When I saw my first pictures of the Pink Bus, a Pepto-pink double-decker that had previously only existed in my dreams alongside unicorns and cotton-candy clouds, I wanted to get on board immediately. From its overturned bathtub bar covered with melted vinyl records, to a ceiling with an array of lampshades hanging down like stalactites, it is a treasure trove of scraps that have been transformed into an entirely unique and surprisingly homey environment. Unfortunately for me, the bus is parked in Edinburgh, so I sought out its two creators – Reading, England’s Victoria Brook and Caroline Fletcher.

Bianca Kolonusz-Partee makes pictures of the things we ignore using pieces of the things we discard. Cezanne painted his Mont Sainte-Victoire over 60 times, Monet recreated his water lilies dozens more. The subject of industrial shipping ports may not seem so romantic, but to Bianca they are every bit as potent. Industrial ports are universal gateways, through which we receive nearly everything we use everyday. Not that we notice them. In fact, you might say we make a point of ignoring them. This is particularly easy in a city like Los Angeles, where the unpleasantness can be easily lost in the endless sprawl of our mega-city. Even in denser cities like New York and San Francisco, where the cranes and docks are unavoidable, most of us are so inured to the sight that it becomes part of the white noise of urban life. We tend to remember the Empire State Building and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Bianca believes this is typical: “The average person in LA, unless they live in those areas doesn’t really think about [shipping ports] or see them.” And yet, according to the Long Beach Alliance for Children with Asthma, the amount of air pollution blowing inland every day from the Long Beach/Los Angeles ports is equal to that generated daily by three million cars. Children in Long Beach face some of the highest levels of asthma and permanent damage to lung development in Southern California. Diesel pollution from the ports’ trains, ships, cargo conveyors and trucks poses such significant risks to local residents as cancer and premature death. “There’s all this processing going on that you can visually see and smell. It’s causing the same amount of pollution and damage as it is in New Jersey, but the San Pedro and Long Beach ports seem more remote.”

Don Argott’s new film The Art of the Steal is closer to a conspiracy flick than institutional documentary. On the face of it, the film tells the tumultuous history of The Barnes Foundation, a maze of political and art world chicanery with twists and betrayals to rival a season of “Lost” – only at the end of the day, it all makes sense. The motive: money, over $25 billion to be exact, the estimated value of the late Albert Barnes’ unrivaled collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Early Modern masters. The crime: betraying the old man’s legal trust by hijacking the entire collection from its rightful home at an eccentric educational institution in Lower Merion County to a shiny new tourist hot-spot in downtown Philadelphia. But the most surprising element of the mystery is the culprit: the big business of big philanthropy.

When I found out that the 15th Annual Los Angeles Art Show is taking place at the LA Convention Center this year, I immediately flashed back to the last time I was there, about 5 years ago, getting sworn in as an American citizen. Instead of being surrounded by fellow foreigners awkwardly waving our tiny American flags as a video George Bush, wheat fields, and smiling children played on a large screen, this time I was surrounded by rich old people, hipsters, and hungry reporters.

“It is underground because we are not supposed to exist,” he explains.