Almost a year ago, Artiholics covered the debut of Prayers from Los Angeles (“Prayers“) by interviewing one of the key artists who inspired this multi-disciplinary collaboration—Margaret Garcia. See this clip of last year’s documentation of Prayers. On December 17, 2016, artists and musicians are bringing Prayers back to Casa 0101 Theater.

The venue itself has held a 16-year, thriving relationship with the surrounding community of Boyle Heights in Southern California. Since its founding in 2000 by playwright Josefina Lopez (depicted in the first featured image above), Casa 0101 has held a theater-centric role that gradually expanded and also became known for musical performances and visual art shows.  Theater productions still continue to play a major role in Casa 0101 today while a learning center engages children and adults in classes related to writing, acting/improv, singing, and dancing.  LA Weekly calls Casa 0101 the “Best Theater Serving Its Community” in 2016.

Proceeds from the event’s art and ticket sales will support local charities.  This year, attendees can look forward to artwork by Joe Bravo, Brian Grillo, Jimmy Centenio, Heriberto Luna, Bonnie Lambert, and Margaret Garcia.  Other local artists and performers will also join the celebrations. Notably, Prayers will also seek submissions of “miniature art pieces” from the community to be shown in a special exhibition space within the gallery. The organizers of Prayers want a web of different voices. They emphasize the need to share and support one another. This is the time to defend thy neighbor, to be as positive as possible, and to work together in understanding the values in and outside of your community. Fortunately, we have people who know how this can be done using art materials, sound, and performance. Fortunately for us, Prayers from Los Angeles is not going away– it’s only growing stronger.

Casa 0101 is located at 2101 E. 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033.  To participate in the community art exhibit, contact nataasja@prayersfromla.org.  Organizers of this festival may choose to coordinate an art pick up time for interested participants.  Anyone can also bring artwork to Casa 0101 during open hours.  The organizers prefer three days of notice to insure adequate installation time, but anyone may certainly bring art pieces directly to the festival on 12/17/2016. The community art show will be catalogued as part of a new book documenting Prayers from Los Angeles.

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A Father, A Son, An Artistic Legacy. Remembering The Artist Robert De Niro, Sr., the HBO documentary about the brilliant and original impressionist painter is a cautionary tale about an artist left behind in the wake of his initial success. Narrated by his son, his contemporaries and excerpts from his diary, the film introduces us to a world where artists were beginning to achieve renown before their deaths, not after.

Caught up in a whirlwind success as an American Impressionist, De Niro Sr. failed to recognize the moment when the movement he operated in was starting to become passe, and had been eclipsed by Pop Art. He refused to conform, he saw himself as a superior to Jackson Pollock and shunned the new school of art.

De Niro Sr. found himself alone, and out of favor, in more ways than one. Alienated by the Pop Art Movement, after his marriage to school mate Virginia Admiral ended, as revealed posthumously in his diaries, he sadly failed to ever find the love and companionship he yearned for as a closeted gay man.

De Niro Jr. serves not only as a narrator in the documentary, but also as a son, hoping to rewrite the pages of New York’s art history to include the life and legacy of his father, the artist. After the documentary premiered on June 9, one of De Niro Sr.’s paintings sold at Sotheby’s at $35,250, far surpassing its estimated value of $5000-$7000, according to Jennifer Samet on Hyperallergic. A collection of his works were also on display at DC Moore Gallery, in an exhibition that ran till July 31 this year.

Remembering The Artist is directed by Perri Peltz and Geeta Gandbhir and produced by Jane Rosenthal Sheila Nevins.

Written by Keziah Quek and Cojo “Art Juggernaut”
Pictures courtesy of HBO Documentary Films

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Meryl Meisler is a Brooklyn based photographer who captured a very tumultuous, dangerous, and simultaneously glamorous era in NYC history – the 1970s and 80s. During that time, Manhattan was erupting with surreal characters and scenesters, gallivanting in iconic night clubs, while across the bridge in Bushwick, Brooklyn, there was destruction, arson, looting, the crack epidemic, and tensions between the disenfranchised communities that resided there. She taught in a Bushwick public school and with camera at the ready she bore firsthand witness to the opposing worlds, which existed just few subway stops apart.

