UCR ARTSblock Live!

UC Riverside/California Museum of Photography, Culver Center of the Arts, and Sweeney Art Gallery present monthly features of music, lectures, interviews and literary readings. Guests featured include Nigerian-born writer Chris Abani, award-winning poet Juan Felipe Herrera, artist Nicole Antebi, novelist Susan Straight, Division 9 Gallery director Cosme Cordova, author Laila Lamami, ethnomusicologist Deborah Wong, filmmakers Chris Metzler and Enid Baxter Blader, writers Ky-Phong Tran and Alex Espinosa, as well as ARTSblock directors Tyler Stallings and Jonathan Green. Hosted by KCET.org Los Angeles (www.artsblock.ucr.edu)

Coming UP: LA Avant-Garde Cinema - Blur + Sharpen

Coming UP: LA Avant-Garde Cinema - Blur + Sharpen

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This weekend I served as a judge for TOP 40, an annual showcase of new digital art organized by Los Angeles Center for Digital Art.  This exhibit, which will open in LA  later in the month then travel to CMP this summer, still has a raw quality, notwithstanding the high production values. Of the forty images chosen, there are varied genres and hybrids of digital design -- straight documentary photography, op art graphic design, narrative illustration, fractal 3-D, and conceptual collages.  (see website)

Artists include:  Alex and Felix Gertschen, Ariel Marte, Arthur Pinkham, Barbara Kossy, Berndnaut Smilde, Carol Dragon, Christopher Robin Blum, David George, David Molander, Dayvid LeMmon, Frank Mullaney, Gary Wornell, Gerry Millet, Hoon Dong Chung, Hyun Ji Shim, Izumu Ito, J.C. Jaress, J.F. Heurtaux, Jeffrey Burke, John Klof, Jonathan Bagby, Keith Dillon, Kurney Ramsey, Latham Robertson, Marika Krissman Tsircou, Matthew C Lange, Matthew Krueger, Meng'Kok Tan, Ondrej Rudavsky, Ori Bahat, Patty Carroll, Phillip Hua, Rebecca Beard, Robert Hustead, Robin Layton, Rocky Reasoner, Sergio Fasola, Stuart Sperling, Tim Portlock, Trevor Messersmith, and Viktor Sykora.

LACDA is a smallish space with major ambitions, the brainchild of artist and director Rex Bruce who's recent personal exhibit Inversions exemplifies his deep dedication to furthering the dialogue on the digital. Bruce's landscaped canvases of empty skies through streaked and stained bus windows are evocative in themselves, but also for him serve as a performative protest against environmental pollution.  Rex's apocalytic vision was shot with a variety of devices including high-low res digital cameras as well as cellphones. 

UCR ARTSblock photo contests Micro Macro and Extreme Places bring in artists from around the Inland Empire region, while TOP 40 brings in many international artists as well as those in LA urban studios.  See TOP 40 at: www.lacda.com and www.artsblock.ucr.edu.