Design Week / Los Angeles

Education of the Textile Arts in California

spencercross — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:37:42 +0000

The 6th annual Education of the Textile Arts in California event is quickly approaching. This three-day event offers over 50 classes on sewing, knitting, and crafting. Take part in one of the exciting classes being taught by industry renowned sewing educators. Stay for the spectacular vendors, demos and a design challenge fashion show!! Participate in sewing blankets for charity! Full-time students may enter exhibit hall & demos for FREE with valid student ID. Class prices vary. For more information about the event, class listings and registration forms, visit our website www.etacalifornia.com

Event Site:
http://www.etacalifornia.com

Scion presents: USE ME [Ongoing]

spencercross — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 20:06:11 +0000

Art, craft, and culture come together in an exhibition of unique objects, and the designers who create them, that beg, USE ME.

ARTISTS INVOLVED
Eneri Abillar / Altar Native / Bea Valdes / Ben Venom / BRD Motorcycles / Carl E Smith / Chad Wright / Kevin Craford / Mike Parillo / Ronaldo Sandoval / Thomas Meyerhoffer / Zac Wollons

Curated by Yuri Psinakis.

Opening reception: Saturday, October 15, 2011 7-10PM.

Wednesdays through Saturdays until November 12, 2011 at Scion Installation L.A.

Event Site:
http://www.scionav.com/event/194/Scion-Presents:-Use-Me

The House that Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945–1985 [Ongoing]

spencercross — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:16:39 +0000

Sam Maloof (1916–2009) was a woodworker born and raised in Southern California who became a nationally recognized leader of the American studio furniture movement—a movement that favored the aesthetics of craft and the handmade over the machine and mass-production. His iconic chairs, tables, and other creations are renowned for their elegant sculptural form and virtuosic craftsmanship. Maloof was also an integral member of the art, craft, and design community that emerged in the Pomona Valley, at the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, in the years following World War II. A major survey of his work, “The House That Sam Built” showcases about 30 important Maloof pieces spanning more than three decades of his career in a display integrated with approximately 80a works by about 30 of his friends and colleagues who worked in other media. Maloof’s circle included painters Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, and Karl Benjamin; sculptors Albert Stewart, Betty Davenport Ford, and John Svenson; ceramists Harrison McIntosh and Otto and Gertrud Natzler; enamelists Jean and Arthur Ames; wood turner Bob Stocksdale; and fiber artist Kay Sekimachi. The exhibition gathers together works from several private and public collections to shed new light on the rich network of influences and exchanges that developed among artists and artisans living in the Pomona Valley in this dynamic period of American art. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog and related programming. “The House That Sam Built” is part of Pacific Standard Time. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together more than 60 cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene.

Wednesdays through Mondays until January 30th, 2012 at The Huntington.

Event Site:
http://huntington.org/huntingtonlibrary_02.aspx?id=9454

The Original Print: An Introduction to Printmaking in the Postwar Period [Ongoing]

spencercross — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:10:45 +0000

The art world of the late 1950s experienced a groundswell of interest in printmaking that forever changed the artistic landscape of America. By that time, the most avant-garde of artists had become interested in making editioned works on paper with a press, using methods no longer relegated to a select group who defined themselves solely as “printmakers.” Because this development was still in its germinal stages in the 1950s, however, there existed only a handful of places in the country where eager young artists could learn the techniques of printmaking. Academic institutions tended to favor familiar and conventional intaglio methods, drawing on Rembrandt, Goya and Whistler, art history’s most successful artist-printmakers. Lithography and screenprinting, which suited the growing pop and minimal aesthetic as well as the more painterly approaches of expressionism, were harder for artists to adopt. These methods, traditionally used only for commercial printing, were still in their infancy as fine-art techniques. As a result, they were rarely taught in university art programs, and by the late 1950s, there were only three or four studios in the country that could claim success as fine-art lithography printshops, and even fewer for screenprinting.

Wednesdays through Sundays until April 02, 2012 at Norton Simon Museum.

Event Site:
http://www.nortonsimon.org/the-original-print-an-introduction-to-printmaking-in-the-postwar-period

Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California [Ongoing]

spencercross — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:06:55 +0000

The first goal enumerated upon the founding of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1960 was to “create a pool of master artisan-printers in the United States” in an effort to revive the method of fine art lithography. With those words, and the dedication to create a workshop that would educate printers, artists, curators and collectors alike, Tamarind sparked a renaissance in the graphic arts—one that spread well beyond Los Angeles and the medium of lithography—establishing and legitimizing all methods of printmaking as viable and valuable forms of art making, even for the most avant-garde of post-war artists. Proof will explore the significance of printmaking and its new possibilities as first re-envisioned in post-war Southern California.

Drawing on the extensive collection of the Norton Simon Museum with a few select loans, the exhibition includes works by the local founders of this movement such as John Altoon, Garo Antreasian, Sam Francis, Ed Moses, Ken Price, Ed Ruscha and June Wayne, as well as those who traveled to Los Angeles specifically to print, such as Joseph Albers, Bruce Conner, Lee Mullican, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg.

