Interviews
Elizabeth McGrath Reflections From a Low-Brow Artist
Recently, ArtNowLA sat down with a queen of the pop surrealism scene, Elizabeth McGrath, at her cozy home in Pasadena, CA, to catch up on her recent activities and glean insights into the life of an artist. Born in Los Angeles in 1971, McGrath, self-taught, has been...
Mark Steven Greenfield: ‘Black Madonna’ Subverting Viewers' Expectations
Mark Steven Greenfield Black Madonna William Turner Gallery September 19 - November 28, 2020 (By appointment) Few scenes are more familiar to a student of art history than the Madonna and Child, making it no small feat when a new rendition of that imagery manages to,...
Austyn Weiner: ‘Head’ Processing the Past and the Present
Austyn Weiner HEAD Soul Car Garage By Appointment Only Los Angeles-based artist Austyn Weiner seems to be thriving in quarantine. This makes sense considering she is an artist whose very practice “denotes and engages a recourse in chaos” (artist’s website). Born in...
The Marriage of Art & Technology in the Era of COVID-19 Frontier or a Continuing Evolution?
With the proliferation of online viewing rooms, virtual museum tours and all forms of socially distant art creation going on since the COVID-19 crisis began, many in the art world have begun to question whether the art world has finally crossed a line in the sand....
DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion™ An Appreciation
It was a cold, wet morning in February of 1997, when I walked into a 3,000-square-foot Northridge warehouse that was sandwiched between Al's Auto Body and a stretch of doughnut shops and nail parlors. Bundled up to ward off the rains that were then...
Bill Barminski A Punk Aesthetic
Bill Barminski Pop-Up Retrospective Castelli Art Space February 22-24, 2018 For three nights only, February 22-24, a number of Bill Barminski's works from the 1980s to the present will be on view at Castelli's great new space on Washington Blvd. near...
One Fatal Cigarette Remembering Ivan Moffat On His Centennial
Yes, I’m guilty. Guilty of giving my dear friend, the great raconteur/screenwriter Ivan Moffat, a cigarette (American Spirit), when he was in Cedars-Sinai after having had a small stroke in the parking lot of the now defunct Le Dome. That was June 30,...
“War of the Worlds” Visionary Opera for the 21st Century
The Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Industry & NOW Art LA Present War of the Worlds: The Opera Walt Disney Concert Hall & Three Siren Sites November 12 & November 18 It might have been one of the earlier disseminations of fake news, if, that is,...
Kent Twitchell’s Monumental ‘Ed Ruscha’ An Iconic Signifier of L.A. As 21st Century Art Mecca
“Kent is a larger than life artist, an ace painter, who thinks big, and his paintings are big.” - Ed Ruscha In a metropolis famous for signs and street art that we view as moving images through car windows, Kent Twitchell’s monumental portraits create a...
Lita & Jasmine Albuquerque A Powerful Mother-Daughter Art Duo
Part Kubrickian, part Wilsonian (as in Robert), with a nod to Isadora Duncan, Lita Albuquerque’s hEARTH, a performance installation created with her daughter Jasmine Albuquerque and composer Kristen Toedtman, on view at Sunnylands Center and Gardens (the former...
Meet The Mudpeople L.A.'s Legendary Performance Art Tribe
Gif from MUD PEOPLE explore the Los Angeles River A segment on KCET's award-winning TV show SoCal Connected was based on this story. Watch it here now. You may have seen them on the Venice Boardwalk, at the L.A. Convention Center or on the streets of...
A Cosmic Performance Eclipse Chasers Eye August 21
Like moths to a flame, so goeth the hordes of people who “chase” eclipses, be they solar, lunar, partial, total, annular, or otherwise. On August 21, eclipse groupies of the world will be flocking to any number of cities in 14 states that are in the 60 to 70 mile-wide...
A Stitch In Time Frau Fiber's Revolution
She doesn’t have a closet and the last time she purchased an article of clothing was two years ago – and that was underwear. She is Carole Frances Lung, a self-proclaimed artist/academic/textile superhero whose alter ego is Frau Fiber. Lung, a tenured associate...
The Art of Taylor Negron Remembering An Icon
His name may not be instantly recognizable, but his face, voice and singular style of humor are. He is Taylor Negron, a raconteur/flâneur for the 21st century, one who also made a rather large mark in films, television, the stage and the page in the last millennium....
Craftivism Rising Queer Fiber Artists Push Gender Norms
With the knitted pink pussyhat on full display in recent months, a political movement may not have been born, but it certainly coalesced after Donald Trump’s unexpected election victory. Knitting, however, and its sister forms, including needlepoint, embroidery,...
The Egg Cometh NuMu Travels to LACMA
It’s not poached, scrambled, fried or free-range. Nor is it hard-boiled. What it is, though, is a museum like no other: NuMu, short for Nuevo Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, located in Guatemala City, is shaped like an egg and, at most, accommodates up to four visitors....
