Venice Stuff To Do
Art Walk: the Bad, the Good, the Beautiful + Other Events
Art Walk: the Bad, the Good, the Beautiful
Sunday, May 21
registration opens at 10:30 a.m., studios open 11:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m.
Tix/maps of studios @ Westminster School
1010 Abbot Kinney Blvd. (near the intersection of Main Street)
$50/per person
Venice has always had a love/hate relationship with this behemoth event instituted on our shores once a year. The good we’ll get to in a minute… but the bad? If you talk to Venetians, it’s almost impossible to find a community member that hasn’t be dissed, besmirched or otherwise jettisoned by event organizers.
One wonders why event founder Sheila Goldberg is no longer running the show though she is too graceful to discuss her departure. One hears from a well-respected artist who’d finally had enough of the event’s absurd inner politics and pulled their studio. Then there’s the prominent local art figure who the Venice art world reveres but who was summarily dissed by event organizers. In the meantime, one marvels at the event organizers’ determination to take all the marbles off the table, not worrying at all about other Venice social service agencies. Finally, one hears stories from the local African-American community in the ‘hood that they’ve been dispatched to other UCLA medical facilities rather than the one in their backyard.
This year, Art Walk moves its party for participating artists to Santa Monica along with crowd favorite the silent auction to create a gala which now has a $50 price tag to attend. The change cements organizers’ perspective of their local cash cow. Art Walk is the babe-alicious boyfriend who has sex with you but won’t let you sleep over.
And yet, everyone puts up with the bad treatment and, not only that, supports it. Why…. We go no further than our own humble insurance bills up to a whopping $485 a month and the third-worldization of this country’s medical system. Health care is in critical condition. Clinton didn’t get to fix it, and, with the Bushites running the national show—it’s plummeting to new depths. Art Walk has to be evaluated in this context. Our decision on whether to support it or not can’t be based on the organizers’ arrogance but on the event’s ultimate destination.
Is $50 too much to chip in to get some desperately needed health care to poor people? To keep them alive? We say no. It’s cool, shut down the street, come to Venice and see the show.
We’ll give what we can give—is what Venice’s artists have done for years for Art Walk. We’re down with our homies. Sunday is important and worthy.
Deadline constraints prevent us from providing a full briefing of all the participating and exciting artists on this year’s walk but there is some compelling work to be seen along with some fascinating spaces. We’ll roll off 3.5 spaces and get this baby posted online.
Laddie John Dill: An internationally known artist with work in the permanent collections of over 25 museums, Dill paints with cement, intersecting the rough surface with spans of smooth glass. Dill’s energy, warmth, and desire to share information about his process make him a highly-accessible art crowd pleaser. What we love about his studio, however, is walking in and seeing a surprising new work or an old one that we had never been aware of. Dill continually steps up for an extraordinary variety of truly worthy fundraisers and also quietly supports emerging talent. Laddie John Dill is Venice. And if he’s there on Sunday, we will be too.
Jennifer Wolf: A painter, Wolf is an emerging talent whose work was most recently been seen at the Riverside Art Museum’s “Flow” show curated by Peter Frank—one of her pieces was selected for the catalogue’s cover. Wolf makes her own paints, using mineral rocks she collects in local and across-the-world-mountains and “recipes” which date back to the Renaissance. You can hear more about her process and see the vivid work it results in at her studio. Her space is located a little beyond the Art Walk hub, but is most definitely worth the quick by-bus detour.
Bill Attaway: A longtime Venice artist, Attaway’s studio was
the crowd fave last year. Attaway’s work in Venice originated from ceramic/mosaic traditions but last year he shifted mediums, showing paintings of spare Buddha-like forms whose allure captivated us. We hear there is new work in the offing. We’ll see you there.
