Mammoth Lakes Film Festival Day Two: Mountain High

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Beautiful day in the snow dusted mountains, and of course a stop at Schatt’s bakery is mandatory. Try the English toffee. But don’t stop there: try the fresh baked, often warm from the oven chocolate chip cookies for sale at the Edison, one of the ML Film Fest’s venues.

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Now let’s get to the films.

Shorts Block 2 began our film programming, with another eclectic mix of 8 films. The incredible animation matched the Elmore Leonard-esque v/o on the animated The Lingerie Show, a fresh cinematic short story well worth noting. Next up was the delightful comic tale of almost-adultery, The Truck. Below, the film’s charming screenwriter and producer Maryse Latendresse explained that the dryly comic near-sexual-liason was produced as part of a Canadian 72-hour filmmaking challenge project, and that the story line came out of her desire to, as a writer “write about the things we’d like to do but don’t do ourselves.”

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Below, Zach Strum and Micah Vassau director and writers of The Panty Symphonic, along with their music director and co-producer, explained the zany, anti-film-school approach to cinema in their surreal film – where a pair of magical panties creates a semi-feminist ideal, and involves a cellist, a last will and testament, and a man in a tutu in  a child’s swimming pool. The piece was shot on VHS, which was an interesting artistic choice. Speaking personally, while recognizing the element of craft the buzzy video medium added to the surrealist vibe,  the VHS medium was a bit of a distraction from an otherwise mysterious fairy tale set to music.

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A standout: A Night in Tokoriki,  a Romanian love triangle with a twist, offered a fresh take on a 21st birthday celebration.  Lots of buzz around this one, which took awards at the Berlin film fest earlier this year.

Next up, the feature Baby Bump.  How to describe:  a Polish Pedro Almadovar-esque chronicle of the tribulations facing an 11 year old boy whose mom doesn’t want him to grow up, but puberty is happening all the same.  Visually arresting, somewhat surreal, and a universal insight into the mind of an 11 year old boy.

Playing with this film was the short Infinite Water, a delicious animation of pastel-drawn art created by CalArts grad Sunn Liang, below.

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Last but not least, Beware the Slenderman from acclaimed doc director Irene Taylor Brodsky, below, with festival programmer Paul Sbrizzi.

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Brodsky chronicles the horrific attempted murder of a 12-year-old girl by her two best friends who lured her into the woods to appease the demonic Slenderman, an internet myth. While the film postulates the internet as a possible cause for the crime, a source of psychological terror for two impressionable girls, the more interesting story is that one of the two perpetrators is schizophrenic, the other, who tested completely normal, an outlier who may or may not have sociopathic tendencies. A cautionary tale of urban myth, impressionable youth, and a judicial system intent on punitive consequences regardless of age, this is a compelling doc that is well worth a view.

The second full day of the fest leaves this impression: eclectic, cutting edge, interesting works that shape a persona for this still-new festival as the place to be to see cinema that is thought provoking and unique.  Viewing all the films on tap results in an experience unlike other festivals – a mix of genres and unusual and often surprisingly wonderful cinema that you won’t see anywhere else. Slenderman’s director said she looks forward to saying her film was at this well-curated festival when it was still small – and to participating again as it grows. So do we.

 

 

 

Garage Art:  West Hollywood Premieres Automated Garage and Community Plaza Artwork

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On Tuesday the 24th,  the city of West Hollywood held a Grand Opening celebration commemorating the completion of a new form of public art: a beautiful community plaza and an automated parking garage, both showcasing not only stellar space but site-specific art. Sleek, modern, and airy, the Automated Garage and Community Plaza represent the first municipal project of its kind on the west coast. The structure offers a 200-space parking garage and a 7,000-square-foot plaza – with stunning hand-painted murals located at four parking bays.

The murals were created by artists Art of Chase, MONCHO1929, Bronwyn Lundberg, and Kim West. Each piece is unique and vibrant. 

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In Parking Bay 1, Moncho 1929’s “Flight Plan” features soaring birds that are meant to represent the innovative tech and wonder of the automated garage itself;  his poetic murals have previously been archived with the Los Angeles Mural Conservancy.

