Hasta La Gadget!

You graduated from middle school and found your way to a desk job, but that doesn’t mean you have to leave rubber-band-powered projectile launchers behind. YouTube’s mist8k is here to show us how to build three weapons of mass distraction, using stuff you’ve already got at your desk. Now (goofing off at) work can be fun!

Read more…

The second biennial exhibition “Made in L.A. 2014,” featuring 35 Los Angeles-based artists, “permeates every available area” of Los Angeles’ Hammer Museum, according to the exhibition catalogue.

The show is laid out as a sprawling network of self-contained pockets, each mini-exhibition endowed ample room to breathe. One aqua-toned sector, an immersive installation by Samara Golden, is packed with a chorus of thrift store dolls transformed into moon-faced portraits with the help of 3D glasses. Viewers jam into a brief funhouse experience as their own faces are recorded and then projected onto the dolls’. There’s something very L.A. about watching the crowd amass around the mirror, even if it is for the sake of art. Another room contains something completely different, for example, Max Maslansky’s dreamy stain paintings, staged pornographic moments rendered hazily on thrifted bed sheets. This, too, is L.A., in the pastel ’70s palette and domestic fantasies.

Samara Golden, image courtesy The Hammer

Navigating through the show’s many sectors, autonomous yet not separate, feels like taking an aimless drive through the city’s many individualized parts, each neighborhood offering up a singular possibility of life in Los Angeles.

The show is a slimmed down version of the 2012 biennial; it’s also a vast improvement. Instead of 60 artists there are 35, and five curators pared down to just two — the new Hammer chief curator Connie Butler and the critic who slammed the original, Ned Holte. There is one exhibition site instead of three. One exception to the slimming: three prizes for the showing artists instead of one. While 2012’s iteration seemed almost like a defiant cry from New York’s cultural little sibling, the current iteration lacks that same feeling of having something to prove. As local blog L.A. I’m Yours put it, “It is in no way over confident or puffy.”

Those who flock to New York’s art scene feel a pull, in many cases, toward the belly of the (cultural) beast, a nagging desire to be at the center of things. Though you may be poor and struggling, living in that historic city allows you to walk amongst giants, absorbing their power and potential through some kind of urban osmosis (the effects of which are, to say the least, questionable). There is endless inspiration in the close proximity to success, and yet being within reach of art history’s MVPs can also bring adverse effects. Their influence can be inspiring, but also stifling, contagious or perhaps infectious. Sometimes, this leads to bad art lacking in creative freedom.

Photo courtesy Barbara Katz, The Hammer

“For much of the past 15 years,” Catherine Wagley wrote in L.A. Weekly, “overly intellectually and self-consciously historically informed work has been so pervasive that too much of what was shown in galleries or ‘finger-on-the-pulse’ group museum shows either seemed to be announcing, ‘Look, professor, I understood all the theory,’ or looked stuck, frustrated by its inability to escape its historical references.” Los Angeles’ art scene, at times, got caught chasing inescapable closeness that’s felt so profoundly New York, for better or worse.

“Made in L.A. 2014” feels different. Instead of charging toward the center, the artists seem intrigued by specific pockets, content to live on the periphery. Just as L.A. is made up of micro-environments whose citizens often feel little need to venture beyond their local domain, so the Hammer artists seem content not to engage in the almighty dialogue of Art, but just to make it. The rhizomatic layout of the cityscape is mapped onto the biennial’s skeleton, and it feels graciously manageable, even generous.

Magdalena Suarez Frimkess and Michael Frimkess, image courtesy The Hammer

Most of the exhibited artwork is not tethered to the trends of today, whether artistic, social or political. Instead there’s Tony Greene’s dismal glimpse at the early days of the AIDS epidemic, and the institutional indifference it faced. There are Magdalena Suarez Frimkess and Michael Frimkess’ hand-painted ceramics that incorporate influences like Cubism and Disney cartoons into rough-edged pottery. The idea of “contemporary” too becomes decentralized, an appropriate condition for a city that so often feels trapped in a bygone era, whether the golden age of Hollywood or the sad glamour of the ’70s.

