After the bachelor party I got a bad cold. It’s otherwise unmentionable except for the disappointing fact that it was the first time I’d been sick in nearly two years, so the counter was reset. Fortunately Sam was still in China, so my being sick didn’t ruin any plans or make her sick. Ironically she was sick at the same time on the other side of the world.
In the following month we caught up on some sci-fi movies and had friends in from Thailand and Manhattan.
On Saturday we went to Bergamot Station for Copro’s 20th Anniversary show. There were a few other galleries open as well. Most were filled with largely uninteresting paintings and photos, but there were a few interesting pieces:
(as always, higher res versions here)
In one gallery we found one of the props (or a replica?) from the Clockwork Orange Korova Milk bBar:
In case your Kubrik memory isn’t as good as mine, scan the photo above for something that looks like this:
Another one (or the same one?) was in the LACMA Kubrik show not too long ago.
The sculptures in the film were an adaptation of similar pieces by Allen Jones.
Under the sign for the “loft gallery” was a sculpture that I’d love to have.
Upstairs in the loft were a few interesting sculptures that were made out of glass or acrylic. One of them (not pictured here) had another image burned inside of the main sculpture.
We walked on down the road (lot?) to Copro and were surprised to hear a lone piano echoing through the alley (road?) and no food truck in sight. When we went round the bend we saw the piano was part of a one man band on a truck.
The show was great, as usual. Copro, along with a few Washington Blvd galleries are consistently the best source of “New Brow” art in the city (country? world?). The popular thinking is that Los Angeles is morphing into the new art capital of the world. Doubt me? On the way to Bergamot we passed Craola and other artists painting a mural on La Brea. This was NOT the event we were going to, didn’t even know about it.
The show at Copro was simply meant to be a celebration of becoming the mecca for this art movement.
My favorites from the show (photos from Copro or artist’s site/s)
Leslie Ditto – Enlightened
Clare Toms – On a Traveler’s Wing
Mark Garro – Dawn
Brian Despain – Journeys. This piece is about the size of the image you see above, maybe a little smaller. The color and the detail that Brian put in this piece were captivating. In real life there’s a glow to everything that can’t really be captured in a photograph. Normally with paint (whether oil or acrylic) there is a reductive element to the color, making everything a bit duller. Here Brian was able to achieve a glow almost like a digital painting from a monitor.
Crystal Chan – A Time for the Innocents. Crystal is one of my favorites, always making interesting atmospheric pieces. Her rendering of flesh and skin is something I aspire to. Not overly detailed, but enough color and shape to blend into nearly photo realism from a few feet away. Look at the hand here, for me, this is the focal point of the whole piece (although there is clearly a lot going on elsewhere).
Now, take Crystal’s level of detail and multiply it exponentially and you get Eric Fortune. I’ve followed Eric’s blog for many years to see his process. It’s often painfully slow, but the results are amazing. Eric paints ethereal and delicate pieces on paper building layers upon layers of thin color.
Eric Fortune – The Demon Haunted World
Visit my flickr to see a close-up of the detail work in this piece. It’s stunning. When you get up close you can see an insanely detailed swirl of patterns on the woman’s hands, every pore in the plant leaves, stitching on the sheets, etc.
