I took the ol’ subway down to the artwalk last night.  The art on display was, well, the usual.  There were a few really bad, a few really good and a whole lot of mediocre.  I’ll detail that as well as some other interesting things below in photos.  Where I haven’t provided a photo please click through to the links to the artist’s Mac portfolios (which won’t let me link/steal the images)

The old bank still had art by Mr. Devo, but unfortunately the Stein gallery had expanded and loaned one of its artists, Sheri Lee.  She had many on display including “seventeen.” (sigh…)

Jessica Viola had some of her living pieces in the “upstairs gallery” (they required a hand stamp for entry now… no idea why).  I liked these, but everything else in this gallery was not so great.

Infusion finally had something good.  They had five pieces by James Brunner. 

Obviously a humerous painting about American Psycho.  You can’t see it in the photo, but his suit had the little sparklies just like the real suit.

Also on display were the Obama, Frankenstein, Pirate and..other paintings.

At the Hive Pamela Mower-Conner had some cool large paintings that I couldn’t even fit in frame:

Although I don’t usually like the subject matter of Delphia’s art, the one below that she had at the gallery was nice (the paint work on the background is really elaborate).

Crewest had a gallery of “street art” including pieces by pro skateboarder Christian Hosoi.  Apparently while he was in prison on drug charges he converted to christianity and then began a series of paintings about jesus.  Or, I should say, a series of jokes about art.  It doesn’t piss me off that these are so terrible, the joke is that the price tag on each one (there was another with the same image just in white paint, another of the image with black paint on a black canvas, and so on) was $7,000.   #1 (based on these paintings alone) you’re not an artist.  #2 you’re not famous enough to demand a high price on everything you “do”… i.e. I’ve heard of Tony Hawk before  #3 converting to any religion and putting that in your work doesn’t automatically make what you’ve done more valuable (in fact, sometimes less so, since there is less actual imagination in the work).  Anyway, here is the piece I’m bitching about, let me know if I’m way off base in saying this is a spectacular piece of crap (or, a $7,000 piece of crap):

In a building lobby Cheech Marin was showing off his collection of paintings by Latino artists.  He had a great piece by George Yepesnamed after a Jimi Hendrix song.

The regent theater completely changed.  Instead of charging admission it just had old psychadelic posters on the walls in the entrance and then nothing in the big hall. nothing.  There were two lonely people on the dark stage sitting on the edge playing guitar softly.  Perhaps someone’s big “sell out” idea failed.  I laughed and nobody understood.

Here is another street band.  I hope they didn’t pay for the dumpster space. (they were actually a pretty good blues/rock/jam band)

Down the street from the Regent was this guy, who calls himself the Artist General.  What exactly he is selling on his antique website is a mystery, but his playing of this instrument (whatever it is) was mesmerizing.

In one of the larger galleries there was an “living installation” that everyone was huddled around.  It was basically a girl with pantyhose on her face, head in a fishbowl, cameras on her fingers with video fed to screens on her dress made of faux moss and butterflies dying (I’m sure they were supposed to be fluttering around, but instead they were mostly dead).

The cross dresser (there was a whole troupe of them walking around last night) was fascinated.

I walked up to the Pershing Square metro station, however, before going down the stairs I noticed lights across the street.  Turns out there was a big concert in the Pershing Square park last night (and these go on at a regular basis).

On the way home I began second guessing my decision to always take the subway when a woman plopped her crumb cruncher into the seat next to me.  I swear the child smelled like he crawled out of the city dump, I couldn’t breathe.  Was it really worth the few bucks in gas savings?  I found a parking garage at the art walk that only charges $5.  My car gets roughly 20mpg and the round trip to the art walk would be about 52 miles.  If gas is $3 a gallon it would cost me about $8 in gas to drive and another $5 to park for a total of $13.  Driving to the NoHo metro (31 miles round trip) costs about $4 and then $1.25×2 for metro passes for a total of $6.50.  So, it is literally twice as expensive to drive… but… possibly worth it if I don’t have to sit in another gas chamber for half an hour.  The teenagers that shout to each other about “the bitches they is (sic) going to fuck laytah” and play loud rap music (and shout along to it) I can do without as well.

However, I don’t actually even get to go to the art walk until December because my fall term classes are on Tuesdays and Thursdays again…  =(