A different drum

Santa Monica 2 - UCLA

This weekend I visited the 23rd Annual UCLA Pow Wow.

There were dancers, drums, crafts, and children. And fry bread.

It wasn't the biggest Pow Wow I have been to, but it had some great highlights. Walking through the booths, the art of Debbie martinez-Rambeau particularly caught my eye. There were also more traditional silver crafts, fetish carvings (from Zuni and other tribes), and for about $10 I was able to pick up the materials to make a couple of dream catchers. Not too bad.

On the less traditional side, there were a few booths, with companies like Full Blood Skates which are bringing a different look and stronger feel to tribal pride. It's nicer to see than the End of the Trail images.

I don't have any pictures of the crowds, you'll have to go yourself to see the dancers.

But I did get my own little drum. I was the envy of all the UCLA squirrels.

If you missed this one, the SCIC Annual Pow Wow is one of the best open Pow Wows in the area, and it is coming up in July.

Rust and Lace

Big Blue Bus, Line 5 – 26th Street

Gallery hopping can be draining. Especially gallery hopping at Bergamot Station.

Once the final stop for the red line trolley (started in 1875 by the Pacific Electric Rail system), which ran from Los Angeles to the Santa Monica Pier, Bergamot Station is now an eight acre art gallery complex.

Although it appears the public transportation link will be reborn with an Expo Line station at or around Olympic and Cloverfield, the most striking feature of Bergamot Station is the parking lot. People walk around the complex, or to their cars, but they don’t walk here (yes, I realize I mentioned this earlier).

One by one, the thirty-odd galleries become a blur of large-scale abstracts and watercolor sketches; black and white photography and ceramic lavaflows.

But at the end of the line, one gallery stands out. The (now formerly known as) Patricia Faure Gallery is currently host to the eye-catching work of artist Cal Lane.

Steel lace. Delicate strength. Refined, rusted car parts are arranged in one room: a filigree car bombing. The crumpled remains appear frozen in time, reworked as fragile veils.

Further into the exhibit hang silent, nudging cartographies etched into oil drums. The etched maps recall the age of discoveries, medieval wars, ancient explorations. And always, the border of the oil drum itself, the spigot poised just over the North Pole.

Lane uses the pieces we throw away, carves them with plasma torches, and delivers them reborn as reminders of the consequences of what we use today.

Finally is the piece that can’t be bought or held. A delicate lace of dirt fills the final room.

The roped-off display feels almost sacred. The one creation more ephemeral than lace.

Go. Visit. Try to ignore the irony radiating from all of the Jaguars in the parking lot.

It is worth the trip.

Arbor Ardor

Big Blue Bus, Line 5 – 26th Street

Some people drive cars. Some people plant trees. Some people make art.

This car, formerly known as a Mercedes, is now decorating the entrance to the Santa Monica Museum of Art at Bergamot Station. It is one of four “Junker Garden” cars created by Farmlab, the thinktank/performance venue/art group which evolved out of the Not a Cornfield project.

The this junker garden was the center of today's Cause for Creativity: Arbor Ardor event.

Inspired by the 2006 eviction of the South Central Farmers from their community garden, the Junker Gardens evolved as a way to bring the garden back to the city. Farmlab realized that constructing mobile or container gardens would cost a fraction of the $16.3 million demanded (and, subsequently, refused) by Ralph Horowitz to repurchase the 14 acres in South Central that once constituted one of the nation’s largest urban gardens.

With a car, some space, some soil, and a few days, Farmlab explained how to build your own self-contained car garden. Although you can’t exactly drive it, it can still be towed, pushed, or dragged from place to place.

Volunteers from TreePeople were on hand, showing kids and parents the essentials of tree planting, but, unfortunately, not planting any actual trees.

Together they created art trees with colored scraps, potted two-by-fours, and staple guns. The colorful garden grew throughout the afternoon with the help of children's hands.

The objective was to expose the groups of children to art, the process of creation, and the idea of growth. The hope was to inspire the kids to look at nature, see what can be created, and plant the seeds of art and arbor ardor (too much alliteration?) in them.

While fun, I still prefer actual trees. It would have been exciting to gut, decorate and plant old toy cars with real plants that the kids could take home.

As a young squirrel, I once visited TreePeople and planted little pine tree seedlings in old milk cartons. That day I learned that even little me could create and be responsible for something living. Something that could very well out-live me.

