Stay FRESH 2016 South Bay Contemporary Fundraiser

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Diversions FRESH
Looking for some art-action – and auctions – this weekend? Coming up on Saturday, the South Bay Contemporary fundraising gala fits the bill. Taking place the 23rd from 5 to 8 in the courtyard of a Rancho Palos Verdes estate, the event supports events, exhibitions, arts education and more at SBC in San Pedro.

The cutting edge art programs at SBC should be well represented by a live auction of collectible works, performance art, interactive art, live music, cool cocktails, and a catered dinner. Attendees will also get a preview of SBC’s upcoming exhibition Skyline, opening May 7th, as exhibiting artists came up with the table centerpieces for the event – which will be sold at a silent auction.

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Looking ahead, Skyline features emerging patterns, silhouettes and lines of 3-D sculptures, to form a unified image of a skyline. Curated by Ben Zask, the focus will be on sustainable practice in sculpture, with most pieces utilizing found materials and mixed media. To see these same artists creating centerpieces – and being able to take an original artwork home – makes the gala even more appealing. Hat and brooch making will be offered onsite, too.

Participating artists in the live and silent auctions and onsite during the gala include Cie Gumucio, Cansu Bulgu, Patty Grau, Margaret Lazzari, Seth Kaufman, and Gloria Plascencia.

SBC director Peggy Sivert Zask
SBC director Peggy Sivert Zask

South Bay Contemporary director Peggy Sivert Zask, says the evening is about “unity” as much as it is a fund raiser to support SBC and the culture of contemporary art in the South Bay.

Don’t know where the South Bay is? Well, it’s time to find out. Just drive south of LAX and look for this event. After all, it wouldn’t be a party without the art.

Tickets for the gala are online at http://southbaycontemporary.org/fresh-2 The event will be located in the courtyard of the Shriver estate, located at 21 Pomegranate Road, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA 90275

Literature Lovers and Book Babies: It’s Poetry Month in West Hollywood

Posted on by Diversions LA

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April is National Poetry Month, and the city of West Hollywood is celebrating poetry and presenting a number of other literary programs this spring. WeHo is dazzling residents and visitors with “Poetry in Lights” electronic billboards and lamppost poetry banners that are literally bringing poetry to the streets. It’s literature as visual art, and as kinetic as it is moving. But don’t stop there – workshops, readings, and the chance to build your own Little Free Library are all a part of the city’s plan to woo readers and writers.

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The city’s celebration of National Poetry Month is the biggest news, city poet Steven Reigns has put together a wide-ranging calendar of events and workshops, and is leading a free poetry writing workshop himself on April 21st at 7:30 p.m. in the West Hollywood Library Community room. Both novices and the more experienced can join – the only requirement Reigns makes is a willingness to try plus a pen and some paper.

Along with his tenure as City Poet of West Hollywood, Reigns is a nine-time recipient of The Los Angeles City’s Department of Cultural Affairs’ Artist in Residency Grant, and has led the My Life is Poetry workshop, an autobiographical poetry workshop for LGBTQ seniors, and edited an anthology of their work. He also has led the 2016 Lambda Literary Book Club series, a monthly discussion of LGBTQ literature that is on-going.

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“This year, my final year as City Poet, my focus has been to introduce poetry to more people,” Reigns says. “Poetry is powerful and I want to share it with as many people as possible.” Reigns is particularly driven to express the relevance of poetry for those who’ve discounted the medium. The Poetry in Lights initiative was his own, with the support of Alex Bazley at West Hollywood Gateway, and graphic designer Eric Hanson, who created the visuals showcasing the poets.

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This digital public art project is being displayed intermittently on two electronic billboards, one at West Hollywood Gateway in the 7100 block of Santa Monica Boulevard, and the other at 1OAK located at 9039 W. Sunset. These billboards flip through portraits of 22 contemporary poets and feature excerpts from their works. Visually compelling, the project is also of course a good read.

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The lamppost banners that are flying in conjunction with this project and National Poetry Month dot the landscape along Santa Monica Boulevard from Sweetzer Avenue to Westbourne Drive. These banners also feature a poet’s image along with a line from the poet’s work.