Hamilton Press Not officially on the tour, but well worth the stop-by is the exceptional lithograph house, Hamilton Press, which is usually open by appointment only. Hamilton Press specializes in hand printed lithographs with editions usually limited to twenty. Hamilton has worked with a select group of area and Los Angeles artists ranging from Ed Ruscha to Billy Al Bengston to Raymond Pettibon to Dennis Hopper to Robert Graham which means the Hamilton Press space is a mini-museum of their work. Address is 1317 Abbot Kinney Blvd, hours will coincide with the Walk’s.
Hawk or Dove, It’s Your Call
Brunch with Marcy Winograd, Democrat for Congress
Saturday, May 20. From 10 a.m. – 12 n.
RSVPS requested (they need a mimosa count)
Reshima: 310 577 0977 /
reshima@hotmail.com
The primary election between Jane Harman, Venice’s current congressional rep, and Mary Winograd, who is looking to unseat her, has been shaping up as the quintessential what’s-wrong-with-the-democratic-party-and-is-this-the-right-time-to-fix-it. We’ve heard that Harman has the backing of several local established Democratic party members, but her hawkish positions on the War and her failure to use her position as the ranking Democrat on the congressional intelligence committee to right Bush’s dangerous anti-civil rights course caused Winograd to step up to the plate and run against her. Is Winograd what’s needed now to re-form a sheepish Democratic Party that let the Republicans lead it by the nose ring? Or does everyone play safe and pray for a Democratic majority by playing off incumbencies next November. Drop by and meet Winograd in person at this brunch event.
Von Dutch Tribute II
Saturday, May 20. 8:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.
Copro Nason Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave., T-5
Long before he was a corporate trademark, he was Von Dutch, a pinstriper of cars and motorcycles in the 1950s. In the years since then and his dead in 1992, he produced a body of work that continues to influence Kustom Kulture artists. If you want to know why he’s more than a jean label, drop by this Copro Nason opening.
New Blood: Next Gen
A+D Architecture and Design Museum Re-opens
Thursday, June 1. From 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
5900 Wilshire Blvd. (opposite from LACMA)
A+D has shifted locations several times in the last few years but rarely faltered in terms of the quality of work presented and the excitement of their openings.
New Blood: Next Gen highlights the work of 40 architects, landscape architects and designers, and features several Venice homeboys.
David Montalba who designed the interiors of architecture-specialists Venice Properties; Whitney Sander whose “Canal House” has been published in a slew of books and is currently building a riveting office building on Lincoln Blvd (yes, it’s possible); Glen Irani whose homes—vast grids of steel, glass and colored planes—leave his signature across the several Canals; and Olivier Touraine & Deborah Richmond (touraine + richmond) who lusciously integrated corrugated aluminum into their Venice home instead of simply using it as the new hip-material, tweaked the whole “picket fence” genre and celebrated their living room as public space visible to the street.
Those are four excellent reasons to attend the event and we haven’t mentioned the free appetizers.
ARTPAGE, the Zine Volume One, launch party
Saturday, June 3. From 6 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Gallery Revisited
3204 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA. 90026 in SilverLake
We’ll have more on this closer to the date but ARTPAGE upholds a long standing tradition of emerging artists—the hand crafted art/literary magazine, only 100 were printed. The zine launch and reception will feature original works by ARTPAGE contributors as well as a short film DVD. Call Leora at Revisited Gallery to reserve your copy of ARTPAGE at 626-253-5266 and/or jet over to the gallery for what’s bound to be a great launch/bash.
Get the Inside Look
Venice Community Housing
Thursday, June 8. From 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
720 Rose Ave (between 7th & Lincoln)
RSVP 310.399.4100 x 103
Few Venice institutions have been viewed so controversially as Venice Community Housing which develops and supervises housing for the working poor. Many residents get concerned at the thought of an affordable housing project next to them. Yet, maverick real estate professional Jack Hoffmann respects VCHC’s work. This open house is an opportunity to see what VCHC actually does, and who they attract. The organization not only furnishes housing but hosts an after school program for tots, transitional housing for homeless women and children, gang prevention programs and a teen court at Venice High. Don’t plan on an all-work evening however, Steve Clare—the organization’s founder—knows how to laugh. Music and refreshments will also be happening.
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