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i'm gonna color this bitch and win me a t-shirt!!

weekends

Last weekend was a little crazy, I was tired so I didn't write about it. We went to Kiel Johnson and Christian Tedeschi's show at A+D Museum in LA entitled "Atmospheric Conditions." It was a cool show, there was some sound art thing at the end that we left during cause it was taking just way too long, but Kiel and Christian's work was good. We then headed off to a chill party in West LA, and Saturday we went to the Hammer, MOCA, and La Mano Press. I had a print at the La Mano thing, but unfortunately the event was poorly attended....ah well. Sunday we went to the student galleries at school and then hit up The Walkmen show at the Troubadour, they were amazing (buy all their albums, except for the PussyCat Dolls thing, a cover album, phtth).


This weekend I didn't end up doing as much crazy stuff. I watched Midnight Cowboy. It was kind of tamer than I thought it was going to be. From what I heard, I thought it was going to be a disturbing look into the underbelly of a seedy Pre-911 New York. I had visions of drugs, violence, and uncomfortable scenes. Not so much. The plot is this, Jon Voight (a southern rube)quits his job, dons a cowboy outfit and goes to NY to become a "huslter," i.e. sleep with women for money. He fails at his first few attempts, and looking like a sucker, runs across Ratso (Dustin Hofman), who con's him out of $20. After this the cowboy goes broke and gets desperate, then he ends up tracking down Ratso but doesn't have the balls to beat him up. After this, they become friends and for the rest of the movie try to steal and scavenge their way into a career in "hustling." It doesn't work out too well. Interspersed throughout the movie are flashbacks of the cowboy's past and Ratso's visions of the future.


Apparently, the brief boob and butt shots in the movie were supposed to be shocking back in 1969. Not so much now. The movie ends up being more or less a "rube in the city" story where Jon Voight's character learns the ropes pretty slow, but eventually does figure them out. Good acting and good direction though

Then yesterday, I went to the CSULB faculty show in downtown Long Beach. All the faculty was showing here and I was surprised to see Jay Kavapil (our past Graduate Advisor) to be showing some pretty nice ceramics peices as well. The show was so-so, most of the fine art professor's work was really nice, the new head of Sculpture had a chiselled marble work I thought was impressive. The people who I expected to have good work did have good work, but some of the other work, like graphic design, was pretty terrible. I guess I just don't understand graphic design, but the graphic design work in the show to me was pretty lousy looking.

Anyway, after the faculty show we went up to the unadvertised M. Ward show at CSULA. Again, a pretty amazing show. Buy all of his cds.

Nothing So Strange

I got the movie Nothing So Strange from the library (where else) and thought the premise was interesting: Bill Gates gets assasinated in a public place and there is a group that is trying to uncover the "truth" behind what they believe is a conspiracy in the shooting.

The movie ends up being more about the group (Citizens For Truth), than about the shooting. The group sounds like a bunch of nuts and does what most conspiracy groups do, get very angry and try some grassroots techniques to drum up support for their cause in cheap and ineffective ways. They have a solid theory about the shooting, and some evidence to back it up, but their PR is a nightmare and their leader is angry and disruptive (although I thought the actor should have played a more angry role). They actually build up some steam in the end and get the movement to gain some momentum, though it is short lived.

The movie worked pretty well as a fake documentary and the story was interesting and very in-depth. The acting was good too, the characters seemed genuinely awkward and nervous, and there is an old lady in the group that I can easily see being in a conspiracy meeting. I was surprised at how deep the story was and how far the film makers went to make it seem real. Although some of it seemed like a parody of conspiracy nuts, you did feel some sympathy when they weren't winning some battles. Anyway, it was a pretty good movie, especially for the obviously limited budget.

Last Weekend and Culver City junk

Last Weekend me and some friends went to a sort of lame party, somewhere, I'm not really sure where I was just directed to it. The party itself wasn't bad: booze music etc etc. The worst was that people ended up either as slutty this or that (mainly a slutty version of something very not slutty, like a scientist, or a prison inmate), or the male version of a lame outfit: no costume whatsoever. A dozen or so guys strictly wore what they wore all day but included a silver mask. I went as Shawn of the Dead (again, I know I know), but the group I went with included, a bearded lady, another bearded lady (his wife) and a battered housewife complete with a bun in the oven. Anyway, the music included a lot of 90's dance music (Salt n Peppa, Young MC, you know the kind), some candy (milk duds!) and massive amounts of alcohol.

This weekend I ended up going to Lab 101's 3 year anniversary gallery opening. In the line up were: Anthony Lister who does dripping sketchy paintings of superhero comicbook characters, and I believe was also handcuffed and duct taped on the floor of the gallery dressed in a Captian America outfit

Kelsey Brookes, who does some paintings that look like people wearing masks with a lot of decoration and geometric shapes.

And Kill Pixie, who does paintings that were of Native American people and objects in shifting and unstable landscapes, as well as scultures of blue canoes that stuck out from the walls.

The show was alright, I felt a lot more comfortable being there than the first show opening I went to, there was some Tecate, some wine, and by 7:30 a bunch of people. I noticed with this show too, almost all of the work was sold, except the Kill Pixie paintings which I actually liked better than the Kelsey Brookes paintings that sold. Kill Pixie's had this nice resin gloss on the top of the paintings (which I really like for some reason) and the work seemed to have more going on in them, these strange narrative's with these weird characters. The show also attracted some local weirdo's, one woman that we saw at the Scion show that was putting chapstick on her forehead, and this other really awkward guy I found out at one time went to Long Beach State. We snuck out before they got attached to us "like gum on a shoe."

We also went to the Blum and Poe gallery breifly that had some interesting video art and gold paintings, it was pretty cool, but we wanted to hit up the other Culver City galleries, and the Giant Robot show in LA.

The other opening's in C C were boring so we headed up to Giant Robot show at the Japanese American History Museum in LA. We made it there with about a half hour to spare. There was a ton of people there, and there was even a line to get in to the exhibit. A bunch of artists had stuff in the show: APAK Gary Baseman David Choe Seonna Hong Sashie Masakatsu Saelee Oh Pryor Praczukowski Souther Salazar Eishi Takaoka Adrian Tomine

One of the most interesting was a large scale spraypaint mural with real ninja throwing stars in it and some other paintings on the opposite wall of very tiny paintings with very tiny painting brush strokes. I don't remember the names of who did what, but I swear next time I go to an opening I'll bring my camera. Anyway, the exhibition was fun, but it was tiny. I think the whole exhibition was maybe 2 medium sized rooms. With that many people we were expecting more...