A Saturday Night in Chinatown

Posted on by Diversions LA

Joyous celebration, paper lanterns swinging overhead, crowds pushing into and out of galleries all along Chung King Road in the heart of Chinatown. That was the scene for Saturday openings all along Chung King Road’s walk-street gallery row on January 9th.

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Images and experiences flow together with the crowd – and just because this was a don’t-miss-night, Los Angeles art lovers need not despair. Thursday January 28, the scene will be repeated from 7-10 p.m., part of an LA Art Show sponsored celebration honoring Pop Surrealist artist Robert Williams with a lifetime achievement award. And most of the exhibitions run through February 20th.

Here’s a look at the great art flowing through these DTLA galleries.

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Brian Mains’ “The Intersection of Light and Darkness,” at the Gregorio Escalante Gallery is a visually and emotionally stimulating mythological world. The artist says “The kind of space, type of composition, use of light, and method of articulating forms all work together to create an other-worldly reality and to infuse the pictures with magical, theatrical and spiritual qualities.”

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At Chungking Studios, Painting by Scott Trimble and Photography by Osceola Refetoff, co-curated by Refetoff and Shana Nys Dambrot, enrichingly combines photographic and painted images that share the same sensibility of space, light, line, or emotion.

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Coagula Curatorial featured “Ten Top Artists,” a group show juried by Tulsa Kinney, editor of Artillery Magazine, and featuring artists including Jill Emery, Same Source, Vanessa Madrid, Annette Hassell, Jennifer Lugris,
Reagan Lake, Daggi Wallace, Michele Vavonese, and Kate Oltmann.
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Very different art and artists – commonality: a vision that makes you look twice.

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The Charlie James Gallery gave us artist Sadie Barnette’s meditative and haunting take on life at the racetrack, Superfecta, and Rosette, a group show curated by artist Mary Anna Pomonis, featuring the work of Suzanne Adelman, Lili Bernard, Mattia Biagi, Annie Buckley, Kristin Calabrese, Angel Chen, Sarah Cromarty, Cherie Benner Davis, Mark Dutcher, Christine Dianne Guiyangco, Sabina Ott,  Pomonis, Cindy Rehm, Allison Stewart and Vincent Ramos.

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Artist Lili Bernard, above, discusses her autobiographical tribute to the souls of her ancestors and three generations of rape survivors. The powerful piece, titled “Elvis Slept Here: Help Me, Abuelitas,” grabs you by the heart and the gut and won’t let go until you really see the details.

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Below, The Project Gallery premiered Wyatt Mills’ Normal, whose images belie the title. The Los Angeles artist’s mixed media paintings are a bold mix of the real and surreal.

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At The Good Luck Gallery, below, Art Moura’s stunning installations are a fine example of this gallery’s commitment to visionary and outsider art.

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Like walking into a dreamscape…F23C7995

A treasure trove of art washed up on a wild shore…

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Not sure how anyone couldn’t love this. It’s folk art, it’s surreal, it’s a tapestry of life, it’s the rhythm of existence, dream, and distance.

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The details are as compelling as the large designs.

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So you want some art? Some exciting art? Chung King Road is the place to be. But then, it almost always is.

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Chomp: Stellar “Home Cooking”

Posted on by Diversions LA

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For delicious, fresh, healthy comfort food, Santa Monica’s diminutive Chomp Eatery can’t be beat. Perfect for picnics and take out, the brick walled, bright cafe is fine for a casual dine-in, too. The flat-out delicious and good for you cold-pressed juices are one fine reason to make a stop, but there are veggie burgers, grass-fed burgers, wraps, breakfast burritos, salads, and crisp fries, too. Co-owner and chef Rolan Pongpuntara serves up a wide range of menu options, and each one of them is tasty and fresh.

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Chomp’s made-to-order breakfast burrito is, according to Pongpuntara, the number one item served for brunch. We had it vegetarian style, fluffy scrambled eggs, crisp tater tots, American cheese, avocado, Chomp’s own zingy salsa, tomatoes, and red onions – a meal in a tortilla.

Waffle cut sweet potato fries, left, are a tasty addition.

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A lighter option, the beet salad is a classy SoCal classic: arugula, soft goat cheese, golden and red beets, toasted pine nuts, mandarin oranges, and a light apple cider vinaigrette dressing.

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Have to say that the juices – which come served in-house with ice filled mason jaws – will bring us back again and again. I’m a cold-pressed juice fanatic, and this topped just about every place in town. The Hawaiian Paradise, featuring orange, pineapple, straberry, green apple, and pear juice was simply phenomenal. And yes, the green juice, Balance, was a perfect iteration of green goodness.

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Served cute on faux newsprint, the vegan Earth Burger was awesome. No plain veggie patty here: the burger comes dressed wtih grilled red onions, grilled bell pepper, grilled jalapeño, fresh arugula, tomatoes, pickles, fresh avocado, and a really, really good homemade basil aioli – all served on a brioche bun.

Pongpuntara says her background is in pharmaceuticals and natural remedies.”I wanted a palce where people from area businesses and homes could have a one stop shop for food. From a healthy salad to a breakfast burrito to juices, I wanted it all to be in one place. I brought in a friend who is a chef o perfect our menu. We’ve been open just over a year and a half, and we;re constantly tweaking the menu to give people exactly what they’re looking for.”