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Parking Bay 2 features Kim West’s pastel “Untitled,” exquisitely floral, evoking butterlies, translucent sunsets, and abstract trees. Other works by west include a four story artwork graces the exterior of the new Huaster, Wirth, & Schimmel Gallery in DTLA.

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Parking Bay 3 features the witty work of The Art of Chase, “We Are All One,” a pop art cluster of eyeballs meant to represent diverse energies moving together. On the opposing wall is a merged symbol that represents the peace and love in West Hollywood’s inclusive history.

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And in Parking Bay 4, Bron’s “Business Park” visualizes colorful pop raptors wearing wigs and talking on cell phones, a delightful riff on business and culture. Adjoining is a Pterodactyl nicknamed Lizadactyl after Liza Minnelli. Both pieces reflect the roots of LA artist Bron, who is the co-founder of the pop art studio YoMeryl.

West Hollywood mayor Lauren Meister is justifiably excited by the art and the technology of the parking structure, located in an area that has long needed additional parking resources. “The technology is amazing,” she notes.

Councilman John D’Amico adds “It’s a clean, green, parking machine.”

The Automated Garage was designed by sustainable design architecture firm  LPA; the mechanical vehicle storage and retrieval system by Unitronics, and actual construction undertaken by T.B. Penick & Sons, Inc.

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Automated parking is an innovative solution to parking challenges, requiring a smaller physical footprint than a conventional parking structure with the same capacity. That space savings resulted in the ability to create the community plaza, and helps to support reduced CO2 emissions with less time idling or circling for parking spots – the equivalent of taking 92 cars off the road every year.  On the garage roof are photovoltaic solar panels that utilize sustainable material crafted from recycled grocery bags.

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But environmental friendliness isn’t the only cool thing about this garage. It features a large glass wall on the east side that allows those on the street below to watch the mechanical shuttles ferry vehicles in and out of parking bays. There’s also a fixed-art installation here created by artist Ned Kahn.  Kahn’s work, the beautiful “Net of Indra” is a grid of crystal spheres which reflect the moving mechanisms in the garage. It’s a perfect fusion of art and technology, and while a completely different piece, shares a common subject with Chris Burden’s mechanical car sculpture Metropolis II at LACMA in its reference to automotive culture and mechanical manipulation.

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The Community Plaza has a park-like feel with trees and benches. A stage provides a setting for community events and concerts. The plaza is home to a beautiful triptych art banner which is a collaboration by street artist MONCHO1929 and West Hollywood’s current City Poet, Steven Reigns. The project consists of three vinyl banners that are designed to express freedom and motion, both captured in a single moment in time. The fluid nature of the artwork includes the incorporation of Reigns’ poem “Morning, West Hollywood” in the background of the piece, with the poems’ lines “Everyday we wake up, a brilliant and creative people in a beautiful city, our past and present intersecting, illuminated, full of promise and possibility.” Images include vibrant birds symbolizing hope and freedom – hummingbird, parakeet, sparrow – each expressing the diversity of people and the freedom of choice in the community’s culture.

Both garage and plaza make wonderful showcases for West Hollywood’s commitment to sustainable living and their ongoing community-focused cultural planning. They’ll be on display at the plaza’s first concert event on June 26th, a performance by jazz musician Jennifer Leitham – not to be missed.

No Bridge Too Far: Jason Vass Gallery

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“Before the Bridge” at the Jason Vass Gallery succinctly and beautifully sums up images of change – perfect for the gallery’s location in the shadow of the soon-to-be-no-more 6th Street Bridge.  This is only the third exhibition at the gallery space, which opened January 30th, but it’s not to be missed.

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Featuring the work of six artists, Deborah Brown, Dan Callis, Mark Dutcher, Cynthia MacAdams, Douglas Tausik and Gene Vass, paintings, sculpture, and mixed media are the mediums for some dazzling art works about transition.

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Above, Douglas Tausik with the two creations his wife’s pregnancy inspired.

Douglas Tausik’s “Venus” is the artist’s tribute to his wife’s pregnancy. “I changed my approach to the work in this piece,” Tausik says. “While the idea of traditional sculpture being exhausted is premature, this piece came out a little differently, a personal narrative, thought and emotion united,” he says. The flowing curves of this piece seduces, the feeling of birth is present in every soft line, even had we not heard the story of the work’s inspiration.

