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Ohio Murals- Jake Kelly in Cleveland

Art, Artists, Books, Cleveland, Drawing, Ohio Street Art, Painting / Painters, Public Art, Street Art, Writers

Dec 122025

Cleveland artist Jake Kelly‘s 2010 mural was inspired by the artwork and concepts of ArtsCollinwood‘s portfolio project students. Along with his numerous murals band posters, and fliers, he has also made several comics detailing darker moments from Cleveland’s history.

He also created the fictional series, The Lake Erie Monster, with fellow artist John G. A few issues are currently available online for free.

More about the series from their website-

The flagship story is an “adaptation” of a fake movie that J. Kelly developed for a series of Ten Imaginary Movie Posters. Set in the 1970s, we follow a cast of eclectic characters as they have to navigate the choppy waters stirred up by a Monster born out of the pollution from a city gone to seed. Along with the main title, each issue will feature at least one short back up story.

The Aither‘s 2023 interview with Kelly is also worth a read for more information on the artist.

Throwback- NYC Public Art- Alex Da Corte for the High Line

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture

Dec 112025

Alex Da Corte‘s Soft Power was on view from the High Line until June of last year.

His latest exhibition, Parade, is currently on view at Matthew Marks in NYC, on view until 12/20/25. The Pink Panther appears in this show as well- Da Corte depicts himself as the character painting the gallery pink.

From the High Line website about the billboard-

Known for his immersive installations, sculptures, and films, Alex Da Corte’s work explores themes of identity, consumerism, and taste, challenging societal norms and reimagining the familiar in unexpected ways. The artist draws from myriad sources, including popular and consumer culture, art history, classical literature, and modern design, seamlessly weaving together disparate elements into cohesive narratives. His adept use of vibrant color and surreal imagery lends a dreamlike quality to his work that captivates viewers and blurs the lines between fantasy and reality.

Da Corte presents a new artwork for the High Line’s 18th Street Billboard, inspired by the Pink Panther, a Friz Freleng creation designed for the animated opening sequence of a 1963 Hollywood comedy that came to embody the film and has evolved, through 60 years of spin-offs and reinventions, into cultural ubiquity. Pink’s durability across many generations has allowed it to sell countless products, from fiberglass insulation foam to artificial sweetener, yet the creature’s essence remains out of reach. With neither master nor peer—and seemingly eternally unbound by the rules of others—Pink represents a certain queer freedom. Da Corte revives Pink as an icon of resistance, supine but poised, wielding a sign of universal protest, brandishing a clear pink purpose. “There is a difference between falling down and laying down,” Da Corte explains. “I call that soft power.” This billboard is an advertisement for the value of such power.

NYC Public Art- Sasha Gordon for the High Line

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Public Art

Dec 112025

Sasha Gordon‘s two billboards- My Love of Upholstery (2024) and Untitled (2024), are currently on view from the High Line in NYC.

From the High Line website about the work-

Sasha Gordon creates surreal paintings and drawings that explore themes of sexuality, gender, race, and the body. Often depicting herself as subject, Gordon is keenly attuned to art historical themes of portraiture and self-portraiture, and of the politics of representation. She approaches these categories with inventiveness and humor, using the uncanny to communicate very real concerns around self-image and identity.

For the High Line – Moynihan Connector Billboard, Gordon presents two works, My Love of Upholstery (2024) and Untitled (2024). Both hail from the artist’s most recent body of work, in which she examines challenging taboos and standards of representation. Her images present a wide range of emotional states, frequently considered through the lens of her identity as a queer Asian American woman. Through endless avatars, she portrays the othering of unconventional human bodies and her own experiences of alienation. Towering over 30th Street and Dyer Avenue, the artist’s fluctuating visage appears at massive scale, marked by a distinct unnaturalness—in My Love of Upholstery, where she depicts herself with a Pinocchio-like wood-grain body, and in Untitled, in which her face and pupils are marked with five-pointed stars. These visions are simultaneously anxious and intimate, teetering somewhere between tender fantasy and nightmare. Her avatars, looming large within their frames, offer both artist and audience an outlet for exploring contradictory emotions and complex personal experiences.

Delaware Art Shows- “Colorful Voices” at John William Gallery in Wilmington

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Mixed Media, Music, Painting / Painters, Wilmington

Dec 102025

Alim Smith, “Floating” and “Thought A New Dress Would Make it Better”, 2025, Oil on canvas

Paintings by Alim Smith

Taylor Gordon, “To Be A Black Woman”, 2023, Oil on canvas

Taylor Gordon, “Dear Tay”, 2023, Oil on canvas with cardboard

Manuel Ramos, “Abuela Gorin”, 2025, Oil on canvas

Manuel Ramos, “Abuela Olga”, 2025, Oil on canvas

Currently on view at John William Gallery in Wilmington is Colorful Voices: Taylor Gordon, Alim Smith, Manuel Ramos, featuring unique paintings by the three Delaware artists.

From the gallery about the exhibition-

Colorful Voices: Taylor Gordon, Alim Smith, Manuel Ramos brings together three distinctive practices that articulate the richness of contemporary community life through color, portraiture, and cultural reference. The exhibition seeks to foreground the vitality of local voices while offering a space in which viewers might consider how identity, humor, and heritage are translated into visual form.

