Congratulations to our winner Lisa Joy Walton and our finalists. Lisa's photo is seen above and first in our photo gallery in the January/February 2022 online edition of Artillery. The following photographs are the finalists. Please see the info below on how...
CODE ORANGE
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...
It’s a Vincent Van A Gogh-Gogh! Review of the Van Gogh Immersive Experience
Doubtless you’ve seen the billboards: the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit has shown in cities across North America, and now it’s Los Angeles’ turn. It’s Time To Gogh! commands the sign, and I oblige, stepping into the old Amoeba building on Sunset Boulevard, which will...
The Truth Is Out There, Somewhere Decoder
Who doesn’t like a bit of mystery? But where are they keeping it these days? There are certainly unknowns—when will this pandemic really end? Did they really do that? But mystery is not the same as a mystery. True crime, for example, isn’t mysterious. In the end...
TALLY HO! Bunker Vision
A friend who made his name in the world of queer underground theater often quipped that “Film is forever.” When he landed a featured role in a late Paul Morrissey film, he was confident that something he had done would outlast him. That film turned 40 years old last...
SIGHTS UNSCENE Deinstalling artist Ning-Hsin Hu’s "Pressure Test" at Torrance Art Museum’s NOMAD show, Torrance, CA, 2021
Shoptalk: LA Art News Art Fairs, Breakout Artists, and More.
On a Roll LA artist Sandy Rodriguez is having a very good year—her work is currently in a solo show, “Sandy Rodriguez in Isolation” (through April 17), at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, TX, plus she’s part of two major exhibitions in the LA...
CODAworx Takes Over the Desert Extreme Public Art
CODAsummit 2021 was marked by an in-person conference in Scottsdale, AZ which coincided with the dramatic light/art/water event titled Canal Convergence. While there was a COVID-friendly digital component for those not in attendance, the turnout was relatively...
Book Review: STREET ART & SOCCER "The Chosen Few: Aesthetics and Ideology in Football Fan Graffiti and Street Art" By Mitja Velikonja
The Chosen Few: Aesthetics and Ideology in Football Fan Graffiti and Street Art By Mitja Velikonja 176 pages DoppelHouse Press Graffiti and street art are often considered synonymous since they affect the urban environment in similar ways. But graffiti is...
ASK BABS BABY STEPS, BACK TO NORMALCY
Dear Babs, Back in the pre-Covid days, I didn’t mind going to art openings and events; they weren’t my favorite thing, but I knew it was essential to show up and meet people. Now, after a year of not going out, I find these activities next to impossible to endure. I’m...
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
Disassembly Line SPY Projects / Molly’s Garage
Independence. Freedom. Unchecked mobility. We’re quick to attribute these qualities to the automobile: grand, sweeping, all-encompassing statements that turn the machine into an intractable, totalizing force to be glimpsed from the outside-in. We think less about the...
Nancy Lorenz GAVLAK
There is a single painting that dominates this exhibition, a painting—if one can describe it so—of such singularity that it renders the other works as experiments, exercises, considerations. All are lesser and unworthy contenders. Its only and quite distant challenger...
Bernardo Fleming Institute for Art & Olfaction
An art show without images or really even objects, Dreaming in Smell presents a suite of micro-stories that express themselves not in pictures or shapes, but in scents. It includes a smell so cool it’s like a breeze on the skin; a face-crinkling assault of mold and...