On the heels of the recent SoCal beef recall and a property being sold abut the Hollywood Sign, PETA announced an idea yesterday of buying or, at least, renting the next-door land to place 5-letters to the left of the Hollywood sign. If all becomes said and done (they wish), Hollywood's icon would read "Go Veg Hollywood." PETA does not have the $20 million needed to purchase the property, but they "did write to the......

The last time, it was locally based artist Shepard Fairey. This time, it's the Coachella Valley natives Carlos Ramirez and Armando Lerma, known as The Date Farmers. Upper Playground, a San Francisco based online store and collective of artists, has asked the Date Farmers to create a campaign poster to be mass-distributed on offset posters throughout Texas prior to the primary on March 4th. "For too long we have been plagued by mediocrity and incompetence......

Jim Wirt is a St. Louis native living in LA, but most people know him as Gay Bigfoot. The 42-year-old North Hollywood resident moved out to Los Angeles in 1996 and is a local artist who recently found himself in the middle of some online censorship when he tried to get one of his pieces printed on a t-shirt. Here's his story... You're an artist, you had some art you wanted to put on a......

Andrew Hurvitz, who many know from Here in Van Nuys, snaps this shot of the behemoth Rice Bowl image at Wilshire and Vermont and submitted it the LAist Featured Photos Pool. Some love the architecture and art: Even though I find this neither simple nor minimalistic, I like it a lot!" Some hate it: "That is an ugly, architecturally inept building." The LA Times doesn't like it either. Photo by Here in Van Nuys......

Los Angeles philanthropist, Eli Broad (rhymes with road), has decided not to give his massively large and impressive private collection of art to museums, rather, keeping the collection in house under control of a private foundation according to the New York Times. One of the assumed recipients of the art was LACMA, where the new $56 million Broad Contemporary Art Museum is scheduled to open next month. However, even with Broad's name on the......

This unexpected Tiki God has materilized on Mildred Ave. between Pacific and Dell--steps from my weekend gig in Venice. A few weeks back when I caught a glimpse of a resident with a machete, I was a little concerned. Thankfully, this friendly neighborhood Tiki was the result! I wonder if he is meant to be Lono, the god of Peace, or Kanaloa, the god of the Sea, or just a whimsical protector of the local......

Have a taste for deliciously scary eye candy? Check out Christopher Ulrich's phantasmagorical paintings: Demoneater Series One in Santa Monica! ...

The Human Calender, a Brady Bunch-esque representation of the calender....

Could you imagine Los Angeles without the Getty Museum? If that serene white chunk of Italian marble nestled above the 405 suddenly removed its bulk to some other parts, would you notice? Would you care? An article in yesterday morning's LA Times reconsiders the Richard Meier-designed edifice in the light of its 10th anniversary, and in doing so, asks some important questions about the nature and integrity of architecture in Los Angeles. "there is......

Photo by Ryan Jesena......

Picasso. Giacometti. Kandinsky. Klee. Brancusi. So begins a list of 20th century artists whose works are part of the largest single donation to LACMA in over 40 years. Private LA art collectors Henri Lazarof, a composer, and his wife Janice, a daughter of the late S. Mark Taper, gave 130 paintings, sculptures, and other modernist works to LACMA this week. The gift is valued at an estimated $100 million plus according to the LA Times.......

The Whole 9 is hosting their holiday party tomorrow (Tuesday) night from 6-9:30PM and would like to invite you to come! What started as an online community where creative, entrepreneurial open-minded people can meet and share, showcase their work and get work has turned into a creative space and art gallery in Culver City. The gallery has shows where the artists are selected from portfolios on The Whole 9 website. The host of the most......

A series of animated shorts titled "Geometry of Circles," featuring music composed by Philip Glass, kaleidoscopically tranced out legions of Sesame Street viewers in the early 80's. The clip above features four of these shorts strung together almost seamlessly, even though they were first broadcast separately, in some cases years apart. According to the Muppet Wiki, "Geometry of Circles" dates back to 1979.......

This Saturday night, high art meets sex with the release of Grafuck, a book featuring some of the best artists out there creating 208 pages of erotic imagery to titillate your creative urges. To celebrate the release, Gallery Nucleus is having a book signing and art show, featuring the artists and the work they've created for the book. The book is filled with all sorts of art ranging from photography to painting, illustration to......

