I had come to check out the hotel’s collection of multi-media installations and projections by Los Angeles artists Jerico Woggon, Desirae Hepp, and Lustre. All the work had been on display for the preceding two days as a teaser to Curator Lilli Muller’s Autumn Lights LA ’09 show, which was premiering the same night just a hop, skip and a jump down the street at Pershing Square. What better medium than light to showcase the local talent pool in our sprawling city of lights? Exactly.

I have, as a native Angeleno, witnessed downtown’s art community grow over the years. During college, I lived on Bixel Street and 8th in one of the bland, fake Tuscany-styled buildings devoid of both character and architectural innovation. I wanted to live in one of the soon-to-be teardowns on Jefferson. Crackly painted-white porches on which I would sit drinking a glass of bourbon, watching those who pass by, feeling the heat from the seat still emanate from voyeurs past. But I was convinced that living at the Medici would be safer, cleaner, better. At that time, LA was going through a downtown renovation project, hoping to bring light to the fact that we do, actually, have a downtown. Going back years later, and after a year in NYC, I appreciate these dirty downtown streets and the united call for action by the artistic community.

Lustre Art Work

The Standard Downtown was already buzzing. The installations and electro-Indian music integrated seamlessly into the hotel whilst people chatted around me, vodka tonics confidently in hand. Without realizing it, I was already within the confines of the art show: a light projection on the wall in front of me by artist Desirae Hepp, another video light piece by the Lustre group to my right. Jerico Woggon’s black light installation, featured on 6th Street’s wall and the hotel lobby entrance, reminded me just how cool black lights make everything. Everything with the exception of teeth color and lint, that is. Photographer Rick Mendoza and LA-artist and curator Lilli Muller created rooftop-projected video footage. Hepp’s textile lit artwork aimed to play with our innate response to light, waves and bioluminescence, while creative group Lustre’s video projection montage sought to immerse the audience in a fuzzy bath of art, design and film, mesmerizing us all in the lobby with dancing images.

Lilli Muller Art Work

LA is reclaiming the arts as a priority, as a way to connect people and its interlaced communities. That community tie-in is exactly what The Standard wanted to do. “When I learned that Autumn Lights was coming back after being dark last year, especially as it was something happening just two blocks away, I thought it would be a fantastic fit. It’s great for the community and the arts, which is something that the Standard certainly is involved with,” Dennis told me. “When I met Lilli Muller, the curator, sitting in the lobby and talking about her vision, something snapped and I wanted to be a part of it. We are not only design-centric, but we are engaged with the local community.”

The live music in the lobby enriched the artwork on display, as intended by the hotel’s Culture Coordinator Dan Mancini. “We wanted a live act as opposed to a DJ that wouldn’t distract from the light display, because it’s about lighting and the fluidity of the light as opposed to a musical experience,” he explained. “To do that, we brought in a group called LEF, which stands for Liberate Elemental Forces, and is a mix of Indian and electronic music. There’s a lot of synthesizers and classical Indian instruments which adds to the overall experience.”

Desirae Hepp Art Work

After perusing the artwork, I walked down to Pershing Square, eager to check out the main area of light installations. Any free of charge, open to the public event in downtown LA draws some unusual characters-the one who talks to himself, the other who dances by herself- but the vibe was informal, welcoming and inspiring. Partnered with the City of Los Angeles Parks and Recreation and Art2, Autumn Lights LA ’09 provided an outdoor art show where LA musicians and artists exhibited their light-based work. A city is marked by its lights. An intangible barometer of our culture, our people, our city. In the middle of Pershing Square, I looked around at our downtown, one that now beamed with lights signaling to those landing in LAX airport that we too have a downtown worth reckoning with. One day, thanks to the efforts of these artists, we will fortify Los Angeles’ reputation as a world-class art and culture destination.

For more information on Autumn Lights LA, visit:
www.autumnlightsla.com
For more information on The Standard Downtown, go to:
http://www.standardhotels.com/los-angeles/

The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go
Downtown, things’ll be great when you’re
Downtown, no finer place for sure,
Downtown, everything’s waiting for you
(Downtown) -Petula Clark

Although Petula Clark is right about the noise and the hurry, forgetting your troubles isn’t really what downtown is for, or at least downtown LA. Just because Skid Row is slowly edging away from the loft spaces and bars that have sprung up like mushrooms after a heavy rain does not mean anything has been forgotten here. The downtown art scene isn’t one of escapism; its craggy roots firmly cling to the foundation of the city, every canvas a mirror of one of the 4 million Angelenos reflected there.

