Last weekend Michele and I met up with our friend Roz to check out some of the work showing over in Culver City. A bunch of spaces were open late Saturday in concert with the LA Contemporary Art Fair across town in the Pacific Design Center. We managed to find some great stuff here and there, like the above neon wall piece, ChakrAK-47 by Artemio at LAXART.
At Honor Fraser we were confronted with Gustavo Godoy’s Fast-Formal Object: Big White. The installation is a seemingly random construction of various lumber, dowels, stamped sheet materials and concrete, painted white with its own lights built into it. It reads as a playful study of form, light and shadow, very architectural but also very drawing based, as many of the elements read like various line strokes. With a small platform inside and ramp leading it, it also gives off a constructivist playhouse vibe that keeps the whole thing from getting too serious. We stuck around for a gallery talk on this one, but I found I liked the work much better before I heard the artist talk about it.
Also at Honor Fraser was a projected video piece by Fabien Giraud and Raphael Siboni in which teams of armed combatants battled among a landscape of movable black objects (much like large pedestals or gallery dividers) and theatrical smoke. The groups, costumed as a military contingent, prisoners in orange jumpsuits, civilians, rap-gangstas, and zombies (?) in medical garb (am I missing any? perhaps there were some terrorists too?) played like video game characters brought to life. They ran towards each other across the space, clicking paint ball guns at each other (no added sound effects) and dying by the dozens. Each shot was a continuous tracking shot across the space, gliding smoothly by on rails, starting from the right hand side every time as the groups went through their maneuvers. This one is part of Lab’s inaugural exhibition VideoRoam, a series curated by Paul Young. Lab is a sort of side project of Honor Fraser, “a forum for the explorations of the arts community in and outside of the Los Angeles area beyond the existing gallery program”.
Finally, down at Angles Gallery, among paintings I didn’t care for at all, we found this little gem of a wall sculpture by Tom LaDuke – a delicate little bit of twig somehow mirrored as if hanging above the surface of a still pond. Around the corner from this, a vertically oriented video proved to be the highlight of our tour. In crisp HD, a still life with hanging bird, grapes, water and plaster wall turns out to be a super-slow-motion shot of the bird simply dropping into the water below. The details of the feathers, the water splashing out into droplets, the sheen of the grapes, recalled old master’s still life painting – and more recently Bill Violas interpretations of the master’s at his Getty residency – but still managed to stay in itself a captivating work.
(hm. I didn’t write down the name of the video artist and now I can’t find it on their website.. same for the above projection. What is it with galleries snubbing the video artists on their websites? Unless I am just missing something)
A while back I designed a logo for my friend Kathleen Greenberg, an interior designer I have worked with on various projects through two different offices. I did this business card design for her too, just because I felt like it. I don’t think she is actually going to use it, but I like the potential of the prints of different materials used in her work for the back of the cards. The intention would be to curate and design a series of backs (these two are more placeholders) that relate directly to materials and patterns she has used on projects. Front is simple and straightforward with an understated but elegant font. Check out her work here.
“The MexiCali Biennial is a non-profit organization that aims to provide a platform for border crossing, progressive art exhibitions and events. These interventions, installations and performances encourage dynamic cultural exchanges that resonate within the fluid context of the territory covering Mexico and California. Concentrating on the border as the site of transgressions, this biennial distinguishes itself by tapping into a unique aesthetic derived from a culture of art and critical dialog evolving from the confluence of both countries in a region defined by its hybridism.
The first MexiCali Biennial took place in Mexicali in 2006 with the idea of producing an exhibition featuring artists from California and Mexico. The addendum of “Biennial” was a deliberate political choice—to add to an art show in Mexicali a term that came with the baggage of art-world prestige and exhaustion, a Biennial at a time when no one could stand the thought of another one. The aim was to provide artists with an opportunity to respond and transgress the overarching environmental context of the production and display of their work with a notion of conversation that engages both with the heavily funded and institutionalized Biennial framework and the less formal and often more innovative process of bi-national exchange that happens every day.”
