Sticker combo in Silverlake

Recent news from our roads, rails, and freeways:

• Metro is now offering true express routes
• Toll Roads in Los Angeles?
• Price of Gas Going Down
• You Don’t Need to go Hands Free Until Next Summer
• Out of Town Journo Rides LA Subway, is Amazed

Photo Credit: Liveu4

5527 Hollywood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90028 RSVP: bushmillsvip@cornerstoneproduction.com

Melrose ~ Hollywood

The Citybeat has an article about how Mexican restaurants have changed in Los Angeles over the past two decades, noting that carnitas was a rarity in town 20 years ago:

Mexican food in Los Angeles has changed a lot over the past two decades. Not that long ago, few restaurants here offered any meats other than chicken or beef, and the only sauces were green or red chili or the mild stuff they pour over enchiladas. Places that served carnitas advertised it on their sign, and homesick Mexicans and savvy diners alike hit the brakes when they saw eateries named Carnitas El Tarasco or Carnitas Patzcuaro.

Meanwhile, over at the LA Weekly, they have their 99 essential restaurants mapped out, which include El Parian, Guelaguetza, La Casita Mexicana, etc.

Before visiting Guillemette’s Downtown L.A. studio or his exhibition for Culver City’s Artwalk 2007, I had seen his work primarily on his website, www.pguillemetteart.com, an i-visit inspired when I saw something fab that he’d created mounted on a friend’s wall. The sculpture was a human head shape with a highly-detailed scaled, two-headed snake throughout. On the forehead there was a ceramic sunflower, and I found out later through a dialogue with Paul Guillemette that it actually spins!

The piece was terribly stunning. When I saw more of his work after my extended cyber-viewing, I was shocked. As is usually the case, the photographs could never do justice to the complexity and richness of his creative output. The texture, detail, color, and even lighting, as many of his pieces have light bulbs placed in them, made for both accessible and awe-inspiring artwork.

A versatile sculptor, Guillemette works with paint, resin, and ceramic, and my favorite pieces often include found objects. If there is any manner in which art can convey the current, both blatant and latent themes of our culture, it is through found objects. In fact, a hot hit with a lot of the ladies at the Culver City gallery exhibit was a headlining piece called “Kiss Me You Talk Too Much,” a silhouette of a couple for which one of the bodies was a collection of found objects. Many of the objects were loaded with allusions to courtship, sexuality, and constructions of femininity, the body as a space in which there is health and sickness, and also societal forces in the external and increasingly industrial and technological world. In other words, eye candy, fo’ sho’.

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Santa Monica ~ CA

Yaw, have a good weekend. Lots of good music if you’re likin’ The Ramones, scientific hip-hop at Echoplex, Columbian-influenced rythyms on Sunday, and DJ FM with Duke of Pico-Union’s own Psychorealm! We’re psyched to see one of our top-favorite artists, EUTHANASIA, bust out at the huge group show at mobile Cannibal Flower this Saturday. Save some energy for the 4th of July, these dumb and dangerous fireworks won’t light themselves.

Thursday June 28, 2007

Low-End Theory @ The Echoplex ~ 1154 Glendale Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90046~ Featuring Free Moral Agents, Gaslamp Killer, Nobody, Edit, resident MC Nocando, & painting by MEAR ONE ~ $5 ~ 10PM-2AM ~ 18+

Lucha VaVoom Quinceanera @ The Mayan Theatre ~ 1038 S. Hill St. Downtown Los Angeles, CA ~ All-girl battle royale, birth of the mini-chicken, super evil chupacabra, DJ Senor Amor, stripteases, comedians, and lucha libre craziness ~ 7PM ~ $30-$60 ~ 21+

Friday June 29, 2007

Anime Expo @ Long Beach Convention Center ~ 300 East Ocean Blvd. Long Beach, CA 90802 ~ $25/$30 ~ Through Sunday

The Ramones ‘Double Feature’ @ Hollywood Forever Cemetary ~ 6000 Santa Monica Blvd. Hollywood, CA ~ See two recorded concerts, one a live show from 1982 and their farewell show, hosted by Linda Ramone and Henry Rollins, in the burial grounds where Dee Dee and Johnny lay. ~6PM ~ $10 donation goes to prostate-cancer research.

