Jerry McMillan's torn bags
" It is portal to a world of discovery, as his collection has been to me."







Over the past month, I've been immersed in Richard Dorso's collection that will be up for auction on October 9 at LAMA. Dorso's vast collection spans many decades, countries, and mediums. Like all great collectors, he collected what simply captured his heart and imagination. His collection speaks of not only the art, but of the people he interacted with, friends, art dealers, and artists. Last week while working with his collection for the upcoming YHBHS installation, I came across a sculpture, protected in a plexiglass glass box: inside, a torn paper bag revealing a "door." A portal to a new world of discovery, as his collection has been to me. This work is Untitled (torn bag) from 1971, by Jerry McMillan.

Jerry McMillan is also part of Cherry Martin's restaging of curator Peter Bunnellʼs landmark 1970 exhibition, Photography into Sculpture. "Described in the original wall text as “the first comprehensive survey of photographically formed images used in a sculptural or fully dimensional manner,” Photography into Sculpture brought together a cross-section of artists from across the United States and Canada. The show encapsulated the radical gestures of late 1960's photographic practice, both inside and outside the photo world. " Cherry Martin's programming is some of the best in this city, and this show is another example of their approach to contemporary + historical programming that is so needed, and so rare to find in a private gallery.

It's a rocking time to be in L.A. Make time for Pacific Standard Time events, or you'll be sorry.... - David John



images above:

Left: Lot 84 Jerry McMillian Untitled (Torn Bag) 1971 Mixed Media #52 of 100 11" x 6" x 5"; Box 13" x 8.5" x 7" Estimate $200 - 300 To be offered in the October 9, 2011 Auction of The Estate of Richard Dorso at LAMA

Right: Jerry McMillan Torn Bag 1968 Photo-offset craft paper bag construction with shelf and Plexiglas cover, Cherry Martin Gallery






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Pacific Standard Time!
(Hollywood is a Verb, man)





For the next few months here in Southern California, Pacific Standard Time will be hitting full force! More art + design than one can possible take in, but hey, it's worth a try, right? The events are beginning to unfold, for a full listing, go here.... For those of us that treasure the history of Southern CA and understand the significance and importance of this work, this is an exciting time to be living in Los Angeles.... palm trees, endless boulevards, forgotten light, fallen stars, and shattered dreams...

I'm particularly excited to be taking the press tour of the Getty's exhibitions: Crosscurrents in LA Painting and Sculpture 1950-1970, Greetings from LA: Artists and Publics 1950-1980, and From Start to Finish: De Wain Valentine's Gray Column. And speaking of De Wain Valentine, LAMA's upcoming auction will feature two works by De Wain Valentine, that were part of Richard Dorso's California collection.




"I look at the unfortunate things: misfortunes, underbellies, sadness. The things that go on not just in a city, but everywhere. The weight of history and all these things can be looked at negatively, but they also can be looked at positively. I see a lot when I drive here. Sometimes I’ll just be driving along and I’ll see a building that just assaults me and insults my intelligence. And the entire thing is so nasty its like having someone spit lemon juice in your face, but there is some effect there that makes me roll on and continue and make something of it. These negative things do work in my favor. They influence me to take motion on things. And that’s where I think my art comes from."

- Ed Ruscha, from an interview in FABRIK magazine, here..



Pacific Standard Time is a collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California coming together for the first time to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene. The celebration begins October 2011 and runs to April 2012. The image above on the left is the cover of the exhibition catalog: Pacific Standard Time Los Angeles Art, 1945–1980 Author: Edited by Rebecca Peabody, Andrew Perchuk, Glenn Phillips, and Rani Singh, with Lucy Bradnock.. purchase here..








