Joshua Michael Patterson for Sovereign Code

Had a nice portrait session at the studio this week with designer Joshua Michael Patterson of Sovereign Code. These images are for self promotion.

LA LIVE Christmas Tree Lighting

Popped by LA Live last night for the Christmas Tree Lighting. I heard LeAnn Rimes was supposed to perform, but she was nowhere to be found. No great loss, haha.

The tree is pretty cool, made up of thousands of programmable LED lights. They also have a cute little ice skating rink right in front of the Nokia Center. Skating is 8 bucks including rental, which is the same price as the Pershing Square rink. Pershing’s version is slightly bigger, yet not quite as glitzy.
Enjoy!

I take pictures.

New Folding Bike shrinks to 26″!

I love riding my bike and I’m a huge cycling advocate. But I feel like if the metro was a part of my commute, I’d reconsider using my track bike since it would be pretty rude to everyone else on the train.
There are a billion and one different folding bikes on the market, most of them pretty unattractive. I came across this one today that looks a bit nicer, appears substantially better thought out, and folds up smaller than anything else I’ve seen.

Demo:

From the video it’s tough to see if this designer has sorted out the drive train issues yet, so it will be cool to see if this ever makes it to production.
Apparently he has approached multiple manufacturers and gotten some interest, along with having been a favorite to win the James Dyson Award.

Maggy Barry’s “Wrapped in Beauty” Fashion Show

The Downtown Fashion Walk has been gaining a bit of momentum here in LA over the past few months. After launching in September, this fledgling event had a wobbly start with low attendance and a lack of direction. To be fair, it’s always tough to spearhead a new project, and I applaud the effort. I do everything I can to support my neighborhood from promoting to event coverage. It’s nice to see everyone’s hard work beginning to pay off a bit.

While Fashion Walk is far from brilliant, this month held a few more actual happenings than in months past. The usual map was passed around with the same boutiques doing nothing new, but The Alexandria Hotel kicked it up a notch by hosting a fashion show for Maggy Barry. Admission was open to the public and there were quite a few people on hand to check things out.

The format of the show was something they seem to have borrowed from Box Eight Studios. Instead of traditional runway style, there was a live photo shoot of the collection. So all of the pieces from the Spring/Summer 2010 collection were paraded in front of the camera, and an all-too cliche’ looking “fashion photographer” shot thousands of images. Normally I am very amiable with other photographers and I love to support others in my field. But when you’re a chubby middle aged man wearing a scarf and sunglasses inside WHILE you’re shooting, sagging your cargo pants with your big belly hanging out the front I feel comfortable shaking my head at your silliness. Guy was a bit too over the top for my taste with his Blow Up-esque methodology.

The atmosphere was fun, and I noticed quite a few people dressed in their finest fashion attire happy to be parading around at the show. Lots of fun styling, music and some hard to see visuals. Sushi was going around on trays carried by topless models provided by Naked Catering.

Here are some images from the evening.

(sub)urban home Brings Style to Downtown

Many people may have noticed the beautiful new space opened recently at 5th and Main. It’s called (sub)urban home and it’s the brainchild of LA designer Ronnie Gene. About half of the pieces in the shop are from other designers, and the rest are all designed and produced in-house. I stopped by to check out the situation yesterday and had a great chat with Ronnie. Seriously nice guy with a lot of passion for what he does and a vision for the future of downtown that’s really exciting.

They have some awesome stuff in there, from ceramic skulls to custom, one of a kind sleigh beds. This is such a cool addition to the gallery row area and downtown in general. There are a few other home furnishing stores around the area that really don’t do anything for me, so it’s refreshing to see such great contemporary work in a great space.

(sub)urban home will be hosting a surprise gallery tonight for downtown art walk that will be worth checking out.

Bottom line, the shop is beautiful, the owner is great and they stock some really gorgeous home decor. Go buy something! Go buy a lot of somethings!

Smirnoff: Be There benefit event for Surfrider Foundation

Last night LoftSeven played host to yet another great event. Smirnoff threw a benefit for the Surfrider Foundation and it was a blast. Free cocktails, live music featuring Lil Dragon, and some excellent appetizers. I love seeing so many people in the penthouse. That place was built for a party!

Art Openings for Clive Barker and John Santerineross

Downtown LA is always hopping and tonight isn’t any exception. A pair of art openings on the same block are sure to stir up a few hornets in the not too distant future.

John Santerineross has been at the center of heated discussion and condemnation from religious groups for some time. His previous shows have been met with critical acclaim and conservative lambasting because of his intense erotic subject matter and use of iconographic symbolism.