The sidewalks are too grimy, and the incomprehensible babble of the old toothless man smoking something acrid in the doorway of a locked up taco joint is too loud to ignore. There are drunk college guys in Ed Hardy T-shirts here as well, but it is a testament to how much downtown has changed in the last decade that during their intoxicated stumble to the Range Rover at 2 am they will not get robbed.

Downtown is morphing and growing, the adaptive reuse ordinance passed earlier this year allowing for 14,561 new residential units. For artists, downtown is a place they can afford to live and have studio space. The area is still socioeconomically patchy, which keeps the rents reasonable, but it is bright with pockets of new businesses to cater to the influx of 10,000 new residents that have made downtown their home between 2006 and 2008.

Few places are as emblematic of the blossoming downtown art scene as the Hive Gallery, where FORTH set up shop for the duration of last Second Thursday. The Hive is aptly named, each one of its honeycomb partitions filled with teeming buzzing people and loads of art. If bees sweated, then I imagine the Hive would smell authentic too. Every tiny partitioned space contains a different world, put together and controlled by the artist, and stepping through each doorway is a tiny thrill each time. Our Promotions Coordinatior, Nancy and I squeeze past a clown with a red and black face who’s holding a doll’s body with a crazy bald head to find myself almost face-deep in Alex Schaefer’s work-in-progress. I catch myself before I crash into his pastels, and I fall in love with his line right there. Unhurried and rough, his strokes manage to capture more detail than they ought to, and he’s not even done –the way the man gropes the blond woman and she leans into him in the center of his piece is so real it feels like I’m watching a movie.

We push through to the bar, where we meet Tony and Laura. Laura is tending bar and is a resident artist at the Hive. I pester her about her art, which is upstairs in her space and not on view. Tony, an actor and an artist himself, kindly escorts us up. Nancy and I try to capture Laura’s work, especially her poi dancers, in the dim light, but the only captured impressions we get are mental until Nancy gets her shot. Despite the light conditions, the photo shows what is mesmerizing about the piece in person — the sensuous bend of the neck, the muscular lithe grace of the dancer, the unison between the girl and the fire, electric and palpably sexual.

Laura’s work contrasts sharply with what we find when we get downstairs. Walt Hall uses discarded wood panels to create his strangely touching “fenceposts for a better tomorrow,” urban fairy tale-like creations that are equal parts fun and gloomy. They are filled with sad-faced people in quirky animal costumes, stark trees, and stern birds, but the true subject seems to be the city. Its presence looms behind every bird and every tree, layers of newspaper looming oppressively like skyscrapers.

It becomes obvious very soon that despite the varied techniques, styles, and themes present, most artists here are thinking about Los Angeles. I step into the collage-covered world of Patrick Haemmerlein, and I’m staring at one man’s brain trying to process the entirety of LA. There are oil-rigs, trees, surfers, skyscrapers, cranes, musicians, and roots. Roots snake through his work like connecting threads, a whole city bound organically by Patrick’s thoughts.

Where Patrick uses color sparingly, to highlight something special in the two-tone city, Nick Wildermuth brings downtown to life in Technicolor. His panels contain whole buildings, a neighbor visible in each window. Their lives are open to dissection like so many TV shows, each window a different channel, each one a possible Rear Window situation. The dark LA sky glimmers with skyscrapers in the background, blanketing the building in a strange comfort, that city feeling – it’s better to be lonely here than anywhere else. Nick’s work, bright, evocative, and fun, is made even better by the world he’s created for it. Fake brick and cement walls, with brightly painted bottles and discarded cigarette packs littered under them, showcase Nick’s little islands of people perfectly – it is as close to downtown LA as you can get outside the real deal.

Outside is where we find Max Neutra, painting in the middle of the sidewalk while gathering a crowd. With a stellar reputation as a wild live painter, it is no wonder. His images, clearly influenced by comics but not static in the least, are graphic and cheeky and appear as the city itself – bright, flashy, brash, but always more than meets the eye.

