I went out to Redlands to see my sister’s art show at the University’s gallery there. Of course it is a fabulous exhibit and you should go. I was really proud of her, that she is using detailed jeweler’s techniques to make conceptual sculpture grounded in personal narrative. How’s that for art speak. She has the craft side and the conept side at the tense and fussy fifty-fifty level. Her art has a lot of family secrets aired out, and her giant rosaries are nice sculptures as well as challenges to everyone’s Catholic Block.

Most of my family showed up, so that was good, it was a fun, loud time. I brought a stack of Coagula Art Journal, as I had given her the back cover advertisement for her show. My brother who is a baseball nut gets so excited before the season starts, so that was all he could talk about. I told my wife, also an artist, to give my sister a card for a show that she is in, but my wife said she hadn’t brought any of the announcement cards. I grumbled about her refusal to self-promote and a niece backs her up, saying, It is not her night, and she is not going to spoil someone else’s night. Very classy, I was impressed with my niece.

I told my brother that my saying on that topic is Don’t Piggyback and he says, Like you are piggybacking with bringing your magazine to her show. And everyone laughed. He says one thing not about baseball the whole night and it is a SLAM on yours truly!

I live next door to an art gallery
I used to live in an art gallery - of my own design - so this is an improvement, being the neighbor, going to meetings once in a while.

Anyway, here is a link to info on the show opening there Saturday.
I will be at the show, which means I will be out on the town, even though i am only going next door.
So it is going to be a good art exhibit and a great party. Come see, if only to say hi to the boy next door!

Half of me wants to take Ritalin, the other wants to move to Vegas.
Half o’ me wants to listen to the Velvet Underground, the other enjoys the serenity of the ringing in my ears.
Half of me loves my girlfriend, the other is all about lusting after her in a pining sort of drama.
Half of me wants a drink of tequila right now, the other is fortunately in charge.

I could tell you more, but I see that you are bored.

So it has been a hectic few days of freelance writing assignments and family Easter stuff.

Bascially, if you want to read my review of Friday’s Bob Dylan concert, Click Here.
(there is a typo - it should say one hundred percent intensity in the part about “Honest With Me”)

I am juggling quite a few projects at the moment, all of them a bit creative but founded deep in the details, so the light blogging only means I am getting the bills paid, hopefully on time!

I walked down Hollywood Boulevard through an amazing rainstorm on Tuesday, to meet up with a guy selling me tickets to see Bob Dylan on Friday.

We met at Musso and Frank’s, as old school a hot meal watering hole as there is. I had a fantastic Pork Chop. The waiter told me it would take 20 minutes, so I orderd the French Onion soup. The ticket man arrived, carrying a copy of Reason Magazine. I didn’t have a copy of Coagula for him, but he told me that he had read it already.

I’ve been inundated with freelance jobs lately, so I haven’t had time to ponder the meaning of art and life.
But here is a link to the long-promised photo of myself, a friend and Charles Bukowski. This was taken after about 20 Heinekens.

In response to yesterday’s post, some emails I got passionately argued against calling Walter Hopps the greatest anything of the 20th century.

Let’s simply say that if you are a curator - there will always be more artists you don’t put in shows than ones you do. And some of those excluded artists will outlive you.

Somone told me they felt Hopps knew the end was near, as he was calling artists he hadn’t spoken to since the 60s and was talking about putting them in one big last show. One artist told me he got a call from Walter like this, and then, a month later, got the call again, Walter oblivious to having made the first call. And a few people complained about his tendency to monologue - shoulda had a blog…

There’s more, but why speak ill of the dead when theree are so many living assholes to critique.

Walter Hopps, the greatest curator of the 20th century, died Sunday.
(Read Obit Here)

Interesting to note in the obituary - that he never graduated college.
And now the curatorial field is swamped with mediocre academics,
and every art exhibit retains collegial mediocrity and breaks no new ground.

I’ve spent a few weeks trying to upgrade the Coagula eBay store - this is part of just working on my business, tinkering, getting it all to work well, all of the boring nuts and bolts that must be tended to.

So my journal here usually avoids the subject of my dark secret… that I am a total uncool geeky baseball nerd. So in the course of selling a portion of my season tickets to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, I end up with my baseball ticket eBay auctions on my contemporary art world eBay store. So two months of getting things to look right now will look ridiculously geeky for ten days, barring a buy it now miracle. And I am also one of those California astrology freaks and Mercury IS retrograde.

But in better news, I found a CD of Agent Orange’s Living In Darkness and downloaded it to my i-Tunes - so the inner punkrawker beast is sooooothed.

The best show I have seen this year so far is Tara Donovan at Ace Gallery’s Miracle Mile space.

Much of the stuff was up for her 2003 show @ Ace NY, but it is great art, something with which you want to be in the room.

So I got an eMail that made me think. They had read the cover story on Chris Burden in the new issue of Coagula and had questions:

You went on at length about the lofty position of the department … but what is all the fuss about really? What makes UCLA so great? You say the faculty is unparalleled in accomplishments and connections and its ability to inspire students (and I assume you are talking about the current faculty). How about a short list of some major talent?

…to which I responded…

Take the faculty at UCLA (including Burden & his wife). Make a list of each Major art museum in the world owns some of their art.
Do the same to any other art department or art school. That list won’t be half as long as UCLA’s.
That was my methodology.

Any challenges to my due diligences?