Melrose Garage Gallery

So, I've expanded the idea of my earlier post. I realized I have some resources in the art/internet/media world as well as friends who distribute premium beverages of all stripes in Los Angeles. The idea would be to open up my garage to art and open the backyard to crafts from local designers. Make it a late day event that turns into a backyard bbq. The idea being to help local designers get seen, see some different art, have some drinks, maybe some food and hopefully make art that people will enjoy taking home. I'm going to be away from Los Angeles for most of March and April so I'm thinking of really working on it when I get back and putting it up, maybe once a month starting in June when it gets really hot. Last night I got some more wood outside of Urban Outfitters that I can use to bolster my walls to make it easier to hang art from. Plus, there's an extra fridge in the garage from a roommate and plenty of tables and chairs to boot. It's all coming together!!

Urban Artfitters?

I live next to an Urban Outfitters. That large clothing/lifestyle chain store that mass produces clothes and trinkets to make them look un-mass produced. Hey, I'm not criticizing it, just pointed that out. I have purchased books there and bottle openers and record cover frames from time to time. I don't buy clothes there because I don't want to look like I buy clothes from Urban Outfitters. You know the type: worn flannel shirts, 80's nostalgia t-shirt underneath with slim black jeans. Maybe they're rockin' a fedora or a scarf around their neck in the middle of August. Sorry, this is not the point of this post. Urban Outfitters (UO) uses lots of wood and textiles to display their clothes and they put it right next to my garage. Lately, I've been carrying the wood into my garage and repainting them and adding my own elements to them. Here are 2 pieces of blank wood that I painted and stained. One red and one black. I can't decide if I want to show them separately or as one piece. What do you think? I've got some great pre-cut boards and old UO displays that I just can't wait to work on and display. When I have enough, I'm going to open my garage on a busy weekend and hang them up there so people can see them. I'm calling it my Garage Gallery. Also, the paint and brushes were left in my garage from the last tenant so I didn't even have to spend a dime on making all this art. Really looking forward to posting some and seeing the response.

New Recession Artist

I painted my coffee table today. I have to add more to this but I can't find the right words. I did however come up with a term for someone in my state. Someone who is not working full-time but has turned to art as a result of being unemployed. Less a direct product of the recession, however all of my art is made from discarded materials or things that I have found in my neighborhood. Needless to say, I would not have found the time to do this art had I been employed in a full-time job. Pictures to be posted later. The term I had for artists like me is New Recession Artist. Not too keen on the New part but think it's necessary to separate from the old recession from the 30's. So, New Recession Artist. There's many more like me. Many, many more.

Art-Tea

I spent the better part of the day cleaning out my garage. Among the things I found: rollerskates, plywood, AVID editing software and lemon scented pillowcases. I gave some of those things to my repair man and I kept the rest. What I kept was the plywood that I found behind the Urban Outfitters near where I live. The wood was already nailed and fashioned into rectangles and shapes suitable for hanging. I was about to stain the wood with a clear coat but had the odd thought to staple tea bags to the top of the wood and pour hot water on them and have the tea run down the wood, thereby 'staining' it in a natural way. Now, this is just a thought, what I need to do is find the right kind of tea to use to get a great finish. I'm thinking of a dark tea as well as a rooibos tea to add some earthy reds. Give me a few days to find the right tea, stain the wood, take a picture and post it back. It could either look pretty cool or pretty embarrassing.

Umbrellas Everywhere: Fun or Profit?

I had an interesting thought that could be used two ways. It rained here in Los Angeles and it gave me the chance to do something I love. I walked up and down Melrose with my umbrella and offered it to people who were without one. They were very grateful and surprised that someone would help them like that here in LA. Doing this I thought of the public improv group called Improv Everywhere, wherein they create events in public areas, you know, stores, subways, malls. They are a very funny and create memorable scenes during unmemorable moments of life. I had the idea that they should all go out when it rains and do the same thing, but in a more crowded area. I picture dozens of people all wearing the same outfit, walking around offering their umbrellas. Then, I had the more cynical and some would say shrewd idea to turn this into a marketing ploy. The umbrella careers become walking billboards so to speak with ads on them and even turning the umbrella into a sort of billboard. Maybe for a coffee company, they paint the umbrella to look like a coffee cup turned upside down and the people underneath are in it. Think what kind of free publicity they would get if one day 20 large coffee cup looking umbrellas in the rain were walking around with people under them. It would be funny and the company would be seen nicely as helping strangers in the rain. It needs some fleshing out, but there's something there. PS: As I write this I'm also watching Rear Window with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. They are just talking about what makes art and ideas and Grace said there has to be an element of surprise. I agree.