TreePeople is still doing plantings like this at their Coldwater Canyon nursery. One day I will try to venture up the canyon to join them again (it’s a long walk).

At the end of the day, the City of Santa Monica Environmental Programs Division spread the word about the green living and business workshops they offer, and offered printed copies of the City of Santa Monica Environmental Directory for all attendees.

It was a sunny, colorful day filled with art and laughter and thoughts. Although I was the only one leaving Bergamot Station without a car.

Nat’l Park

Metro Rapid 704 – Bundy Drive

So, you ask me, how does it feel to be a national hero, to have your home transformed into a National Park and people worshipping the sidewalks you walk down?

Good, I say. It feels pretty darn good.

That’s right. My home, or at least the adjacent traffic triangle, has been declared an official Islands of LA Nat’l Park.

But, you might ask, what is an Islands of LA Nat’l Park?

Well, according to the art project, Islands of LA, little traffic islands have been declared National Parks as "a symbol of the treasure of everyday urbanism in our unique democracy". Their artistic antics are designed to, like most urban art, provide the inspiration for discussion and an examination of how we use the materials – or, in this case, public spaces – and encourage interaction. The Islands of LA designation was announced with the placement of commemorative signs, such as the one gracing my park, at 200 different traffic islands across LA.

Alongside their Islands of LA project, they have also participated in Newtown’s Hugely Tiny Festival with a little traffic island float, placed signs encouraging art and passed out mini-postcards of Traffic Island.

The oddities surrounding my little park (fenced in to keep out you pesky humans!) have been the subject of other public art stunts in the past, including Heavy Trash’s Stair to Park project.

I’m just glad to finally get the recognition I so clearly deserve.

Next stop, commemorative coins.

Port Angeles - Art Outside

Port Angeles, WA

Somewhere between eccentric and magic, there is the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center’s Art Outside project. Over 75 pieces of art can be seen scattered along the trails through Webster’s Woods.

At first, the pieces seem obvious. Roots lead from the parking lot to the forest. Large floating thought bubbles surround the entrance.

But inside the forest, along the trails, the pieces skew your perspective. Make you look at what is in front of you through a different angle.


Granted, some of them are absurd. The prospect of being able to create art which will sit in a forest seems to bring out the Blair Witch in everyone.

But sometimes you can see into the art.



And feel tiny.



You can also see into a few backyards. The Art Center is hidden in the middle of the suburbia surrounding Port Angeles. But that only makes it seem more magical to encounter mathematical gates hiding behind trees with stones hanging like fruit from their branches.

Wilshire - Fairfax: Consider This

When you ride the bus, you can do crazy things, like crash an art party on the spur of the moment, without having to worry about the high cost of parking and car thieves. Which is, of course, exactly what I did.

LACMA West...well, I have no real idea what LACMA West is. I know that it is West of the actual LACMA building, which is easily identifiable by the grandiose architecture and river-lake-fountains leading up to and surrounding it. Or, by the giant signs reading LACMA > in front of the construction/gaping hole which will one day be a new LACMA (middle?). The only information I could find on LACMA West in my extensive five second search for information is that it used to be a May Company and was purchased by LACMA in 1991-2.¹

Side Note: Amazingly, LACMAwest.org does not exist. I suggest
that someone purchase that domain immediately and begin ruthlessly dismantling the exhibits hosted at LACMA West. Because really, what fun is art if you can't criticize it?

Oh, yeah, we were supposed to be considering it.

LACMA West is also better-known as the building which once housed the King Tut exhibit, which did not contain King Tut at all (and therefore should be submitted to questions about truth in advertising).

Right now it appears to house an exhibit dedicated to the futility of modern art. Or a workshop designed to expand the average white, privileged mind as other white, liberal privileged minds believe it should be expanded. One of those two.

The exhibit is tentatively titled "Consider This..." although the punctuation varies according to publication. I attended it in the midst of what was, apparently, a very private birthday party. Luckily, as with most parties, there was no one there who knew everyone else, so I was allowed to explore uninhibited.

So, let's consider:

Important questions......facilitate factitious replies...
...without sufficient answers...

...which lead to...

...and an over-use of elipses.

Also known as "art".

Apparently.

Those of you looking for real artists, click here.

Those of you searching for real answers need not apply.

¹ General Information > About LACMA (www.lacma.org)