(click image to see more of the Obamas on election night)
With the election now over, do you still find yourself needing that over saturated Obama fix? Yeah, me too. Thankfully David Katz, photographer for Obama for America, took an amazing series of candid photos of the President-elect and his family on election night. The photo set on Flickr allows you to relive that magical evening that started with a prayer in a little hotel room in Chicago and ended with me drunk off of Moosehead Light in a seedy motel on Sunset blvd. while partying with this hot young lady. You betcha!
The paint is still drying and the time is almost upon us. The highly anticipated show will open tomorrow night at the Laforet Museum at 6pm! Like the sign says…
ESPO vs. Valentino? Find out what it’s about in a few days!
Steve Powers, a.k.a. ESPO, has long been one of my favorite artists for both his sarcastic signs and clean lines. Along with the rest of the artists putting together the show, the studio gangster is currently holed up in the exhibition space cooking up punchline after punchline. When he’s not perusing the aisles of Tokyo Hands of course. Here’s the hand made myth himself along with Jo Jackson, Aaron Rose, and Yours Truly.
The inside walls were lined with images of pop icons ranging from Hendrix to Run DMC to the Dalai Lama to of course, Elvis. Lots and lots of Elvis. The styles of Warhol, Banksy, and Shepard Fairey run rampant through MBW’s work, as is the case with many pop artists working today, but in addition to his emulation he has created an entire installation space that lives, breathes, and breeds pop culture and shaped it into his own thing. Even though that “thing” is derivative of what others have done before him, it’s still something to behold. The sheer volume of work is impressive, especially in putting together a 2 story art show, my only gripe is that it looks all too familiar and a tad redundant. Apparently, I’m still not sure what else Mr. Brainwash has done.
Exhibit hours and location:
June 27th-29th
1pm to 9pm
The show will be open Friday through Sunday for the months of June and July.
Show reopens mid-September with new art and installations.
Last Tuesday June 17th, Beautiful Losers screened at the 10th annual CineVegas Film Festival. The burgeoning Las Vegas festival which “annually presents work by innovative, uninhibited, and renegade artists to an audience of local and national film lovers, journalists, and film industry representatives” was home to some of Hollywood’s biggest stars over the past week and a half. With honorees James Caan, Don Cheadle, Rosario Dawson and Viggo Mortensen, in town as well as fellow actors Dennis Hopper, Anjelica Huston, and Sam Rockwell in the mix, we were honored just to be a part of such a prestigious event.
We felt even more honored when we were asked back to accept one of the festival’s awards at a luncheon ceremony on Saturday. Not knowing what we were fortunate enough to win, Jon Barlow (the film’s producer) and I headed to the City of Sin with modest expectations for a brief 6 hour stay, just enough time to collect our wares and avoid any real Vegas trouble. We were hoping for an award like the Documentary Audience Award where the winner is chosen by votes the audience casts after screenings, but much to our surprise we were handed the Documentary Jury Award which is determined by a panel of fellow filmmakers! To be honored in this way is extremely special for us and has exceeded all our expectations.
The lovely Jo Jackson on the red carpet of the Beautiful Losers CineVegas premiere.
The Festival also screened The Cool School, a documentary similar to our film in that it follows the careers of artists who came together in a small LA gallery in the 50’s and 60’s. A panel discussion between the screenings of our films entitled Marginal: Art for its Own Sake featured a live conversation with a group of artists from both films, including Billy Al Bengston, Dave Hickey, Jo Jackson, Geoff McFetridge, Ed Moses, Stephen Powers (ESPO) and CineVegas chairman Dennis Hopper.
(click image to see more photos of The Sads silent show)
Last Saturday June 14th, The Sads played a “silent show” at the Westwood Art Forum. I had heard their previous foray into the silent show business went exceedingly well when they recently performed in New York. This time they were bringing along artist/designer/director Mike Mills along with them. I was definitely intrigued.
