Speed of Life

Donald Sultan Spring 1999 "Robert Creeley is an artist’s poet....I think of him as one of the most  thoughtful poets ever to explore this complex relationship between the eye and the object."  - Donald Sultan, 1999 "(Battery) There" Wherever it was, I took this place To be in mind as well as there Where persons walked with muffled forms, Marked by the high sky's yellow glare. The measured look placed all in squares, Boxed by a distance fixed in space. Lampposts blackened against the day. The shuffled passage of persons faded. The building, it seemed, they would never           get to. Its vertical strips of window reflected Light from a world they might have heard of, But, try as they would, they would           never reach. - Robert Creeley From the New York Public Library: "Over his lifetime Robert Creeley explored the profound connections between visual art and creative writing in collaborations with artists such as Georg Base...

Gregg Chadwick Speed of Life Study 33"x20" monotype 2005 From the San Francisco Art Institute Art Auction The annual San Francisco Art Institute Art Auction will be held Saturday, April 2, at SomArts, 934 Brannan St., in San Francisco. Works donated by such artists as Marcel Dzama, Jay DeFeo, Lynda Benglis,Gregg Chadwick, Imogen Cunningham, David Ireland, Annie Leibovitz, Larry Thomas, and Charles Hobson will be offered to the highest bidder. The range in value is expected to be $150 to $15,000 for the works. In addition to paintings, works on paper, photographs, and sculpture, other items to be auctioned include art-related travel tours, restaurant gift certificates, and fine wines. The reception and silent auction begin at 5:00 P.M., and the live auction commences at 7:00 P.M. The auctioneer is Malcolm Barber, from Bonhams & Butterfields. SKYY Vodka will sponsor the open bar. Co-chairs of the event are Nicole Fife and Will Wick (Art Auction Committee) and Caro...

A wonderful discussion is continuing on the place of arts writing and elitism in contemporary art. From Mark Vallen's art for a change "A poet living in Southern California made a few points I’ve been wanting to touch upon. Although the poet practices a discipline apart from that of the visual artist, the two are linked in many ways. When artists malign the public for having ‘bad taste’, or when critics say that ‘art is not for everyone’, they fail to see how this is a problem of acculturation. For instance, in much of Latin America crowds fill stadiums during poetry festivals, while such an event is impossible to envision for the US: “I wish I had been present at the forum because the same thing is happening in the world of poetry. Some academics say that poetry is not for everyone. But how come that is not so in many other countries? I grew up in Persia and poetry was in our blood. In the smallest villages, even the illiterate could recite poetry by heart. In Afghanistan the...

Gerard Bourgeois Après le Bain 41" x 54" oil on canvas 2005 Currently on view at the Sarah Bain Gallery in Brea, California is a new collection of paintings by Gerard Bourgeois. These seemingly Degas inspired images of a woman at the bath are rich in painterly nuance accomplished by a rigorous process of painting, readjusting, overpainting, sanding, scraping down and finishing. Like a frescoed wall eroded over time, the images in Gerard's paintings emerge from the accumulation of paint. The history of the painting, with its ghosts and pentimenti, is the painting. Gerard's work is extremely sophisticated, notice the nuances of hip and shoulder, yet these paintings ring true emotionally. Based on intimate moments with his wife, the paintings in this exhibition are not mere exercises involving painter and model, but instead portray an intimacy normally found in the cinema. Gerard was raised in the South Pacific on the island of Vanuatu. Like a reverse Gauguin,...

“The Bias of Costume Design” a lecture by Oscar & Tony Nominated, Emmy Award Winning Costume Designer JULIE WEISS Sunday, April 3rd, 2005 6:30 PM On The Re-Defining of Beauty Through Costume films include: Frida American Beauty 12 Monkeys Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas and many others •The costume as part of the character…or •The character as part of the costume •Can the costume dress the spirit •How does the costume help the written word? •The loss of individuality through dress •The definition of the veil as privacy or ownership •Is a trend without a story nothing more than a blink? $5 donation RSVP 310/ 397-7449 Lecture held in ARENA 1 GALLERY 3026 Airport Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90405 hangarstudios@verizon.net 310 397 7449 phone 310 397 7459 fax

Update: RB Kitaj Exits R.B. Kitaj Los Angeles no. 20 1990-2003 Collection of the National Gallery of Australia "Don't listen to the fools who say either that pictures of people can be of no consequence or that painting is finished. There is much to be done. It matters what men of good will want to do with their lives." -RB Kitaj We are fortunate to have Kitaj back in Los Angeles. Much like Alex and Jane Eliot, Kitaj should be declared a living national treasure. Almost thirty years ago Kitaj curated an exhibition, for the Arts Council of Great Britain, entitled The Human Clay. Let me be the first to propose a new exhibition incorporating Kitaj's School of London with our new - School of L.A. The School of London - School of L. A. connection is a natural one with Kitaj and Hockney working here and inspiring a whole new generation of artists. In the catalog essay for the original Human Clay exhibition, Kitaj wrote, "If some of the strange and fascinat...

photo courtesy Heritage Watch "There is not a single site that is not affected," said Helen Jessup, the founder of Friends of Khmer Culture, describing the looting of Cambodia's artistic treasures. "The Western collectors continue to be as guilty as those who do this." -Jane Perlez in the New York Times Jane Perlez' New York Times article, on the looting of Angkor Wat , shed light on a growing problem in Cambodia and Thailand - the defacement and looting of national treasures for collector's cash. Hidden in the article, a single photo credit, is the identity of an organization that refuses to accept these events as inevitable. Headed by Dr. Dougald O'Reilly, Heritage Watch is actively promoting a series of measures to combat looting and the international trade in stolen art: "The initial phase of HeritageWatch’s projects will focus on education. By targeting a broad spectrum of Cambodian society and visitors to Cambodia we hope to sl...