Yeah, yeah. Vacation is over, Winter Winter (2+ feet of snow right before I left) has been traded for LA Winter (awesome out with a chance of rain.. actually pouring right now with I-kid-you-not a 2 foot deep lake around my parked car). Not working and not connected to teh internets (parents house was a 2-week internet black-out during which I read a lot) has been traded for working working working working, hopefully some of which will be billed at some kind of hourly rate, some of which will be traded for, uh, street cred(?) and some of which will be chalked up to well I was going to do that anyway so who cares if no one’s paying me for it.
So. Its already busy back at the Rise Studios, with Michele furiously editing a freelance video project in between Otis responsibilities, which I am supposedly going to review tomorrow for sound and further editing, me trying to make my way through several hundreds of pages of technical structural study guide so that I can pass that exam when the time comes, also while looking into all the nooks and crannies around Los Angeles for the mythical, aforementioned Work That Pays which when found will sustain the lifestyle of care-free-artist-architect-musician-designer that is after all how I roll. Oh, and I got some super-cool digital sensors in the mail today so that I can rig up some Sci-fi hi-tech bio interface thingy to some syth software (ala the Vivarium project). PLUS! Still need to put on my nerd goggles and solder up a kick-ass synth project that has been sitting on my desk mocking me for about three months now. That and a handful of little Radio Shack style kits that when assembled will allow me to sonically influence the outcomes of both past and future events. What else? Web design continues for my own site which is filling up with content and not yet really designed (that’s the half-assed version as it is, and might just stay that way). Hmm. I think I completely lost the flow of that sentence-paragraph there. But you get the idea.
So, lets just say Two Thousand and Ten is off to a helluva start, and check back in here shortly when I have some actual news to post out to ya.
This past weekend I finally finished putting together my latest collection of songs/audio experiments. Mountain Mountain includes tracks from 2004-2009, some are soundtracks to video or installation works, others solo guitar performances or studio sound experiments using a handmade synthesizer, various small instruments, my trusty e-bow and layered delay effects.
The CD is available as a first edition of 100, signed and numbered on the inside of the fold and made right here in the Rise Industries studios. Its super DIY, handmade music.
The CD is $15.00
with 3.00 shipping and handling
1.50 S&H for each additional CD.
(from Jeremy J. Quinn Design store)
Payment accepted from either PayPal or credit card (with no need to sign in).
I will be shipping these up until the 19th of December, then I will resume on the 5th of January, so if you order in between those dates it will take a little longer to get.
Here are excerpts from each of the tracks:
01. The Winding Path 1:20
[audio:The-Winding-Path.mp3]
02. Soundtrack to Western Descender 8:11
[audio:Soundtrack-to-Western-Descender-excerpt.mp3]
03. Soliloquy 2:22
[audio:Soliloquy-excerpt.mp3]
04. Curlicues and a Broad Marker 10:26
[audio:Curlicues-and-a-Broad-Marker-excerpt.mp3]
05. Sounds From the Afternoon (with Michael Feldman) 10:12
[audio:Sounds-From-the-Afternoon-excerpt.mp3]
06. Whale Song 8:18
[audio:Whale-Song-excerpt.mp3]
Bonus Track: Tetsuo Loses Control 5:30
[audio:Tetsuo-Losees-Control-excerpt.mp3]
Lately I have been experimenting with a slew of different audio tools, both hardware and software – analogue and digital. Eventually the ideas and methods will work their way into this project, Matter Management‘s Vivarium, which I am doing sound design for. It will be constructed, birthed, and will die in the Sci-Arc Gallery, and is the creation of MM’s CEO Juan Azulay. The sound portion of the Vivarium takes on the identity of a sort of organic and machine hybrid synthesizer with many layers of interactivity.
