Earthworks 06 : 50/50 SHOW

\Opening Reception : Dec 15, 2009 8 to 11pm
$5 cover

Dec 15, 2009 - Feb 10, 2010
open everyday 11:30am - 10pm [except M-F between 2:30-5:00pm]
SHOJIN restaurant
333 S. Alameda St., Suite 310(3rd Floor)
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Earthworks 05 : YOU & ME opening reception + performance

video by Ken Tanaka

EARTHWORKS 05 - You & Me

Opening Rception : Oct 6, 2009 8 to 11pm
$5 cover

Oct 6, 2009 - Dec 6, 2009
open everyday 11:30am - 10pm [except M-F between 2:30-5:00pm]
SHOJIN restaurant
333 S. Alameda St., Suite 310(3rd Floor)
Los Angeles, CA 90013

OMOCHA DE CHACHACHA reception September 12, 2009 @ Cafe Bolivar

video by Ken Tanaka
song by WESO
free MP3 download

Omocha show - Photos

The show was awesome!! Thanks all!
Here are the pics :


Sorry for all the multiple shots!! ;)

Omocha de cha cha cha

CAFEMODE + CAFE BOLIVAR present
OMOCHA de CHACHACHA
AUGUST 17 to SEPTEMBER 26, 2009
ARTIST RECEPTION > SEPTEMBER 12, 2009
@ CAFE BOLIVAR 1741 Ocean Park Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90405
www.cafemode.com

new new

for an auction at a church in september

finished

new stuff!

some new stuff. blue one is complete. other two are on their way. the orange is a commissioned portrait of cantinflas. :)

Earthworks 04 : CATCH opening reception + performance

video by Ken Tanaka
music by the Rickleman's

NINELIVES opening @ QIO select boutique gallery July 11 + 12, 2009

progress

so i'm recovering from feeling sick. but i've made progress on this painting. not sure if i want to leave it the way it is or add something. i really like the simplicity it has right now...but i'm not sure how complete it is...opinions?

The story behind this piece...

A friend of mine introduced me to the Danish band Private and I really got into the songs they have on their website (www.weareprivate.com). I was watching the video for Crucify My Heart and I was inspired to draw one of the singers in the video:



By the time I was done drawing the lady singer from Crucify My Heart I was listening to another Private song called We Got Some Breakin' Up to Do and I included some lyrics from that song in the drawing. Check out that song here:



I hope you enjoy Private and my drawing inspired by Private.

Earthworks 04 : Catch > NEXT WEDNESDAY July 8 from 7 to 11pm

new painting.

been playing around with this the past two nights. going well so far.

"catch"

DONE. i'm over it. moving on haha. actually, i sorta like this one. this one i'll be showing at the cafemode 04 show. just gotta varnish it. Let me know what you think!

starting anew

for the third time :/
discussing this with my new old friend Caroline (new as in we just reconnected, old as in..i know her from what seems another life), i just have to paint. paint and stop painting over ideas. just do the damn thing so i can figure out what's what. and perhaps carry a moleskin journal with me. eh...i feel sorta lost on the art front these days. feeling weird about always wanting to paint animals. but maybe i should just paint what i want. john james audubon. no one told HIM what to do.

change of plans

painted over that over piece of wood and did four flowers as a mini-series, directly inspired by sylvia plath and frida kahlo

what do you think??

new painting

just started this tonight. have some way to go but thought i'd show what i had so far.

new site

here's the site with some colors and a pattern i put in there. currently laying out in wordpress..css is a bitch.

new site layout

this is in the works. it's just the basic layout, i'm working on adding design elements now. what do you think?

Mini-Wrong Gallery

platform is a project at Laxart gallery in culver city. i love the idea of having a show in the smallest exhibition space on earth.

Facebook friends.

I started a new series called facebook friends. I asked friends on facebook to send me an image. The se are what I have so far. This is an ongoing project. 

Dali and Disney

Have you seen this yet?

Destino

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDb1Pa4PRE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdesignslices.com%2Fvideo%2Fmay-09%2Fdestino-salvador-dali-and-walt-disney&feature=player_embedded

EMPTY CAGE QUARTET + OAKWOOD NEUMS QUINTET @ JAZZ BAKERY TONIGHT!

