Recently I had the opportunity to visit Detroit for the first time in my life. What a magnificently diverse city bustling with bars and restaurants on every corner in the downtown area, with one of the top encyclopedic art museums in the nation where the socialist...
Seeing Detroit Through Fresh Eyes
From the Editor Sept/Oct 2024; Volume 19, issue 1
Dear Reader, I have good news and bad news. Let’s start with the bad news: This, after 18 years, is my last editor’s letter. What an incredible journey it has been. Here’s the good news: Artillery will still carry on! More on that later. I started this magazine with...
From the Editor July/Aug Volume 18, issue 6
Dear Reader, As a kid, I didn’t get to do much traveling. The family trips we took were always by car to visit relatives, somehow miraculously fitting seven of us into a big two-toned Oldsmobile. My dad used to roll down the window, just a sliver, to blow out the...
PEER REVIEW Tom Knechtel on Thomas Antell
Tom Knechtel, a Los Angeles–based artist who shows with PPOW in New York and Marc Selwyn Fine Art here in LA—where his exhibition, “The Hare in the Studio,” just ended in June—is known for his intricate paintings and drawings, often depicting himself, animals and...
From the Editor May/June Volume 18, issue 5
Dear Reader, In the early Artillery days, I assigned a writer to critique the films and videos that were showing in the sprawling 2007 MOCA exhibition, “WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution.” There were more than 20 films and videos included, mostly viewed on the...
Editor’s Pick: Margaret Lazzari USC Fisher Museum of Art
The New York Times recently ran an article with the headline “Art Isn’t Supposed to Make You Comfortable”—Margaret Lazzari’s series of works devoted to her traumatic struggle with breast cancer, “The Cancer Series,” fits right into that category. More than 30 works of...
From the Editor March/April; Volume 18, issue 4
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...
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...