Arts & Culture

Downtown Art and Music Brought Out from the Underground

By Ed Fuentes — February 18, 2008
5 Comments

Inside Red Dot’s café, “The Parties, The Punks, The Past, The Present” had a civilized panel of artists and former club owners talking about Downtown’s punk past without the sentimentality of reminiscing. Both speakers and audience shared the comfortable air of lounging in a familiar restaurant, talking about the events of the night before. The event, sponsored...

Tomorrow: Play Wii at the Orpheum

By Eric Richardson — February 15, 2008
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Saturday afternoon Nintendo is throwing a competition at the Orpheum for the soon to be released Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It’s a double win for Downtowners – the chance to hang out inside one of our great historic theaters and the chance to play someone else’s video games. The first 256 players will compete in L.A’s regional tournament...

DotDotDash: I [Heart] Art Edition

By Ed Fuentes — February 14, 2008
9 Comments

Off The Path, But Worth Noting: This morning Councilmember Jan Perry will unveil “Purple Heart,” a large-scale mosaic mural crafted by residents of Skid Row working with the nonprofit org Piece by Piece. . —The opening will be held at 11am at the Southern (412 East 5th Street), an SRO dedicated to Vets. Piece by Piece’s mission is to...

Documenting Past Witnesses Who Loved L.A.

By Ed Fuentes — February 14, 2008
3 Comments

Mariann Gatto is one of two curators for the El Pueblo Historical Monument. Her office on the third floor of the Biscailuz Building is crammed with personal and professional photos, including a number of her son, an image of the David Alfaro Siqueiros’ “Tropical America”, and photocopies of photographs dating back to early days of Los Angeles...

Memory No Longer In Service; No New Number

By Ed Fuentes — February 12, 2008

Curators Edgar Varela and Terry Elsworth invited local photographers who’ve documented the Arts District to exhibit archived work for a February 15th opening that debuts a new gallery space. Rather than showing photos, last month I asked Arts District resident and actor Jonathon Carter Schall if he wanted to collaborate and portray characters who may have passed...

DotDotDash: Pet Projects

By Ed Fuentes — February 07, 2008
1 Comment

A New Mural for Main Street

By Ed Fuentes — February 01, 2008
2 Comments

It’s up. My digital mural named “Main Street Recovery” is now installed and hanging on the front of Main Street’s Regent Theatre. The grassroots public art project is composed of photographs taken between September 2006 to September 2007, the 225th year of the City of Los Angeles. The time span saw a Downtown in transition and Main Street in recovery...

Capturing the Heart of Los Angeles

By Ed Fuentes — January 28, 2008
1 Comment

Leo Politi’s children’s books foretold the deeper story of a city’s ethnicity as seen in neighborhoods connected by trolleys––without stepping away from religious and cultural traditions. His book “Pedro, the Angel of Olvera Street” gives historical Olvera Street an identity beyond the 1930s commercial recreation of a Mexican village, and showed...

DotDotDash: Break in the Weather Edition

By Ed Fuentes — January 26, 2008

'Follow the Sun'

By Ed Fuentes — January 22, 2008

“Dude … you wouldn’t believe the day I just had.” 29 year old photographer Josh Spencer’s face had the look of a skateboarder who had just found the perfect urban playground. He did. Spencer had just gotten off a double-decker bus that was following the Downtown sun with architectural photographer Julius Shulman, known for a decades long body of work...