Behind the Canvas

I've been going to a lot of galleries and museums lately and have been constantly thinking about art and what makes good art. I can't draw worth a lick and am a little envious of those who can. I just respect how well they can create life-life pictures on two-dimensional surfaces. Since I can't draw, I tend to focus on the why of art and about creations that don't rely how steady my hand is. Maybe it's cheating but it's how I contribute and show my creativity. One of the things I like about art is that it brings out and stimulates your imagination. I'm just as much stimulated by things of unreal beauty such as anything by Van Gogh, as I am by art that confuses me and makes me think, like Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp and more recently Bruce Nauman. I am working on a series of canvases that are blank and I place objects behind them. I include and describe the object in the listing but it's up to the viewer to picture it in their mind. Since they can't see it, they have to decide if I am telling the truth or not. They have to take my word for it. They see what may be behind the canvas and project it onto the blank front. How large is it? What color? Is it a picture, a real thing or nothing at all? A few industrious souls may attempt to shine a light through the canvas to see a shadow and get a definitive account. But how can they believe it if they don't see it. A shadow doesn't exist, you can't touch it the way a brisk fall breeze touches your face. Okay, I have to stop for now. I just crossed the self-indulgent poetic line.

A hand on art

Last night I went to the museum of contemporary art in downtown Los Angeles. There were many famous pieces of art, among the notables: Warhol, Johns, Basquiat, Koons, Raushcenberg, Lichtenstein, Miro and Flavin. Great pieces all in all and I did a surprising thing. I took pictures of some of them with my hand in front. I don't know why I did it but when I looked at them as a whole it seemed as if my hand was trying to touch the priceless works. Parts of the pieces were covered with my hand but what the also did was open up the pieces. It contextualized them and gave them some what's the word, ah, dimension to them. Is this weird? Vain? I thought it was interesting and so I took many photos. I only included a few here but you see what I mean. The hand also looks as if it might be malicious toward the art but rest assured, it is not. I kept thinking of that old Kids in the Hall sketch with the guy who sits in the chair on the street and raises his fingers to crush the heads of strangers walking by. He doesn't do any damage but in his mind he is destroying these people.

Lonely Art: LA

I walk around. I walk around a lot. When I do, I notice the smallest pieces of art, put there however long ago and forgotten or overlooked by the majority of peripatetic folks like me. Lets not kid ourselves, these pieces of art are forgotten by near everyone. If I only traveled with a camera I could document it all. The wrought iron swordfish, the ceramic snake gnomes, the pied-piper mural half-covered with ivy. All great stuff but I'd wager money not seen on 99.99999(you get the point) % of LA. Not anymore. My idea would be blog of all the great hidden pieces of art in LA. If it got big, yeah, it could move to other cities: New York, Miami, London, Issaquah. The point is, people over look the smallest gestures and if there was something that documented and described them, well then maybe people wouldn't take them for granted. Be sure to come back to this one because I'll be sure to take photos and show you exactly what I mean.

Yeah. But is it art?

This may be weird but I decided to put one of my favorite movies out of its misery. I had an old VHS copy of Apocalypse Now and the cassette head was broken. I didn't want to throw it out so I took it apart and wrapped the whole reel around a canvas with the box protruding in the middle. The face you see is Marlon Brando. The movie is over 2 hours, so that's a lot of reel I had to wrap! It looks interesting, but is it art? Just because I put something on a canvas? I can see how one would say yes, it's art, but Josh, it ain't good art. Okay, I'll take that bait. To a fan of the movie, it could be considered a nice representation of the movie. My thought process as I was wrapping the canvas was that in the movie, Colonel Kurtz was always surrounded by darkness. You barely saw his face, let alone his body during the whole movie. The VHS tape represented that darkness and it wrapped, covered and consumed him whole.

Canvas face

I had this idea today and please let me know if you've heard it being done. But what I do is, I take a 12x16 canvas or maybe 16x20 and I cut holes in the middle for someone to place their face into. I cut out the eye holes, the nose area and room for a mouth. The viewer puts his face on and into the canvas and what they see when they look in well, I haven't decided. The canvas could either be set deep so that I can put a mirror in there or paint a scenery that is only viewable by them. It's a one on one piece of art. Designed to shut out the world and for however long they want, whatever I decide to put behind that canvas, is only viewable by them. I figure dozens of people see the Mona Lisa at the same time and mine would be the opposite. One viewer at a time. Whenever I am at a museum there is usually someone who spoils a nice moment for me in front of a piece. The high-school girls on their cellphones chatting next to me when I viewed Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon or the man who backed into me with his umbrella as I stared at Van Gogh's Irises. I am in no way comparing my half-cocked idea I thought of today to those two masterpieces, but I was trying to think about how one views art at a museum or gallery and how that process could be boiled down to just one viewer at a time. To shut the world out so to speak. If I work on this idea more, and there's a 45/55 chance I might, I'll be sure to put up some pictures.