Chalk Talk- Time Again
This song is from Chalk Talk‘s recently released album, Sun Lies Heavy. The band is playing at The Echo in Los Angeles with Charlie Havenick on Thursday, 8/7/25.
Aug 042025
Aug 012025
This mural by Gabriel Specter is located in North Collinwood, Cleveland, in the Waterloo Arts District.
Jul 312025
The two large paintings pictured above are by Takako Yamaguchi and were on view as part of Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing.
From the Whitney Museum website about the artist-
Takako Yamaguchi’s recent seascapes use meticulously rendered zigzags, tubes, and lines to suggest weather and other natural elements. They reflect Yamaguchi’s experimentation with what she calls “abstraction in reverse,” or taking recognizable forms, like clouds or waves, and abstracting them to the point of pattern. Her interest is less in nature itself than in the artifice that has allowed artists to represent it. The artist aims to paint “umbrellas” that will read as “trees,” referring to a quote by the poet Wallace Stevens, who said, “All of our ideas come from the natural world: Trees = umbrellas.”
The resulting paintings work against Western art historical ideas of “pure” abstraction. The luminous surfaces are intentionally decorative and structured using graphic techniques drawn from Mexican muralism and Japanese print design alike. Throughout her career, Yamaguchi has also resisted assumptions by critics that Japanese aesthetics are inherently minimalist, drawing from the most opulent and intricate aspects of Japanese visual culture.
Yamaguchi’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles is currently on view at MOCA until 1/4/26.
Jul 312025
Black Sabbath- War Pigs
Ozzy Osbourne passed away last week at the age of 76. The Birmingham musician started as a singer in the English rock band Black Sabbath.
After leaving the band in 1979, he began his successful solo career with manager, and later wife, Sharon. In the 1990s he and Sharon started the very successful music festival Ozzfest, which included a Black Sabbath reunion. The yearly festival continued until 2010.
Along with his distinctive singing voice, he would also become notorious for his wild antics- including biting the heads off doves (at a record company meeting) and a bat at a concert (that may, or may not have been alive). The drug and alcohol fueled stories from his tour with Mötley Crüe in 1984 also added to his reputation.
From 2002-5 he joined his wife and two of his children for the popular family reality show, The Osbournes. He also continued making new music throughout the years, toured, and played reunion tours off and on with Black Sabbath- most recently only a few weeks before his death.
While it was sad to hear of his passing, he lived an incredible life.
Jul 302025
Happy Birthday to Los Angeles-based artist Betye Saar who turned 99 today! Pictured above is her work The Locksmith, 2018, which was part of the 2019 group exhibition Behind Face at Los Angeles gallery Roberts Projects.
Her biography from the Roberts Projects website-
As one of the artists who ushered in the development of Assemblage art, Betye Saar’s practice reflects on African American identity, spirituality and the connectedness between different cultures. Her symbolically rich body of work has evolved over time to demonstrate the environmental, cultural, political, racial, technological, economic, and historical context in which it exists.
For over six decades, Saar has created assemblage works that explore the social, political, and economic underpinnings of America’s collective memory. She began her career at the age of 35 producing work that dealt with mysticism, nature and family. Saar’s art became political in the 1970’s namely with the assemblage The Liberation of Aunt Jemima in 1972. As did many of the women who came to consciousness in the 1960’s, Saar takes on the feminist mantra “the personal is political” as a fundamental principle in her assemblage works. Her appropriation of black collectibles, heirlooms, and utilitarian objects are transformed through subversion, and yet given her status as a pioneer of the Assemblage movement, the impact of Saar’s oeuvre on contemporary art has yet to be fully acknowledged or critically assessed. Among the older generation of Black American artists, Saar is without reproach and continues to both actively produce work and inspire countless others.
In recent news, Saar has assembled a group of curators to form the Betye Saar Legacy Group, whose purpose will be to “help ensure that museums, art historians, and critics wanting to know more about the artist can continue to do so in the decades to come.” More information here.