This little test is a tongue-in-cheek software and MIDI input test (using a simple controller to alter several different parameters in how the sounds are shaped or generated) using the 80’s ballad The Captain of Her Heart by Double, a variable sine wave, and an ethereal audio track of my creation as its main audio inputs. Later on the controllers will all be sensors, and the sound will be – shall we say more brooding and insectile? The video up there was created using Akira Rabelais‘ intriguing software, Argeïphontes Lyre, which I have also been messing around with lately. Its rather difficult to get something intentional out of it (for me), but quite easy to find pleasant surprises when you just let it go ahead and do what it does (which, incidentally, is not actually obvious on the first, second or sometimes third tries).
The weekend before Thanksgiving Michele and I went over to one of the old hangars by the Santa Monica Airport to check out the show Cautionary Tales, Feral Structures at Arena 1 gallery. Curated by Berenika Boberksa and presented in several rooms underneath the cavernous roof of the hangar building, the show consisted of works by artists and architects from London and Los Angeles. Each piece employs the cautionary tale as a narrative device which plays out in the feral structures created or proposed in the space.
Our invitation to attend a small gallery talk turned out to be an invitation to participate in a small panel giving the gallery talk… and when we finally got our bearings the conversion kept cycling around the differences between the architects and the artists, and methods each group might employ when working within a gallery context.
As we spoke, my gaze kept returning to the half-constructed or half dismantled volcano across the room. Built haphazardly out of delicately arranged fans of bass wood, and propped up on a scaffold of small timbers, it loomed large above a quaint town composed of kitsch plaster buildings of the sort my mom would put on the mantel around the holidays. I kept wondering weather these townspeople had been building this volcano, and putting themselves in immediate danger through their industriousness; or if they have been trying frantically to take it down in time to save themselves before it blew its top. For some reason the key to this work for me was held in the difference between these two methods, and what each of them might refer to in our own society. I never did decide on an answer, or ask about it, but ended up satisfied with just the question itself, and the state of indeterminacy the work left me with.
Other works included a full-scale proposal by Berenika for an opportunistic retrofit of a housing block, enabling the tenant to architecturally flirt with her neighbors. This large sculptural work took over the main gallery space, and had a line quality reminiscent to me of the restrained yet flowing drawings I had created back in school using only a compass, pencil, and some basic geometry. In the back room was a striking composite analogue projection by Zoe Hodgson (very analogue, using a couple of haphazardly taped up overheard projectors) of a salt tower emerging from the desert. Blockily reminiscent of some medieval Italian creation, its details glowed yet were infused with hairy, creepy things and bits of wood or other materials hinting at a depth beyond the shadow and light on the wall.
The whole show managed to unmistakably come at you from many different places and perspectives, while keeping enough aesthetic and narrative links to stand as a unified body of works – especially when read in the light of the show’s title and curatorial statement.
Since it took me so long to get around writing this post, the show has already been down for quite a while – so you’ll have to be satisfied with checking it out through the photos below.
The artists in the show were: Berenika Boberska, Louise Clarke, Sarah Gillett, Dominique Golden, Zoe Hodgson, Ilaria Mazzoleni and Neil Rollinson. (Sorry I didn’t manage to write down which one belonged to each artist this time)
For months now Metro LA has been taunting us, running test trains up and down the shiny new tracks laid down right along Alameda and over the First Street bridge out into East Los Angeles. The trains, all clean and modern, glide by with only a driver onboard, making all their stops. The ticket machines on the platform still wrapped up in shrink-wrap, platforms themselves empty too.
Last Sunday though, we finally got to ride.
The Gold Line Eastside Extension had been coming for decades, and when the Pasadena-Union Station part of the line was completed back in 2003 the planning was already well underway. This little 6 mile, eight stop run of track may not seem like much to those in mass-transit oriented cities like Boston (I do miss the T) or New York, but it brings the gold line practically to my doorstep (well, within a couple of blocks) and opens up easy access to Union Station and the Red Line to Hollywood or Wilshire, Chinatown and its Galleries, Pasadena, and East Los Angeles from the Rise Industries Studios. Need to get to LAX? Train to Flyaway. Need to hang out at Mariachi Plaza and then hit La Serenata di Garibaldi for dinner? Two stops. Need to get to the Armory Center for the Arts for an opening? Gold line takes you right up into Old Town Pasadena. Wanna hit a farmers market on Saturday morning? Train out to East LA Civic Center. Hollywood Bowl without traffic? Take Gold Line to Red Line and get off at Hollywood and Highland for a short walk up the hill.
