Panchiko- Honeycomb
This song is from Panchiko‘s 2025 album, Ginkgo.
The band is playing at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Saturday, 6/14/25 with Kitty Craft.
Jun 092025
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Jun 062025
Breaking Free by Rhys Meatyard for the 2023 edition of SHINE Mural Festival in St. Pete, Florida.
From the artist about the mural-
For my mural, I wanted to do something hopeful and bright, and the color palette reflects that intent. I took inspiration primarily from classical art and 70s prog rock album covers. I am a big fan of Roger Dean – the artist behind covers for bands such as Yes and Uriah Heep – and borrowed some of his themes for this piece. In the foreground, you see two statues in a colonnade, and as your eye moves across the piece into the mid and background, you become aware that the land and temple are breaking apart, with parts floating off into the sun. The furthest statue has awakened and is stepping off of her base, gazing into the sun. Although the context – the solid ground she has been standing upon is breaking apart – should be frightening, she is looking into the light and moving towards her new existence. This is a metaphor for the process of being reborn in the breaking we all face in our lives, for waking up to the beautiful and terrifying reality of self, and becoming another thing and venturing into the unknown.
Spatially, the piece unfolds for you as you round the corner approaching it. Your first view is of the static statues, and as you come closer, the rays of sunlight draw you in to the rest of the scene. There is not much room to stand back from the piece, so you are forced to confront its magnitude up-close, pulling you into the world in which it exists.
Jun 062025
Pictured above is All that Glitters is Gold (for Liberace), 2000, from the portfolio 1989. A Portfolio of 11 Images Honoring Artists Lost to AIDS, by Lari Pittman. It was on view last year as part of Cleveland Museum of Art’s group exhibition, New Narratives: Contemporary Works on Paper.
From the museum about the work-
Lari Pittman made this print as part of a portfolio honoring visual and performing artists lost to the AIDS epidemic. Dedicated to pianist and singer Liberace (1919-1987), Pittman referenced the performer’s renowned love for glitz and glamour through what he calls over-decoration. The male profile (perhaps representing a young Liberace), diamonds, sunbursts, and undefined architectural elements in layers of bright, complementary colors celebrate artificiality, or in the artist’s words, “frippery” that defines both Pittman’s practice and Liberace’s public persona.
Art21 also has several videos of Pittman discussing his work worth checking out.
Jun 052025
The newsletter returns– this week I’m talking about AI and tying in some posts from the website- check it out and subscribe!
Jun 042025
Currently on view on the High Line in NYC is Teresa Solar-Abboud‘s colorful sculpture, Birth of Islands.
From the High Line’s website about the commission-
Teresa Solar-Abboud creates sculptures, drawings, and videos characterized by an interest in fiction, storytelling, natural history, ecology, and anatomy. In her work, she alludes to material entities in states of transformation and the tension between the organic and synthetic, interior and exterior, gestation and birth, and embryonic and advanced. Solar-Abboud wields these tensions as a tool, not to draw binary juxtapositions, but rather to suggest that they co-exist in a quantum world, in a constant flow state of evolution. This is articulated in her work through an interest in and re-imagination of life’s diverse and sophisticated networks—cultural, geological, industrial, and anatomical—and how these systems overlap or sometimes clash.
For the High Line, Solar-Abboud presents Birth of Islands, a new sculpture in her series of zoomorphic shapes inspired by animals and prehistoric life forms. Birth of Islands, is composed of slick, blade-like foam-coated resin elements that emanate outward from the pores of a muddy, gray ceramic stump. When visiting New York, Solar-Abboud was struck by the landscape—building after building rising from the soil in a fight for prominence, just as vegetation in the forest combats for sunlight in order to survive. Birth of Islands refers to this competitive ecosystem, while also evoking human anatomy: two yellow, tongue-like emanations have seemingly tunneled their way from underground onto the High Line. The forms are spoon-like in their appearance, concave or convex, depending on one’s vantage point. The result appears simultaneously post-human and primordial, sophisticated and elementary—a representation of our own unending transformation alongside nature’s ever-evolving state.
This sculpture will be on view through July 2025.
Jun 022025
Sister Gemini- One Room Apartment
This single above, released in 2024, is from Los Angeles based artist Sister Gemini.
She is opening for Scout Gillett at Gold Diggers in Los Angeles on Friday, 6/6/25.
May 312025
Cindy Bernhard‘s Dangle, 2024, was part of PLATO gallery’s 2024 inaugural group exhibition, Double Vision.