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Dan Callis say his multi-layered paintings reflect light beneath darkness. “I wanted to build up these very dense layers to create intentional space, then subvert it, and build it again. That may be emblematic of my own aging,” he laughs. “I want my paintings to be beautiful but not in a traditional way, rather in a way that comes out of going down some difficult roads.” Delicate and translucent colors create a translucent effect; there’s a sense of reflection, light, water, glass in each of his pieces that pull viewers in as if floating in a wave of color.

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Mark Dutcher’s abstract paintings include stark but sensuous lines weaving through flows of color.  His “I am Hart Crane,” is blue with black graphite lines. It could be a river or a highway, something that courses on, as mutable as time.

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Deborah Brown’s “I Thought I Could Handle It” is hilarious, sexual, and simply captivating, an interweaving of female legs and bodies with a mushroom head with which Freud would have a field day. This too is a piece about transformation, as desire, as feminism, as identity. Both surreal and whimsical, her work dovetails nicely with photographer Cynthia Macadams, who presents iconic photographs of men and women that delve beneath the surface of the skin. Also beneath the surface: the swimmingly dark monolithic forms of Gene Vass that offer fine cracks of light breaking through these seemingly immovable shapes.

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Yes, it’s all about change. Check out this exhibit which will change after June 12th.  The gallery is located 1452 E. Sixth Street in DTLA.

  • Genie Davis; All Photos: Jack Burke

 

It’s Elemental: See Elements at the Loft at Liz’s

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Fire, air, water, earth. At Loft at Liz’s “Elements,” the gallery’s annual nature themed exhibition, six potent artists create this year’s entry in an annual show that focuses on nature. Six artists, Doron Gazit, Michael Giancristiano, Moses Hacmon, Luigia Martelloni, Jeff Frost and Joan Wulf re-create these natural elements as something profound and poetic.

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Environmental artist Doron Gazit has worked with inflatables for thirty years, and his kinetic wind sculptures here potently visualize the unseen. Using nature as his canvas, he has worked with plastic tubes that are hundreds of feet long.

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Writ on a smaller scale here, “Frozen Flow,” take up substantially less space, white and illuminated from within, they channel air currents and pull viewers into a world both haunting and beautiful. It’s not hard to visualize Gazit working on his next upcoming projects in Iceland and in the Amazon forest.

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Artist Luigia Martelloni takes on the element of earth in an installation that fills the smaller exhibition room at the Loft. Luigia’s work involves crystals, earth, organic materials, and paper prints.

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“It’s a very personal journey, that goes back to the vastness of the land that I explored in 1986. I’m translating to the audience not information about finished objects, but about recovering and salvaging materials and translating ideas. The crystals are about a trip I took from the Colorado mines to Utah. There is salt from Salt lake City, dirt from Monument Valley. I prepare my paper in an organic way, and I use papers that are a collection of years and years.”

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Joan Wulf “fell into” her own burning ring of fire – she was painting on wood panels, and found a particularly beautiful wood grain that she did not want to gesso, instead using the panel to burn rather than paint her work.

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Now this pyrographic artist is creating art painted with flame rather than brushes, burning canvasses, crafting images that resemble ancient cave paintings or conversely, modern patterns that just happen to be burned into shape rather than conventionally painted.

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Moses Hacmon uses a liquid film technique to render images of water on aluminum. His eco-friendly project creates images that evoke both the depths of the ocean and the earth from space, watery images that shine over aluminum that could merely be representing the crystal clear waters of a distant cove.

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Michael Giancristiano says his art in this show, featuring air plants, was “inspired by melting ice caps and what’s under them. Scientists have reanimated organisms, a rebirth,” he notes. He wanted to use “organic materials that are alive and growing. The air plants are held onto functional handbags and panels by fasteners. They can be interchanged, removed, and watered.” The air plants he uses here come from the pineapple species.

 

We did not have the opportunity to talk to Jeff Frost, whose images of fire are seductively palpable in his photographic and video art works.

Find the element that moves your spirit through June 20th at the Loft at Liz’s, 453 S. La Brea Ave.

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Jack Burke