You are invited to Selina’s first official POPUP event, a spontaneous creation by SELINA and Brad and LA’s finest photo talent (THAT’S YOU !). Join us for a lively discussion and Q&A about enhancing your success as a commercial artist. Together we will create the agenda and the content for the evening. A free event, just bring a refreshment, and your point of view, to share. PLEASE RSVP by Wed 12/14 as we need to know how many chairs to rent. Have a buck in your pocket to chip in for chair rental, and BYOB and BYSTS (Bring Your Snack To Share). Spread the word, the more the merrier. Let’s build community and celebrate the year! - Selina Maitreya and Brad Buckman
Looks like Selina Maitreya will be in Los Angeles this upcoming Monday Dec 19th over at Brad Buckman’s Studio in Hollywood. The studio might be a bit difficult to find if it is your first time. Just walk into the complex, turn right. It is near the end of on the right hand side. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of signs on that day to guide you. Details here.
I started grad school at Ohio University in Athens in January, 1990. Right away, I began volunteering at the Pater Noster House, an AIDS hospice in Columbus, maybe 50 miles from Athens. In March, I started taking photos there for a school project, and got to know the staff and amazing people like Peta who was volunteering and caring for David. On the day that David died, I happened to be visiting Peta. It was in the morning and they came in to get Peta so he could be with David, and he took me with him.
I stayed outside David’s room, minding my own business, when David’s mom, Kay, came out and said, ‘We’d like you to photograph people saying their final goodbyes to David.’ I went in, and just stood in the corner of that room, quiet, barely moving, and it all happened as I watched and photographed it. After that, I did realize that, yes, something truly incredible had unfolded, right in front of me.
I had worked for newspapers for about 12 years already when I went to grad school and was very interested in covering AIDS by the time I got to Columbus. Of course, it was difficult to find a community of people with HIV and AIDS willing to be photographed back then, but when I was given the okay to take pictures at Pater Noster I knew I was doing something that was important — important to me, at least. I honestly never believed that it would lead to being published in LIFE, or winning awards, or being involved in anything controversial — certainly nothing as epic as the Benetton controversy.
In the end, the picture of David became the one image that was seen around the world, but there was so much more that I had tried to document with Peta, and the Kirbys, and the other people at Pater Noster. And all of that sort of got lost, and forgotten. - Therese Frare
This Saturday @ LACMA brings us the L.A Print : Edition 2 , an annual event celebrating printmaking here in Los Angeles.
L.A. Print: Edition 2 is the second annual showcase of Los Angeles printmakers, dealers, galleries, and non-profits focusing on current trends in printmaking and publishing. Guests are invited to connect directly with artists, curators, printers, and dealers to learn more about the production and collection of fine art prints and editions.
12:00 PM Doors open.
12:00–12:15 Introduction to the event and welcome to visitors and vendors. Announcement of the silent auction.
12:15–12:45 Carol Stakenas from LACE will speak about ephemera within the context of editions and works on paper.
1:30–2:00 Richard Duardo of Modern Multiples will give a talk on publishing and collecting emerging artists.
2:30–3:30 Printmaking demonstration presented by LA Printmaking Society. Members of LAPS will be making prints using woodcut, screenprint, and letterpress printmaking techniques.
Ice Cube explains L.A. in a video celebrating the Eames House in Pacific Palisades. “Before I did rap music, I studied architectural drafting,” he says in the video. Also: The 405 is bourgie traffic, and the 110 is gangsta traffic.
…sometimes I have an idea in my head and spend time thinking about it. You know, you come across things over and over so there’s that, but it’s usually something personal like things that remind me of where I grew up. I’d say it’s always stuff that’s somewhat personal, related to my life in some way.
Jason Nocito will be having a book signing/release party this Sunday night @ Family over on Fairfax. Music provided by DJ Tim Koh. A decent way to end the weekend, chill night checking out Jason’s four years of Vancouver BC.
Wait….what does street artist David Flores have to do with iconic photographer Phil Stern ? Guess we’ll have to ask those two at the opening reception this Thursday night at Phil Stern Gallery from 7-11 pm. Oh, it is also Downtown Art Walk night too !
The series plays with voyeurism — Amos (Mac) gaining access to a whole section of my history that has been relatively private or undocumented in my work as an artist. The thing that has always drawn me to photography as a medium is the intimacy and relationship created between spectacle and spectator, and I was interested in seeing what kind of dynamic shift was possible when the person behind the camera was a trans guy. I’ve been photographed, projected upon, and sexualized by plenty of photographers, but how would it be different with another trans person, and one of opposite identification furthermore, with our experiences within the world being so simultaneously similar and exactly opposite? - Zackary Drucker
“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
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