In a recent interview with Overstandard, she discusses her practice and specifically the use of cats-
Cats and dogs frequently appear in your paintings as stand-ins for humans, adding layers of humor and empathy. What inspired this choice, and how do these animals enhance the narratives within your work?
Cindy: I was trained in figure painting, and I was making figure paintings for many years. I found that when painting the figure, the dialog about my work became a conversation about identity politics. In my painting practice, that is not of interest to me. My interests lie in the human experience, not gender, or body type, or the color of someone’s skin. I’m interested in shared human connection, shared emotions like grief, pain, beauty, suffering, and joy. There are days I miss painting the figure and I can see it returning in my work again one day.
With that in mind… What do you think it is about cats that resonates so well with you?
Cindy: I love looking for the cats and dogs in old master paintings: they are always so weird and expressive. Even though they are in the background and very small, they have a lot to say. In my work the cats become the main character, I think it adds humor, and it’s easier for people to connect to the cat than a figure, which is interesting. There’s also a song I love, by one of my favorite bands, mewithoutyou. For some reason this part of the song ‘a glass can only spill what it contains’ always stuck with me…
A cat came drifting
On my porch from the outside cold
And with eyes closed, drinking
Warm milk from my bowl
Thought, “Nobody hears me, nobody hears me
As I crept in so soft
And nobody sees me, nobody sees me”
As I watch six steps off
In my mind I would always see this cat creeping along….not wanting to be caught. I think it’s about when we do things in the dark and think no one knows, God still sees.
May 312025
Mogwai- Fanzine Made of Flesh
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 Scottish band Mogwai‘s 2025 album, The Bad Fire.
Below are April’s selections-
May 302025
Tania Figueroa‘s painting Oronym, pictured above, was part of a group exhibition at The Werk Gallery in St. Pete, Florida, in April of 2023.
About the artwork from the artist-
Expressing a point of view feeling restricted. Throwing your truth only between the lines. Not being able to express your thoughts openly because of fear, pressure or prejudice. In that restriction, we feel trapped, we feel with two faces. The one the world wants to see and the genuine face.
Like an oronym.
You might hear one thing, but what is it really saying?
The artist is currently part of the three person exhibition, Between Worlds on view at The Studio @620, also in St. Pete. The other Florida artists included are Sketzii (Ketsy Ruiz) and Alexa Espinosa (ArttByLexx).
From the gallery-
In Between Worlds, artists Sketzii, ArttByLexx, and Tania Figueroa bring together layered narratives of memory, identity, and cultural connection. Their work moves across genres and materials—painting, digital illustration, and mixed media—to explore what it means to exist in the spaces between home and heritage, past and present, tradition and personal truth. Each artist offers a unique lens through which to view belonging, storytelling, and the way art creates meaning across generations.
Sketzii is a celebration of her Puerto Rican heritage and the experience of living within the Latinx diaspora. Her bold, vibrant compositions honor communities that are often overlooked—uplifting stories of cultural pride, displacement, and the longing for connection that spans across geography and time.
ArttByLexx’s practice centers on her connection to ancestry and the inward journey of self-discovery. Her practice embraces nature’s rhythms and emotional depth, creating intuitive pieces that blur boundaries between past and present. Through her exploration of joy, grief, and transformation, her art becomes a spiritual and reflective space.
Tania Figueroa brings a rich history of movement to her visual art practice. Trained in classical ballet and theater, her work now lives in the textures of mixed media—combining textiles, sand, and paper to evoke memory, place, and care. Her pieces draw on deep personal experience, blending the sensorial and the sacred to reflect both resilience and tenderness.
Together, their work maps a shared space between worlds—charting stories of belonging, resilience, and the quiet beauty found in complexity.
This Saturday, 5/31/25, there will be a reception held from 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM with an artist talk at 2:30 PM.
May 292025
Brazilian documentary photographer and photojournalist Sebastião Salgado passed away on May 23rd at the age of 81. His distinctive black and white images brought attention to previously unseen cultures, devastating humanitarian crises, and the struggles of workers, all around the world. Later, he turned his sharp focus to the remote natural world and its inhabitants.
The images in this post are from the 2014 documentary The Salt of the Earth, co-directed by Wim Wenders and his son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado. The film celebrates the artist’s life and career and focuses on several of his large projects.
Salgado also created Instituto Terra with his wife Lélia in 1998. The organization focuses on planting trees and restoring Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. The project began in on his family’s farmland, pictured below, before and after the restoration.
Below are additional images from Salgado’s environmental work seen in the film.