Proof: The Rise of Printmaking in Southern California, is part of Pacific Standard Time, an unprecedented collaboration of more than fifty cultural institutions across Southern California, which are coming together to tell the story of the birth of the LA art scene. Pacific Standard Time takes place for six months beginning October 2011.

Wednesdays through Sundays until April 02, 2012 at Norton Simon Museum.

Event Site:
http://www.nortonsimon.org/proof-the-rise-of-printmaking-in-southern-california#

Sympathetic Seeing: Esther McCoy and the Heart of American Modernist Architecture and Design [Ongoing]

spencercross — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 21:16:14 +0000

This exhibition is the first to focus on the formidable range of architectural historian Esther McCoy’s practice, and affirm her unassailable role as a key figure in American modernism. Co-curators writer Susan Morgan and MAK Center director Kimberli Meyer have worked closely with the Esther McCoy papers–an invaluable primary source comprised of thousands of documents and photographs–housed at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, as well as local archives. Through photographs, drawings, texts, videos, and audio interviews, Sympathetic Seeing will highlight the extraordinary range and importance of McCoy’s work. The exhibition covers McCoy’s activist journalism focusing on fair labor practices and Los Angeles slum clearances in the 1930s; her work with Schindler first as a draftsperson and later a critic and historian of his work; the Arts & Architecture magazine years and the rise of innovative domestic architecture; her campaign to save Irving Gill’s 1916 Dodge House; and her always incisive stories that deliver an irresistibly compelling, first-hand view of American modernism.

Wednesdays through Sundays until January 08, 2012 at MAK Center.

Event Site:
http://makcenter.org/MAK_Exhibitions_Current.php

Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design and Activism in Post-War Los Angeles [Ongoing]

spencercross — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 00:25:02 +0000

A survey of the dynamic and diverse Japanese American contributions to the visual landscape of L.A. in the period following World War II.

Works of art and historic documents—together with texts, images, and video clips from extensive oral histories—will illustrate the delicate line that exists between form and function.

Featured Artists:

• GIDRA
• Matsumi Kanemitsu
• Nobuko Miyamoto
• Robert A. Nakamura
• Linda Nishio
• Ben Sakoguchi
• Larry Shinoda
• Qris Yamashita
• Bruce Yonemoto
• Norman Yonemoto

Tuesdays through Sundays until February 19, 2012 at Japanese American National Museum.

Event Site:
http://www.janm.org/exhibits/drawingtheline/

Peace Press Graphics 1967–1987: Art in the Pursuit of Social Change [Ongoing]

spencercross — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:23:17 +0000

Founded in 1967 by a group of L.A. activist-artists who created an ‘alternate everything’ printing and publishing business, Peace Press emerged from the tangle of progressive political and alternative groups that flourished during the decades between 1960 and 1990. This survey drawn from the archives of the Peace Press Collective showcases an important chapter of visual and cultural history, with posters addressing feminist causes, workers’ rights, civil liberties, environmental concerns, and the anti-nuclear and anti-war movements. The exhibition will also feature a historical timeline, music, poetry and spoken-word performances and film clips interspersed in the galleries, and a separate film screening series.

Tuesdays through Sundays until December 11, 2011 at University Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach.

Event Site:
http://www.csulb.edu/org/uam/EXHIBITIONScurrent.html

Recent Acquisitions from the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts [Ongoing]

spencercross — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:47:30 +0000

In 1956 Los Angeles collector Fred Grunwald made an extraordinary gift of more than 5,000 works on paper to establish the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at UCLA. Today the center’s collection has grown to more than 45,000 prints, drawings, photographs, and artists’ books, dating from the Renaissance to the present. This exhibition includes a selection of works acquired by the Grunwald Center during the past five years. They range from a vibrant sixteenth-century engraving by Renaissance artist Hieronymus Wierix to a large-scale aquatint from 2010 by artist Julie Mehretu. Other artists represented in the exhibition include Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Enrico Castellani, Vija Celmins, Robert Gober, Robert Heinecken, and Kara Walker.

Organized by Cynthia Burlingham, director; and Allegra Pesenti, curator, UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts.

Tuesdays through Sundays until January 22, 2010 at The Hammer Musuem

Event Site:
http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/209

The Golden State of Craft: California 1960-1985 [Ongoing]

spencercross — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:04:06 +0000

From the 1960s through the mid 1980s, a vibrant and innovative group of artists working in California made significant contributions to the American Craft Movement. Working in wood, glass, clay, textiles, and metal, artists produced both functional and non-functional objects that represented an era, a philosophy, and a lifestyle immersed in the power of the handmade. This period also saw the rise of the designer-craftsman movement, which was characterized by a graceful fluidity between the now distinct disciplines of design, manufacture, and studio art. This exhibition will celebrate exceptional works made during these fertile decades, and will also pay tribute to two central figures in the blossoming of the craft field in California; Edith Wyle, founder of the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum and Eudorah Moore, director of the Pasadena Art Museum’s California Design exhibition series. The exhibition will consist of approximately 75 objects, representing various mediums, and be accompanied by a historical guide for visitors.

Tuesdays through Sundays until January 8th, 2012 at Craft and Folk Art Museum.

Event Site:
http://www.cafam.org/GoldenState.html