Art Walk May

The number of “Events” happening at or around the Art Walk is growing. However, the amount of “art” at the Art Walk is shrinking. Many of the older galleries are now closed. The “citizen art park” regular area was closed and the booths were moved across the street. There are now only three galleries which we consider worth even visiting. Every once in a while BlueCanvas has a show as well, and that is usually the best show of the night. However, there was no bluecanvas show in May. The only galleries we actually enjoyed this time were The Hive (although we’d already visited on opening night last Saturday), The Temple (although the art hadn’t changed since April) and The Ground Floor Gallery.

Of course, one of the reasons you go to the art walk is not to see art – but see the eccentric wanderers in downtown Los Angeles. Check this guy out:

This guy was wearing a weight vest and doing squats with 50 pound dumbells as he walked up and down Spring Street.

There is also the cool atmosphere of people out and about in “the historic core” of downtown Los Angeles.

Of course, the food truck craze is hitting Los Angeles harder than any other city in the world (I’m making that up, but I imagine the only other city that could compete is NYC). The commercialization of the Art Walk is evident everywhere you go. Sometimes this becomes an extreme annoyance, like the eardrum killing rap DJs in the particular food truck lot we decided to eat in:

These idiots were going on about “grenades” and other things that you wouldn’t think an “art walk” crowd would appreciate. From my observance, the art walk crowd seems to be predominantly young educated adults and hipsters. Neither crowd wants to hear a “grenade whistle” while they’re trying to eat a Vegan Burger.

Branch of Life had a good location this time – the first booth in view when you walk into the “art park” from Broadway. Even at 6:15, when the Art Walk is just getting started, it was hard for us to get through the crowds to talk to the owner/artist.

This time, Kit made some “plants in a bottle” with the “air plants.” We bought one of the larger ones (seen on the bottom right in the photo above) for Byron and a smaller skinny bottle for myself. He also put some air plants and moss in some cool rectangular glass (boxes/vases/??) enclosures. Sam bought two of those. Unfortunately I wasn’t smart enough to snap any shots of our purchases before Kit wrapped them up for us. Here are some other shots of the merchandise on display:

(in this first one you can see the skinny bottle hiding behind the plant in the middle of the shot)

I had been hoping when Kit made my custom piece a month ago he could use some driftwood – but there wasn’t any available. Below is a shot showing what kind of cool stuff can be done with driftwood:

A lot of large murals are popping up on buildings downtown. This is no doubt due to the local (and perhaps national) conscious raising about graffiti art. MOCA downtown has a graffiti exhibit right now featuring the big names like Banksy (who has had pieces spotted around town for a few months now). Although I probably wouldn’t like the art on its own – put on buildings like below certainly makes the urban landscape more interesting.

A little while later we came upon a group of four “sad clowns” running around inside a building.

Turns out they are promoting their show in Santa Monica.

And at every alleyway there was an impromptu musical act.

Last month the Ground Floor Galley had some bad art – but an interesting orchestra on their little stage. This month they had a soul singer at the mic and some art that wasn’t bad. Below is a picture of Sam and her favorite (can you guess why?) painting:

Across the street from the gallery there was a pre-race event for the Red Bull Soapbox Derby. Only after returning home did I learn that they were giving out free ice cream over there. (there are always lots of free drinks and other things being given out a the Art Walk)

Right next to the Hive was a newer gallery that had its “garage door” about 1/3 closed. Clearly the event going on inside was private, but what a pompous ridiculous thing to do? Why would you have an invitation only art show on the same night as the Art Walk, literally in-between the Temple and the Hive? The more crass art walk attendees knocked on the glass and peered in the window. I can’t blame them, though. By literally turning their back to the art walk the gallery director/owner seen here is essentially saying “my art gallery is above all you COMMON art people”… I’m probably making too much out of it – but look at them…

Below is a drawing at the Hive that I liked but couldn’t attribute it to anyone because the tag was completely blank. I could look on the web site I suppose – but I don’t feel like searching through the hundreds of pieces right now to find it…

This sculptor is really talented. Although you can’t see it in the photo – the paint job was really good too. You could see little blue veins on these guys that were shady enough to actually look like they were underneath the skin: