A Musical Stew

Music lovers will not want to miss "A New Music Concert" at the Barnsdall Gallery Theatre Sunday afternoon presented by the Idyllwild Arts Academy (IAA) Orchestra featuring Richard Thompson's Interview with Ghosts, Chen Yi's Tone Poem, Peter Askim's Elsewhere, the World Premiere of the Orchestra Version of John Cage's Credo in US, the West Coast Premiere of So Percussion member Jason Treuting's Oblique Music, and Steve Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood.

I had the good fortune of meeting Peter Askim last year. He is the Music Director for the Idyllwild Arts Academy Orchestra - has been for the past five years - and under his leadership, the orchestra has been successful on many fronts. The students have performed with seven Grammy nominees, performed with the Concertmaster and Principal Violist of the LA Philharmonic and the Principal Oboe of the NY Philharmonic, and performed World Premieres including a new version of Peter and the Wolf with Harry Shearer that was broadcast internationally. 

It was during the Peter and the Wolf rehearsals that I met Peter, and Harry, and discovered the ambitious and innovative work of the orchestra under Peter's direction. Soon after Peter and the Wolf wrapped, Askim began work on a new project - Guitarist Richard Thompson's Cabaret of Souls, a darkly humorous piece about a reception and talent parade for the recently deceased, sort of an American Idol of the Underworld. Thompson calls it a "folk oratorio."

Thompson's work with the students resulted in a studio recording of Cabaret of Souls soon be released.

The success of that first collaboration has brought about another.Thompson's new work with the students, which they'll be performing Sunday afternoon, is another showcase for Thompson's scathing wit and dark humor. Called Interview with Ghosts, the songs are based on alleged interview transcripts of people who have spoken to ghosts. 

Askim says each artist and each piece in Sunday's program is "amazing in totally different ways. So Percussion is a force of nature, Richard Thompson is one of the greatest guitarists and songwriters in history, and Chen Yi's music is beautiful, personal and totally her own."

It's the combining of the ingredients of this "musical stew" into one place and time that he is most excited about. Askim writes in the program notes that he hopes the concert will present the audience with "music and perspectives you haven’t heard, opening your ears to new possibilities. Each piece on the program has its own unique way of thinking about music, sound and what it means to be human in our time."

The concert is Sunday at 4pm, Barnsdall Gallery Theater, Hollywood.

A free preview concert is 7:30 tonight at the Bowman Auditorium on the IAA campus in Idyllwild.

Guillermo Bert's Bar Code Series

Revolution is on Guillermo Bert's mind. It's been there since he left Pinochet terrorized Chile years ago. He now lives in Los Angeles where he has been creating his provocative and politically charged art for two decades. Bert has a wide body of work, including his frequent use of Mao imagery, but his Bar Code / Branding America Series dominates his current collection.

Bert defines the series as a reflection of the current political climate and says the work is "his perspective on the consumerism that permeates the core of American society." The mixed media works are mostly on wood or plastic surfaces. Bert employs industrial and digital techniques to burn images onto the surfaces and then applies a layer of 24 ct. gold leaf or glossy candy enamel paints in red, white and blue. He chose his enamel colors and gold leaf for specific reasons. The glossy colors reference American nationalism and the gold-leaf references religiosity and the sacred.

At the heart of each piece is the bar code or the QR code. Bert takes the symbol and mixes it with social ideals, pop culture, or politics through statements or the image itself. One work is simply a bar code with the word Democracy at the bottom. It's a brilliant justapositioning of consumerism with political ideals.

Another piece depicts the Statue of Liberty dripping with a bar code and the words"Statue of Limitations" at the bottom.

His clever use of the mundane - bar codes and QR codes - reminds me a bit of Andy Warhol's use of the Campbell's soup can, but Guillermo's pieces are more message-driven.

Bert not only draws upon North American culture in his work, but also South American culture. His piece, "Blue Poem," a blue image of a QR code, is a mixed media work on wood with powder pigment and iridescent acrylic that is based on a poem by Mapuche writer Graciela Huinao. The Mapuche are the largest indigenous group in Chile today. Huinao was the first female Mapuche writer to publish work in Chile and become an internationally recognized poet.

A title placard next to the piece contains an actual QR code and pulls up Huinao's poem Psalmo 1492. It begins, "Though we were never the chosen people, they kill us in the sign of the cross..."