Upon entering the upstairs venue, I was greeted with a bit of laughter coming from one of the 3 television sets facing the sitting audience who were positioned in a circle around the room. The 3 video installations, which were created specifically for this show by Mr. Mills, were loops of iconic film clips featuring laughter, crying, and people saying “I love you”. The televisions continued to play through the band’s performance thus evoking a variety of emotions depending on where you were sitting. The one I sat closest too was laughter:
Also positioned in front of the audience were 50 headphones connected to amplifiers which in turn were hooked up to the bands instruments. When the lights dimmed it was time for the audience to put on their headphones. I had seen the band play once before and was impressed with how far they had come, but it was even more impressive to see how much further they have jelled since then. What I was listening to in that dark little room while watching James Dean continually laugh at me was something I hadn’t heard from them yet. It was again, something different that I welcomed and thoroughly enjoyed. With Dan Monick leaving the band to pursue other pursuits, The Sads have brought in a new drummer with more of a beat driven style and the pairing seems to have taken them to a new place as well as a new pace.
The band went on to perform their 25 minute tour de force while the Mills videos continued to sway your feelings one way or the other all while the attentive audience sat peacefully quiet enjoying the sadness of The Sads. I had to leave in a hurry, but I left smiling knowing that the band was progressing and affecting people differently. Or maybe it was the repeated image of the straggly haired Gary Sinise from Forrest Gump snickering out of the side of his mouth that put a smile on my face? It was definitely both.
Check out what the band had to say prior to their Saturday performance on KCRW here: The Sads on Weekend America
After traveling the world for a month and a half, mixing business with pleasure from Los Angeles to Toronto, Canada; Toronto to Modena, Italy; Modena to Washington D.C.; D.C. to Beijing, China; Beijing to New York, and finally from New York back to Los Angeles; my Odyssey has finally concluded. I never thought I would be so thankful to be back home in L.A., but we always somehow end up missing what we take for granted. This website being one of those things taken for granted along my journey. But now that I’m back I’m going to do my best to get this kid back on track, appropriately starting with this video of a monkey doing karate. Think of it as a metaphor. Enjoy.
(from left to right: Harmony Korine, Mark Gonzalez, and Carlo McCormick)
On Sunday May 18th, my first full day back stateside, I was treated to a special “conversation” between filmmaker Harmony Korine and artist/skateboarder Mark Gonzalez which was later moderated by magazine editor Carlo McCormick at Tokion’s Creativity Now conference at Cooper Union in Manhattan. The two playfully started off their discussion by going through their list of “Name Poems” which are names of celebrity types dissected and reshaped to form whole new names. This exercise in adolescence started in Harmony’s Prince street apartment at the start of their long standing friendship and through the years has grown into a list of hundreds. Starting with their first foray into their new art form, Harmony recited the original name poem “Emily dicked her son” (Emily Dickinson). And from there, back and forth they went laughing with childlike pride at some of their crudest and funniest inventions which included; “Dick rides around in a van looking for dykes” (Dick Van Dyke), “Is it a kite? Harvey can’t tell” (Harvey Keitel), “Burt Reynolds wrap”, “What’s Stephen Hawking?”, and “Kirstie was raped in an alley” (Kirstie Alley) to which Mark replied, “That’s just mean.” Mean indeed, amusing yes, and the audience of students and young and old people enjoyed it all. Here’s a bit of video of the tail end of the name poetry segment:
From there Carlo McCormick joined the brouhaha and attempted to turn the conversation into a more insightful one with sincere answers. This was not easily done with the Harmony and Mark revelling in being the jokesters they are. At one point Mark completely interrupts Harmony mid-answer when he started playing his harmonica on his mic:
But not all of it was fun and games as Mark gave one of the best answers of the day when Carlo asked him how his process when making art involves leaving his errors in finished pieces, to which Mark responded (in so many words), “the mistake is part of the make.” A lesson I’ve been slow to adhere to being a perfectionist for most of my life, but a lesson I now live by as I understand the beauty in drawing outside the lines. As these two creators have been doing for most of theirs.
Thanks to the lovely Heather Seccia of Tokion for getting me and my brother in.
When I was in Modena, Italy a couple of weeks ago Cinzia and Manny from Sartoria took me to a spot where I could check out good local graffiti. It was there that I learned about their friend Blu and his stop motion graf piece he was working on overseas. They went on and on about how talented their boy is and how he was doing some next level shits. Stop motion graffiti?! I was intrigued to say the least. I got back to the states a couple of days ago and what do I find in my inbox from Chris Pouy? A link to that very piece and it is indeed the amazing. For those who have yet to see it, please watch now:
