Where To Play In L.A. This Week
This week features more than enough playgrounds for both day and night, Angelenos---wow we need another name---Los Angeleans. Eagerly brace your brain and body to be hopping about stimulating happenings Friday night through Sunday afternoon covering every art form, including but not limited to full on visiting the 1920s and 1970s. The older I get, the more that daytime events reign appealingly supreme as I find myself ready to dose off by the time I used to be leaving the house for the night. This weekend, experiences in the light and dark are so enticing that I'll barely have to bite the bullet to get out of the house. Are you a napper? There's time for that too.
Sleepless: The Music Center After Hours
April 6 and April 7 11:30PM to 3AM
The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Is disco dead? Never. A two night only event at The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (regularly home to ballet and opera) seems fabulously promising if you're into visually artistic experiences and actually dancing, not strobe lights and grinding up on the body next to you in a deep fog. Sleepless: The Music Center After Hours starts Friday and Saturday at 11:30PM and ends at 3AM. Dublab DJs (the Coachella and seemingly everywhere peeps) will be spinning tunes around sets from an actual live band Friday (Luxxury) and Saturday (De Lux). It gets better. The nights will consist of art installations and film screenings. But what would make a disco scene complete? Rollerskating---and this event is not devoid of that. Keep your eyes peeled for rollerskating demos and "pop up dance happenings" by Invertigo Dance Theatre. If you're still not keen on shaking your booty in public, you can partake in creative typewriter exercises from Melrose Poetry Bureau. Love the disco look? Style yourself silly absorbing a fashion show and talent via DJ Lady Bunny's drag revue. Still hate being around people in the dark? No problem. The Pavillion's private chambers will be open for the taking if you need a time out from all of the stimuli. This event is my pick and the best pick if you and your eclectic friends have varying ideas on what fun is and how to productively spend their valuable weekend playtime. Please see the only photo I could find above. This photo is awful and depicts nothing, and I am still interested in going. Aren't you?
http://musiccenter.org/sleepless for tickets and more info
Spring Art Walk at The L.A. Brewery
April 7 and April 8 11AM to 6PM
The Brewery Arts Complex
Love art and wish you could visit the studio birthplaces of the finished pieces adorning formal gallery walls? Well, an artist party, most similar to an open house awaits you. It's bigger than that. The PBR Brewery used to be an Edison plant, and starting in the 80s, began to only rent to artists, earning it the title of the "world's largest art complex." Get lost on the 16-acre campus featuring over 100 artists' studios where you can intimately meet the artists and buy pieces straight from their studio lofts. If you're thinking paintings, paintings are a given, and might even sound a bit boring. So, if you're into more than just art you can hang on your wall, engulf yourself in studio dwellings of jewelry, fashion, sculpture, ceramics, prints, performances, and installations, as if each unique artisan unit wasn't already one. Remember, art takes limitless forms, and if you never thought of a furniture maker or an architect as an artist, keep up with The Anal Artist, and we will be sure to set you straight, which is ultimately an infinitely crooked masterpiece. This event only occurs twice a year, so a semi-priority if you can't wait another 6 months for the next. No need to prepare to spend the whole day there, but you will. Food trucks galore and a huge beer garden will supply you with all of the rations you need. Lost? An artist thought of that. Download the Brewery Artwalk App for iOS and Android. Spring Art Walk LA Brewery Art Colony is open to the public 11am to 6pm Saturday and Sunday so you definitely have flexibility as you plan your weekend itinerary of fun, culture, and festivities. Oh, and unfortunately no dogs allowed. Maybe Iguanas though?
breweryartwalk.com for more info
Paper-Thin Hotel
April 7 7pm to 11pm
Corey Helford Gallery
Opening Reception is Saturday April 7, 7-11 p.m, so you can squeeze it in between daytime and disco festivities, however it's not pressing. If you end up napping through this one and would rather enter this experience less populated, you can visit this installation through May 5. However, artists David Connelly and Zoey Taylor (together known as Dosshaus collective) will be wandering in cardboard costumes about the multi-room cardboard crafted exhibition amid the length of the reception. Decisions, decisions.
coreyhelfordgallery.com for more info
Roaring '20s Lawn Party
April 8 12pm to 6pm
Griffith Park
As if going back to Disco wasn't enough (let's face it, nothing is ever enough these days), Griffith park is going even further back to The Roaring 20s. Yes, the roaring 20s, which is another dance happy period of history. The Roaring 20s Lawn Party will spill off a centerpiece of the existing 1926 built merry-go-round with live era bands, encouraging dancing, games, and contests. Get your foxtrot face on as you pose for photo ops (these are always fun to post on Instagram, because I know that's what we're both thinking), play horseshoes and croquet (which I love, AND we don't even have to bring the supplies or set it up!), and try to make it with the pro Charleston dancers. If you have kids, I'm sure this event will have so much entertaining nonsense it will barely feel like you have kids. Personally, I definitely don't think I will spend the day there, but it's definitely worth a flapper waltz through. I still find the ability to engulf myself in another decade alluring as hell when it presents itself. It's a break from self (which I often need) and allows an adjusted perspective that my mind cannot create on its own often enough. The dive into another day and time is a performance piece in and of itself and one hell of a social experiment, as much as I allow it to be lived and not just observed. That being said, this event could be pretty weak depending on the crowd involved, who may be quite pretentious and not interested in the experience I described above. Proceed with caution.
roaringtwentiesstreetjam.com for tickets and more info
Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece
April 11 7pm
Book Soup
Stanley Kubrick fanatic? #MeToo Fascinated by the creative processes behind works of art by your hand picked list of geniuses? #MeToo An intimate Wednesday with author Michael Benson, whose book delves into the ingenious technique and progression of director Stanley Kubrick and author Arthur C. Clarke, and includes a look into a domestic Kubrick via interviews with his widow. I'm itching for a peek.
booksoup.com/event/michael-benson-discusses-and-signs-space-odyssey-stanley-kubrick-arthur-c-clarke-and-making for more info
The Exhibition Back-burner.
(for when there's still time for you to find time)
"Tattoo: An Exhibition"
Daily until April 15
The Natural History Museum
This is another touring exhibit first seen in 2014 at the Musee du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. Tattoo: An Exhibition displays the history of body ink going back 5,000 years. The LA showing includes a look at California's own tattoo history and even a recreated version of the oldest continuously run tattoo parlor in America, Bert Grimm's World Famous Tattoo.
http://nhm.org for tickets and more info
Something Resembling Truth
Daily until May 13
The Broad
Jasper Johns retrospective of over 120 pieces never to be see in LA. Free admission first Thursdays April 5 and May 3 from 4-7pm. The Broad is always a fun time, and if it sucks, MOCA is right across the street.
http://thebroad.org for tickets and more info
King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh
Daily until January 19
California Science Center
The collection is the largest ever to be displayed outside of Egypt. LA is just one location as part of a years-long international tour. Why now? Well, it's the centennial of the discovery of King Tut's tomb by British archeologist Howard Carter in 1922. Don't worry, you have plenty of time, it's open from 10am to 5pm daily until January 19th of next year.
http://californiasciencecenter.org for tickets and more info
Museum of Failure
Daily until March 8, 2019
Hollywood & Highland
From Sweden to Hollywood, this exhibit with spend 1 year inviting Los Angelans and beyond a look into great failures over human history. This museum is a reminder when in this world it seems there is no time for failure (or that any misstep is death sentence of perpetual inability), failures often precede works of art, and if we don't learn to learn from and later laugh at ours, we will become resistant to trying and in turn resistant to living with our imperfect selves or imperfections. They are there for a reason, and they have a purpose. Our greatest failures as artists have the potential to birth our greatest assets if we take the time to channel them.
http://failuremuseum.com for tickets and more info
Noah's Ark
Permanent Exhibition
Skirball Cultural Center
A permanent collection for kids, yet playing and climbing a life size arc filled with animals sounds like a great time for me. Finding your inner child as an adult is a must if you are going to survive in this world where people, places, and things old and new become less and less mind blowing. Ya feel me? Oh they invented a flying car? Figured they'd do that.
Sensory Sensitive Fridays encourage and accommodate through art special demos and activities for children with developmental disabilities such as Autism. I find this very very spectacular as studies show that Autistic children learn from and interact best with other children their own age as opposed to adults. Add art to the equation = gold.
https://www.skirball.org/noahs-ark for tickets, calendar of events, and more info
Something I missed? Let me know, email art@theanalartist.life