Jul 292025
Isabelle, by German sculptor Julian Voss-Andreae is located in Palm Springs, California. Voss-Andreae creates sculptures designed to change their appearance- disappearing at times when viewed at a certain angle. His background in science helped to influence this work when he went on to study art.
Below is a section of his biography from his website-
Prior to his art career, Julian Voss-Andreae studied quantum physics and philosophy at the Universities of Berlin and Edinburgh. As a graduate student at the University of Vienna, Voss-Andreae was one of the small team led by 2022 Nobel Prize Laureate Anton Zeilinger that conducted a ground-breaking experiment in quantum mechanics in 1999. The researchers showed that even molecules as big as C-60 “Buckyballs” can reveal their fundamentally quantum nature under the right conditions. Zeilinger’s group found that a beam of them, passed through a diffraction grating, will exhibit the purely wavelike property of interference. Subsequent experiments showed how interactions with the environment (in the form of infrared photons and background gas of different densities) will gradually wash away the ‘quantum-ness’ thanks to the process of decoherence, which is now recognized as the way the classical world emerges from the quantum.
Our Single Garment of Destiny, (pictured below) is located in Washington Gladden Social Justice Park in Columbus, Ohio. It was specifically designed for the park and takes its name and inspiration from the Martin Luther King Jr. quote below.
“All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” – Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963)
The video below explains his process when creating the sculptures.
Jul 282025
Coral Grief- Starboard
This song is from Seattle band Coral Grief‘s recently released debut album, Air Between Us.
They are playing at Scribble in Los Angeles on Thursday, 7/31/25, with Mo Dotti and Cupid & Psyche.
Jul 282025
Harry the Nightgown- bellboy
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 Los Angeles band Harry the Nightgown‘s 2025 album Ugh.
Below are June’s selections-
Jul 252025
ILL.DES created this mural in 2022 for Tampa Walls.
About the artist and his work from his website-
ILL.DES (David Fratu) is a Romanian-American abstract artist based in Denver, CO whose work is rooted in geometric shapes and technology. With a background in computer engineering, he brings elements of technology into their art, creating visually striking pieces that represent the balance between chaos and order.
His style is characterized by their use of gradients of color and intricate patterns that create a sense of depth and movement. Their compositions are filled with vibrant colors, geometric shapes, and organic line work. The use of optical illusions and visual effects in their pieces adds to the illusive nature of their work, and is influenced by the op-art movement.
Despite the strong geometric shapes and technological influences, his pieces are not cold or mechanical. Instead, their work reflects the complexities and contradictions of the natural world. The use of symmetry and repetition creates a sense of order, while the use of unexpected shapes and colors adds a sense of chaos and unpredictability. Together, their unique compositions form a perfect equilibrium of harmony and discord.
ILL.DES’s work has been exhibited in galleries in Denver and nationwide, and has received critical acclaim for its ability to blend technology, art, and the exploration of the balance between chaos and order. They continue to push the boundaries of what is possible in the world of geometric abstract art, creating pieces that are both visually stunning and thought-provoking.
Jul 252025
Maya Hayuk is one of the four artists on view in Brooklyn Museum’s Brooklyn Abstraction: Four Artists, Four Walls. The other artists included are José Parlá, Kennedy Yanko, and the late Leon Polk Smith.
From the museum about Hayuk and this work-
With a diverse practice as a muralist, painter, photographer, gallery founder, and member of several artist collectives, Maya Hayuk has worked internationally to bring vibrancy and movement to urban and exhibition spaces. Weaving layers of paint, she animates walls with what she describes as “perfect imperfection.” These paintings, with their symmetrical organization and brilliantly overlapping colors and drips, are both constructed and improvisational, blurring perceptions of outer and inner space and confronting paradoxes of harmony and dissonance, optimism and hopelessness. Hayuk’s Ukrainian heritage as well as current geopolitical events inspire her to express abstracted physical and psychological landscapes of the war’s front line, simulating the flash points of explosions intersecting with the hope of sunrise.
The exhibition, which takes place on the walls surrounding the museum’s Beaux-Arts Court, remains on view until January 4, 2026.