Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Saturday afternoon, I went over to Hollywood for the big Tattoo Hollywood convention put on by BMEzine. I figured that because it was BME, it would be a good convention. And I also figured that a lot of people I know would be there.

When I walked in the door, I immediately saw The Lizardman. We’d never met in person before, I’ve known him from rec.arts.bodyart back in the days when he was a grad student, and before he embarked on his show business career.

I had a fun time schmoozing around and taking pictures. I met up with several other people who I’ve known online for years but never met in meatspace before. Late in the afternoon, Leslie came by, fresh off the plane from being out of town for the last few days. So I got to introduce her around, and she even has instant cachet in the tattoo scene, since she worked on the Modern Primitives book back in the ’80s.

It was a very fun afternoon and evening. Pictures are in the usual place.

On Saturday night, Shari and I went over to Hollywood. The occasion was a party and book signing at Antebellum Gallery for my friend Elayne’s new book, The Piercing Bible. I’ve known Elayne for more than 20 years now, and seeing her is always a treat.

The art on display at the gallery was an odd mix of old Bettie Page bondage pictures, clown paintings, and photos of amputees. And the crowd that turned out was equally entertaining. I saw a number of people who I hadn’t seen in many years. I also got to introduce Shari to my friends Nina Hartley and Ernest Greene. That was some fun.

It was a very fun evening. And as a piece of trivia: I’ve known Elayne since 1987, but she’s never actually stuck a needle through me. The one time I had an appointment to get pierced by her, she called in sick and so Jim Ward did it instead.

Tonight, Susan and I went on the Museum of Neon Art’s Holiday Lights tour. Being that it’s December, and the tour was after dark, it was cold by L.A. standards. We dressed warmly and brought along a couple of blankets, since the whole tour is conducted from the upper deck of a double-decker sightseeing bus.

It was a tremendously entertaining tour, but sadly, it didn’t transfer into photographs well. To take good photos at night, the camera has to be on a rock-solid platform to hold it steady enough. And the upper deck of the bus just wasn’t a steady enough platform. So if you want to see the lights, you’ll just have to take the tour. But it was certainly Great Fun.

On Saturday afternoon, Susan and I went out to Santa Monica to Bergamot Station. The occasion was to visit Track 16 Gallery for the “No Spitting, No Kidding” exhibit. This is a retrospective of Robbie Conal’s work. He was the midnight guerilla artist in Los Angeles during the ’80s and ’90s. He did satirical paintings of prominent political figures and then his crew would plaster the entire city with posters of them in big overnight raids. I always enjoyed seeing his work around the city, so it was a nice treat to see the original paintings, as well as a lot of other works that never were made into posters. The photo is one of his posters that was on a wall down the street from my old house in Hollywood back in 1990.

Afterward, we strolled around and looked in a lot of the other galleries at Bergamot Station, since there are a lot of different ones there. We particularly enjoyed the Gallery of Functional Art.

On the way home, we stopped off to visit my friend Kathleen in Westwood. I’d been telling Kathleen about Susan for some time, so she wanted to meet her. That was a fun time.

This afternoon, Susan and I went to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Bank of America is having a promotion where having a BofA credit card is good for free admission there on the first weekend of the month.

We went to see the “Los Angelenos” exhibit. For some reason, the opportunity to see the art collection of Cheech Marin was just too good to pass up.

Afterward, we went to see the Contemporary Art building. That was interesting. We saw a lot of nice art, and some pieces by famous recent artists as well. I think the giant balloon animal was our favorite.

Before we left the park, we took a walk around the tar pits. As always, I’m amazed at plants that grow right in the middle of the tar.

On Saturday afternoon, Susan and I went to the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena. I’d been wanting to go there for some time, and they were having an exhibit called “Chinaman’s Chance” about the Chinese immigrant experience. As it turned out, there wasn’t much to the Chinese exhibit. It was three artists whose art reflected their views of straddling the cultural divide. It was amusing, but not very filling.

The rest of the museum was nice, though. There was an exhibit of ceramics from China, along with other artifacts. One of the artifacts was a chair dating from the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644. When I read the card, my first thought was, “that’s one old chair.”

I got my renewed membership card for the Museum of Neon Art last week. They just reopened the museum in a new space on 4th St in downtown Los Angeles. And tonight, they had a reception for the new exhibits. I went down there with Susan from the morning bike ride, since we’d talked about it while riding up the canyon. With a membership, we got in free, and we got to enjoy some wine and snacks while looking at all the neon.

The new space is a very funky one. It looks like it used to be the lobby of a hotel in years gone by. There were big holes in the ceiling, and lots of new electrical wiring on the walls to power all the neon lights. It’s a bit smaller than the old space at Olympic and Hope, but it’s all right. They are still looking for a larger and more permanent space for the museum in the future.

The exhibits included one of soda neon signs, some regular neon artwork, and also a collection of photos of old soda advertising signs. It was pretty entertaining, and we had a nice time looking at it. And maybe in the summer, we will go on one of their neon cruises around the city.

Tonight is Art Night in Pasadena. And there was a group doing a bike ride around to visit all the museums. So, in the interest of getting out of the house and having some fun, I put the light on my bike and headed over there.

The group met in the courtyard at One Colorado. It was a pretty big group. We started out riding to the Norton Simon Museum, which I’d never been to before. We had about 30 minutes there before going on to the Pasadena History Museum. The exhibit there was about the history of the purse. A bit odd, but very entertaining. Then, on to the Armory Center for the Arts. The collection there was more to my liking, with lots of very strange pieces, and some that were outright disturbing.

There was a short interlude at the main Pasadena Public Library. They had coffee and snacks there. A very nice woman I’d met on the ride bought me a chocolate-chip cookie there, which was very sweet. Both the woman and the cookie, that is.

Next and last was a double at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and the Pacific Asia Museum. The PMCA was very nice, and had a lot of interesting pieces. Also, I got a nice picture of Pasadena City Hall off the roof there. And that was the rest of our evening. By the time we all trooped over to the Asia Museum, it was 10:00 and they were shutting the doors.

Still, it was a very fun time.

This afternoon, I took Lucinda and her friend for a little adventure in Hollywood.

First, we went to West Hollywood, where we went to M+B to see the Alison Jackson: Confidential photo show. This was a fairly small exhibit, but it was very amusing. I bought the book so we can see the rest of her photos.

After that, we went to the park in West Hollywood. The girls played there for a bit before we headed back to Hollywood to visit High Voltage Tattoo. This is the shop in “L.A. Ink“, which Lucinda and I have been enjoying recently. When we were first watching it, there was a scene of a person walking out he front door, and I recognized the JONS market across the street. And I realized that the shop was right around the corner from our old condo in Hollywood. So I’d promised Lucinda that I’d take her there to visit. We gawked for a bit and I bought Lucinda a shirt. And then we went home. It was a fun little afternoon adventure.

Saw this today in the L.A. Times:

Alison Jackson: Confidential An exhibition of photographs toying with the notion of celebrity. M+B, 612 N. Almont Drive, L.A.

This is an exhibit of photos of celebrity look-alikes, staging the pictures we’d like to see. The photos cover a full range:

• The impossible: Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed, and their baby;
• The improbable: Madonna ironing her clothes;
• The completely plausible: George Bush looking perplexed by Rubik’s Cube.

This looks like a hoot. Have a look at the gallery on their web site: http://www.mbfala.com/Jackson/Jackson_Confidential.html