Many Mentions of the Monk

Shaolin: Temple of Zen, a photography exhibition by Justin Gurarglia will debut at Otis' Ben Maltz Gallery this Saturday, February 2nd with a reception from 5 to 7 PM but the show is already showing up throughout the blogosphere. In addition to being the Monday feature on Artdaily, it has attracted attention from several blogs and was picked up in Calendar Live.

In addition to the photographs, opening night visitors will see a live demonstration by one of the monks featured in the work, Shi De Chao, who has traveled from his temple in Henan, China.

The show, an outgrowth of the book published by Aperture will continue in the Gallery through 29th.

Additional Mentions (added Feb 1):

LA Cityzine
A Little Birdy Told me
Sean Slavin Photography
Flavorpill
Ian O'Phelan Artlog
Apartment Therapy
Lady Hooligan
ArtSlant
Marshallastor
Nothing to Do in LA

Some Paintings Some Party!

Last Saturday, I went to the opening of the opening of Some Paintings, the LA Weekly's third Biennial at Track 16 Gallery. I got there pretty late- after 10:30 and the place showed no sign of slowing down. I was thankful I had not arrived any earlier!

Curated by Doug Harvey, the show features Los Angeles painters, including alums Sandow Birk '88 and Steve Roden '86 (doing double duty by also standing in for Robert Williams) as well as Otis faculty member Carole Caroompas. Ben Maltz Gallery Director Meg Linton also had a mention related to artist Don Suggs.

With the crowd and over 70 artists, the experience was a bit overwhelming. My favorite part of the show (apart from seeing the work) was Harvey's statements about each artist. It was a rare treat to have the curator's thoughts about each artist available as a wall label.*

Gifted multimedia narrative populist Sandow Birk’s amazing “Depravities” show at Cal State Long Beach in December used up his store of new Iraq-war paintings, but he dug out an early-’90s collaboration with graffiti artist Devin “Relm” Flynn for “Some Paintings.”

Carol Caroompas’ punkadelic patchworks of archetypal gender conflicts played out by glamorous rock stars, clip-art domestics and B-movie exotics over eye-boggling textile patterns bring Pattern and Decoration through the looking glass of experimental narrative semiotics into the 21st century.

Renaissance dude STEVE RODEN’s multivalent work is imbued with a profound familiarity with Modernist design principles and an avant-gardist appetite for getting lost in translation. But it was his paintings that first caught my attention, and which never fail to dazzle and mystify.

Even though DON SUGGS seems to have spent most of his career making fame-evasive shifts in style and media, his own persistence is beginning to catch up with him. Last spring’s OTIS survey (curated by me and Meg Linton) exposed the still center of the spinning Suggsian universe, and there’s nowhere left to hide! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Some Paintings remains on view through February 16.

*All of Harvey's statements are also available in his LA Weekly article about the show.

Roll Call Roundup

Artillery magazine's "Roll Call" spread is chalk full of Otis folks in the latest edition (volume2 number 3):

Christian Mounger at Haus Gallery (Martin Gantman show)
2007 "O Award" recipient Kori Newkirk at High Energy Constructs (Mark Dutcher show)
Roy Dowell, Carol Caroompas and an unidentified Adam Mars at Western Project (for Carole's opening)

The two year old magazine has frequently covered the work of Otis faculty and alums and recent MFA grad Tucker Neel is a regular writer.

You can pick up a copy of Artillery in the Ben Maltz Gallery and at many galleries around LA and NYC.

Santa's Southland Workshop

The holidays are over and old St. Nick is back in the north pole working on all the toys for 2009. He's not alone in that effort. Otis has the leading program for Toy Design in the country and over the years it has received a lot of media attention- stories in the Los Angeles Times and news spots on KNBC and ABC World News Tonight being just a few.

Often the stories come during Christmas time and this year was no exception when Toy Design Chair Deborah Ryan and faculty member Mark Taylor were featured guests on the KCRW show Design and Architecture, hosted by Frances Anderton. You can still access their interview via podcast here:

The Serious Business of Designing Toys

Enjoy the interview. If you wind up on the correct side of Santa's list next year one of your gifts might come via Otis!

Look Out for the Lueys!

In the latest volume of Hi Fructose magazine, there is a nice photo spread featuring Otis alum and faculty member Bob Dob's creation- "The Luey's." These hard living little critters have been prominent in his work and if you haven't seen them, take a look!











Universal Bad Habit 8" x10" (from bobdob.com)

Otis in 08

As we head in to 2008 I hope you will look forward to more notes about Otis in the media. I've been writing this blog for almost a year now and throughly enjoy it.

If you see some mention of Otis that you think would be a good mention, just give me a shout.

Happy New Year!

-Marc