Doing the monster mash at Malibou Lake 1

Fashion · Film
This lakeside fol-de-rol is featured in the fun new book, Location Filming in Los Angeles, by arts·meme pals Mark Wanamaker, Karie Bible and Harry Medved. The book describes how Universal shot the controversial scene on location at a lake in Malibu State Park eighty years ago this September. We learned this on Frankensteinia: On this ...

Bring Your Own Glue (BYOG) to New Puppy Gallery’s street-art show

Visual arts
From our friends at New Puppy Gallery, which floats like an island in the no-man’s land between Highland Park and downtown Los Angeles: ABCNT, Cryptik, Nomadé and Eddie Colla poke the MOCA institutional bear with their explosive new show, Sniffin’ Glue, opening April 16 at New Puppy Gallery. Armed with intense imagery and street credibility, ...

Paul Taylor’s Annamaria Mazzini, a true modern dancer

Dance
Annamaria Mazzini, in action-mode in Paul Taylor’s Runes (1975), a ritualistic piece about a primitive society (i.e., nothing to do with America today). This great, thrusting leap by the soon-to-retire Mazzini says everything about why modern dance is its own magnificent art form: the way her arms pull behind her, the subtle curve of her ...

Jamison, Battle, and Ailey dancers feted by L.A. community

Dance
This line-up of good-looking people is an elite squadron — they’re dancers with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Nice and fun people, too. We had a chance to meet them at Thursday night’s packed and bustling party hosted by mega-couple Mattie McFadden-Lawson and Michael A. Lawson (here’s Michael hanging out with one of his good ...

Jack Cole mosaic

Dance
Photos say it best where the intense dancer/choreographer of film and nightclub, Jack Cole, is concerned. Here’s a little collection for your viewing pleasure. As for photo #6, what about Jack Cole and Gwen Verdon as a dancing duo? Absolutely superb . . .

Michael Govan comments on LACMA’s new film program 1

Film
In a brief message sent to arts·meme at the end of his day in London, LACMA Director Michael Govan writes, “I think we have a real foundation for continued and sustainable growth of the program now.” The just-announced new film program notably lacks the kind of stable financial underpinning that an endowment provides, nor there ...

BREAKING NEWS: LACMA announces new film program

Film · Visual arts
This just in from the museum: “Los Angeles (April 6, 2011)—The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Film Independent, the non-profit arts organization that produces the Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival. LACMA and Film Independent will inaugurate the new weekly Film ...

L.A.’s artistic and cultural heritage vs. a rock 2

Film · Visual arts
Los Angeles, megalopolis, hosts a cool, vibrant and progressive art scene, an expression of its unique history and inimitable cultural mix. Many Angelenos will derive pleasure and meaning from Michael Heizer‘s Levitated/Slot Mass, a pyramidal granite boulder suspended on concrete rails above a pit carved into the northwest corner of the L.A. County Museum of ...

Accomplished arts professional Kristy Edmunds to head UCLA Live

Architecture & Design · Dance · Music · Theater
Performing arts curator Kristy Edmunds has been named executive and artistic director of UCLA Live, the venerable outlet for music, dance, and theater at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. Edmunds, an American, born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, comes to UCLA Live from Australia’s University of Melbourne, where she was head of the ...

Soraya Nazarian, sculptor, offers a 25-year retrospective 5

Visual arts
In 2000, Los Angeles sculptor Soraya Nazarian traveled to an artists workshop in Pietrasanta, Italy, a city made famous for its marble quarries by none other than Michelangelo. The experience profoundly shaped Nazarian’s life, focused her technique, and enhanced her relationship with stone. She has been one of the few female artists who have personally ...