Of course, most biennials don’t commit to a single perspective or theme, but “Made in L.A.” seems particularly afloat, driven by ideas of locality, anti-heroism and free play. “I don’t have a goal,” Magdalena Suarez Frimkess explains of her ceramic practice, which she’s been at for half a century. “I just play it day by day. It’s like eating, you have to eat everyday.” Like Frimkess, the biennial seems to have nothing to prove, just lots of treats to share.

KCHUNG, Photo courtesy Barbara Katz, The Hammer

The inclusion of local collaborations like Alice Konitz’ Los Angeles Museum of Art, located in the driveway of her Eagle Rock Studio, or the nonhierarchical cooperative KCHUNG, a Chinatown-based radio station that dabbles in art, music, philosophy and whatever else, further contribute to the supine stature of this new biennial model.

“Made in L.A. 2014” has another standout aspect separating it from the majority of such exhibitions worldwide — a majority of the artists are women. As Christopher Knight noted in the L.A. Times, “This may be the first major biennial exhibition anywhere in recorded history that features more art by women than by men. Given the oft-repeated statistic that more women than men go to art school and become artists, that makes simple sense.” He makes it sound so easy.

Channing Hansen, photo courtesy Arielle Sherman, The Hammer

The relationship between art and gender is revisited throughout the biennial, by subverting traditionally feminine techniques, like Channing Hansen’s “knit paintings,” or traditionally masculine ones, like Caitlin Lonegan’s anti-AbEx abstractions. Hansen, who calls himself an “armchair physicist,” hand-dyes and spins different fiber blends — silk, alpaca, mohair and wool — into massive, colorful webs according to a predetermined algorithm. The seemingly spontaneous color fields, which transcend scientific assumptions by making yarn drip, weave together science and craft as twin tools of art, privileging neither.

Lonegan’s paintings posture themselves opposite macho mid-twentieth century abstract expressionism and all the connotations of heroic genius associated with it. Instead Lonegan allows her canvases, which she works on synchronously, to build slowly over time, some taking over a year to create. Emerge is perhaps a better word for Lonegan’s process, which she employs through “a heap of borrowed tricks” according to the Hammer catalogue, including frottage and embossing. Reveling in shallow spaces and moments of metallic glitter, Lonegan remixes Los Angeles tropes into her disorienting canvases, revealing how “serious” abstraction can materialize through unlikely, not all too exciting narratives.

Tala Madani, Photo courtesy Barbara Katz, The Hammer

No artist brings gender to the center of the conversation more than Tala Madani, whose paintings, drawings and show-stopping stop-motion animations create worlds in which women are absent and men, left to their own devices, engage in bumbling, perverse, violent and all-around moronic rituals. The portrait of male society as an elaborate bundle of nincompoops, not skimping on the gross-out tactics, features everything from senseless stabbing to rows of butts in the breeze. Its affect settles somewhere between Mike Kelley and a “Dick and Jane” picture book. This show’s inclusion of animated videos, each minute made from 2,500 paintings, brought the childishness and grotesqueness to new heights.

Madani’s addictive films, reminiscent of painfully surreal Saturday morning cartoons, seem to comment on the L.A. lifestyle, where creativity and entertainment can’t decide whether to work together or apart. Knight added that the biennial as a semi-coherent whole poses “questions of the relationships between profoundly singular consciousness and deep social connectivity.” This balancing act between the individual and society is especially prevalent in Los Angeles, a place where it’s possible to avoid unpleasant people and issues, simply passing them by in your air conditioned vehicle. To engage with the community is a choice, unlike in New York, and many artists blatantly grapple with that option.

