The Times has the story on MOCA’s latest woes:

Los Angeles’ prestigious but chronically underfunded Museum of Contemporary Art has fallen into crisis. Museum Director Jeremy Strick said MOCA is seeking large cash infusions from donors, and this week he did not rule out the possibility of merging with another institution or sharing its collection of almost 6,000 artworks.

Federal tax returns show that even before the current national crisis, MOCA had been draining its reserves to pay operating expenses. In the meantime, the museum’s staff has grown.

Unlike the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is partly controlled by the county, MOCA receives minimal government funding. Its annual budget has grown to exceed $20 million, but it relies on donors to pay about 80% of its expenses. When the gifts have fallen short, as they have more often than not during Strick’s nine-year tenure, the museum has gone into its savings.

Photo Credit: JOITS

Show runs through November 30th, 2008

Crewest
110 Winston St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
www.crewest.com

PEEL HERE ‘08 @ NOMAD ~ 1993 Blake St. Los Angeles, CA 90039 12/13/08 6-11PM All Ages

It’s official and it’s on!! Our bud Sticky Rick sent us his flyer announcing the next Peel Here, happening next month,  Saturday, December 13th in Frogtown. For those who don’t know, Peel Here is the city’s largest and best sticker art show,  celebrating homemade and hand designed stickers, as well as those from the pros and semi-pros. This is always one of the year’s rocking-est all ages parties and art shows and we’re happy to see Rick saluting the streets’ sticker artists and slap maniacs once again. See you there, L.A. TACO!!!!

Founder and co-director of Tropico de Nopal Gallery-Art Space, Reyes Rodriguez explains that he was first inspired to have a Dia de los Muertos inspired fashion show after seeing people in the Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights celebrating Dia de los Muertos and dressing up in home made outfits.
“I would always see people getting decked out [for Dia de los Muertos.]
“It was never an attempt to recreate a calavera (skull) or specific image, it was always very contemporary, it was always very East L.A. and Chicano and I would say, that stuff belongs on a run way.”

However, when Rodriguez first came up with the concept for the show, he knew that there were certain boundaries and issues he had to address in planning the fashion because of the traditions that are involved with Dia de los Muertos.
He knew that even though he never wanted to limit artist in terms of their creativity in designing outfits, he knew he still had to set some guide lines to make sure no one ventured to far from the main idea and concept of the show.
Rodriguez said that altars don’t always have to be on ancestry, they can also be about current events.
He wanted artist to focus their ideas on what the traditions for Dia de los Muertos are and to make their designs an offering to a specific person, an idea or even cause.
Everything from the fabrics used to the music chosen for the model must be incorporated and have a meaning and that’s what Rodriguez says is an integral part of the show.

“It’s not about creating couture or something that looks sharp or anything like that.
“I know that if I put a fashion person in the context of the fashion show, they’re no necessarily going to get it because they might not understand [the traditions].
“Artist get an opportunity to create a different piece of art in a different medium that they’re not use to using and I thinks that’s part of the challenge,” said Rodriguez.

The Modern Woodcut @ The Hammer Museum ~ 10899 Wilshire Blvd. Westwood, CA 90024

For part of the Hammer Museum’s major exhibition on woodcuts, the modern master, Artemio Rodriguez, will be showcasing his woodcut take on Bruegel’s masterpiece Triumph of Death, a copy of which hangs on our office walls. While in Westwood, visit UCLA’s Fowler Museum to see work from the underground artist collective who protested in print, armed with woodcut and stencil, during the recent tragedies in Oaxaca, plus an accompanying photographic exploration of being undocumented, among other exhibits both provoking and beautiful.

La Tinta Grita/The Ink Shouts: The Art of Social Resistance in Oaxaca, Mexico @ The Fowler Museum ~ UCLA Campus

In 2006, the Mexican state of Oaxaca experienced seven months of social conflict that resulted in at least eighteen deaths and the occupation of Oaxaca City by the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) a confederation that included concerned citizens, teachers, and representatives of indigenous communities. Strong-arm tactics by city and state officials against public demonstrations inspired a group of designers and artists, products of Oaxaca’s acclaimed visual arts programs, to use the city walls as a canvas for conveying their outrage over social injustice by creating bold graphic images of remarkable quality, sophistication, and wit. Calling themselves ASARO, Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca, the artists remain anonymous both to avoid persecution and to emphasize that it’s the causes they voice through their art collectively that is important, not their individual identities. La tinta grita/The Ink Shouts features more than thirty of their wood block prints and stenciled works, which evoke a Mexican history of portraying social themes graphically, in the tradition of Posada, Siqueiros, Orozco, Rivera, and Toledo.

Canoga Park ~ CA

Day of the Dead takes on a new meaning this year for the community of East Los Angeles as its residents prepare to celebrate not just the commemoration of their dearly departed but probably the last weekend-long festival at Self Help Graphics’ current location.

“When last we left our embattled arts activists at Self Help Graphics, they were on the verge of eviction from their longtime headquarters in East L.A. Even some true believers were ready to count out the struggling community-based institution that has been a beacon for Chicano art for almost four decades.

But the group is still alive and kicking as it prepares for its biggest event of the year, the Day of the Dead on Nov. 2, with a display of colorful altars, a procession and a concert. The group’s legendary print shop remains active too, with an exhibition of political posters that opened Friday in collaboration with Farmlab, the experimental arts complex that is hosting the show at its gallery north of downtown, and La Casa del Túnel, a new Tijuana gallery located in a house once used by drug dealers to cover a border tunnel for smuggling.

Self Help’s barrio spirit of perseverance is what earned it a reputation for nurturing great art on a shoestring. Showing it can survive despite adversity serves its cause much better than complaining about the nuns who sold the building the nonprofit had occupied rent-free for decades.” Click here for the full LA Times article and here for the full schedule of events.

The downtown crowd can hit the 7th Festival de la Gente, a community festival and fine arts exhibit followed by a Masquerade Ball for those lucky enough to have hit number 21. Go to www.festivaldelagente.org for more info.

Also worthy of mention is Plaza de la Raza’s Saturday event where you can catch altar-maker Ofelia Esparza’s first solo exhibit at the Plaza’s Boathouse Gallery. Click here for more info.

With the Holidays right around the corner, the Day of the Dead celebrations are also a great place to find unique gifts by our talented local musicians, writers and artists.

Exhibition on view at Cella Gallery in North Hollywood from October 16th – November 7th.

http://www.edwardwaltonwilcox.com/
http://www.cellagallery.com/