May 25, 2009
8:00 and 9:30pm $25

Jason Mears - alto saxophone, clarinet
Kris Tiner - trumpet, flugelhorn
Ivan Johnson - contrabass
Paul Kikuchi - drums, percussion

The Empty Cage Quartet has consistently been praised as one of the most powerful and original new jazz groups to emerge from the American West Coast. For nearly seven years the group has explored imaginative new ways to integrate a diverse mix of musical influences ranging from shuffle swing to free jazz blowouts, minimalist percussion loops to complex modernist gestures, robotic grooves, odd-meter marches, heavy rock, and nearly everything in between. Performances of this music involve an elaborate system of on-stage cues to navigate the flow of improvisation in, around, and out of modular compositional structures designed to cycle, overlap, combine and recombine. The result is a continually evolving, multidimensional approach to jazz and new music performance, improvisational acuity, and compositional craft that Amazing Sounds Magazine has likened to an "urban folk music of the future." The Empty Cage Quartet has toured extensively in the Western United States and in Canada and Europe, and they have received support from the American Composers Forum, the International Society for Improvised Music (ISIM), and Chamber Music America’s French-American Jazz Exchange. To date they have released six CD recordings that have been featured on jazz radio stations around the world and reviewed favorably in publications including Signal to Noise, The Wire, All About Jazz, Cadence Magazine, Jazz Hot, Paris Transatlantic Magazine, LA Weekly, Tucson Weekly, and Stride Magazine. Stratostrophic, their most recent album, is out now on the Clean Feed record label.

www.emptycagequartet.com

OAKWOOD NUEMS QUINTET

The Nuems Quintet was formed in 2007 as a student ensemble at the Oakwood School in North Hollywood. Since then the group has premiered over 20 pieces written by composers from New York and Los Angeles. The group focuses on improvisation, while continuing to pursue new compositions that showcase their unique instrumentation and their ability to play in a very diverse range of styles.

My half-twin

Just finished this. I'm not sure what to call it. but the idea is based around the relationship between the whole bird and it's under-developed, dependent half. What i thought about when i did this piece was love and co-dependence. not necessarily positive.

Celebrity meets the artist at Shojin!

Hello CafeMode Blog readers,

This Jessica Vliet making a first time post on this blog. I am the artist of Don't Look at the Sun in the Earthworks 03 show.



Funny story about that, actually. Last Sunday two friends and I met at Shojin for lunch and art-gazing. We got a table next the window and to the left of my piece. During our lunch we realized that the woman at the next table, across from my art, was Alicia Silverstone!



Seeing her at Shojin, a vegan Japanese restuarant, she must practice what she preaches. Good for her! Celebrities wear a "Don't say anything!" face in public among the non-famous, so we played by the unspoken LA rule of pretending not to notice the famous person. Suddenly our forced distance from the Alicia was broken by Tsuguhiro, Shojin's hyper-friendly head chef. I met him the last time I was at Shojin with another friend and he found out that I was the artist of Don't Look at the Sun. He was very excited about my piece and zipped around like a friendly,busy bee. That was a bit of backstory, now to the story at hand; Tsuguhiro went over to Alicia's table and showed her my piece, right behind her, and then pointed out that I was the artist sitting at the next table. I was a little lost in the amazing/absurd situation that was unfolding so I don't remember exactly what Alicia said but I'm pretty sure she said my piece was good and she liked it. The older gentleman whom Alicia was with, we assumed he was her father, went over to have a closer look at my piece. I noticed him touch one of the layers realizing on closer inspection my piece is 3-dimensional and not flat. It was the first time I've watch a stranger react to my piece. Apparently my piece begs to be touched in order to be believed real!

But I digress, I was very flattered to hear that Alicia Silverstone and her dad(?) liked my piece and that the employees of Shojin point out the artwork to the customers. The cherry on top of the whole situation was that Tsuguhiro probably had no idea that the customer he was talking with is famous! Irony and absurdity only found in Los Angeles. Look for the situation in future artwork. Thank you Alicia Silverstone for making my Sunday. I loved you in Clueless.

www.aliciasilverstone.org
www.theshojin.com
www.jessicav.com

Riccardo Spinotti photos from EW03 opening

Earthworks 03 : IMPULSE opening reception + performance

video by Ken Tanaka

music by Sick of Recorder

Earthworks 03 : IMPULSE > NEXT THURSDAY MAY 7 from 5 to 11pm

cover art by Lorelay Bove

Earthworks 02 opening reception + performance

Live performance by
Motoko Honda [toy piano / synthesizer / effects]
Joe Berardi [drums / percussion / effects]
Meyu Kobayashi [dance]
Jesske Hume [dance]

Shinichi Ono video installation @ EARTHWORKS 02

Earthworks 02 opening reception @ SHOJIN

video by Ken Tanaka
music by Pay Katusyuki and Yo-Ma