In New York, on a single commute to work, you’re bound to encounter countless strangers, overhear strange conversations, physically bump into different ways of life. Although this provides ample opportunities to encounter beauty, ugliness and inspiration before you take a sip of coffee, there’s a darker side to living always in public. You’re constantly self-aware, self-curating, pressed up against those who came before you, scrambling to make progress before someone comes along after you. Although L.A. is known for its plastic citizens, in many ways the Western metropolis creates a safer space for its inhabitants to just be. Instead of riding the subway, think of jamming out alone, dancing wildly with the windows up, with no outside forces able to disrupt your groove, until you choose to engage with them.

Photo courtesy Barbara Katz, The Hammer

“Made in L.A.” showcases artists who, regardless of where they were born, chose to make art in a particular, and quite temperate, climate. The biennial questions what it means to make art in Los Angeles, while, of course, refusing to stick to a single answer. But there seems to be something about L.A. art that could only result from the disconnected, sprawling flatland where so many adults make a living playing make-believe.

Something about living outside of the center, combining work and play, dwelling somewhere a bit more removed from reality, jamming out with a total lack of self-awareness. The L.A. crop, decidedly separate from today’s market-climbing trends, privileges space. Space for viewers (and artworks) to roam, space for new ideas to grow unbothered, space for artists to unbutton their collar and make things.

The prominence of women in the show, as well as the interplay between so-called feminine and masculine fields, adds another interesting factor to the New York/Los Angeles comparison. There is something wonderfully un-macho about the Los Angeles sprawl, all flat and decentralized. It appears unconcerned with creating a single narrative, an artistic mythology to rival New York’s, just because the city setup so clearly doesn’t call for it.

And while New York’s most recent biennial failed to yield a diverse output, Los Angeles, in typical California fashion, made it look easy.

“Made in L.A. 2014” is on view until September 7, 2014.

They say that when you are dying your entire life passes before your eyes in just an instant. There is another way to experience that sensation, of your entire life passing so quickly before you, one that leaves you in a much less permanent state of death. You want to watch your entire life pass before you in an instant? Just have kids.

When my daughter Amanda was born the idea of being a father was an entirely new concept; one that was both exhilarating and frightening. I would not have exchanged her for the world (that wasn’t an option, right?). There was one thing about my daughter that I could have done without (besides the dirty diapers and the spontaneous projectile vomiting) and that was that she never slept at night. Never. We attributed that to the fact that Arlene, my wife, went to the gym every day right up until the moment she gave birth. Amanda was born wearing a headband and a neon yellow sweat suit (no, not really, that would be ridiculous). Every night, while Arlene slept, I walked the bedroom floor with Amanda, singing ‘Ave Maria‘ to her (not the whole song, just those two words; it was all I knew). She did tell me years later that ‘Ave Maria’ was one of her favorite songs. I held her and walked in circles around the bedroom most nights; she was so small, and helpless, and oh-so-very loud.

Then I blinked.

I’m often asked, ‘Where is Amanda?’ Good question. She spent four years living in New York City while she attended NYU. After graduation she worked in the city and lived in several of the surrounding boroughs. She’d gone down to Florida (a few times) for some concerts, then to Atlanta to visit her old roommate (and more concerts). Off to England and then Amsterdam (I think she enjoyed that trip a little too much). A brief stint back home followed by a short trip to Michigan (Hell, Michigan actually — she sent me a post card). Amanda gets that wanderlust from her mother; in her younger years Arlene loved to travel the world (the problem was Arlene kept coming back).

Right now Amanda is living and working in North Carolina. Why? Just because…

Much like today, Alexander entered this world without making a sound. At birth he looked like a muted rubber doll colored an awkward shade of grey. It wasn’t until a second doctor rushed into the delivery room, blocked our view of our newborn and worked some medical miracle, that we finally heard from Alexander that first gasping cry of life.

Alexander would be back in the hospital a year later (on his birthday) with a severe upper respiratory infection that would keep him in an oxygen tent for several days. The doctors warned us there could be long term respiratory problems when he was older; that he could develop asthma.