Bert is an astute observer of modern civilization and our global environment of 24/7 information exchange. He says he was drawn to the universal Bar Code because of its "branding of information as a standardized mechanism used to define certain products."
There's an elegance to Bert's work. The images are thought-provoking and striking yet it's not heavy handed.
Bert is happy to talk about his artistic process with visitors to his gallery at The Brewery downtown Los Angeles.

99 Buck Art Sale

One of the fun annual art events to attend in the Coachella Valley is happening this Saturday at the Hotel Zoso downtown Palm Springs. Guests can browse more than 550 original works of art by local and national celebrities and for less than one hundred dollars, you can purchase one of them. It's the Palm Springs Art Museum's Annual 99 Bucks Art Sale. Okay, the artworks are only on 5"x7" canvasas but come on, size doesn't matter if you really love it, right? And you'll be surprised at how much beauty and artistry can be created on a small canvas when a wide range of materials are utilized including acrylic painting, oil, glass, fabric, clay, assemblage and whatever else is born from someone's wild imagination. These are photos of previous year's creations.

Last year I had my eye on this palm tree painting, but ended up purchasing a dreamy oil painting of a woman lounging on a beach that I framed and gave as a birthday present to my sister. I felt a little silly when I spent more on the framing than I did on the painting, but the total cost was still only about $200, and for an original framed oil painting, that's not bad.

Some of the celebrities creating works this year are Tommy Tune, kd lang, Bob Mackie, Michael Childers, Linda Ellerbee, Michael Costello, Kaye Ballard, James von Praagh, and Joe Mantegna.

The works are sold anonymously (they're signed on the back) and that's part of the fun. Buy what you like and if it ends up being a piece by Tommy Tune or kd lang, so much the better!

There's no cost to attend. The lower level bar will open at 4 p.m. and doors to the event open at 4:30 p.m. The hostess for the evening is the fabulous Bella Da Ball who will keep the festivities lively and announce the sales of celebrity canvases after they are purchased. All proceeds benefit the museum's educational programming. For more information, go to http://www.psmuseum.org/.

Chuck Hood's Extraordinary Chess Sets

Chuck Hood has been playing chess most of his life. He was a teenager when his dad first taught him the game. But after decades of playing on standard chess sets, he wanted something new. He also wanted to entice his niece and other youngsters to take up the game and thought new ideas for pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, kings, and queens might encourage interest. Being an artist, he decided to take up the challenge himself and create original chess sets.

His first idea was Hollywood vs New York. He says it was pretty easy coming up with ideas for the pieces. Hollywood's king is Oscar, the Academy Award, and Marilyn Monroe is the queen. Surfers are the bishops, film cameras are the knights, rooks are the iconic circular Capitol Music building, and pawns are oranges.

For New York, the queen is the Statue of Liberty, and the king is the Empire State building. Pawns are apples, rooks are the Flatiron building, knights are the Wall Street bull, and bishops are St. Patrick's Cathedral. It's a beautiful, fun set.

Hood next tackled sets a little more esoteric. He has one called Deco vs the New World on display in his studio, but each is actually its own set. With the New World pieces, Hood brings politics into the mix with the bishop where he has three religious symbols engraved into the bottom portion of the bullet - the Jewish star, the Islamic crescent, and the Christian crucifix.

Greek mythology has fascinated Hood ever since he was in the Navy and read Homer's Illiad and the Odyssey. So it was only fitting that he make a chess set of Greeks vs Cycladics. The pieces are made of zinc and tin. On the Greek side, Zeus is the king and Euphrates is the Queen. Homer is the pawn.

Hood's fascination for the game of chess comes from its 16 basic opening moves, its 42,000 different moves, its series of mathematical equations, and the interaction with opponents that is far juicier than any computer generated game.

Hood has made about eight sets so far. He plays on all his new sets and says, as the creator, it's easy for him to remember surfers are Bishops, or Knights are the Wall Street bull, and it's kind of fun watching his opponents get confused at first. It takes a game or two for them to remember what's what. The one-of-a-kind sets are for sale. Hood is not planning on making many more, or mass producing the sets. If interested, contact Chuck at gallery618E@yahoo.com.

Dan Statler's Vulture Kulture

If you met Dan Statler outside of his studio - away from his work - you might take him for a nice, quiet, average next door neighbor type. He has that eternally little boy look.
But that first impression quickly evaporates after you see his body of work. You realize Statler might be a nice guy, but he's no where near this side of ordinary.

