially thought I was looking at the documentation of some kind of performance, photographic or video art, but taking a look at his profile, it’s obviously fetish. Regardless, I thought his recent and brief entry to Flickr (his earliest photo went online Saturday), consisting thus far soley of self-portraits in sailor/police costume in a large, inflatable, indoor tub of water, merits some kind of elevation to found art. Is any sufficiently out of the ordinary and repetitive behavior conceptual art or appropriatable as conceptual art at this point?

Technorati Tags: fetish, sailor costume, sailor, wet clothing fetish, wet, all wet, art?, is it art?, conceptual art, tub