Buy An Art Piece And Preserve A Living Piece Of L.A. History

Up until the 1980's a multitude of artists like Charles White, Otis College of Art and Design students, and June Wayne would flock to the Los Angeles paper store McManus & Morgan. Today the store is 101 years old, and some of these artists still buy their paper here, but the younger generations of Angeleno artists are largely un-aware of this steel rooted institution of artisanship and dedication. Even fewer have ever heard of Gary Wolin the lone paper expert and unsung L.A. art historian behind the counter, nor do they know of his struggle to keep his once hollowed doors open. My readers have seen the short documentary Ink & Paper that tells the story of Gary and the neighboring letterpress shop, but a surge of new artists have come to L.A. and are still moving in to take advantage of the ever-expanding art and entertainment industries here. Well I am a young artist in Los Angeles, and I care about history. I care about quality local businesses too so I am going to put my money and art into the very place that cared enough to stick around all these years and offer what no corporate store could: knowledge, expertise, and unparalleled assortments of unique paper. God bless it, I think other young artists will care too once they hear about it!

... So LET THE ART SALE FUNDRAISER FOR MCMANUS & MORGAN BEGIN!

Buy one of my prints at McManus & Morgan and I will split the profits with the store. (the money I take in from the sale will most likely go towards buying paper from Gary anyway) We are asking $900 per print which is comparable to the price that Self Help Graphics and Arts is selling the same print for.

Now - Aug 31 2014, $900 for a limited edition 26" x 20" screen print by artist John Tallacksen and Self Help Graphics & Art, Four prints only #'s 41, 39, 37, 35 out of an edition of 50 all signed and numbered with a Self Help chop in lower left corner.

My work is about honoring the people and places in the communities of Pico Union and MacArthur Park in central Los Angeles. The scene in Serenata En El Callejón 12th and Alvarado was a real life moment not far from McManus and Morgan where my girlfriend and I saw a man serenading a woman in an alley with a small Mariachi band. It's moments like these, and places like McManus & Morgan, that expose the heart of our community. Please watch the short documentary in the comments section of this post and you'll see a small fraction of why I treasure Gary Wolin and his paper store so much. This limited edition that we are selling has enjoyed some amazing exposure. Having been created in collaboration with Master Printer Jose Alpuche in Self Help Graphics & Art's Professional Printmaking Studio, and then archived in institutions like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Mexican Fine Art Center Museum in Chicago, I wanted to use this edition's provenance to encourage my friend Gary and help off-set some of his overhead costs even if for a short time. I consider McManus & Morgan to be one of the most important arts institutions in Los Angeles. Watch the film below and consider purchasing an expression of the community that Gary and I share.
Self Help Graphics & Art values prints from this edition at $900 each. We are selling four prints from the same edition at the same price being careful not to under-cut such a prestigious organization. To purchase, leave a comment below, call me at (213)290-6777, or visit Gary at McManus & Morgan 2506 W 7th St. Los Angeles, CA 90057 9AM to 5PM Mon - Fri and 10AM to 2PM Sat.
We hope you join us in this unique celebration of community and the arts.

June Wayne: The Beginning Of Tamarind Press

June Wayne the architect and much more of Tamarind Lithography Workshop talking about the early days, W. McNeil Lowry's contributions to the arts in the U.S., and what we need to do in the future.


A few questions...

-Where does one find June Wayne's plan for Tamarind?

-Has the think tank she suggests at the end of the video been created? Where or why not?

-Do I have the guts to take on some of these issues myself?

-Is there space and workers for this effort in L.A.?

Learning About Printmaking From Picasso

  Lately I have become very interested in turning half of my focus to regular printmaking. I will always continue to make ACEOs and ATCs, but I would like those small pieces to point my audience to this blog which will hopefully then introduce readers to a larger body of equally collectible work. 

  Since I am in the research phase of learning what printmaking is, my girlfriend and I decided to visit Galerie Michael in Beverly Hills, CA to view some of Picasso's masterful prints. We learned that Picasso, along with his experienced friends, was one of the most prolific print-makers of his era. Thankfully my wonderful girlfriend Karla brought her camera and documented our field trip. Her images are below.

Galerie Michael

Picasso's linocut process

One of my favorite prints of this collection by Picasso

Another amazing print by Picasso

Closer view of the print above

Detail of the print above

One of Picasso's prints a little smaller than an ACEO- hmm ideas

Me sketching from the same print above

Close up of the small print above

Later my girlfriend and I walked to Sprinkles for cupcakes

The Art Market Smashing Records: You Might Smash A Few Too

  Oh I most definitely appreciate all of the patrons of the world who buy, and therefore support, the world's art. Unfortunately the middle class is rapidly diminishing, and there is a wider gulf between the rich and the poor every day. Wealthy people obviously need culture in their lives, but so does everyone else. How do hundred-aires get into the buying original art game?