He's the artist behind Vulture Kulture, metal art "with an edge," as he describes it on his website (http://www.vulturekulture.com)/.

His work is bold, loud, in your face. Once you've seen some of his pieces, it's likely you'll recognize his distinct style forever after.

It's possible you've already seen his work. It's been everywhere from the pages of Rolling Stone magazine to television shows and films.
As Production Designer for the Discovery Channel's "Monster Garage," he created 50 metal sculptures and furniture for the show.

It was through his special effects work in the entertainment industry on films including Batman Returns, Cliffhanger, Alien 3, Ed Wood, Volcano and Armageddon, that he became interested in working with metal.

Browsing through his Los Angeles studio, his passion for car cultures becomes obvious. It's no surprise Hot Rod Magazine, Popular Mechanics, among others, have commissioned work from him for their pages.

Statler takes a stab at popular culture in some of his pieces, like the one below. The television with the cracked screen is called "American Idolatry."

His work isn't for everyone, but he's developed a huge client base and has become the go-to guy for bold metal work.

Weaving Together Life's Debris

It's been said, one person's trash is another's treasure.That's certainly the case with Nancy Kyes, who takes the debris of life and weaves it together to create her sculptures. Motherhood, and all the messiness and disorder of child rearing, was the catalyst of her quest to understand chaos. Ultimately, she decided to utilize the so-called trash of life, "domestic detritus" as she calls it, as the materials for her work. Hundreds, sometimes thousands of disconnected and unrelated pieces are combined to create familiar objects. She uses no glue or paint in her construction. Her pieces are held together with an intricate weaving process.

The sculpture above, titled "More Perfect Union." was built in early 2009 in honor of Obama's presidential election. She describes the piece as "a remake of the nation's flag to more fully reflect the cultural reach of the USA. At the same time the work also takes on the appearance of an axe. This has something to do with the shape of the tree branch attached to the undulating flag part of the work. The branch could be a very crooked flag pole or the normal shape of the wooden handle of an axe, the kind Abraham Lincoln famously used to split rails." The piece is more about questions than answers. "I'm cultivating all sorts of questions here about who and where we are as a nation state at his time," Kyes says.Some of her pieces are collaborative works with fellow artist Joyce Kohl. (In the photo above, Kyes is on the left, Kohl on the right.) Their first freestanding effort is a piece titled, "Boat." Kyes says it was inspired by the limitless possibilities, materials, offered in life. "How we choose to engage with possibilities largely determines the shape of our indidvidual and collective lives," she says. The piece is the first phase of a two phase work, with the second phase more fully developing the theme. The second piece will use the same materials, process and scale, and be a "cage-like form suspended from the ceiling, to suggest an altogether different state of mind."

The work of Nancy Kyes and Joyce Kohl is currently on display at LA ArtCore, 650A South Avenue 21, just west of the Main Street exit off the Golden State Freeway.

The Brewery Art Walk Experience

If you've never been to the twice-annual Brewery Art Walk downtown Los Angeles, mark your calendar for the next one in the Fall. It's one of the best opportunities in Southern California to meet dozens of artists and see hundreds of original works in a single location, albeit a very large location. The complex is at the site of the former Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery and has been called the "world's largest artist-in-residence community."My husband and I went to the event this past weekend and did our best to visit as many galleries as we could. We wandered from one loft to the next and discovered artists of all stripes working in photography, sculpture, mixed media, installation, performance art, architecture, illustration, fashion, video, and that which is still undefined.

Chuck Hood's amazing intricate mixed media assemblage pieces are fascinating works, many with headsets for audio accompaniment. His stack of religious books, called "I Swear," was quietly interesting until I listened to the provocative audio recording and it ramped up to startling and powerful.One of our favorite stops was at Guillermo Bert's gallery. His Bar Code series and 24 ct. gold leaf works are illuminating and I love his mixed media Sumo wrestlers. I'll have more on Bert in a future post.We found wearable art at the Dream Luxe loft where Javier Granados creates hand painted silk scarves. Granados graciously explained the batik process and how he works with wax to create his unique designs.

Children were not left out of the fun. There was an area for them to paint on the ground and the Barnsdale Arts exhibit featured paintings and drawings by kids.

In the coming days and weeks I'll be posting about some of the other artists we met at the Brewery. We only touched the surface, though, and will be heading back in the Fall.