What's better than spending your Friday night among free donuts and over 85 pieces of art from The Simpsons? Yeah, that's right, nothing. Starting at 6 p.m. tomorrow night, Every Picture Tells A Story on Montana Ave. will have an art opening showing off and selling 40 original production drawings from The Simpons Movie, over 25 original production cells from TV show and limited edition prints and treatments from film. Many of the prints are......

Welcome Home LA, a group of students from the USC Roski School of Fine Arts, recently hit Skid Row using performance/public/street art to draw attention to the Downtown neighborhood and its issues. "We want to utilize public art and the reproduction and documentation of public art to bring attention to marginalized urban space," the Welcome Home LA website explains. "These images, which allude to homes, human presence, security and comfort, will be juxtaposed with......

Opening tonight, less than an hour from now, is Shepard Fairey's Imperfect Union show at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery. The show features probably near 100 new pieces of work from Shepard, showing how truly creative and artistic he still is. The work looks like his standard cut stencil style, but when you really get up close to his pieces, you start to see how truly great he is, actually. His pieces feature tons of......

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James Jean signing at Gallery Nucleus....

It's sexy, it's sacrilegious, it's scandalous, and it's just in time for Christmas. LA's hottest art curator Lenora Claire has done it again with a new collection of saucy art pieces guaranteed to get folks hot and bothered. Mixing Christmas themes with ample female breasts and featuring the work of Austin Young, Kitten Natividad, Buff Monster, and our fave the Gay Bigfoot, among others, Claire chose not to rest on her laurels of the......

Stuffed, A Plush Food Show, features over 30 artists creating culinary feasts made of felts and fabrics....

Occasionally it doesn’t totally suck to work my weekend job on the Westside. Especially if there are art openings going on. I got to use that: “Well, I’m in the neighborhood anyway.” excuse last Saturday night. After a “hearty” Krishna carbo load at Govinda’s Restaurant, I and fellow art crawler, MXL, hit Mark Mothersbaugh’s Rugs During Wartime and Peacetime exhibition cum warehouse sale at the Scion gallery in Culver City. (Yep, that Mark Mothersbaugh,......

I first saw this house in 1986. Whenever I'm in the area, I take a quick detour down a side alley to check it out. It has gradually evolved, with a new mosaic or glass feature appearing each time I drive by. I saw a guy working up on the roof about six months ago, and he seemed too young to have been working on the house for 20 years. Maybe it is a......

Secret Headquarters will be displaying the artwork of comic book artist, Seth Fisher....

Monday Shalom Auslander presents Foreskin's Lament 7pm @ Vroman's Valerie Plame Wilson presents Fair Game 7pm @ Carpenter Performing Arts Center, Long Beach Barbara Firestone presents Autism Heroes 7pm @ Dutton's Slash presents Slash 7pm @ Borders, Torrance Lawrence Wright presents The Looming Tower 7:30pm @ UCLA Tuesday David Plante, with host Mark Danielewski, presents ABC 7pm @ Book Soup Michael Lent presents Christmas Letters from Hell 7pm @ Vroman's Tommy Lasorda & Bill Plaschke......

Replace 'Please' with Fast & 'Thank you' with Good, a new show at Lab 101....

A brief overview of the new Takashi Murakami exhibit at the MOCA....

A review of Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich....

Like most people, proximity to death frightens me. Somehow the beauty of the headstones and obelisks overshadows my fear. To me, cemetaries are like museums. The mediums themselves - cool white marble, wrought iron fences, cracked bricks and mortar speak to me. But what really entrances me is the statuary, especially the angels. Their serene countenance and peacefulness somehow embraces penultimate sorrow. They have the ability to show respect for loss while still offering......

Saturday night the Copro Nason gallery hosted the Talking Board exhibit (more popularly known as Ouija boards - how do I do the little TM trademark symbol on this keyboard?). The show was held in Bergamot Station, a really cool grouping of galleries in Santa Monica, known for great art spaces (and great parties). The talking boards were unbelievable, even down to the creative pointers, which ran the gamut from a crow skull to......