Lisa Derrick

Barnsdall Art Park is vital part of Los Angeles — and municipal art gallery and park that the LA City Council now wants to privatize, citing budget issues. To do so would limit citizens’ access to enjoy and create art and go against the goals of the land’s donor. Sadly, the privatization seems to be steamrolling ahead with minimal community outrage input as a way to keep Barnsdall open.

I love candy. And when I travel I bring it home.  But sometimes you just want to look at the wrappers.

Coolly retro-themed artist SHAG — a.k.a. Josh Agle — is the in-person host for next weekend’s Mondo Lounge III convention in Las Vegas which focuses on the culture, art and aesthetics of mid-20th Century America, specifically that brief shining period, Post-War, pre-grassy knoll when all things seemed possible, glorious and beautiful.

There’s more growing in Humboldt than marijuana. I’m staying on a farm where pounds of potatoes have been harvested, along with apples, zucchini, and edible greens. Since it had rained a couple days earlier, I picked up a friend and we went frolicking in the secret spots where edible mushrooms erupt. But I succumbed to home grown zucchini again, making so far 6 loaves of zucchini bread with apples picked from the orchard. Here is a basic recipe with my tweaks.

Beyond Eden, held at Barnsdall Park features a number of local galleries showing some of the top West Coast artists. It, like the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, creates a pilgrimage for strolling art aficionados.

Los Angeles art as we know it–and as it has been carried through to the rest of the country for the past 30 years–would not have been possible without the skill, genius and vision of Robert Williams. Williams’ work incorporates pop iconography, not just modern pop kitsch like hot rods and lusty ladies–though he executes those beautifully–but ancient symbols, gods, goddesses, historical figures, making each painting a learning experience. It’s eye candy that’s good for you, with enough information to make you think and learn and enough space for viewers to develop their own concepts and thoughts about the work and its meanings.

Food Sunday: In Which I Attempt Biscuits

There’s a lot to see in Istanbul, and my few days there certainly didn’t do justice to the sights of the city. Though I hit the Big Four–the Grand Bazaar, Topkapi Palace, the Blue Mosque and Ayaysofia, as well as the Justinian Cisterns and the mausoleums of the sultans, I didn’t take the commuter ferry through the Bosphorus; nor dine at Haci Baba or Borsa, and I opted out of the Spice Market.

For decades, homemade “Polynesian” food meant ghastly suburban gastronomy: Charred meat in sticky, salty marinades, soggy coconut battered, deep fried shrimp, and neon-colored fruity rum drinks–perfectly, nay desperately, suited for washing down broiled rumaki–bastardized versions of the recipes created by master mixologists like Joe Scialom and Don Beach. But by the mid-1980s, underground culture hunters had discovered and fallen in love with tiki via the music of Martin Denny and vintage clothing, a fantasy detour on the path carved by punk. These adventurers set to work revitalizing the style.

A unique art show runs August 19 through 22 at the Crown Plaza Hotel in San Diego featuring 25 artists renown in tiki and lowbrow/pop surrealism circles Heather Watts, Tim Biskup, DEVO’s Mark Motherbaugh, Isabel Samarasa, Crazy Al Evans, Claudette Barjoud aka Miss Fluff, Ken Ruzic/Little Lost Tiki, Derek Yaniger, Jason Rodgers and Mia Rodgers, and Ken Ruzic/Little Lost Tiki who’ve created works using plaster casts of women’s torsos–including burlesque artists and tiki aficionados as their inspiration and canvases–to raise awareness in the alt/underground scene about breast cancer prevention and detection.