[Previous entry: "Art World Economics Part Three"] [Next entry: "Art and nature walk "The Legend""]
09/02/2005: "My Week in Los Angeles" by Sue Spaid
Before sharing the highlights of my Los Angeles trip, I respond here to my critics of which a surprisingly large number have surfaced, as evidenced by the preponderance of negative comments posted in response to my blog.
To my Critics:
Next year, I celebrate twenty years of curating exhibitions, so perhaps the reason that I seem so well connected or have cause to name drop is that I’ve been involved in the artworld for a very long time. In fact, I have experienced every possible role- collector, independent curator, art writer, gallerist, art educator, performance artist, museum curator and exhibiting artist. I’ve organized hundreds of exhibitions for myriad spaces ranging from the non-art Staten Island Ferry and Pavilions grocery store to infamous venues like the Bellevue Art Museum or the Contemporary Arts Center.
My entire life is organized around one purpose- to experience as much art as possible, which is why I both dwell in Cincinnati and travel so much. Scraping together enough money to pay my mortgage and travel expenses requires me to work as a lifeguard/swim instructor, tax accountant, cook, companion to a woman with Parkinson’s Disease, reader (for the elderly), photographer’s assistant, art writer (not all pay), itinerant lecturer, salon coordinator, and university adjunct. Of course, all of these jobs are seasonal and none guarantee future employment. While this lifestyle is quite interesting and the tax benefits are enormous, I’d hardly call this a privileged life as my detractors suggest. I drive a beat-up 1988 Honda and finally bought a new computer, so I no longer conduct my on-line life at the public library.
By the time www.absolutearts.com provided me this (non-paying) gig on their site, several people had already suggested that I blog my art travels. My blog describes my ordinary routine, which I would perform with or without this blog. Blogging doesn’t make my daily life any less interesting or more important. Since reviews and articles in major art magazines rarely boost careers, I never imagined that blog citations could be considered advantageous. The inefficient artworld accords critics, let alone bloggers, little say-so. Collecting is a different story. Moreover, I indicated from the beginning that this blog is commentary, not review. Rather than name drop, as some have opined, I like to acknowledge people who play a vital role in my art life. No one mails me press material, so no one (save the annual Art in America upcoming exhibitions calendar) influences my travel plans. My professional research requires travel, so the IRS honors write-offs with or without this blog. In short, this tedious task offers no obvious benefits.
Ultimately, my blog’s model is PBS’s Rick Stees, who explores regions from several vantages, such as archaelogy, architecture and local color such as food and drink. I hardly expect people to read this blog monthly, but I hope to inspire other art travelers. Several museums use my blog to organize “collector trips.” A search for whatever city in the www.absolutearts.com archive grants immediate access to past articles mentioning that city. A click onto my blogs provides automatic access to cultural institutions (live links) plus additional information such as local bars, stores and architecture. I don’t expect anyone to mimic my activities anymore than Rick Stees or the Lonely Planet folks do. I rather offer starting points, enabling art lovers to tap current information.
Some of you have suggested that it would make a better video than a text. I would think I’d died and gone to heaven if someone actually gave me a television show to visit museums!!! I would drop everything for this opportunity. There are times when some of you are annoyed that I visit a state and skip a nearby institution. This usually means that my trip didn’t coincide with some friend’s schedule. For example, I would have visited the Cranbrook Art Museum or the Madison Contemporary Art Museum in July had either Elena Ivanova or Jane Simon been available. Electing not to visit the Cranbrook made visiting the Arab American National Museum a possibility, while our arriving late in Madison meant missing Jane. I hope to visit both within the year.
I welcome future comments and will try to respond to them as they arise. Organizing this material as a travel blog requires some effort, so it’s informative when people provide comments that improve its content. Someday, all of this may become an art travel book, but it will always be more useful as an on-line resource than a fixed text.
My Week in Los Angeles
Having lived in Los Angeles for over nine years, I visit at least once a year to catch up with old friends and to experience new art. What struck me this year was less the art and more the way artists are becoming real estate magnates! I won’t go into details, but it’s a boon to the economy to witness all of the renovations and additions under development.
Sunday was spent preparing for an outdoor barbecue in the garden of Angie Bray and Steve Dewitt’s Venice home. Monday, I checked out Nancy Evans’s new curiously-adorned bronze sculptures, as well as her gorgeous second-floor addition. We then took a wonderful bike ride along the Venice boardwalk, which included strolling on the Santa Monica Pier. While walking back to Angie’s house, I checked out every shop and restaurant along Abbot Kinney Boulevard. After coffee with Beyond Baroque director Fred Dewey, we returned to Angie’s to eat her husband’s delicious pizza before heading to the Nuart Cinema for Won Kar Wai’s newest film “2046,” which inspired each of us to offer a different interpretation.
