Art in August

This brings us up to August, I believe.  In homage to Creative Intelligence's original Cultural Hookie Day, a friend and I stopped work early today to go check out two different restaurants and two different art openings.  Nothing like a quadruple dose of culture in one night!  (Yup.  Food + wine count as culture in my book.)  After nibbling at both Sila Bistro and Rush Street (which are both sound, but not enough to swoon about), we headed to Royal/T's to the "All of This is Melting" opening in Culver City.  The art world may scoff at Susan Hancock as an "art market rookie" who throws money about without even remembering the names of the pieces she's bought, but if she brings attention to art & artists that people find interesting, how is that bad?  The show was packed so I wasn't the only one who liked the idea of states of change.  But then again, I don't know anything about art.  My favorite piece of the night was the giant blue phallus.  (Just kidding - it was the giant puppy.)  It probably helps that Royal/T is so surreal - part tea house, part gallery, part design shop, part japanime dream sequence.

When we got kicked out, we headed downtown to the LA Art Girls Biennial Fair.  My friend Marjan had a few projects showing, only one of which I caught before someone jacked part of an art installation and the gallery had to shut down early.  I guess everyone thought the junkie running away with the DVD player was performance art.  Fave of the night?  It's a toss up between the abstract yarn web and the very spankable unicorn.  I feel wholly enriched and more cultured now.

de LaB - Neutra Fundraiser

Another amazing highlight in July was the successful fundraiser that de LaB threw with The Architect's Newspaper.  We had a great turn out of over 100 people and we raised almost $3000 for the NeutraVDL house.  Thanks to all the people and all the sponsors who helped make the party possible.  I've never organized a fundraiser before, but it was actually really fun.  Mostly, thanks to the amazing photographer Adam Latham who made the house and everyone in it look so incredibly sexy!  To see more photos, check out our de LaB pages on Alissa's great site or on Facebook.

Make Up Your Face, Make Over Your Space

I know it's August, but it's been so busy that I'm only just getting around to sorting through the photos that have been accumulating on my camera.  Highlights of the month included helping my client Storm Interiors throw a successful launch party (dubbed "Make Up Your Face, Make Over Your Space") for its new subsidiary Designers Call, a company that delivers high-end interior design direct to your doorstep.  Think of it as interior design house calls.  

Guests stopped in for p.i.n.k. + Her (energy drink) cocktails (which were surprisingly tasty -- I'm not typically a fan of energy drinks but I downed several of these bad mamas!) and make-overs and eye brow and lash tinting treatments by Benefit Cosmetics.  This led to a great evening with the ladies from Apartment Therapy LA, Abby + Laure, and a valuable observation - lash tinting is a form torture.

  

First Harvest

With the price of gas soaring, food shortages in other parts of the world, and the general malaise this summer, Brian and I figured we should plant a garden and try our decidedly UN-green thumbs at producing our own food (or at least, a very small portion of it).  So after weeks of waiting with baited breath for our seeds to blossom into little seedlings, and worrying whether our little seedlings would survive the transfer, and copious watering, and then some more waiting, our first crop was ready for harvest!  We planted several different things, but the first harvest was radishes.  Strangely shaped, incredibly bitter, nasty, disgusting radishes.  And after all that waiting, we barely had enough to fill a spice jar.  They were so bad, we had to pickle them.  And even after we pickled them, they were still kind of gross.  Lesson learned?  Growing one's own food is way harder than it seems.  Farmers rule.  Radishes suck.

Life is Beautiful....and kinda funny

I'm not the hippest or the most informed when it comes to modern, urban art forms.  But luckily I have friends with discerning taste and private access who took me to the preview of the LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL exhibition by Mr. Brainwash, a talented French artist with a wicked sense of humor who's rumored to be the next Banksy.

The preview was packed, but we were lucky enough not to experience the four block line that others encountered once the exhibition opened.  While I can't really offer criticism or praise for the exhibition, I definitely had more fun than I normally do at art openings.  The exhibition was housed in the former offices of CBS on Sunset in Hollywood, giving it a very vagrant feel, as though we were all trespassing on a secret underground art society that had temporarily been squatting in the erstwhile offices.  It helped that we all had teatinis in hand and live muscians were circulating, belting out jazz riffs to shake your fillings.

Mr. Brainwash has a knack for taking forms of accepted art and infusing them with a bit of modern wit.  Definitely living at the intersection of pop and culture, his irreverence is palpable.  Some might find it shocking or cheap.  Others might find it genius.  But that is the wonderful thing about art.  There's room enough in life for it to be both beautiful...and funny.  While I loved the artified LAPD squad car and the weird baby head flash, I think my personal favorites were his oversized sculptures, like the flying Campbells spray can and the gigantor lunch bag.

Peek inside the Penthouse Life

I was lucky enough to catch what several visitors called "the best" abode on Dwell on Design's downtown home tour this weekend.  The gorgeous double-unit penthouse in the historic, gorgeously refurbished Douglas Building downtown belongs to real estate maverick Goodwin Gaw.  The Douglas Building is the first of several ambitious Downtown Properties' projects that will most likely change the face of downtown.  Gaw's own space was designed by Hong Kong's Clarence Chiang.  The overall Douglas Building was re-furbished by Rockefeller Partners.

    

      

Designers & Agents Green Room in Los Angeles

I spent this past weekend at the Designers & Agents trade show covering the Green Room for Inhabitat.  Hosted at the New Mart, the space vert was adorned by Edina Tokodi's amazing living green grafitti and filled with some of the coolest in up and coming sustainable fashion brands.  My favorite were the dresses by the Stockholm- and New York-based Ekovaruhuset design collective and the eco-undies by Milk & Honey which are as delicious to wear as they sound, I'm sure.  It was certainly a weekend that tested the willpower of a shopping junkie such as myself.