On Saturday Sam and I hiked in Griffith Park with her coworker Sara. We started going the long way up to the top of the mountain (Dante’s Peak) by the observatory. We turned right when nearing the top though and went instead to Dante’s View, a garden with benches on the slow trail to the back of Dante’s Peak.
In the evening we went to two gallery openings. Our first stop was at the corey helford gallery for the Folkman/Samaras/Huot opening. At the entrance they were giving away Huot prints and Franks hot dogs business cards. The man handing out the cards said they were for a free hot dog – but nowhere on the card did it have a coupon or say anything about free dogs.
I think we both liked Huot’s work better than the other two artists. Although Folkman’s figures were well conceived (and actually similar to some of the work I do), they didn’t have the same tone that Fuot’s more “fantasy” style work has.
We had already eaten dinner before leaving for the shows, but we decided to check out the hot dog truck anyway. It turns out the cards were for free hot dogs (a $5 value). So, we ate a hot dog dessert.
After that we went over to La Brea to see Kent Williams‘ show. I’d seen a lot of Kent’s stuff online before and wanted to see this – but in person I wasn’t as impressed. Kent likes to smear paint on top of what seem like finished pieces. Sometimes this works, but it mostly just gets in the way for me. Some of his work reminds me of Egon Schiele, but I wish he’d get more focused and less muddy. I appear to be the minority opinion though among online art critics.
The show was one of those art shows where more people come to Be Seen than To See. I took a shot at the back of the gallery – count how many eyes in this photo are actually looking at the art – I see two women on the left (maybe a third on the right) and that’s it. It was so packed we couldn’t move around, and couldn’t really see the art very well either.
After this we headed downtown to the Music Center’s Pulse of LA event. Cindy had informed me of the contest a while ago and I’d submitted three “days” of photos. I made the cut for final voting (I believe the voting is closed, but you can still check out my submissions here, here and here).
Unfortunately, when we arrived at the event there weren’t very many people there. Alan and Miranda had decided to meet us there and I felt bad that I’d invited them to such an under-attended event. We ended up just sitting and talking for a while next to the Mark Taper Forum.