Meryl carried a medium format camera nearly everywhere she went, and caught a glimpse into two very different social environments. One of those settings was the disco-era music and dance scene. She snapped photos of William Shatner, Andy Warhol, Grace Jones, and frequented  Studio 54. She went to places like the Paradise Garage, one of the most powerful House music venues of all time.

Meryl Meisler referred to the initial lines of A Tale of Two Cities when describing the then NYC dichotomy between extravagant Manhattan nightlife and the struggling nightmare of Bushwick, Brooklyn.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” – Charles Dickens

I went on a walk with Meryl, and then she took me out to lunch. Her eyes glowed with compassion and warmth. She currently lives in Chelsea, and she supervises/teaches future art teachers at NYU. Her new exhibition highlights photos published in her new book by Bizarre Publishing, called A Tale of Two Cities & her work is displayed in Bushwick’s Black Box Gallery (12 Jefferson Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206). She sent me photos, some of which have never been released. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did:

The original Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, and later to become the Priceline spokesperson, William Shatner is seen above. Meryl didn’t seek these people out, they just showed up in her life without her going out of the way. They seemed to be bizarre characters that had found their place in the media.

I love this one, it’s almost as if there was a crossover with disco night life into the grime and neglect of Bushwick.  My guess is that this depicts the relics of the night a woman got drunk, and experienced that shaky, exciting time. The shoes are evidence of god-only-knows what kind of misfortune and tales of love and loss that accompanied this shoe’s original owner.

 Meryl described Grace Jones (follow the link to view Jones’ YouTube video, ‘Cannibal Corpse’) as a diva, and when she walked in, she looked fabulous and divine.

This photograph cracks me up, the overt abundance of pubic hair, and the benevolent yet devious grin of the man contorting his body. Not to mention the guy with the flamboyant hat, in a mesmerized daze.

I said, “why not ask her for a photo of herself?” This photograph exemplifies the sexy and exuberant energy that I witnessed Meisler to possess ( she is standing to the left).

Meryl talked about where these three amigos wound up – one in jail, one died, and one still lives in Brooklyn. This photo was the first one that caught my attention due to the presence of innocence that had the immanency of destruction and pain.

To see more of Meisler’s photos, check out the show in Bushwick.

Meryl Meisler’s
A TALE OF TWO CITIES:
DISCO ERA BUSHWICK
exhibition and book launch
Exhibit open through September 10, 2014
Gallery Hours: Daily, 11am – 4am
BIZARRE PUBLISHING
8.5 x 11 inches
180 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9910141-1-8
$40.00 USA/CAN

Written by Andrew Kaminski

The post Is This Bushwick’s First Hipster? Meryl Meisler Photographed The Neighborhood Before It Was Cool appeared first on Artiholics.

Ai Weiwei The Fake Case, is the second in what looks to be a possible series of art documentaries about China’s most famous artist, Ai Weiwei. Filmmaker Andreas Johnsen seamlessly picks up exactly where director Alison Klayman left us at the end of her award winning documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry.

After being released from an 81 day government detainment we are launched right back into Weiwei’s world as he struggles to balance being a father, an artist, and a strong political voice; all while living and working under constant surveillance of repressive communist regime which has taken away his passport, and wants nothing more than to silence him.

AI WEIWEI THE FAKE CASE  has it’s US debut this Friday (May 16 – May 20, 2014) at NYC’s IFC Center, where director, Andreas Johnsen will be in attendance for Q&As all opening weekend.  Advanced tickets for the premiere went live last night and ARE AVAILABLE HERE.

If you are like me, you will do yourself a favor and watch the first documentary Ai Weiwei Never Sorry (currently available on Netflix Streaming) before hitting the theater, as it completely sets up the story, and this film doesn’t waste time with exposition. It goes ALL IN straight from the jump.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

The two films are seamlessly meshed.  So seamlessly in fact that because I watched them both back to back on my iPad in bed last night I am almost a little blurry as to which events happened in which film.

Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry ended with Ai  being released and being out on a $1.5 Million bail for alleged tax evasion, which as said in the trailer above, isn’t a real thing in China.

If you recall at the end of the first film we found him released and returning to his compound at night, surrounded by reporters in the dark, lit up by flashes and camera lights.  He had a government gag order that barred him from interviews so he apologetically made his way through the crowd and closed the metal door behind him, and that is where we were left.

Trying as much as possible to resume as much of his life as he was legally allowed to while suffering from sleeping disorder and memory loss, he began re-bonding with his son after his three month absence.  His world had been rocked, as he realized the truly scary “nightmarish” power of the government, who when the cameras were off made it perfectly clear to him that they didn’t have to give him his passport back, they could rearrest him at anytime, and that he was still being watched 24/7.

Much in the way former hackers who’ve infiltrated government websites are forbidden from operating computers, the verdict was still out as to the possibility of  Ai Weiwei resuming his online presence.  For a man in his 50s, you will never find a guy so social media savvy.  He is hooked into twitter (https://twitter.com/aiww), and has used it’s power beyond what any other artist has thought possible.

With 245 Thousand followers, and having posted over 106 thousand tweets, he is tuned in.  He also always has a film crew following and documenting him, he documents his experiences with a smart phone and iPad himself, snapping pictures constantly.  I can only imagine how a guy that plugged in must have felt stripped of a huge part of his feeling of who he is when he was placed in a white room with no WiFi.

When someone has that sort of fan base, and the news comes out that the government charged him $1.5 Million to be released, they come to your rescue.

His bail was paid by donations, either mailed to his studio, or tossed over the studio walls.  Crumpled bills and paper airplanes sailed into his garden.  Unfolded and unwrinkled the bills totaled up to cover the amount he had needed to be released.  He was humbled, and overwhelmed by the power the internet wield.

Like countless artists before him, he turned his suffering into beauty with is series of six perfectly scaled down hyper-realistic sculptural dioramas depicting the six parts of his daily life during his 81 day imprisonment  in a taped up box of a room with two fatigued guards watching him day and night while he ate, slept, and shat.  The creation of which is chronicled in the film.

The six pieces, titled S.A.C.R.E.D., premiered during the Venice Biennale and is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum in his current show titled According to What?

AI WEIWEI THE FAKE CASE screenings in NYC start Friday, May 16th, 2014 at IFC Center and end Tuesday, May 20th. Only 30 screenings will be available, so get your tickets now.

Not in NYC?   AI WEIWEI THE FAKE CASE may be coming to an arthouse theater near you, here is a current list of upcoming playdates in the US.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

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Long Island City based art collective Flux Factory created an elaborate piece of art which runs all around their building.  Exquisite Contraption, a Rube Goldberg machine triggered by sound activation, dominoes through an elaborate series of events concluding with the timed taking of a group photo after their weekly house meeting.  It’s documented beautifully in this short video narrated by Jason Eppink, and shot by Aymann Ismail for AnimalNewYork.

Unfortunate for the Fluxers in residence, who in everyday life must have to tip-toe around that noise sensor or risk accidentally launching the entire chain of events into motion.  It’s not enough that some poor sucker has to reset all of the balls, cars, and soda bottles of liquid each week, god forbid someone in the house raises their voice or comes down with a loud cough – abrupt volume comes with a price.  But it is a small price to pay for art.

Alas, if they had Chunk from the Goonies around, they could program it to only be set off  when the halls echoed with the hauntingly singular siren song of the “Truffle Shuffle.”

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

Flux Factory video via Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork – Goonies video via Sblankman76

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Last night the first episode of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge premiered on Syfy.  Much like one of the network’s other reality show contest properties FACEOFF the show pits ten potential creature designers against one another to create an original camera ready puppet based on some broad parameters set-up to guide each week’s challenge, with a two or three day deadline, and the worst designer of the week gets eliminated. Grand prize winner at the end of the season gets the traditional 100K and a job.