Saturday June 30, 2007

Cannibal Flower Huge Group Show ftg. EUTHANASIA @ Infusion Gallery ~ 719 South Spring Street Downtown Los Angeles, CA 90014 ~ Shitloads of artists (incl. Euthanasia, Zach Johnson, & Catherine Brooks), 2 DJs, live painting by Paul Torres, performances, and The Grey Moose Band live. ~ 9:30PM-2AM ~ $5-$8

DJ FM of Psycho Realm In-Store @ 33Third ~ 5111 W. Pico Blvd. Mid City-Los Angeles, CA ~ Street mixes, screening Apocalypse Now, Cookout, Q&A, Signings, guest appearances and more ~ 6-10PM ~ Must RSVP @ 33ghost@sbcglobal.net ~ All ages

Sunday July 1st, 2007

Michael Moore’s Sicko @ Theaters city-wide ~ Important and disheartening look at the declining state of health-care in the U.S. ~ Released Friday ~ $10

Upground & Sello Columbiano Live @ Universal Studios Citywalk ~ ‘Descarga’ concert series, sponsored by Mun2 & Telemundo, with a free concert every Sunday at the same time through August ~5:30-10:30PM ~ Free

Venice ~ CA

Recent taco reviews/discussion:

• Best Crispy Tacos in the SGV?
• Leo’s Tacos in Eagle Rock Reviewed
• 5 Good taco trucks in San Jose, CA
• Tanya’s Tacos Reviewed
• El Idolo (NYC) Taco Truck Review

Can’t get out for tacos tonight? Watch video of them being made to order in Veracruz:

Photo credit: Jessamyn

A black-and-white border rocking an enigmatic cult icon under, above, or alongside bold lettering. If Shepard Fairey didn’t kickstart the contemporary poster renaissance, he certainly established a few molds that have been followed, appropriated, mocked, and straight-up stolen while the artist himself has moved on to worldwide fame, an endless string of promotional deals, outlets in all media, and no doubt a lot of scratch. It didn’t take long before everyone’s mom seemed to have their own posse, among other fringe characters, fame seekers, and subversive jokers with a penchant for fucking up city property.

(Image by Aiko)

Fairey has seemingly always been straight-forward about appropriating imagery, telling TACO that every time he does, it’s both on purpose and meant to be recognizable as such. We certainly know his army of Andre the Giants, Misfits skulls, Subcomandantes, Malcoms, and Assatas were self-aware tributes that recontextualized and subverted known imagery rather then creating wholly new icons. Like many fans of creative vandalism, we admire Shepard and have been stoked on his success and what it means for the hundreds of other artists who are coming up.

(2-Cents)

Staring at the online invitation TACO received for Fairey’s show opening this past Friday at New York’s Jonathan Levine Gallery, I couldn’t believe the image looking right back at me, though I must have seen at it the Charity By Numbers Show…a small girl holding a grenade very much in the style of Aiko, with a flower sprouting from its top. New Yorkers might not have caught this, but anyone with a middling interest in Los Angeles street art would recognize the grenade/flower juxtaposition from the work of our friend 2-Cents, whose black-and-white grenades with flowers sprouting from their tops have covered boxes, billboards, and marquees from the sea to Downtown, and are even sold by MOCA stores around Los Angeles.

What happens when an artist much more famous than you is inspired by the same idea, and all your hard work gets attributed to someone else? Contacting 2-Cents in the same week we’d discussed the unlicensed use of his grenade vase poster on Colin Hay’s recent album, 2-Cents said about the internationally-circulated Fairey image, “I don’t know what to do about it. I may have overreacted a bit with some of my posts I did concerning the matter. But on the other hand, I feel that people needed to know what was happening. It kinda got to the point where I had to say something. People that follow my work know that my main iconic image is the grenade vase. That is what I’ve been bombing around L.A. for the last two years. I sell my grenade vase print alongside Shepard’s work at Los Angeles MOCA Stores. In Santa Monica, my print is literally hanging on the wall right next to his Andre print in the MOCA Store. It just kinda sucks for me ‘cuz it takes some wind out of my sails.”

From top: Banksy, the original photograph, Bast. More on this particular image here.

A lot of things flashed through my mind as I considered 2-Cents’ words. In a genre where we borrow and are inspired liberally by one another, how damaging can it be to a young artist’s career when their work is recycled, knowingly or not, by someone with worldwide fame? Though there be nothing new under the sun, something about 2-Cents work is arresting and fresh to those who come across it– will the effect be dulled once Fairey’s huge show gains momentum?

Which leads us to the big man himself…

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