Some Culture for the Boy

From September through February here in LA county many various art galleries are participating in an art event called Pacific Standard Time LA/LA. The "LA/LA" stands for Latin American and Latino Art. It's a celebration of many of the diverse local and not-necessarily-local-living-but-local-collections of works created by artists of a Latin American descent and the related diaspora.

We happen to be lucky enough to live less than a half-mile away from the MoLAA, the Museum of Latin American Art, apparently the only museum dedicated to contemporary Latin American art in the US. Of course they're participating prominently in the Pacific Standard Time event, and on Sundays they are free to the public.

This past Sunday I took Cassius over there to have a look see. They have a very cool sculpture outside that's very photogenic, and I've taken multiple pics over the years of the free-Sunday allowances using various cameras.

This past Sunday

While on the small side for a serious art gallery, the space was happily dense right now. The focus for their part of the PST LA/LA event is the art of the Caribbean islanders or the associated diaspora (that's twice for diaspora!).

Upon entering was a large video projection of the ocean as seen from a driving car along an ocean-side route. Called "Perpetual Horizon," the video tried to capture the feeling you get living on or growing up on an island, the ocean meeting the sky in a constant loop around your home.

The legacy of Columbus is felt all the time, and it's captured neatly in this rendering of the man himself:

It may be hard to tell, but those are staples on wood. I tried to take the picture so the light reflected in a way to be picked up by the camera, but the idea of sharp metal being embedded into nature drives home the point.

There were a few mobile pieces, like these silhouetted faces on strings that swayed, making for dynamic shadows:

There was a very expressive and beautiful---and quite large (4' x 7')---and very pink painting of the sinking of a (possibly fictional) ship called the Flamingo:

Possibly my favorite piece here.

One exhibit was a a mock up of the beach, but done with plastic garbage you'd find in the ocean, and all were correctly coordinating shades of blue (and I got a good picture of Cass, who tried to mess with everything):

That boundary was just his height.

There was an interactive piece with wooden bird calls, all of which looked like pepper mills:

One very striking and beautiful piece was actually multiple pieces put together, but they made for an enormous jungle scene:

Cass used for scale.

That was another one of my favorites.

The third set that I really dug on was the following triplet:

From a distance these three look like storms.

And that's what they are. BUT, they are artistic renderings of three separate hurricanes done in the medium of doily.

Yes, doily. Check out a detail:

I had no idea the power of doilies.

Around another turn was this cool vision of a grey sea:

But on the edges it looks like there are some frayed things, but upon closer inspection you see that what is making that ocean pattern look are actually all fish hooks nailed into the canvas:

How cool is that?

One of the last things I took a picture of was a series of photographs on light boxes, photos of awesome and colorful projections onto buildings and the like, from a series of nighttime exhibitions called "Starman Visits":

If you find yourself in the LA or LB area between now and February, you could do worse than to check out the gallery on a free Sunday.

I feel so lucky to be able to share this kind of thing with the Boy, even if he won't be able to remember this exact afternoon. I think the emphasis on exposure to and discussions of art and its importance is the main thing.

That's what I tell myself, anyway.