Tuesday began with dozens of visits to Bergamot Station galleries, as well as the Santa Monica Museum of Art’s wonderful exhibition of drawings by notable female artists Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz and Agnes Martin. Also of interest were Jen Pack’s thread paintings at Sarah Lee Artworks, Katy Bowen’s optical felt paintings at Gallery 825, Dame Darcy’s dandyette provocations at Richard Heller Gallery and Shoshana Wayne’s fascinating group show, “No Man’s Land,” comprised of works by recent grad students. After sharing a lunch of steak salad and artichokes at Angie’s, Phyllis Green and I headed to Culver City to visit the new gallery frontier. We only got as far as Cliff Benjamin’s Western Projects before I realized that I had left a camera at Angie’s. Thus, our route to LACMA to view Tim Hawkinson’s survey, which looked way better here than at the Whitney Museum of American Art (May 2005), began strangely with a detour via Venice. I later attended a Bach and Vivaldi concert with gallerist Jan Baum, her husband Dick, a collector, and dealer Laura Schlesinger at the Hollywood Bowl, which was nearly drowned out by the sound of hovering helicopters, extinguishing a fire in nearby Nichol’s Canyon. I viewed all of this alone from the bowl’s cheapest ($6) seats and joined them afterwards for desert at the collector’s home.
After a fun breakfast, Wednesday, at the Farmer’s Market Crepe Counter with Dana Bain and her two sons, we visited the adjacent sticker shop. After lunch, I met up with Lynn Aldrich at Maura Bendett’s amazing exhibition at Roberts & Tilton. Together, we visited nearby galleries 1301, Karen Lovegrove, Daniel Weinberg, Carl Berg and Paul Kopeikan, whose exhibition of book imagery was particularly enjoyable. After catching up over tea and cookies at Mani’s Bakery (a former employer), we checked out Culver City galleries Anna Helwig, Blum + Poe, Q.E.D., and Susanne Vielmetter. Lynn dropped me at Jan Baum’s gallery, where I viewed “Figuring the Female,” which included two of Lezley Saar’s striking paintings. En route to Jan’s house, we stopped by Ace Gallery and got a sneak peek at Ken Feingold’s upcoming exhibition, which was truly enticing even though only two works were installed. Jan, Dick and I later feasted at Mandarette with painter/song writer Bob Crewe, who’s in the news whenever again some young singer covers one of his memorable hits!
Early Thursday morning, curator/critic Terry Myers and I headed off to MOCA’s Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition, which I had also seen in New York. Much more impressive was Blake Byrne’s diverse collection, which included a Gordon Matta-Clark “splitting,” several early works by Juan Muñoz, a Steve McQueen video and myriad Jim Shaw works. En route to little Tokyo for lunch, we stopped at Red Cat across the street to see Margaret Kilgallen’s posthumous installation. Our Chinatown tour included newer spots like Sister, Peres Projects and San Francisco’s Jack Hanley Gallery, as well as familiar venues China Art Objects, Black Dragon Society, Acuña Hansen and 4-F, where we chatted up John Souza. At LACE, Terry traded me to curator/writer Michael Duncan, who agreed that we should visit Rhonda Saboff at DIRT. And fun it was… At Michael’s house, we viewed a recent renovation, a wonderful Mary Baumeister sculpture, his exhibition catalogs for Richard Pettibone and Eugene Berman, and later devoured a memorable dinner at Madeo, which is evidently Italian dealer Emi Fontana’s favorite.
A bit more low-key, Friday began with a hike in Griffith Park, from where Kahty Chenoweth and I watched helicopters extinguish yet another fire. Painter Selma Moskowitz joined Jan and I for lunch at Sonora. Before going to UCLA/Armand Hammer to see Patty Chang’s Shangra-La video, Kahty and I caught the incredibly sexy film “Nine Songs.” We returned to Jan’s for a delicious home-cooked meal. I spent Saturday breakfast with old friends on the new patio of Kokomo’s at the Farmer’s Market, before meeting up with Armory Curator Jay Belloli at the studio of artist Caryl Davis. Before hopping a plane, I attended “Wine, Word and Wonderful Women,” a local artists’ event which took place at Jacci Den Hartog’s home and involved various activities like tasting soup made from a mélange of canned vegetable soup, eating dishes created from church or temple cookbooks, and reading selected texts. Unfortunately, I had to board a plane before it got into full swing.
Santa Monica Museum of Art- www.smmoa.org
Gallery 825- www.laaa.org
Shoshana Wayne- www.shoshanawayne.com
Museum of Contemporary Art- www.moca.org
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions- www.artleak.org
Los Angeles County Museum of Art- www.lacma.org
UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum- www.hammer.ucla.edu
