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Our dear newlywed friend Lauren Fong is doing something special for the women this weekend as her elegantly lovely ladies line ITSOLA joins a host of other designers in a sample sale in Santa Monica to benefit USC’s Westside Alumni Scholarship Fund. Check out the list of other vendors here.

From Lauren:

“I am a part of a big sample sale this Saturday in Santa Monica to support the USC Westside Alumni Scholarship Fund!  Itsola will be there along with 19 other designers of clothing, jewelry, bags, and shoes!

The sale is from 10am-3pm at The Fairmont Miramar Hotel.  You can find more info about the vendors at http://www.westlatrojans.com/sctyle/vendors.php.

Make sure to bring your friends because I am marking everything down at least 65% off retail values and will have one rack of things under $30!

Hope to see you there!”

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Luke Chueh’s Beginnings/Endings (and other Worthless Epiphanies) comes to a close at the CoproGallery in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station while a set of four limited edition prints from the show become available to hang on your walls.

Click here to view the first preview images from the show at CoproGallery.

From Luke:

“This is the final week my latest show, “Beginnings / Endings (and other Worthless Epiphanies)”. So hopefuly you’ll get a chance to see the paintings before they go down for Copro’s next show.
Regardless, Copro and I have produced four very limited prints from the show. The paintings chosen include a canvas print of “Figure with Meat (Remix)”, and wood panel & paper prints of “Hook & Scratch”, “Hunny Bears”, and “Rough Waters”. For more information, please contact Copro Gallery or follow this Link”

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UPDATE: Click here to view the first preview images from the show at CoproGallery.

The simple elegance and poignant, and oftentimes humorous, melancholy of fan favorite Luke Chueh returns to galleries with Beginnings/Endings (And Other Worthless Epiphanies) at the CoproGallery in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station.

From Luke:

“My upcoming solo exhibition of new works, Beginnings / Endings (And Other Worthless Epiphanies), begins Saturday, May 8th at Copro Gallery in Santa Monica, and runs till May 29th. The show will feature upwards to 18 paintings, and also showcases another Chueh “remix” of a popular piece of modern art. Last year, I remixed Francisco Goya’s “Saturn Devours His Son”. This year I’m paying tribute and remixing the Francis Bacon masterpiece, “Figure with Meat.”

Beginnings / Endings… features a range of work that many of my fans will be happily familiar with. The show is meant to be, as the title suggests, a stylistic bookend before Luke begins to explore and experiment with themes inspired by my love/hate relationship with “contemporary” art.“

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As part of their ongoing Film Matters series, Giant Robot is offering a free screening to Jackie Chan’s latest film Shinjuku Incident tomorrow night at the Laemmle’s in Santa Monica. RSVP Essential: filmmatters@giantrobot.com. Click here for more info from Film Matters.

Click here or poster below for film synopsis and trailer.

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A solid first weekend of November with friends in art shows, friends being crafty, and Pac Man going up against Kitty. I got my money on Manny.

• Fifteen years strong, Marsea Goldberg’s venerable New Image Art Gallery keeps banging out the hits with the help of special human being Amber Abramson (who herself is often busy-being) as they present the group show 14 Artists. And these aren’t just any artists, they’re heavy hitters Judith Supine, Cleon Peterson, Skullphone, The Date Farmers, Richard Colman, and Erik Foss among others. Party starts at the gallery and continues on to the after-party at the Cha Cha in Silver Lake.

• Get your craft on at the Contemporary Crafts Market in Santa Monica as my dear old friend Tianna Osborne will be displaying (and selling) her art through her uniquely beautiful purses through the weekend. Flyer below is good for free admission for two!

• Want more Manny? Of course you do! So I suggest you start waiting in line now at Hollywood’s Montálban Theater as Nike Sportswear presents Under the Hood with Manny Pacquiao, a send off celebration and Q&A with the man himself and his team of Freddie Roach, Buboy Fernandez and Alex Ariza. RSVP is mandatory and capacity will surely be reached, but if you can’t make it in person the event will be streaming live on Niksportswear.com, Complex.com, and Facebook.

• The HVW8 Art+Design Gallery on Melrose reunites three old designer friends with the show Michael, Kevin & Geoff. Those three amigos would be: Geoff McFetridge who was of course in Beautiful Losers and whose work you’ve most recently seen in the title design of Where the Wild Things Are; graphic designer Michael Leon whose work with Nike is well documented; and Kevin Lyons who’s well, Kevin Lyons.

• Ever wanted to know how to blow yourself up? If your answer is yes (or if you just want to see some good art) then you’re in luck as WK Interact teaches you how to do so at Echo Park’s Subliminal Projects with his solo show aptly titled How to Blow Yourself Up.

• Speaking of blowing stuff up, the Three Apples Exhibition Celebrating 35 years of Hello Kitty continues at the Royal/T Cafe in Culver City with limited edition print releases, live painting, and meet and greets with some of the participating artists of this never ending event. Along with my Hit+Run homeboys silk-screening gear, Buff Monster and Plasticgod will be among the artists on hand from 4-9pm. Presented by Juxtapoz and Japan LA.

