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January 4, 2008
Interview with Allee Willis of Bubbles and Cheesecake
I first met Allee Willis in the mid-nineties when we worked together on "Willisville", a virtual world of 19 or so wildly amusing fictional inhabitants of a town by the same name, accessible only through the Internet. It was a grand experiment, funded by Intel, and like so many things that Allee creates, years before its time. Allee is one of the bravest, truest artists I know. Brilliant ideas come hurtling out of her faster than most of our brains can process. She seems to thrive teetering on the edge of either disaster or brilliant success, ready to leap fully into the next thing, forging ahead wherever her creative juices take her.
Recently Allee teamed up with recording artist Holly Palmer to create and publish their own music, skipping the established record labels all together. Their video It's a Woman Thang was featured on YouTube and has had over 800,000 downloads to date. Allee is a grammy award winning songwriter, over 50 million songs sold, used to write a lot for Earth Wind and Fire, wrote a lot of the music to Beverly Hills Cop (remember Neutron Dance?). She co-wrote the music to the Broadway show "Color Purple", produced by Oprah, based on the book by Alice Walker. I've always been awed and amazed by Allee Willis and am delighted that she agreed to be interviewed about what motivates her and the latest stage of her career:
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June 9, 2007
Portraits of Women in 500 Years of Western Art
Found on YouTube. From DaVinci through Picasso.
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June 3, 2007
Hundertwasser and Quixote Winery
See more photos in the Flickr photoset
Tucked away at the end of a long private road at the base of the jagged edges of Stags' Leap cliffs in Napa Valley is the first, last, and only building in North America designed by Austrian artist Frederick Hundertwasser, the Quixote Winery. As a participant of the Taste3 conference, I recently had the privilege of touring this architectural delight. Here are a few highlights.
Hundertwasser was a singularly unusual man. An environmentalist, a nudist (he gave a press conference in the nude on at least one occasion), a ladies man (he died in his 70s on the QE2 on route back from Asia with his 20-something Japanese girlfriend), Hundertwasser was a wildly distinctive artist (think of mash-up of Klimt and Gaudi), whose works spanned from prints to public housing to postage stamps.
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August 6, 2004
Cartier-Bresson Dies at 95
Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1954
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson died Tuesday at the age of 95. I first encountered his work at Symantec's Norton office in Santa Monica. Peter Norton, founder of Norton Utilities, had at one time a large art collection in place in the offices there. Walking the halls everyday I would pass the photo above and stop for a few seconds to delight in the pure joy expressed by the boy in the photo. I had no idea who this Henri Cartier Bresson person was, but the photo so inspired me I wrote down his name for future reference. Later searches on the web revealed that Cartier-Bresson was one of the most influencial, renown photojournalists of the 20th century. The Peter Fetterman Gallery has an extensive collection of Cartier-Bresson's works.
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June 25, 2004
Mary Temple - 1 Million Ellipsoids
Artist Mary Temple finally completed her 1 million ellipsoid project, comprising several hundred orginal works. Drawn with one color of ink pen on a translucent vellum sheet, each work has 1000 to 5000 ellipsoids reflecting form and color in a thoughtful, yet playful and meditative manner. The works are sequential and took several years to get to the final millionth ellipsoid. I recently purchased this piece, which was completed near the end of the project. Everyone here loves looking at it.
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June 6, 2004
NYC - Robert Longo at the Whitney
Robert Longo
Untitled (Hell's Gate) 2001
Charcoal on paper
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April 16, 2004
Jean Shin - House of Cards
My Jean Shin arrived! Jean Shin is a featured artist at New York City's Mixed Greens contemporary art gallery. Her works are mainly sculptural and she uses everyday objects that we tend to throw away - laundry lint, umbrellas, used lottery tickets - and in this case, rolodex cards. This piece, Carte Blanche II, is a photogravure print of a construction she made.
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April 10, 2004
SFMOMA Artists Gallery Sale
Heads up. The SFMOMA Artists Gallery is hosting their annual sale of art by contemporary West Coast artists May 5-9th, 2004. The opening reception is Wednesday May 5th, 6-9pm, at Fort Mason, next to Greens. I and a friend bought pieces here last year at the sale that we love and the prices were fabulous. Everything is 50% off.
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March 27, 2004
NYC - Chuck Close at the Met
Emma, 2002 43x35 inches
If you are in NYC, an exhibit not to miss is Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibit shows over a hundred works, many of them demonstrating the progressive stages of various print processes including lithographs, wood cuts, and silk screens. The exhibit closes April 18th.
Pictured above is my favorite of the exhibition, a 113-color Japanese-style ukiyo-e woodcut. Many thanks to Barbara Linhart for the recommendation!
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March 19, 2004
NYC - Vik Muniz, The Armory
Last weekend I had the great pleasure of accompanying Paige West and Kelly Stoezel of Mixed Greens to The Armory Show, NYC's premier contemporary art event. Wandering the aisles was a great way to get exposure to the New York art scene. Many thanks to Kelly especially for guiding me through the melange.
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March 15, 2004
NYC - Mixed Greens
(Paige West, Elise, Kelly Stoetzel)
If you happen to be in NYC and you love art, I recommend a stop at Mixed Greens on 26th St between 11th and 12th avenues. (601 W26th, 11th floor). Mixed Greens is a contemporary art gallery like no other. Mixed Greens has evolved out of founder Paige West's vision that collecting art should be a fun, inspirational activity, not one in which you have to deal with beyond-cool, snobby and snooty art dealers. Paige has even set up a blog devoted to art collecting - Art Addict - to help take the mystery out of the process. Mixed Greens deals primarily with emerging artists, who, because they are not yet established, can offer their works at more accessible prices, perfect for the new collector.
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March 14, 2004
NYC - Butterflies!
Stopped by the Scope Art Fair (www.scope-art.com) this last weekend in NYC. Scope is a contemporary art fair that is put on in hotel rooms, each dealer getting or sharing her own room. This year's New York Scope is at the Gansevoort Hotel which is still being completed. The fair was fun, though a little crowded. Some of the artists made the best use possible of the fact that they were exhibiting in bedrooms as can be seen above. This artist, whose name I never got, made cut-outs of butterflies from aluminum beer cans.
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