Two years later I held Alexander down as a doctor stitched his forehead. He had cut it wide open while at the babysitter playing on the swing. He stuck his head out as the swing flew by and caught his flesh on an extended screw. Even as the doctor sewed up the wound Alexander never made a sound.

A year later he had a cast on his leg when he suffered a greenstick fracture to his leg while playing with his mom in the living room. I had a real concern that my son would grow up to be asthmatic accident-prone man often attacked by life.

Then I blinked.

“Where’s Alexander?”

“He’s sleeping.”

I heard that answer a lot. But he wasn’t sleeping because the asthma I feared might inflict him took the wind from his sails, or some accident sentenced him to a bedridden life. I opened his bedroom door.

“You awake?” I asked.

“Grrr…yeah,” he grunted his reply.

I looked at the empty food containers stack on his bed stand, and then over at my son; he was huge.

He wasn’t ‘I just ate a dozen Oreos with a gallon of milk and I’m still hungry’ huge, he was ‘I just got back from the gym and I’m exhausted’ huge. His legs hung off the back of the bed like someone washed his mattress and it shrunk in the drier. His shoulders filled the bed as he lumbered to turn and look at me. If there was an asthmatic accident-prone kid in this room Alexander probably would have eaten him.

Between football, basketball, weight-lifting, and any other half-dozen events he does at college my fear that Alexander would have grown into a sickly adult were certainly put to rest. My only fear now was that he might get mad and kick my ass.

My youngest son Danny came out of the womb asking questions; he was always an inquisitive child. In grade school he was the first to volunteer. Even when he moved to a new town in the fourth grade, not knowing anyone, he volunteered to be George W. Bush in the mock campaign the school was running. He went from classroom to classroom making speeches and, much like the president, he won the election. Danny was once just one phone call away from appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show for his invention, ‘The Sleepy Head‘, a compact device that allows napping on long car rides. Unfortunately, he lost out to a classmate who did appear on the show (damn you Nose Sweater).

Then I blinked.

Actually, this one was not so much of a surprise. It was easy to see the outgoing kid who didn’t mind talking to crowds growing up and being the amp-jumping guitar playing singer who I watched in awe on stage. Of course I was nerve-wracked at his first attempt at singing in a local coffee shop. Even then it only took three songs for him to go from the tentative singer to the mini-Elvis that flung his guitar with abandon.

What I didn’t see coming was: No-Shave-November.

Danny was a cute little kid with a bowl-shaped-blond-haired Beatles haircut. I guess I couldn’t have expected him to stay that way, but I definitely did not like how he looked this year. I have to state that although I have grown many beards in my life I detest the way they look on anyone who is under twenty-one. And Danny took his to the extreme.

For example, a few weeks ago I went over to see the kids and Danny was standing outside. I stepped from my car wearing dark, wraparound sunglasses. Danny took a look at me and said that I looked like Magneto from X-Men. I told him he looked like Dr. Xavier from X-Men — if Dr. Xavier was Amish.

He has since trimmed it down to an almost acceptable state.

It all goes by so incredibly fast — I’m almost afraid to close my eyes.

(Me and the kids somewhere between then and now.)

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

From Greenpoint to Bay Ridge (yes, Bay Ridge) the topic of gentrification has sparked a lot of debate in Brooklyn. But despite the fear that luxury condos and those wealthy enough to afford them are threatening the borough’s fringe, there’s still plenty of weird, amazing street culture in New York’s epicenter of cool.

Coney Island’s annual Mermaid Parade is one notable expression of that culture. The yearly art parade encourages participants to dress up as mermaids and mermen in costumes of their own making. Some participants make homemade floats, others wear very little aside from makeup.

Harvey Stein is a New York photographer who specializes in capturing street culture. His book, “Coney Island: 40 Years, 1970 – 2010” (Schiffer Publishing ) has an entire section devoted to the Mermaid Parade, along with many stunning portraits of outrageous characters from the neighborhood’s famous boardwalk.

