psychic garage sale

I think you should go to Night Gallery.

Have you ever been on your way home from a party at 2:00 am and thought to yourself, “Hmmm… I wonder if there’s anywhere I can go right now to see some interesting art? It should be super chill and definitely dark enough to cover up any drunk face I might be sporting.”

Why yes, yes there is.

From now until January 26 this show by Alexandra Grant and Channing Hansen is up.

The piece, Womb-Womb Room is a large, soft, knitted web of colorful yarn  that brightly careens around the inky dark room.

Meet (one of) the makers. Also go back and read that last sentence in a diabolical British accent. I’ll wait.

Night Gallery.  Check it.

LAX Part 2, so nice, I’m hanging up stuff twice.

Turns out I get to another project at LAX (the airport).

If you are flying out of LAX on Southwest Airlines, you can check out some of my original drawings in the departures (upper) level from now until March.

They’re located behind the security checkpoint, so you’ll need to have a ticket to see them.

It’s always hard to describe where things are in the complicated maze of hallways, checkpoints and gates at the airport.

But they’ll be in a hallway near the Starbucks, if that helps.

If you have time to kill, you can think of it as a treasure hunt.

It will give you something to do.

You’re welcome.

Ships

Cargo ship Rena ran into a reef in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty. The ship is taking on water, leaking oil and likely to break apart. Alcohol might have been involved in the crash. The reef is well marked on maps. 

2017 containers some containing “dangerous goods”. Each of those containers can hold up to 40,000 pounds.

Maybe I’m aiming low, but I’m surprised scary events caused by drunk people who happen to have huge responsibilities, don’t happen more often. Like daily.

Slow, one handed clap for humanity.

Just found this image of a drawing I made of a ship called inventively, Ship. It’s from 2003, I think?

Sort of amazing that mine looks more seaworthy.

Peter Alexander, Van Nuys, 1987, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 60 x 66

Peter Alexander, Bell, 1990, Acrylic and Oil on Canvas, 60 x 66

“There is nothing to match flying over Los Angeles by night. A sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching as far as the eye can see, bursting out from cracks in the clouds. Only Hieronymus Bosch’s hell can match this inferno effect. The muted fluorescence of all the diagonals: Wilshire, Lincoln, Sunset, Santa Monica. Already, flying over San Fernando Valley, you come upon the horizontal infinite in every direction. But once you are beyond the mountain, a city ten times larger hits you. You will never have encountered anything that stretches as far as this before. Even the sea cannot match it since it is not divided up geometrically. The irregular, scattered flickering lights of European cities does not produce the same parallel lines, the same vanishing points, the same aerial perspectives either. They are medieval cities. This one condenses by night the entire future geometry of the networks of human relations, gleaming in abstraction, luminous in their extension, astral reproductions to infinity. Mulholland Drive by night is an extraterrestrial’s vantage point on earth, or conversely, an earth dweller’s vantage point on the galactic metropolis.

-Jean Baudrillard, America, 1986

I’ve been looking back a bit, lately, thinking about the different reasons artists make art about the places around them.

Firstly, Jacob Lawrence, The Decommissioning of Sea Cloud, 1944, watercolor on paper

From The Coast Guard website “In 1944 Lawrence’s own life imitated his art when he made history as part of the first racially integrated afloat unit in the U.S. military. That year he joined the USS SEA CLOUD, a yacht converted into a weather patrol ship for the Coast Guard, which was then operating under the control of the Navy. Afterward, Lawrence remembered this landmark experiment in racial equality as “the best democracy I have ever known.” Moreover, he rendered it for posterity, recording one more major event in African-American history.”

Secondly, Charles Sheeler, Golden Gate, 1955, oil on canvas

He’s mostly known for his paintings of imposing, architectural imagery but he was also a photographer and he photographed his house a lot, especially in the early years. Guessing this came out of that.

Americana, 1931, oil on canvas

Charles Sheeler worked as a photographer at the Met, photographing all kinds of stuff from their collection, ancient to the then contemporary. He said, “All the arts we revere come out of the main trunk. An underlying current goes through all the way to Renaissance, Egyptian, Chinese, back to cave painting.”

Kamikaze

We’ve reached that time of the year where the ceiling fans run on blast while we eat outside and the cats play dead on the tile floor. Also, it’s Kamikaze time at POST. In case you don’t know what that is, POST founder artist/curator Habib Zamani asks 31 artists to curate a show a night (7-9pm) in July in a downtown warehouse. Some artists show their own work, while others put together group shows.

I really enjoyed seeing these shows last summer. The energy is great, one a night and they were all totally different from each other and full of suprises. It’s almost like getting to peek into a curated artist studio every night.

Tonight is the first exhibit, curated by artist/ curator Devon Tsuno of Concrete Walls fame and it is called Case Study: Los Angeles. I’m happy to have a (never before shown) drawing in the show and it looks like I’ll be in good company. Other artist included are: Marie Thibeault, Brian Boyer, Matt Logue, Justin Dahlberg, Calvin Lee, Alia Malley, Omar Ogues, Greg Rose and Shizu Saldamando.

7-9 tonight, 1904 East Seventh Place, 90021, bring cash for the taco truck, drinks provided, be there or be square.

Here’s a list of all the Kamikaze artist/curators for this month.