She makes over 33 different juices and constructs individualized juice cleanses, and also serves more than ten house-made fresh almond milk flavors. Flavors change seasonally. Don’t miss their smoothies, either, which run the gamut from the fairly traditional, like the agave, mango, and orange juice Mango Dream, to the far less so – the Paleo Cacao Avocado is grand, crafted with almond milk, banana, avocado, organic almond butter, organic raw cacao and raw honey.

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  • Genie Davis; All Photos: Jack Burke

Painting by Scott Trimble and Photography by Osceola Refetoff

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Co-curated by art critic, curator, and author Shana Nys Dambrot and photographer Osceola Refetoff, Chungking Studios is serving up an exciting juxtaposition of painting and photography through January 29th in Chinatown. Featuring the works of painter Scott Trimble and photographer Refetoff, this visually and emotionally linked combination of images is a mind expanding look at scenery both external and internal.

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As if seamless, the melding of photographic images with painterly ones is like watching two different sides of the same art coin. Here the same touch of color, there a similar image; the vibrancy and desolation of the desert, the emptiness or vividness in a place or a face. Shapes, shadows, and feeling coalesce.

The two artists met, liked each others work, and wanted to put on a show despite apparent lack of similarities in their work. Dambrot and Refetoff chose work by each artist that is intrinsically linked, through landscape, palette, and lines.

Scott Trimble
Scott Trimble

Trimble describes his work. “I paint every day, it’s a total coping mechanism for me, the one and only area of my life in which I have total freedom. It brings me such joy, I can’t imagine not painting.”  Trimble says he was thrilled to work with Dambrot and Refetoff, and agrees with Dambrot’s description of putting the show together as “casual and organic.”

Osceola Refetoff and Shana Nys Dambrot
Osceola Refetoff and Shana Nys Dambrot

“Osceola and Scott were trading studio visits,” Dambrot explains. “Their work was so different, but they both wanted to have a show together. To assemble the exhibition, we went with a palette approach, picking images that were both hot and cold, or shared the same graphic strengths.”

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Refetoff and Dambrot made studio visits together. “It was a ‘yes, no, maybe’ process,” Dambrot notes. “And once we had the loose structure, we unpacked the pieces, we looked at Scott’s paintings and Osceola’s photographs, and we just saw the pairings. I saw that this idea made sense.”

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Refetoff adds “We were originally thinking of separate walls for Scott’s paintings and my photographs. We thought it would be hard to make black and white photos and colors work seamlessly together, but they do. It’s a dialog together.”

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“It clicks, and I can’t say why,” Dambrot laughs. “We toyed with the idea of calling it ‘Studio Visit’ since the show grew out of the binding of two artists who explored each others work.”

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The exciting visual aspect of the work is apparent the moment the viewer steps into the gallery. Thematically, the pieces work through their images, their colors, their emotion. It is an underlying sensibility that perhaps drew both artists together originally which creates a dynamic pull throughout the exhibit.

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Missed the opening? See the work of this electrifying trio Thursday 1/28 from 8-11 p.m., as part of an LA Art Show sponsored celebration honoring Pop Surrealist artist Robert Williams with a lifetime achievement award. Other Chung King Road galleries will be open late, too.

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Chungking Studios is located in the heart of Chinatown, at 975 Chung King Rd. in DTLA

Kind-Hearted Compassion in Action

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Saturday December 12th was the date for the “Elevate Genius” fundraising event held at the Yost Theater in Santa Ana, but the purpose of the event is on-going throughout 2016 for non-profit Kind-Hearted Compassion in Action. The organization is dedicated to supporting artists, musicians, and activists from adverse circumstances,helping them to share their works, “in order to create positive and uplifting social change,” according to organization co-founder and Orange County attorney Pamela Tahim.

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Pamela Tahim, center

Tahim‘s brother, Jesse Tahim, a musician and lyricist, started this project, a movement to make mainstream hip-hop music more socially conscious. Jesse Tahim asked for his sister’s help to start the program, but passed away before his dream could be realized. Pamela Tahim, along with psychologist Dr. Sonia Singh, went on to found this organization, which offers mentoring, funding, and partnering for artists.

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Pamela Tahim explains “Our goal is to spread peace and compassion through music and the arts, through the words musicians select, or the type of art displayed. At our December event, headliner Bizzy Bone from Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, keynote speaker and music manager Steve Lobel, and other speakers from Southern California all echoed the importance of empowering those who use art and music to spread these messages.”

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Along with a wide variety of musical performers and additional speakers including FOX 11’s Christine Devine, an art exhibition was an integral part of the evening, depicting homeless or marginalized individuals who have lost their lives.These powerful portraits underscored the importance of spreading the positive to prevent brutality, abuse, and corruption. Words, music, and images – all vitally important ways to change negative events both politically and personally, according to the tenets of Kind Hearted Compassion in Action.

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With over 500 attendees, funds raised from the event will be used for artist and musician grant recipients and for future programs. For more information on this program and its efforts to empower at risk artists, visit www.kindheartedcompassion.org

  • Genie Davis; Photos: Provided by Dea Shandera Hunter