Dear Reader, I admit to being a Luddite when it comes to preferring a paintbrush to the computer. So, when artists gained access to AI-generating tools, I wasn’t that impressed, nor alarmed. There seemed to be a lot of hoopla and fearmongering about the prospect of...
From the Editor
Mary Woronov: A Survey West Hollywood
Mary Woronov, Chelsea Girl, writer, actress and painter, is currently displaying her luscious punk-rock paintings in a Pop-up exhibition at an old Land Rover/Jaguar dealership in West Hollywood. This is a rare opportunity to see this extraordinary survey of her unique...
From the Editor November/December 2023; Volume 18, issue 2
Dear Reader, This issue is a fave of mine. I’ve always loved crafts, especially as a youngster. I taught myself how to sew and embroider, and I made a hooked-rug wall-hanging in my high school art class. I was by far the youngest member of a quilting bee. I even...
PEER REVIEW Matthew Rosenquist on Pat Phillips
Raised in and around Washington DC, with two degrees in painting, Matthew Rosenquist now makes sculptures, albeit with some paint applied. How did that happen? I ask him. After grad school in the South, he took an entry-level job at the Smithsonian with duties that...
From the Editor September/October 2023; Volume 18, issue 1
Dear Reader, Seventeen years—that’s a long time. Most relationships don’t last that long. That number has now outlived all my other jobs; I’m referring to my relationship with Artillery. I started this magazine with my late husband in 2006, who warned me: Once you...
From the Editor July/August 2023; Volume 17, issue 6
Dear Reader, Reading wasn’t a top priority in our family; I don’t think I was ever read to as a child. It wasn’t as if literature was banned in our house, but the walls weren’t exactly lined with bookshelves. The preschool in our tiny town was held at the local...
From the Editor May/June 2023; Volume 17, issue 4
Dear Reader, “Art about art is elitist,” my boyfriend in grad school used to tell me. But if that was the case we wouldn’t have AbEx, Minimalism and maybe even Conceptualism. I got it though: The art world with its various trends and movements could seem precious and...
From the Editor March-April 2023; Volume 17, issue 4
Dear Reader, As long as there are people, there will be portraits. Face it—no pun intended—people are attracted to people. We like to look at ourselves; we like to people-watch; we gaze into our lover’s eyes. Our faces are unique and fascinating: they are who we are....
From the Editor January-February, 2023; Volume 17, issue 3
Dear Reader, My social media intern recently sent me a text with an unmistakable degree of urgency. She stated that Chance the Rapper was trying to get in touch with me by Instagram message. “Who?” I replied. My assistant, being of the millennial generation, was not...
From the Editor November-December, 2022; Volume 17, issue 2
Dear Reader, This Women’s issue is not our first, but we welcome any opportunity to celebrate women artists, curators and dealers. Normally our November/December issue is our Interview issue, but in light of the recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, we made the decision to...
From the Editor September-October, 2022; Volume 17, issue 1
Dear Reader, As I’ve been saying since the dawn of Artillery (16 years ago now): LA is the most vibrant art city in the country. This isn’t exactly a revelation, so why focus on LA—yet again—in this current issue? Because we felt it was worth revisiting the subject in...
From the Editor July-August, 2022; Volume 16, issue 6
Dear Reader, My late husband was a historical biographer with four published books; three of them were written during our marriage. It was an eye-opener to live with someone who writes for a living. For one thing, it seemed like he did a lot of nothing. He would...
Ways of Reading On the Road with Tim Youd's 100 Novels Project
When I first encountered Tim Youd, he was sitting at a metal table outside an art gallery in Chinatown, tap-tap-tapping away on a portable typewriter, just minding his own business. Most of the crowd didn’t pay him much mind either. Earlier that summer, Youd found...
From the Editor May-June, 2022; Volume 16, issue 5
Dear Reader, This issue is about art being made outside of Los Angeles and New York. If art is being made and shown at reputable galleries in those cities, it has the stamp of approval: Collectors can feel safe that their taste is superb and their investments are...
From the Editor November-December, 2021; Volume 16, issue 2
Dear Reader, I had the unexpected pleasure of spending four hours at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum with my 93-year-old mother-in-law recently. Not that visiting the Fogg is unusual—we’ve done it for years, practically every summer. But this time we spent four hours...
Bennett Roberts It’s About Time
Back in 2006, I approached Bennett Roberts at his gallery on Wilshire Boulevard with a bit of chagrin. The LA art dealer had always been nothing but nice, helpful and accommodating to me as a person and as an arts writer. So my heart was heavy when I had to break it...
From the Editor September-October, 2021; Volume 16, issue 1
Dear Reader, Happy Birthday to Artillery for turning 15 this year! And to celebrate this milestone we are covering how the world is going to hell! The climate crisis is our September theme and it wasn’t an impromptu decision or stop-the-presses situation because of...
From the Editor July-August, 2021; Volume 15, issue 6
Dear Reader, It is inexcusable to not be well read, mainly because it’s so easy to fix. Just read more! But who has time? Only recently, when a friend asked what book I was reading, I had to admit that all I’d been reading was art copy. He found that unacceptable and...