Articles
Nancy Baker Cahill Challenges the Limits of Perception Seeing the World Anew
In 2017, my friend—artist/curator Nancy Baker Cahill—invited me to see the art she was creating using virtual reality technology. Until that point, I knew Nancy to make ambitious drawings and otherworldly videos depicting abject, flesh-like topologies; works...
A Conversation with Casey Kauffmann Hot Girl Sh*t
Casey Kauffmann is a hoarder of cyber content. Her image archive is a black hole of digital debris, infinitely consuming, tearing apart, and spitting out images—a spaghettification of visual culture. Kauffmann is known for her digital collages that populate her...
Tabita Rezaire and the Materiality of The Digital COMPLEX INTERACTION
The digital is an arbitrary category. In everyday speech, it is sometimes used as an opposition to the material: a digital copy, artwork or exhibition versus a material one. The digital is presented as something existing outside of the material realm and the history...
It’s All About Meme
A meme is unit of cultural information, such as an idea or belief, transmitted from one person to another. The word is an alteration of the Greek mimeme, meaning something that is imitated, not duplicated. The difference is important, as each iteration of a meme...
Poems "Kiefer Lights a Big Cigar" by Klipschutz; "The Poet’s Garden" by John Tottenham
Kiefer Lights a Big Cigar & waves the heavy machinery into place He rearranges the rubble speaking whichever language suits the occasion He & Tony saunter through a tunnel in the South of France “It’s my gesture” is what he says about his art His use of...
COMICS Joseph Wright of Derby
Travels in the Midwest Musing on Art and Architecture
A couple of months ago I took short trips to Phoenix and Denver for a change of scenery, to indulge in culture, and to see the rebranding of Sheraton hotels. Denver is a surprisingly interesting city, and we stayed in the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, which is very...
A Journey into the Mind of Calliope Pavlides Pragmatic Surrealism
Calliope Pavlides engineers her compositions like a to-do list, an Easter egg hunt, or survival kit. Her works on paper for an upcoming exhibition at Harkawik in New York City exist as impossible still lifes and contrary landscapes. In the wake of a global pandemic, a...
The Activism of Allison Janae Hamilton Land as Witness of History
Land has been a constant throughout history. We bring to land our personal experiences, and land in turn acts as a witness to the people and events that come and go. For artist Allison Janae Hamilton, land is her most enduring subject. She describes land as a...
The Spiritualized Landscapes of Hung Viet Nguyen DEVOTED TO NATURE
“Art is a universal language,” Hung Viet Nguyen says. “And when I came here as an immigrant, my English language was not that great. My strength was in painting. I slowly convinced people that my art is my language.” Nguyen came to the US from Vietnam in 1982, with a...
Leila Weefur’s Hymns for Other Voices Uncomfortable Questions
Explorations of gender identity are central to the work of Oakland-based artist and curator Leila Weefur, how they felt that their identity was suppressed by belonging to the Christian Church is at the crux of their latest project, “Prey†Play.” Presented in two...
Poems "The Mind Wanders" By Daniel Crook; "Courtesy of the Artist" By John Tottenham
The Mind Wanders We pass 6th street at eight o’clock. This is not remarkable but sometimes one can do something countless times and remain enchanted. The colors aren’t the same. Once blue, now purple, then red. No two things are alike an hour later but they...
COMICS A Bunch of Sour Grapes
Top 10 Picks of 2021
I resisted compiling this list (the limitations of which are obvious); but then thought: “Wait! In this awkward year of slow emergence from a pandemic that may never really be over, how many really great shows could there actually be?” Until, as I went over the shows...
Top Films of 2021
What a year, and what a year for films—many of them delayed in production or distribution due to COVID, but roaring back as the theaters reopened. Below is my list of top theatrically released films of 2021; films I have had a chance to see thus far. I’m struck by how...
Remarks on Color: Cringing Cucumber December's Hue
Cucumber is so much more than a tea-time British delicacy, served on white bread with loads of butter, yet Americans cringe at the thought! Cringing Cucumber, as she is known in the States, decided to open a specialty shop in the heart of Manhattan, serving all manner...
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...
June Edmonds Freedom in Abstraction
The post-pandemic era can offer rewarding challenges, as I found out when engaging in my first Zoom interview. I spoke with painter and educator June Edmonds on the occasion of her current 40-year retrospective at the Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, and a...
Constance Mallinson Talking Trash: Figuratively and Abstractly
Constance Mallinson’s career has spanned the many vicissitudes of the art world, from Minimalism to Pattern and Decoration, through to postmodern conceptual strategies. More recently, she has created a form of realistic painting that draws from Modernist Abstraction...
Ilona Szwarc Reclaiming the History of Breasts
Ilona Szwarc is a Polish-American artist based in Los Angeles. Her latest show, “Virgin Soap” at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, introduces sculpture alongside her photography, documenting herself casting a model’s torso in silicone and plaster. Other recent LA exhibitions...