Taylor Gordon’s paintings situate themselves within the lineage of Black contemporary art, yet remain deeply personal. Her chromatic sensibility infuses each figure with layered emotional resonance, encouraging conversations around beauty, resilience, and the multiplicity of Black experience beyond reductive narratives. Manuel Ramos, or “RAmos ART,” approaches portraiture with a keen attentiveness to light and surface, imbuing his sitters with an understated dignity that resonates quietly yet powerfully. Emerging from a self-taught practice shaped during the pandemic, his canvases record moments of presence that hover between the intimate and universal. Alim Smith, or “Yesterday Nite,” works in a spontaneous visual language, fusing surrealism, popular culture, and sly humor. His rhythmic compositions and vivid palette translate music, memory, and cultural archetypes into forms at once playful and incisive.

Together these artists propose color as more than visual pleasure: it becomes a conduit for empathy, critique, and joy. Colorful Voices invites us to engage with works that are celebratory yet searching, attuned to both the textures of daily life and the broader currents shaping our communities. In gathering their practices, the exhibition hopes to affirm art’s capacity to nurture dialogue and to render visible the stories that animate shared experience.

This exhibition is on view until 12/18/25.

Alim Smith’s work may look familiar- he created work for the television series Atlanta and the cover art for Mac Miller‘s second posthumous album, Balloonerism, released earlier this year. Miller reached out to him in 2018, after finding his work on Instagram. Smith was recently nominated for a Grammy award for “Best Recording Package” for this album.

Mac Miller’s “Balloonerism” cover art by Alim Smith

Song of the Day- Fime- “Better Half of a Dollar”

Los Angeles Events, Los Angeles Music, Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist

Dec 082025

Fime- Better Half of a Dollar

This song is from LA band Fime‘s recently released second album, Just Can’t Win. The album was produced by Melina Duterte aka Jay Som.

The band is part of a great lineup of bands playing at The Echo in Los Angeles on Sunday, 12/14/25, for No Ear Buds Fest. Also on the ticket- Prince Daddy & The Hyena, JER, yungatita, Bones Shredder, Glass Generation, Soft Blue Shimmer, and Hudson Freeman.

Flashback- Los Angeles Art Shows- Vhils at Over the Influence

Architecture, Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Conceptual Art, Egypt, Germany, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Munich, Painting / Painters, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture

Dec 052025

In addition to his numerous street art pieces, Alexandre Farto, aka Vhils, has shown his unique creations in various galleries around the world. The works above are from his 2018 exhibition Annihilation at Over the Influence gallery’s temporary location in Los Angeles.

From the gallery about the show-

Presenting a reflection on the current model of globalized development and the forces shaping and affecting local identities around the world today, Annihilation emphasizes the global impact of Los Angeles culture and the subsequent breakdown of unique global identities across continents. For his first solo exhibition in the United States since 2011, Vhils has taken the opportunity to set up a dialogue between the United States, Europe, and China to address the growing struggle for hegemonic supremacy between global powers and the ensuing social and economic impact on the world at large. Annihilation shares the stories of the citizens who breathe vitality into densely populated urban epicenters. Based on a variety of source material, from advertisements collected in cities worldwide to salvaged wooden doors, the new patchwork-like series intentionally dilutes the readability of each individual portrayed, a reflection on how identity is both formed and affected by the city’s visual discourse. This intentional juxtaposition of contrasts mirrors the interplay between elements from various cultures which we observe at work today in large urban contexts.

Vhils-Strata, which presents a selection of his work from the past twenty years, is currently on view at the Museum of Urban and Contemporary Art (MUCA) in Munich, Germany until 3/1/26.

He also recently created the site-specific installation, Doors of Cairo, located near the Pyramids in Giza in Egypt. It is part of Forever is Now 05 and is on view until 12/7/25.

Flashback- NYC Street Art- Vhils in 2018

Art, Artists, New York Street Art, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture, Street Art

Dec 052025

Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, aka Vhils, created this mural of TJ Mizell (Jam Master Jay‘s son) in 2018.

It is one of many street art projects organized by LISA Project NYC.

Los Angeles Art Shows- Robert Therrien at The Broad

Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture

Dec 032025

Robert Therrien‘s larger than life sculpture of a table and chairs for Under The Table (1994) has been delighting visitors to The Broad in Los Angeles for years. Robert Therrien: This is a Story, recently opened at the museum is the largest exhibition of the late artist’s work to date.

From The Broad about the exhibition-

Therrien’s meditations on scale and material are a deeply influential and well-known approach within the field of contemporary sculpture, significant to The Broad’s own identity as a museum, and long admired by visitors of all ages. The installation showcases Therrien’s personal vocabulary of images and symbols—from enormous tables, chairs, and dishes, to intimate drawings of snowmen, birds, and chapels—as they become a language of continuous creation and transformation for the artist over time. Featuring more than 120 works spanning five decades, the exhibition offers unprecedented access to the artist’s exploration of scale, memory, and perception, just miles from the downtown Los Angeles home and studio space he operated out of for close to thirty years beginning in 1990. Many of the works on view, including those created just before Therrien’s untimely death in 2019, have never been featured in museum exhibitions and will offer new avenues of understanding his practice.

The exhibition is on view until 5/5/2026.

Song of the Day- Goon- “Begin Here”

Los Angeles Events, Los Angeles Music, Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist

Dec 012025

Goon- Begin Here

This song is from Los Angeles band Goon‘s 2025 album Dream 3.

The band is currently on tour and playing at Sid The Cat Auditorium in Pasadena on Thursday, 12/4/25, with Peel Dream Magazine.

October 2025 Spotify Playlist

Los Angeles Music, Music, Musicians / Bands, Spotify Playlist

Nov 292025

Princess Nokia- Drop Dead Gorgeous

Every month I listen to the majority of bands and musicians who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artist.

The song above is from Princess Nokia‘s 2025 album, Girls.

Below are the selections for October 2025.

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