If there was a vote for mascot of LA, the most cynical among us would choose the automobile, so seeing the Art on Wheels truck parked on Spring St is a vision realized. To elevate the value of an object that most Angelenos cannot live without from its most basic function to a moving art exhibit is a work of art in itself, and a credit to Carlos Ulloa and Eder Cetina. Climbing up the crude wooden steps, the excitement of seeing art outside the conventional set-up of a gallery or a studio is palpable among the viewers. It feels like a secret art party with an open guest list. The art itself also did not disappoint – Eder’s eye-catching pieces play with iconic images of ninjas and guns, while Carlos’s wicked sense of humor is evident in his masks, one descriptively titled “Black Sperms & Green Amoebas.” The truck is no gimmick; it is art for the people, four wheels for the world. It is the perfect last stop for our art walk, leaving us feeling excited, smiling, and free.

For more on the downtown art walk, visit http://downtownartwalk.com/.

Slideshow and photos by Nancy Accomando

At the risk of upsetting the dead Balthus, I have to say I’m glad that he was not part of the open studio event at the Santa Monica Fine Art Studios – he’d have certainly declined to talk to rubes like me about his work.

On June 13^th, he would have been in the minority as the Santa Monica Fine Art Studios opened its doors to the unwashed masses for a rare treat – a chance to grok art with its creators, over 30 of them to be exact, spanning a myriad of media from painting to mobiles to sculpture, and encompassing every style, from Impressionism to Superflat.

Being allowed into a working artist’s studio is a lot like going backstage at a concert – you get to geek out about your favorite artistic creations with the artists themselves while being exposed to the nuts and bolts of the usually intimate creative process. Plus, there are groupies. I think I saw one gentleman literally drooling at one of Ann Calfas’ masterful nudes, its powerful buttocks clearly triggering a Pavlovian response in the appreciative viewer.

SMFAS opened its doors in 1987, when 1834 Franklin St was one of several warehouse buildings that provided workspace to artists in the area. Tanja Rector, the SMFAS artistic director, primary lease holder, and an incredible artist in her own right, had a vision of a creative hub that provided artists with affordable studio space, accessible 24 hours a day. Today, SMFAS is home to over 30 artists, and while the rent has gone up since 1987 and the other artist warehouses have had to close their doors, Ms. Rector has managed to keep 1834 Franklin St an utterly accessible creative playground for her colleagues – a place where content is influenced not by curators or galleries, but by the creators themselves.

During the open house, visitors had an incredible opportunity not only to mingle with artists and talk about their work, but also bring home a little piece of their experience through the silent auction. The silent auction, another anomaly in the LA art world where breaking into art collecting seems daunting, not to mention pricey, features 8” x 8” pieces of wood which have been transformed by artists into mini-masterpieces that are representative of each artist’s work. With the bidding starting at $25, even unemployed Angelenos could forego a month without Starbucks in order to bring home an incredible original piece of art. The bidding was made even easier by the free wine and amazing music by Forth musicians – when you’re tipsy and grooving, money is suddenly revealed to be the silly paper that it is, far less important than the art you can trade it for.

Of course, Balthus is right to a degree – nothing beats looking at art, certainly not reading about it, so without further adieu, I present the slideshow of a small slice of real local talent as seen through this reporter’s eyes. May you grok in peace, and I hope to see you at the next SMFAS open house in the fall.

Editors Marco Mannone and Jason Hall manned the Forth booth at  Equator, a rowdy and fun scene, with Brad Elterman’s iconic photographs providing the perfect backdrop to the party – what’s cooler than a black-and-white photo of Steve Jones doing the backstroke naked while grabbing his shaft and sticking out his tongue? Now I don’t know what I enjoyed most about the photo, the fact that in it, Jonesy is the spitting image of a young Sean Penn, that he whipped his cock out to shock an unsuspecting prudish visitor, or how funny it was watching guy after guy try to hit on girls while they were completely mesmerized by the photo. My socks were officially rocked off during the awesome Hi As a Kite set, when I may have fallen in love with their keyboardist, and then seductively rocked back on by the sexy cello and vocals of Oak and Gorski.

