Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Whoa, Supertouch, where I’m going to do some blogging at in the future posted a lot of photos from the event. I think they were from flickr, so they included some of Michelle Matthews, mine, Baseman’s and more. The very first photo by Baseman is great. And BUTOH is spelled wrong there. Bhuto is closer in spelling to the Pakistani leader, Benazair Butto, who was assassinated. Yeah I signed an autograph too. It was all for the kids. Let’s do it again. Take a look at Supertouch.
Continue reading
Today was the closing of the JANM show. It was a great ride, but it wasn't done until Souther did his job which was to do a joint project for the kids. TOCA it's called... Teens of Contemporary Arts. They're from all over, and it's a program that MOCA does for the kids. Today, they heard Souther talk about his work and then they got some of his instruction.
The room full of kids. Many definitely...
Today was the closing of the JANM show. It was a great ride, but it wasn’t done until Souther did his job which was to do a joint project for the kids. TOCA it’s called… Teens of Contemporary Arts. They’re from all over, and it’s a program that MOCA does for the kids. Today, they heard Souther talk about his work and then they got some of his instruction. The room full of kids. Many definitely got inspired by seeing his work. I think the best part is seeing them go for it. I think it’s interesting how groups of people’s work can be similar. Are they just looking at each others works and inspiring each other? If so, that’s cool. This table looked great. I just wished there was no paper on it. I think these palettes are funny. You shove your digit through that hole, and you can pose like an artist. The thing is, the work was mostly small, and everyone’s sitting, so these didn’t come into play too much. One thing that was funny was that Souther held the mic while he was walking around. Sometimes, I could hear his talk to some kids and the mic would pick it up. There was another moment where he was doing something, maybe ripping a piece of paper and the mic either dropped and made a huge sound. Another funny thing was that Souther said some last words to end the day which was about the students work, and then I guess he noticed something, and his actual last words were something like, “and someone got paint on the mic.” He smiled, and I smiled, and that was that. The mic though had purple paint on it. Souther liked this piece a lot. I think it actually has some similarities to his work. The snake is sort of like a highway, and you can see a building popping out of it. The roads are something… I don’t know, there’s rock or mountains, and some drawing. The point is that she used collage items that weren’t photos of roads or mountains, but found substitutes and made those work. Her idea was that this represented a trip on the 5 freeway. From leaving the city to a long drive.
Continue reading
That's Denise Gray at saturday's MOCA Pervasive Persuasion starring, Gary Baseman, Simone Legno, and Tim Biskup. This was right after our panel discussion. Moderating something like this actually turned out to be easier than I thought. Each introduced themselves and their work and that alone took up a lot of time. They said great things about where they are in their careers, how they sort of got...
That’s Denise Gray at saturday’s MOCA Pervasive Persuasion starring, Gary Baseman, Simone Legno, and Tim Biskup. This was right after our panel discussion. Moderating something like this actually turned out to be easier than I thought. Each introduced themselves and their work and that alone took up a lot of time. They said great things about where they are in their careers, how they sort of got there, and how Murakami influences their work. I think the latter was somewhat important since that’s one of the reasons this event took place. Another reason it took place was that before Murakami’s show even went up, he got together with the folks at Moca and mentioned that he’d like me to be involved with an event. What an honor. So that’s how it all got going. But really, MOCA made it happen. We brainstormed the event, but in the end, they staffed it with an army, and all of the logistics were theirs too. The reason I know they did well was neither I or the artists had anything to stress out about. They absorbed it all and evidently there was a mountain of problems, but we never saw them or noticed them. Well over 400, maybe closer to 500 came through. That’s Simone sitting, Baseman standing, and a huge crowd of attentive listeners. One of the things that we didn’t get to talk about more, and that was on my list of things to talk about was the fact that Los Angeles seems to be a hot place for art right now. Will people look at LA in 20 years and say wow, that’s a huge run of great artists who were working here at the time? Are we in a hot moment? That’s something that would have been nice to talk about since we’re in LA, but maybe it’s old news, and they already know and maybe that’s why they came to hear these three speak. Or maybe it’s something that just has to continue. An hour+ blew by quick, and in the end, I had an arsenal of questions to go. Things got esoteric later in the night. That’s Baseman painting on Oguri, the Butoh dancer. Butoh dancers move slow, and it was funny to see Gary being so patient and painting slowly. Gary ended up with a weird line of paint on his face. He actually painted a character on Oguri’s head. Yeah, it was arty. Piggy back butoh, and that’s Gary painting more. In the end, the crowd respected Butoh, but I think it started with some trepidation. That’s something MOCA should be proud of. While prepping for the event a bit in December, I think we all had skepticism of this part. Tim Biskup did a great job in creating the sound for it, and it meshed perfect. I think Tim’s talent in music is probably well underrated. Tim told me that Oguri spoke with him afterwards and said, “I think we were in the same...
Continue reading