Articles
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...
Trulee Hall Femininity in Phantasmagoria
On a blessedly moderate summer Sunday, I am driving over to Trulee Hall’s studio in the industrial backside of LA to participate in the filming of her newest project, Ladies’ Lair Lake, by getting nude and air-brushed green from head to toe. This project will be the...
Poems "March 2nd, 2021" By Steve Anwyll; "The Great Wall" By John Tottenham
March 2nd, 2021 I step off but don’t move. The bus pulls away in a roar. I remove my mask. The air I breathe feels like bliss. I stand on the muddy sidewalk looking up at the sky. If I were a man of faith now would be the time to start speaking in tongues....
COMICS Future Features for Creative Creatures
Drip Dry: Our Relationship with Water
Beatriz Jaramillo has had water on her mind ever since she can remember. The Colombian-born Los Angeles–based artist spent her childhood in what sounds like an idyllic wonderland—wandering around the tropical rainforest that surrounded her family’s home. She remembers...
An Interview with T.J. Demos Climate Breakdown and Capitalism
T.J. Demos is Professor in Art History and Visual Culture as well as Founder and Director of the Center for Creative Ecologies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Last year, he published Beyond the World’s End: Arts of Living at the Crossing a book exploring...
A REAL HORROR SHOW Ecological Dystopia in Contemporary Art
Our apocalypse is self-inflicted. We gouge at our wounds in acts of self-harm. Our collective anxiety festers as disaster takes hold, yet we remain paralyzed by fear, unable to face our reality. Implausible flames dance on the ocean’s surface; acres of California...
Hugo Hopping and The Winter Office Nature As Infrastructure
I became aware of LA artist Hugo Hopping in 2009, when his conceptual work appeared in the exhibition “Post American L.A.,” curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas for the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica. Since then his trajectory has taken him to base his practice...
Zaria Forman: Fear and Awe Showcasing Beauty and Fragility
Climate change is a crisis that we must all recognize and work together to mitigate. For artists engaging with climate content, their activism manifests in many different ways. Some choose to showcase the devastating evidence of global warming, while...
Ron Athey at the ICA Los Angeles “Queer Communion”
I’m on the freeway traveling through the San Fernando Valley to see the Ron Athey exhibition of art, documentation and ephemera called “Queer Communion” at the ICA in downtown Los Angeles. All of the LA tropes are in place: It’s a sunny and clear June day, the hills...
Poems "Dostoevsky Takes a Selfie" By Clint Margrave; "Take It Easy" By John Tottenham
Dostoevsky Takes a Selfie By Clint Margrave I’m not surprised to find him in the underground, but I am surprised to find him in L.A. He sits across from me on the metro in shorts and tennis shoes, taking a selfie. I want to ask him what he’s doing here. Too...
COMICS Concerned Creative Artists Against Climate Change
GONE TO THE DOGS
“Ride on the street, man.” With difficulty, I attempted to maneuver my way around a young couple who, with their three dogs, were hogging the entire sidewalk. “I beg your pardon,” I said, as I cleared these five figures, who had only made the most minimal effort to...
Remarks on Color: Lachrymose Lemon August's Hue
Lachrymose Lemon cannot stop weeping. She sobs uncontrollably at everything all the time: the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, softball games, dinosaur conventions, the day her favorite chicken finally laid an egg. From the moment the sun rises to the last...
Matt Warren Makes Movie Posters For Your Consideration
As any Angeleno knows, every awards season, from about September - February Hollywood studios buy up billboards to promote their films as award-worthy works of art; it’s like LA’s version of leaves changing color in Fall. Unlike normal ads for new releases, each of...
In Living Color: Felix LA 2021 Art IRL at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
Felix LA, the fair that for two years has run concurrently with Frieze LA, is once again at the Roosevelt from July 29 through August 1. This time it is going up without the auspices of the larger Frieze fair, which first delayed in February, then fully cancelled in...
John Knuth’s The Dawn John Knuth and Writer Matt Stromberg talk Horseshoe Crabs, Manet, Realism and Kids in a Vaccinated World
John Knuth is a Los Angeles-based artist who recently had a solo show with Hollis Taggart Gallery in Southport, CT. His work explores how humanity and material and the natural world intersect and influence each other. “The Dawn” ran from May 15–July 3. MATT STROMBERG:...