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As an added bonus, free bookmarks depicting four of these lamppost poets are being distributed throughout the city, at the West Hollywood Library, City Hall, and other locations.

Grab a bookmark while you can, and along with Reigns’ workshop on the 21st, check out events that include a poetry reading by three Red Hen Press poets at Book Soup on Monday the 25th. Don’t miss these events, remember, as poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti once said, “Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” Living in LA, that’s a pretty potent metaphor.

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Proving that WeHo will continue to be a literate community even after National Poetry Month rhymes on, is the Little Free Library Program. West Hollywood residents can apply on the city’s website for one of eight $600 grants to build their own “take a book, leave a book” shelter. While most participants start off using their own books, the group Friends of the West Hollywood Library has agreed to donate a starter set of books to each person who receives a grant from the city to build one. The initial pilot program still has enough funding for five more Little Free Libraries, so bibliophiles in West Hollywood are encouraged to apply.

And lastly, writers who reside in West Hollywood should look up the three PEN Center USA Scholarships, which include an eight-week master class in fiction and non-fiction, a session with an editor, and a reading. But would-be applicants better hurry – the deadline to apply is Monday 4/18. To apply, visit https://emerging-voices.submittable.com/submit.

For complete information on Poetry Month in West Hollywood, including bios of featured writers, visit http://weho.org/residents/poetry-month-2016

And for WeHo residents interested in building a Little Free Library visit www.weho.org/residents/arts-and-culture/little-free-library

Body to Bodhi: Heart to Heart Art

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Body to Bodhi is a conceptual art exhibition that connects body shapes to nature and nature to the universe. “The art focuses on how we can use the life we are living now to go a step further along the path to enlightenment,” curator Hayley Marie Colston explains. “The pieces contributed by the twelve artists exhibiting were open to their own interpretation of what that path means.”

Opening Saturday the 19th for a limited run at Oddville event space in DTLA, Body to Bodhi is a wide ranging collection of paintings, photography, mixed media, installations, sculpture, and virtual reality. In short, one vibrant, witty, cavalcade of art.

Oddville’s Steve Payne and Ezra Croft stepped in to host the event, which is experiential in all the best ways.

Artists on display include Nychole Owens, Gus Harper, Hung Viet Nguyen, Johnny Naked, Snow and Kevin Mack, David Malana, David Cedeno, Reid Godshaw, and Bill Mather, among others.

Matt Elson’s Infinity Boxes, below, offer a transcendental experience unique to each viewer – and unique to the same viewer exploring the mirrored, kaleidoscopic sculptures from both the front and back of the pieces.

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Yes, even babies were enthralled. This piece reminded us of a more intimate version of Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, now on display in the Broad’s permanent collection.

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Another piece by Elson evoked memories of fun house mirrors. What is your body or bodhi reflecting?

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Below, guests experience the virtual reality of Kevin Mack, Zen Parade. This is truly and honestly an amazing artwork, the viewing of which is unique to each viewer. The piece lives up to its tag lines of “meditative, invigorating, entertaining, universal.”

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The project is entirely a family affair.

Mack worked for years on the technology for this experience, and is a pioneer in the visual arts, known for creating the opening visual sequence in the film Fight Club, as well as winning an Academy Award for visual effects in the film What Dreams May Come. Wife Snow Mack served as producer on this piece, Mack’s sons were also involved in the project. Ray Mack created the music for this work of abstract dimensionalism, Jonathan Mack worked with his father as tech adviser on the 360 degree motion.

Mack says “It’s the culmination of many years of development. I’ve worked in visual effects, neuroscience, and the mechanism of perception. The shape space explores visual consciousness, and the aspect of virtual reality that’s new, the spatial presence using it to create mindfulness.”

I saw alien figures, sea life such as turtles and fish, while my partner saw elephants and other jungle animals. Morphing three-dimensional paint splatters become living, organic beings. Tough to explain without seeing it – the solution is – see it.

“It’s different for every person,” Mack asserts. “The brain has the tendency to find meaning in an abstract medium, the way people can see an image of Jesus in toast or a ghost in a stack of clothes. In this case, there is nothing there to actually identify the images, and it releases your verbal mind so your abstract mind can experience it.”

