chase the light

With three days of art gallery shows there was no way I was going to make it out clean. Friday night started out with Rachel and a show called “Remixing the Magic” [LINK]. Rachel and I have developed a simple code word for going out to eat. We just leave a message on our answer machine with one word, “huuuuuuuuungry”. That’s it. So I got the “hungry” call and I was planning on eating and then going to the gallery. So she was game for the gallery too. We did a drive by of the gallery to suss it up and there were a few people milling about. No worries then. So we went to eat and stumbled across a place called Zeke’s Smokehouse [LINK]. La Brea and Santa Monica. We gave it a pretty big thumbs up. Then about 45 minutes later we drove back to the gallery and there was a line down the street. It was also raining out so we bailed on the show. No need to fight the crowd when it’s just down the street and we can catch it some other time.

Saturday night I went and picked up Alicia and we went to The Counter for dinner. Again. Again, it was great. Then we took off for downtown to see the show “Visual Amalgam” [LINK]. Basically a group show made up of visual effects artists. Saw some people I knew and drank some wine and saw some friends and milled about and saw some more friends… Anyway, after a couple hours I started getting bored and got the urge to leave which was confirmed when Alicia was also giving the “all clear to leave” signals. Then Eric [LINK] showed up and I got to catch up with him and talk about his giant photo panorama. Which consists of 300 individual shots stitched together from a motion control camera. It was pretty impressive really. So I couldn’t actually give him shit about the crappy thing he had hanging in the show. Then Alicia and I hit the road and made it an early night. Well, for a Saturday it was early.

Then Sunday I went to a benefit show for an artist named Alfredo de Batuc. Alfredo has been stricken with Guillain-Barr?ɬ© [LINK] syndrome. A disorder where the immune system attacks the nervous system. One of the problems with being an artist is trying to support yourself and also having medical insurance. A lot of artists can’t afford to have good coverage and occasionally you’ll see a benefit show come together to help the individual with expenses. A lot of friends of the artist donated works for the show and it also included works by Alfredo. Alfredo painted the quite well seen Dolores Del Rio mural at Hollywood Blvd. and Hudson Ave. I shot a pic of the mural on the way home. So, of course I walked into the gallery and one painting by David Flury screamed at me. If I’m going to buy a painting, I usually don’t have a hard time finding it within minutes. The mental decision is usually made within the first glance around. This is the one that I walked in and said, yep, that’s it. If something’s going to grab you, it’s going to do that immediately. Which is of course different for each person depending on their tastes. I even spent the next hour looking at everything much closer but I kept going back to this one. Plus, it was within my budget. Ha!

It’s titled “de Batuc”, after the stricken artist. The artist even painted in a version of the sun that looks like the ones found in a lot of Alfredo’s paintings. I really love the woman releasing the winged snake and that the bed Alfredo is lying in is surrounded by candles. The saguaru cactus and sun are really nice. One thing you can’t see are the dabs of gold paint used as highlights so that as you walk by the painting it kind of shimmers. It was also the most current painting and really addressed the current situation. After I got it home I noticed the painting had been dated as February 14th, 2006. Valentine’s Day, just 5 days ago. The day we all went to Lucha Va Voom. That’s amazing. How fast all this came together and I was happy to put some money into the pot for Alfredo. You also know you’ve got something special when different people at the show stopped and asked if I had just bought the painting. Looking slightly disappointed they didn’t get it yet knodding their approval. So, now I’ll go get it framed this week and enjoy it the rest of my life. I really need to find something upbeat for some balance. Dogs playing poker has always cracked me up.

There was also a really nice book there called Chicano Visions [LINK] by Cheech Marin. He’s been collecting Mexican-American artists for more than 20 years and some of the artists in the book were represented at the show. Not that I know a whole lot about the East L.A. art scene, but the area is so tightly linked to the hispanic community of Los Angeles and it’s nice to see that the art coming out of that area is so amazing. As the review read… “The Chicano school began evolving 30 years ago as artists sought to combine traditional Mexican imagery, themes, and styles with American pop, and it is now the source for some of America’s most evocative, animated, brilliantly hued, inventive, and gripping contemporary painting.”

So all that aside, fortunately most recover to some degree from the syndrome, but they can be incapacitated for various lengths of time ranging from months to years. Learned a lot today. So, here’s hoping Alfredo has a quick recovery. And there ya go. Go call your friends.

Oy, glad I got all that out. And I had to work all day Saturday and Monday. I’m crapped out.