Coming into the contest the bulk of the designers already have years of experience in creature making some own their own studios, some have worked on big budget feature films, some work for Disney.

These are already talented creature designers who really could submit their resume and portfolio to Jim Henson’s Creature Shop and be considered for an actual job and not have to go through these on-air contests, but whatever, it makes for good TV.

In 2012 I was invited to attend New York Creative Week, and was fortunate enough to see a presentation by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. It was fascinating to see how many commercials they are behind, which you would probably never have guessed because many of them don’t look like classic “Henson Muppets.”

Prime example, look, it’s Snuggle. He went creepy CG for a while, Jim Henson’s Creature Shop was hired to redesign him as a physical puppet again, this required them going back and studying the original commercials (as the original bear had been lost) and designing a new Snuggle from scratch.

Original Snuggle

Jim Henson Creature Shop Snuggle.

As well as seeing the pre-puppet drawing, leading into the finished product.

Sketch of Dominar Rygel VXI from Farscape. Finished Dominar Rygel VXI puppet.

A puppeteer demonstrates how voice and movement bring a puppet to life.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

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HBO’s newest artist documentary  Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman premieres tonight (Monday February 24th) at 9:00pm. Directed by New York based artist Mickalane Thomas, who only last month had her solo exhibition Origin of the Universe at the Brooklyn Museum, Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman paints a riveting and emotional portrait of her mother and longtime duende, Sandra Bush.

Featuring intimate interviews with “Mama Bush,” as well as personal and archival photos, the film celebrates this mother-daughter reconciliation as Sandra Bush achieves a measure of celebrity posing for her daughter’s most famous paintings.

I had the pleasure of meeting Thomas years ago during her residency at the Studio Museum of Harlem. Eloquent, hard-working, well spoken, she eagerly talked to me about her creations, all the while inserting each crystal into her paintings by hand, back in the days when she didn’t have the assistants that come from the acknowledgment and recognition of her work that she now has.

The Brooklyn Museum exhibit was a sparkling exhibition of Thomas’ plethora of talent. I have a penchant for glitter and shine; as I was walking through Thomas’ exhibit, a patron noticed my colorful sequined outfit and gleefully asked me “Are you part of the art?”. “Why yes I am.” I replied to her compliment. However the shimmer and rhinestone splendor aren’t the only things that draw me to Thomas’ work.

Her style is amazing, delving into a formal training that touches upon centuries of art history. Thomas is well versed in the art of art; beautifully informed, her skillful and thoughtful sense of technique, texture, composition, and of storytelling are all evident in her body of work.

Too many hip young people thinking of themselves as edgy artists disregard form, narrative, and color theory, but they don’t have much to say. Thomas is brilliant and poignant in her use of archetypal imagery: notions of Buddhism, influences of Adrian Piper’s political collages, classical painting, retro design, feminism, pulp pop culture, are all featured in her art.

The heartbreaking documentary tells the story of her mom’s survival of years of domestic abuse. Sandra Bush, a former fashion model, is well versed in being a muse. The love her daughter has for her makes one realize why Bush is such a symbol of revelry and strength in Thomas’ work.

Her mom’s arm was mutilated by her husband, he carved his own name into her flesh, scaring her for life. But Bush, a true survivor, transformed this marker in her psyche to be a reminder of the love she has for her son, who shares the same name as his father. All these human experiences lends themselves to the content of Thomas’ art. Thomas really is an artistic genius; she has the alchemical magic of transforming pain and hardship, into true beauty.

Happy Birthday to a Beautiful Woman

First airing (tonight) on HBO on Monday February 24th at 9:00pm.

Play times after the premier as follows:
Mon, February 24 – 9:00 pm
Tue, February 25 – 4:15 am
Wed, February 26 – 8:00 pm (HBO 2)
Thu, February 27 – 4:45 pm
Should you wish to see the film after the above times, it will also be featured at HBO ON DEMAND and HBO GO.

Written by Betty T. Kao

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