• And finally, another celebratory show as the clothing line Blood is the New Black celebrates their five years of existence with a group show and party at Silver Lake’s JÜNC Gallery. And what would an art party be without my talented friends, the lovely Jesse Spears and the sometimes bearded Dan Monick, among the many participating artists.

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Openings all over Los Angeles, a walking tour that turns into a Big Parade, and a dime bag to take home from New York.

• The Clayton Brothers come home to Santa Monica’s Patrick Painter Gallery with Jumbo Fruit, their latest series featuring their trademark surreal twist this time focussing on the standard issue still-life model of fruit.

• A big two for one opening for Culver City’s LeBasse Projects summer season with Distorted Lens, featuring “Superflat” styled pop artists David Flores and Lisa Alisa.

• Make a move to the group show Momentum, featuring Tiffany Bozic, Chigi (also known as Neri), Ina Kyung Lim, Tessar Lo, Veronique Meignaud, and Brooks Salzwedel at Alhambra’s Nucleus Gallery.

• Giant Robot New York goes tiny for their massive group show Dime Bag 3. Among the over 200 New York painters, illustrators, graphic designers, filmmakers, photographers, and product designers, are Cynthia Connolly, Evah Fan, Maya Hayuk, Rich Jacobs, Andy Kehoe, Matt Leines, Jeff Soto, and Tobin Yelland.

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By now you’ve all seen the global peace through music project which quickly became an internet phenom, Playing for Change. And if you haven’t, now’s your chance to actually see this one of a kind band perform live as the Playing for Change players come to Los Angeles for a sunset performance that will continue through the night at the Santa Monica pier. Read more about the project here and check the first of the “songs around the world” if you need to refresh your memory:

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Group shows, group shows, and more group shows with Sarah Silverman, Z-Trip, Shepard Fairey, Diego Rivera, some graffiti, a dragon, and a Winnebago man mixed in to make your weekend well done.

• East coast meets West coast as artists Sage Vaughn, Dereck Albeck, Hiro Kurata, Mars Mario Martinez (MARS-1), G Bradley Rhodes, Britton Tolliver, and Oliver Vernon join forces for a group show at the Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica.

• At their not-so-secret Silver Lake comic book shop, The Secret Headquarters presents the Guilty Pleasures of artist Aiyana Udensen. Come for a drink or two and an “an informative slide presentation on rodent care”.

• Get down with superstar DJs and Darwin’s Revolution at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles for the last First Fridays of the season as Z-Trip, The Gaslamp Killer, and The Phatal DJ rock the hallowed halls of history.

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• You don’t have to be quiet as you laugh your ass off at the Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax as The Cinefamily presents Sarah Silverman presenting Carl Reiner’s 1970 black comedy, Where’s Poppa? as part of June’s Comedy Death Ray (Upright Citizens Brigade) series.

• For those looking to take a weekend trip to Northern California, the Scion art tour makes a move to San Jose with Installation Five: Self Portrait featuring artists Blek le Rat, Jeff Soto, David Choe, Kelsey Brookes, Mark Mothersbaugh, Ron English, Sage Vaughn, and many, many more at the Anno Domini Gallery.

• LA’s downtown Crewest crew presents a group tribute show to the mecca of the LA graffiti scene with The Legendary Belmont Tunnel. Featuring writers Cab, Man One, and the legendary Saber, among others.

• Sometimes there’s nothing funnier than found footage and the Cinefamily has a bunch of it as the Silent Movie Theater presents TV Carnage Night, the equivalent of “a mystical night of channel-flipping, in which every single click of the remote lands you on that bizarre something that stops you in your audiovisual tracks”. Check out a clip here:
TV Carnage Night (feat. One Man Force)
Silent Movie Theater
Saturday June 6, 2009 at 10:45pm 611 N. Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036 Cost: $10

• Giant Robot New York spotlights “indie-comics creators from across the country, ranging from stapled-and-folded stars of DIY to art-gallery superstars” with the group show Panelists V.

• The ever visceral Amanda Visell unleashes her latest vinyl toy, The Dragon Scout, for a release party at Pasadena’s Switcheroo workshop.

• For the Internationally inclined, the irrepressible street art icon Shepard Fairey opens a retrospective of his screenprint work at the Berlin arm of LA’s Merry Karnowski Gallery.

• See the Life-size Murals of Diego Rivera as educator Gregorio Luke leads an innovative multi-media lecture of the Mexican muralist’s life and work with the aid of 20,000 lumens at the Ford Theater. “Murals are projected life size using the most advanced projection technology and gives viewers the sensation of being in front of the original murals”.

• And finally, end your weekend on a f-ing high note with a sneak preview of Winnebago Man, a film in which filmmaker Ben Steinbauer takes on the seemingly impossible task of tracking down Jack Rebney (aka “the angriest RV salesman in the world”) and his hilariously foul-mouthed and ill-tempered outtakes from a Winnebago promo he made in the 80s. Check the original clip here:

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