But while its great for Rise Industries, the real hope for Metro is that it becomes the new commuter route for people coming into downtown from East LA, and that it brings more museum goers, bar hoppers, and food eaters in to the pretty lively downtown neighborhoods within reach of Little Tokyo. Its only a short walk to 4th and Main, or Second and Hill, or even Grand and the Disney Concert Hall. As most people who have been driving down here will realize, parking sucks and is getting expensive. Maybe even some of the hipsters frequenting Hipster Sausage (aka Wurstküche) will take the train and free up my parking spaces at night.
The Little Tokyo/Arts District stop opened to some low-key fanfare on Sunday, with a small array of booths from local businesses and cultural organizations. There were some speeches, a ribbon cutting, and then a few different bands took to the podium to play for the sparse crowd. The real affair was going on at Mariachi Square two stops away in East LA, where a couple of blocks were lined with booths, packed with people, and rocking to two bandstands, one at each end. Kids drew on the streets with chalk, bounced in Bouncy Castles, or tried out some Faux rock climbing, and crowds of people milled around checking out the booths, sampling Tamales, or moving to the music.
The trains themselves were really the main attraction though, with long lines just to get on, and packed conditions (like a normal day in New York at rush hour, I suppose), it felt like we just might one day have a full-on train network connecting all of Los Angeles. While that reality is still decades in the future, plans are already in motion to further extend both ends of the Gold Line, even as progress is made on the Expo Line into Culver City. If all of Los Angeles won’t be connected by rail, at least perhaps enough art hotspots will be to warrant gallery hopping across town exclusively by train.
A couple of weeks ago I took a nice bike ride from my place up to Sunset Junction to meet a friend for lunch. Very nice ride by the way, I had forgotten Sunset has a bike lane, so I didn’t actually feel like my life was in danger the whole way there. Anyway, on the way home I came down Second Street and came across the nice new pocket park (I guess you’d call it? Lawn?) on the south side of the brand spanking new Los Angeles Police Department headquarters building. The new building is by AECOM (used to be DMJM, but maybe they found that acronym to not be corporate sounding enough?) and is really surprisingly pretty fantastic. I don’t mean surprising for AECOM, corporate joking aside they do some pretty great work and I know some talented designers who work there, but surprising to me that the headquarters for the LAPD could come out just so damn nice and open and become a part of the urban fabric so smoothly. Of course, the biggest thing is the landscaping, and the conscious choice to give the public the south lawn as the aforementioned mini-park. So now there is this great little lawn on Second Street that I totally want to play croquet on, and the rest of the site is well developed and meticulously planted. Maybe the police will take Rise Industries up on a game or two? I will try to overlook the use of decomposed granite on the upper levels instead of concrete in order to defeat skateboarding on those sweet stairs and handrails. I guess all building developers will always hate skateboarders.
I can see that this building is an exercise in trying to revamp LAPD’s image, to give downtown a very open, transparent building with inviting grounds and hope that the message translates to the organization it houses. If so, we will see how that goes. It’s certainly a great gesture. Also on site is a series of dark bronze, abstracted animal-ish sculptures by Peter Shelton which were the topic of some controversy last month. Apparently Chief Bratton hates them… as does LA Times writer Steve Lopez. I was particularly fond of them myself, especially in the context of downtown LA. Head over there and take a look for yourself though, as they read better all lined up as a kind of progression. Then chill out with a book on the new lawn, maybe some good LA Noir like Raymond Chandler or something, right?
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