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An hour before closing on Sunday, I enter through glass doors to the inner sanctum of Marilyn Minter’s retrospective Pretty/Dirty. Hard to resist such an alluring title. Her lush paintings, glossy photographs and videos confront our relationship with the power of desire. Accompanied by a sliding soundtrack of chimes, the seductive images and videos entice and repulse. The exhibition opens with black and white photos of her disillusioned mother gazing in the mirror and expands into large-scale images in vibrant colors – lips and eyes with heavy make up, nails with dirty green polish, grungy designer shoes, jewels, and glittery body parts dripping with translucent liquid. With wry humor, Minter positions the viewer as voyeur to challenge the lure of beauty and the female body, the distinction between art and pornography.  Read More »

As I down my second espresso shot, I jolt myself from the blissful state of sleeping until noon. I don’t regret the bliss, but it dawns on me I will never get a refund for this lost time. Post caffeine, I scan a week ago Sunday’s LA Times and today’s breaking news in the NY Times. What transpires in less than ten days shocks me. Not only humanitarian deeds, scientific advances and creative breakthroughs, but episodes of unreality stream. Political sideshows offer their wares, smear campaigns unleash and possible acts of terrorism go down. Seven centuries ago, Chaucer earned his burial place in the Poet’s corner of Westminster Abbey, not only for legitimizing the use of the vernacular or we would still be reading Latin, but for his insights into the poetics of tides and time. I should have reread this mantra sooner! Read More »

As Easter drew near last month, I thought I would take my previous post A Perfect Red and just dye it blue like an egg. But the damn thing resisted the dye so now my March post is post March. Had I not failed so well, I might never have discovered the true or not so true secrets of blue(s). Turns out a gauzy pale blue scarf I bought on a Cinderella impulse had tricks to teach me. It also took the dark of night and break of dawn, the pull of tides and distance, to spring the spirit free.  Read More »

If you’re looking for love in all the wrong places this Valentine’s Day, you probably haven’t encountered the perfect red. Not scarlet, burgundy, carnelian, crimson, Falu red, persimmon, sangria, magenta, maroon, Venetian red, vermillion, merlot, mahogany, currant, cherry, garnet, wine, rose, blood, blush, brick, candy, jam, ruby, apple or berry. No, a perfect red the Spanish explorers happened upon in the Aztec marketplaces of 16th century Mexico. For those who knew the secret, the perfect red became a source of power in an age when textiles equated to great wealth. Spain made a fortune selling the rare and precious dye around the globe. In 1587, the conquistadores shipped 65 tons of it home. In a quest to break Spain’s monopoly and acquire the guarded red dyestuff, men turned to espionage and piracy, plundering ships and risking death. All for a fragile little bug that lives on prickly pear cactus. Read More »

Due to lively procrastination in the first two weeks of January, I’m not as timely with this post for the dawn of the New Year as I planned. But according to a recent N.Y. Times article, procrastination leads to mind wandering i.e. creative thinking – a habit employed by Steve Jobs, Frank Lloyd Wright and other creative mavericks. Ah, yes mind wandering… But ok, my tardy post may also be attributed to indulging in an eclectic menu of elegant cinematography, live performances, investigative journalism and dreamy words. Samples include the seductive gay and transgender films Carol and The Danish Woman, the retro stardom of Stallone in Creed (released on the 40th anniversary of the original Rocky), the moral exposé of the immoral in Spotlight, the chilling ravages of The Revenant, Willie Nelson live at 82, Patti Smith rocking the deco off the walls of the Wiltern, plus an evening immersed in her provocative new memoir, M Train. All this followed by tributes around the world for the unexpected loss of David Bowie.  Read More »

Swept into the celebrations of the holiday season, I marvel at the ties that bind but simultaneously get all tangled up in them. No, I’m not referring to ribbons and bows or John Fawcett’s hymn Blest Be the Tie That Binds, not Pedro Almodovar’s dark romantic comedy Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! or Bruce Springsteen’s new box set Ties That Bind: The River Collection. I mean the ties that blind. Ties that bind of a certain kind that may simply reside in the mind.  Read More »

Big guys talk small talk, small guys talk big talk and smart guys know how to talk. If you want to experience the thrill of a small guy (in stature only) walk the walk with no talk, check out the actualization of Philippe Petit’s high-wire dream The Walk. The ultimate suspension of disbelief.

So much of our lives exist in the pursuit of nothingness all dressed up as somethingness. Creativity allows you to transcend the numbing roundabout of chores, expectations, obligations and blah blah emptiness. Wainwright says, “Why be in music, why write songs, if you can’t use them to explore life or an idealized vision of life?” Substitute “music” with writing prose or poetry, plays or screenplays, painting, drawing, sculpting, photographing, performing – experiment with actualization i.e. wake up!  Read More »

Perhaps because temperatures soared into the 90’s, or more likely because I have a fascination with the quest of mountain climbing, I immersed myself in the Sundance award-winning documentary Meru and the IMAX adaptation of Into Thin Air. Twice. If I hadn’t spent so many hours getting higher and higher in an air-conditioned theater, I might not have let my September blog deadline slip by. No, I have not climbed Everest – only gazed with awe and wonder at the highest peaks in India, Nepal and Pakistan. Pondering the big questions.

What compels someone to undertake such an irrational act as climbing Everest (29,029’) or scaling Meru (21,667’)? It’s not as if an Olympic medal or pot of gold waits at the top. With the treachery of sheer surfaces, thin air, shifting ice, bottomless crevasses, violent storms and killer avalanches, what fuels this intense desire? Detractors who have never laced up boots or strapped on crampons tend to compartmentalize. Thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies, hubris and fame, they accuse. But I don’t think so.  Read More »

Ironically last August I advocated The Art of Doing Nothing and in August 2013, I skipped the whole blog post! Since then I’ve walked through a lot of doorways – this August I’ve decided to keep moving.

Every doorway, every intersection offers an experience. A story doesn’t present itself fully formed – the intersection gives birth to potential. Without vision and movement you have only ink on a page, paint on a canvas, frames spliced together ABC or a static hunk of stone. Like life, a story moves. When the momentum stalls, the tightrope slackens, you lose your balance. And nobody cares. Like a story, life moves… Read More »

Even though I can visualize and conceptualize numbers, I have a shortage of passion for spreadsheet dynamics hence I am not known for my wizardry at math. What I do know goes like this – the illustriousness of an artist and a work of art lies in direct proportion to the passion that fuels her/his vision and creativity. On the anniversary of the tragic death of Amy Winehouse at age 27, her music and persona echo with the same haunting beauty as when she first emerged as an original artist. Read More »