Hey sugar, take a walk on the wild side.

It is a curious thing to tell the person I am dating on any given week that I write about sex. This opens the door for all kinds of assumptions, but most of my work is concerned with sexual ethics and moral construction. Even saying this, my dates surely hear me saying things that sound incongruent. Talking to others in the sex field, almost every conversation ends with a sometimes frustrated, sometimes blissful sigh and an agreement that there are many ways to talk about sex.

Finding myself once again in one of those conversations, I started to write down some of those “many ways,” making a few notes with them.

• Biological: Sexuality activity seen in terms of mating behavior and physiological response. Functionality is of primary concern with considerable attention given to genetics, chemical balances, etc.
• Communal: Similar to sociological in that it is concerned with cultural, but more focused to local and immediate context (i.e. friends, immediate peer group, etc.) Sex is about securing social bonds and relational stabilization.
• Economic: Sex is a series of exchanges by which we achieve goals, valuation, or a degree of power; marriage and prostitution are both “transactions” by which we feel valued and are valuing our partner(s).
• Ethical: Considers sex in terms of ethical norms on what is “right/wrong” and why.
• Familial: Even more focused than the “communal” lens, the familial is primarily about what we learned from family and friends while growing up; relates to what is “permissible” among those who are closes to us.
• Gendered: Sex is about finding meaning in gender roles (ex: “feeling/ making our partner feel like a man/woman,” negotiation of initiator/responder, etc.)
• Historical: Discussions of sex in this lens tend to focus on mating behavior over time (i.e. evolutionary biology) and comparisons between today and some previous point.
• Individual: Fulfillment of individual wants; self-fulfilling desires are the primary motivator of all sexual activity and expression.
• Moral: Considers sex in terms of personal conviction on what is “right/wrong” and why.
• Personal: Individual experience(s) and context; personal trauma; most sensitive lens in that it is the most difficult to communicate and resides firmly in the mind and emotions of the individual, consciously or otherwise. Different from “individual.”
• Physical: The most “practical” lens, in that is looks only at the physicality of sex; positions; intentional body awareness; sexual expression over the life cycle, etc.
• Psychological: How sexual identity and desires affect the individual; includes discussion of gender identity and what role, if any, our desires have on us.
• Relational: Sexual understanding between ourselves and partner(s).
• Sociological: Role and effect of sexual expression in broad cultures (ex: “European” or “California”) not to be confused with communal which is local.
• Theological: Considers the role of religious identity and spiritual context; not specifically any particular religion as this is a broad spectrum of what we think, feel, and believe our faith tradition promotes or denies; considers sex alongside deeply held convictions and existential concerns (i.e. the “moral” or “ethical” lens) within a religious framework.

These lenses are not comprehensive, but are certainly a strong start to understanding what is meant when we discuss sex. When friends or colleagues ask me my thoughts on the topic, I find that it is helpful to locate which lens they are using first. To try and talk about the physicality of sex with someone when they are instead discussing it abstractly makes for a strange conversation indeed! This is, however, what happens so frequently when we discuss sex and sexuality — we find that we are coming from entirely different perspectives and feeling a measure of unsettlement.

As with anything of interest, our attention will shift over time. The physical lens of high school sex-ed class (or teenage masturbatory exploration) leads into a personal awareness and later a relational understanding. Bawdy humor at a dinner party will be misunderstood, leading us to explain no, no, I was just joking! from which we will become more sensitive to personal experience. Knowing that our thoughts and attentions will change over time, indeed that we are often using multiple lenses — such as when we discussing the interaction of biological, psychological and physical response — can help us understand where we are coming from ourselves, and articulate what we really mean with one another. Indeed, as much as we talk about sex, it is still a confusing topic. Every measure of understanding between one another could very well make for better relationships and a more stimulating sexual experience.