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Don Bachardy's "Portraits of L.A. Artists"
at Craig Krull, Los Angeles
&
Beatrice Wood: Career Woman—Drawings, Paintings, Vessels, & Objects
at Santa Monica Museum of Art

2 portraits :Ed Ruscha & Frank Gehry,
pencil on paper, 1978

Shows galore! This Saturday, a show I've been looking forward to opens at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica. Part of the Pacific Standard Time events, Don Bachardy's "Portrait of L.A. Artists" includes portraits of Mary Corse, Robert Graham, Ed Ruscha, Chuck Arnoldi, Billy Al Bengston, Vija Clemins, Craig Kauffman, Joe Goode, Tony Berlant, Larry Bell, Guy Dill, and many of Don himself.

Also, Santa Monica Museum is opening a new exhibition of California artist, Beatrice Wood: Career Woman—Drawings, Paintings, Vessels, and Objects. It will offer a comprehensive survey and a new assessment of this emblematic California artist—a scholarly, commemorative evaluation of Wood, whose extraordinary life and career traversed and contributed to the cultural and artistic highlights of the entire 20th century. (Adam Silverman did the design installation for the show!)







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It Happened at Pomona: Art at the Edge of Los Angeles 1969–1973 "demonstrates the ways in which several groups of artists who were associated with Pomona College between 1969 and 1973 engaged with the art of their time in Southern California and contributed to a transformative moment for art history both in Los Angeles and internationally."




YHBHS is gearing up for Pacific Standard Time exhibitions, that are about to explode in about 60 different venues all over Los Angeles. Anyone excited about California design, Post War Art + Sculpture + Design should have plenty to keep their minds & eyes occupied in the upcoming months. First stop, will be Pomona to check out the latest exhibition, It Happened at Pomona, Part 1: Hal Glicksman at Pomona August 30–November 6, 2011....

"The highlight of this exhibition will be the creation of a new work by Michael Asher in response to his landmark 1970 installation at Pomona College, and the re-creations of seminal installations by Lloyd Hamrol and Tom Eatheron. Asher’s 1970 architectural intervention dramatically altered two of the museum’s adjacent galleries (the South and West Galleries), transforming them into two triangular spaces joined by a narrow opening that severely restricted the flow of light into one space while keeping the other space permanently open to the street outside.

"Like many artists of his generation, Michael Asher took his lead from Minimalism’s theatricality, which was designed to enhance viewers’ perceptual awareness of their role within the exhibition space. Yet where many of Asher’s peers responded by expanding their practice into the more temporal realms of film and performance, Asher focused on the temporal as a condition of the spatial, which aligned his work more specifically with architecture. Overall, Asher’s entire oeuvre has investigated how viewers encounter specific sites, primarily spaces dedicated to the presentation of visual art. As a result, Asher’s work is typically associated with the Conceptual art practice of Institutional Critique". (text taken from here)

read more here...

image above, Michael Asher, installation, 1970. Viewing out of gallery toward street from small triangular area, Pomona College Museum of Art. Photograph courtesy of the Frank J. Thomas Archives.








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Sam Maloof + Pacific Standard Time = :)

The House that Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945–1985
Sept. 24, 2011–Jan. 30, 2012, Los Angeles, @ The Huntington


I just spent a good portion of the morning looking over the upcoming exhibitions that will be part of PACIFIC STANDARD TIME..... This fall, Los Angeles will be full of some pretty exciting exhibits.... I'll be posting probably tons of info, and will be sharing some exciting news along the way. Stay tuned:) One show I am particularly excited about it the exhibition that will be happening at The Huntington in Pasadena. The show is called "Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945–1985 ", and I believe will be shown in the space that "The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs" was shown last year....

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"Sam Maloof (1916–2009) was a woodworker born and raised in Southern California who became a nationally recognized leader of the American studio furniture movement—a movement that favored the aesthetics of craft and the handmade over the machine and mass-production....

The exhibition gathers together works from several private and public collections to shed new light on the rich network of influences and exchanges that developed among artists and artisans living in the Pomona Valley in this dynamic period of American art. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog and related programming. “The House that Sam Built” is part of Pacific Standard Time. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together more than 60 cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the L.A. art scene. (please read more here)






go to the Huntington here....
go to the Sam Maloof Foundation here...

above image taken from past LAMA auction catalog.....
new LAMA Auction coming up June 26th! more info here...










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