“John Santerineross is mentioned extensively in Catholic League President Bill Donahue’s newly released (September 2009) book entitled “Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America” (ISBN# 978-0446547215) along with several other groundbreaking artists including Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe in Chapter 4: Artistic Sabotage. Donohue states:

“In 2006 at KFMK Gallery in New York City, an exhibit of the work of John Santerineross featured a photo of a woman with her genitals cut and bleeding; a crucifix was placed below the woman, and the blood from her mutilated genitalia was shown running into a wine glass. Just so we got the point, the photo was dubbed “The Transformation of the Madonna”. These artistic assassins want to artistically assassinate Christianity, especially Catholicism. They are not artists who are simply making a statement. They are nihilists. Not to understand the difference between artists who protest Christianity’s teachings on sexuality, and moral anarchists out to sabotage Christianity altogether, is not only to miss what is at stake, it does an injustice to their work.”[1] ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Santerineross )

Tonight’s works feature nude figures in various stages of discomfort with substantial propping and staging. As I perused the exhibit tonight (a preview soft opening before tomorrow’s art walk) I found myself drawing similarities between Santerineross’ work and that of Joel-Peter Witkin . While stylistically similar and evocative of like-minded mood, the images in tonight’s show don’t take things nearly as far as Witkin’s more salacious work. Todd/Browning gallery on 5th St at Spring, the host of tonight’s show, is known for carrying books and artworks that appeal to the edgier end of the art set. This exhibit will no doubt continue them on that path.

As I was getting ready to leave, I overheard the owner mention something about an even more scandalous opening that was going on. I was surprised to find that it was a Clive Barker show of paintings and photographs at Bert Green and that it was sure to be an outrageous display.

The show is called Imagining Man, but it leaves little to the imagination. Barker’s photographs are highly charged homosexual images of men in body paint, blood, costumes, or nothing at all in bondage and torture scenes. Though artfully lit and composed, they could be very upsetting for the faint of heart. Models seem to have been selected based on the size of their “equipment” among other criteria. The sign on the door stated no minors were allowed without a parent, for obvious reasons.
Barker also exhibited sketches of skulls, props from his photo shoots and some inspired paintings. No doubt he is a talented painter, and pieces were not unreasonably priced. Prints of the photographs were available in signed limited editions for $300 and signed open editions for $50. Paintings ranged from a few hundred to $8000.

Barker embraces a friend at tonight’s opening.

It will be interesting to see what furor ensues as the conservative crowd catches wind of these two shows. With this month’s Art Walk kicking off tomorrow, thousands will have the opportunity to make their own judgments of the work.

Design Hunting Los Angeles

So I’ve been meaning to start blogging about design-related topics for some time. I’m passionate about good design, and as a photographer I love looking at beautiful things and photographing them.

I can’t always afford all the fanciest stuff I like, but I think I will start curating a collection of things and places that I think are great.

Today I had a meeting in Culver City with the incredibly talented Mark Laita at his studio. It’s a gorgeous spot, all covered in vines and full of great minimalist design elements.

Afterwards I walked around the Main St. area of Culver City and I was pleased to find it to be quite nice. Lots of little shops and boutiques, restaurants and galleries. I stopped in a cool little gallery called Western Project.

They showcase contemporary artists, and had a nice little selection of work. I snapped one photo of this silly gun painting, but there were a number of other really nice pieces for sale. If you get a chance to pop in there, the owners are really pleasant and friendly. So refreshing.

Found a neat vintage table and chair across the street in front of a little antique shop.

Grabbed a few snaps of the local flora as well.

I’ve been wanting to check out This is Not Ikea on Fairfax for a little while, and since I was kind of in the neighborhood I stopped by. The place is like a well-merchandized junk store full of hand picked awesomeness. They have tons of great old chairs, fans, desks, lighting, signs, and a host of other stuff. I didn’t find anything I absolutely had to have, but this place is certainly on my list of places to go for props for shoots.


On the way up Fairfax I found this big Mural of Madonna and it was awesome.

After that I popped into Modernica and chatted with Stephanie Miller who was very pleasant and encouraged me to sit in any of the chairs I wanted to. So I sat in about half of the furniture in the store and loved it! Haha. Here are some of my favorite pieces:

I’m very interested in Scandinavian desgin as well, so Stephanie recommended I check out Denmark 50 on Melrose. I cruised over there and had a nice chat with the owner about his furniture and grabbed a shot of my favorite piece.
It’s a Hans Wegner chair, and I’m a big fan of his work. Such perfect lines on his work, it gets me smiling!

Fitzsu happened to be right down the street so I strolled on over. They always have the most beautiful stuff, and it was great to get to see a lot of things I love in person. They were great and very welcoming. I found this amazing piece of pottery that would go perfectly on a coffee table:

After that I was all hunted out and headed back downtown. Awesome.

Panamanian Independence Day Parade in Downtown LA

I just looked out my window about an hour ago because I thought I heard a marching band. Sure enough, there’s a parade going on. They must not have promoted it very well in the neighborhood, because I haven’t seen any posters or ads. But that didn’t seem to stop the thousands of people who were on scene to celebrate the Panama Parade down Broadway.

Today’s event celebrates Panama’s independence, so there were a gaggle of fun-loving central Americans prancing down a closed Broadway, with music and dancing.

I grabbed my canon and my trusty 70-200 f/4 and ran down. Here are some of my favorite images from the parade