Publishing Assistant Christine Gergori held down the fort at G2, which was a mellower scene, the crowd checking out the gallery’s On the Wing: Picturing the Plumed exhibit, which showcased images of aerial and flightless birds in their natural habitat by talented nature photographers Daniel Gottlieb, Susan Gottlieb, Larry Wan, Ron LeValley and Thomas Mangelsen. Conversation flowed like the free wine, and the tiny cheese cubes were a deliciously zesty accompaniment to the smooth vocal stylings of Susan Crebs and her aviary-influenced jazz band.

Although nothing can replace the heady nighttime Venice aroma of Nag Champa, sage, medical marijuana, and beer in your nostrils, or the dramatic look of the sky as the sun sinks through gorgeous layers of pollution into the ocean, I will do my best to transport you to the orgy of the senses that is First Friday.

Favorite Terrible Pick-up Line of the Night:

“Show me your Tweets, I’ll show you mine.”

Favorite Outfit of the Night:

The cumulatively confusing effect of this curious assemblage cannot be accurately captured on paper, but I will say that lame gold pants paired with a faded sage polo shirt underneath a faded black sweater, coupled with black orthopedic shoes, will never fail to make an impression on me. It’s like his legs were at a party, his torso was at his IT job, and his feet were…well, flat, which is a serious condition affecting 25% of the population and not funny at all.

Favorite Conversation of the Night:

Fratty drunk white guy in beanie: I wanna beer.
Bartender: All right, man. We got a local microbrew, it’s a lager called Che, and we got Budweiser. Which one would you like?
FDWGIB: What?
Bartender: One’s a real good local lager, named Che, like the revolutionary. And the other is Budweiser.
FDWGIB: What?
Bartender (patiently): One’s brewed at Angel City Brewing, who LA Magazine named “Best Microbrew” in its “Best of LA” issue. And the other is Budweiser. Which one do you…
FDWGIB: Budweiser.

Favorite Lesson Learned:

Next time, bring a clear bowl for subscriptions. Sure, at the beginning of the night the concept of an empty cardboard Tsingtao box with a subscription-urging flyer on it being used as a receptacle for said subscriptions is easy to grasp, but after 4 cups of Che, I can’t even be sure I wasn’t the one throwing trash in it.

Favorite Tramp of the Night

I had help deciding on this one, namely from the bouncer/bartender dudes who were happy to share their sexy-lady ogling with me. After watching throngs upon throngs of the beautiful, the trashy, the crunchy, and the urban-outfittery, our ogling was beginning to feel tiresome, until I gorgeous, petite, black woman with almond-shaped eyes and an incredible afro walked in, her perfect skin luminous even in semi-dark. I looked over at the guys, and I could see they agreed, their arms crossed, lips pursed in satisfaction, nodding slowly.

“Oooooh-weee…” The main bartender exhaled softly through his teeth.
“I know! Isn’t her hair fucking fierce?” I asked.
“Huh? I’m talkin’ about the white girl in the shorts, I don’t know what kind hair she got,” he clarified.

I hadn’t even noticed Wonder Bread, even though she was with the hot black girl. But as she walked away working her 5-inch cork platform sandals with black ties that snaked around her ankles, culminating in a bow in the back, the jiggly bottom parts or her ass (the bottom bottoms, if you will) had me mesmerized; and in light of this I could definitely see how her hair was irrelevant. It turns out that, after she finished rounding the corner, I also didn’t know what kind of hair she had. When I think of her now, I picture a Bratz doll.

“You mean the girl in the coochie cutters?” I just wanted to be sure.
“I like you,” the biggest security guy guffawed and put his arm around me.
“I like you too, but I need to help y’all out with the ladies,” I decided. “Listen, we’ll go out, and I’ll totally be your wingman. It’ll make you look less sleazy, and maybe we’ll find you someone whose vagina hasn’t had more visitors than the Smithsonian.”

I don’t think their laughter was indicative of them taking my matchmaking seriously. A girl can try though, can’t she?

Favorite Cop Story of the Night:

What’s the best barbeque you’ve ever had?  Was it so good that it warranted you breaking the law you were, ironically enough, sworn to enforce? That was the case for certain gastronomically inclined police officers who, parking their squad car unashamedly in the middle lane, bravely decided to risk the inevitable “pigging out” jokes as they patiently waited for their ribs from the Glencrest Bar-B-Que.

And on that delicious law-breaking note I will bid you adieu. See you on the next First Friday of the month!