A trailer containing paintings, prints and sculptures by Joan Miro, Leroy Neiman, Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse was stolen from an industrial park in Los Angeles, the LAPD Art Theft Detail announced in a crime alert.
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Taste
Contemporary Arts Center
Soho Lofts.
​Through February 12. Thursday-Sunday, noon-6 p.m. ​

By Angela M. Brommel

Just like the story of the Roman god Janus with two faces that look in both directions as the world changes, on Friday night the local art scene was looking as one set of doors was opening and another set was closing.  It was the night that more than 500 people showed up to welcome Contemporary Arts Center’s return to a permanent space, and the night that Blackbird Studios closed its doors with a going away party that we will never forget.  

When I arrived the parking lot across from CAC was almost full, and people were lined up to get into the space for the opening reception of “Taste.” Curated by Melissa Peterson and Brent Holmes, the exhibit features the work of 15 local artists. 

Through the large front window you could not see most of the artwork because the room was packed. There was something very exciting about not being able to see all of the exhibit, being only able see the crowd slowly working its way around the room. You could not see the work until you were in front of it.  Once you were standing in front of the work you saw that there was nothing identifying the artists or their work. People were asking their friends if they knew whose work it was. People were asking strangers if they knew whose work it was.

Everyone was talking about art.

In the middle of the crowd Justin Favela’s papier-mâché sculpture of Big Bird became a place where people paused for longer conversations. You could see the dilemma when someone had to decide how to get around the bird without falling into it or stepping on it. I saw one man who looked like he was considering stepping over Big Bird’s leg to get to the other side of the room. A few people paused to see what would happen. The man decided against stepping over the sculpture. Everyone returned to talking about art.
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It was a night where the people themselves due to excitement and proximity to the work and each other had become part of the exhibit. The event of people gathering to see art, and the exhibit itself had intertwined.

Outside of Blackbird Studios the cars lined the surrounding blocks. The sidewalk was full of people heading to the studios for the last night of the final show, “A Life Artistic with Wes Anderson.”

It was also Blackbird Studios last night. 

I thought that the closing would be somber, but instead it was a little bit of many of the best kinds of things. Here we were in studios transformed into a Wes Anderson themed house. There was a DJ in the living room playing songs like Lesley Gores’, “You Don’t Own Me.”  In the next room there was a table with a box where people left photos and wrote down stories of their favorite memories of working with Gina Quaranto, owner and Creative Director, and the artists at Blackbird Studios over the past six years. People were taking photos the way one does at a family reunion.

Like a Wes Anderson film, Blackbird balanced what could have been a lush melancholy with a sweetness for everything hopeful and full of wonder. These intentional spaces held a deep nostalgia for the places where we fear we will not and cannot return, but they also held enough magic to promise us that anything is possible. Blackbird Studios just might open its own new doors someday. 

To end on a light note,  and remind ourselves how Bowie was about subversive disguises reaching into alternative universes, here is a wheat-paste from 2014, via Los Angeles Street Art.