“It’s a gift for us to share,” Snow Mack adds.

“It’s a truly profound experience,” Kevin Mack continues. “I made it and I’ve seen it five or six hundred times at least but I see different things every time I go through it. It’s a natural system in which I create the rules that govern the system.”

Mack describes his work as a form of simple artificial life. “It’s like crystals. Different from biological life, but entities that have behavior that is generated by a genome with wide variability.”

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Kevin and Snow Mack, above. Below,  works by Liz Huston on the left, the nature-body beauties are by Bill Mather on the right.

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Above, curator Colston with one of her earliest artistic supporters: her mom. Behind them, and below, a beautiful, immense piece by Gus Harper.

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Below, photography by Colston. The image of trees, center, was a travel photo that captures a haunting setting and a mystical rainbow.

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Below, the hot, bright desert image is by artist Johnny Naked.

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Below, more works by Gus Harper, whose west side gallery recently showed multi-media works including an installation of arrows titled “Kill the DJ.”

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Below, more of the Macks’ work: 3D printed sculpture and multi-media.

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Above, a living sculpture: bonsai trees created by Thousand Oaks artist Travis Goldstein.

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Above, Colston with artist Hung Viet Nguyen. His landscape, below, has a quilted quality in texture and design. Nguyen describes his work as an almost mystical, memory-based process. “When I paint, I have two ways of looking at a landscape, sometimes through memory entirely, at other times through a photograph.” The artist cites influences from Chinese landscape painting to David Hockney, but his fluid, dream-like work is uniquely his own.

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Didn’t make it to Oddville for this inclusive, immersive, and above all heart-felt and mind-bending exhibition? Watch for more from these artists, curator Colston, and this venue in coming months.

  • Genie Davis, all photos by Jack Burke

Sex and the City Zoo: GLAZA Informs and Entertains

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You won’t find Carrie Bradshaw hanging out at Sex and the City Zoo, but maybe she should give it a whirl, and learn about the mating habits of species besides her own.

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At Sex and the City Zoo, a charming and informative Valentine’s Weekend event at the Los Angeles Zoo, GLAZA once again shows an enormous capacity for the expansion of its educational offerings, served up with a heaping dose of fun.

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The event began with a dessert buffet and wine served in the museum’s courtyard. There were also adorable stuffed animal zoo gift baskets available to purchase to support zoo conservation efforts.

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While guests mixed and mingled, zoo staff circulated bearing a touchable Angolan Python, an ‘ooh and ahh’ worthy cute sugar glider, and a Hawaiian owl named Paula who came to Los Angeles as a stowaway on a naval ship.

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Once visiting and noshing ended, guests moved into the zoo’s comfortable auditorium for a lively talk by chief curator Beth Schaefer. Here the audience laughed, learned, and groaned over animal mating rituals.

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The male octopus disguises itself as a female in order to go undetected and avoid being devoured; bees sometimes have sex mid-air, bower birds woo their mates by building elaborate bowers that include found objects from car keys to soda straws. Male ostriches are supremely helpful with incubating eggs and watching over babies, and also engage in elaborate mating dances. And, well may they dance: most male birds do not have penises – the theory being such an appendage would adversely affect flight dynamics. But ostriches do, and also ducks. Ah, but ducks – well. Apparently most duck sexual behavior is not consensual, and male ducks lose their genitalia after they mate – growing a new one prior to each mating period. Um. Yes. That will teach them.

From learning about the great apes interest in oral copulation to the zoo’s success story for reproduction in endangered species like prong horn antelope and condors, this was a highly entertaining and memorable evening. Attendees could also opt to extend it with an elegant dinner set up on zoo grounds following the talk.

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We say: stay alert to other special occasion zoo events: from the holiday festival of Zoo Lights to new children’s programs that allow kids to pet a hippo, and fascinating presentations like these – there’s plenty that’s new and fun to do at the zoo. Yes, the rhymes are intentional.

So…how about those ducks?

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  • Genie Davis; All Photos by Jack Burke