  I don't know much about markets, investments, or business in general, but art is hot right now. 

According to an article from the Associated Press viewed here, art sales are up even in a more than shaky economy- in fact records have been broken in succession within the last few weeks. 

Edvard Munch's The Scream

  Pictured above: the late Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's The Scream tipped the first domino with a record sale at auction of almost $120 million on May 2nd of this year. Go Norwegian artists! YEAH!

  The second domino to fall shortly after The Scream was Russian artist Mark Rothko's abstract expressionist piece titled Orange Red and Yellow. The purchase of this minimalist masterwork set the new record for contemporary art auctions at just shy of $87 million on May 8th. Russian artists stand up!!!

Mark Rothko's Orange Red And Yellow 

  A slew of other high value art purchases continued and may still be running for a while. The a-fore mentioned article by the Associated Press reports that the art sales business is booming right now while almost everything else struggles to reach restoration. In the same report linked above Nicolai Frahm of Frahm Ltd in London is quoted as saying, "People feel very safe about buying art. You have a huge amount of new buyers coming to the market. If you have money, you want to be a part of buying art. People almost are considered imbeciles if they have money and they're not buying."


  I'm glad the wealthy are buying art at a healthy rate right now, but they shouldn't be the only ones able to make this kind of investment- right? Believe me, they don't have to be the only ones. How did the previous owner of The Scream manage to own that iconic piece? He was a patron of Munch's. That's right, they were neighbors and the gentleman liked Edvard's work so he became a patron of his art. Do you have friends that create art? If so, and you like it, maybe you should buy some. If you can't afford to spend even a few hundred dollars on original art (I know I can't) you might be able to spend $5 to $20 on an ACEO. Click On This to sort through many many artists auctioning their original miniature art on Ebay.com. Find one two or three artists you like and bid a few dollars on some original pieces. If you're not impressed with the miniature card stock format just remember that The Scream up there was created on cardboard. You never know if you might be collecting the work of the next top selling artist- and it's very affordable I might add. Go ahead, get into the art buying game. Support a budding artist and allow their work to bless your home and your collection. I promise you'll enjoy it immensely.

Graffiti 101: The History

(piece by: Revok)

I'm a big fan of origins. I like the origin stories of characters in hero comic books. I like the origins of popular samples in Hip Hop music. I definitely like the origins of art movements. Everyone knows that "early" graffiti (such as wild styles, burners, etc) was popular in the boroughs of New York City during the 1970's and 80's, but how far back does it's history go?

(piece by: Seen)

The script or "tag" form as-well as the colorful grapheme and character based form of graffiti is said to have been started by this man in Philidelphia...



Writing on walls in the 1960's may sound pretty old to your average Justin Beiber fan, but I wasn't born yesterday. I'm pretty sure it goes back much further than that. There have been more than a few art history classes that I've attended, and as far as we know, one of the first uses of art by humans was in the form of paintings on cave walls. We all know that they looked something like this...That's right, graffiti goes all the way back to the dawn of human kind. In fact, the first stencil ever used on a wall, that we know of, was an early artist blowing barks and pigments on their hand as they placed it on a wall.
Check it out, it even looks like they were throwing up a "west side."

Street artist Banksy shows us what a more modern stencil piece looks like. Note the flat black shapes that make-up the city worker buffing out the cave paintings. (to me this piece is warning the cities that if they buff out street art and graffiti, they buff out our past and our innate need to communicate on walls.)

So every other art form owes it's existence to the act of painting on walls. Some people have argued that putting paint to wall is even born within us. If that's true, then why do most people associate the term graffiti with crime?

Man's law and God's law are often very different. So deciding what is truly right or wrong while talking about "the law of the land" can be a very complex process. Personally I refrain from altering anyone's property in any way without asking them first. If a person feels that painting on someone else's wall without permission is within their moral compass I like to remind them that they also have to be willing to pay the consequences of any action they take in life. In California, "bombing" the streets can quickly get you 2 out of 3 strikes on your record which would send you on your way to receiving 25 years to life in prison. I would rather see us and the state invest in schools, libraries, and jobs so please don't feed into that crooked system.

On the flip side, I don't think it's right that large corporations can rent billboard space in our neighborhoods without our permission. Currently my neighborhood has many instances of alcohol abuse destroying our collective sense of family and self respect. The alcohol industry never asks us if they can put their ads on our walls, yet they are everywhere. I wouldn't mind these images being replaced or covered up with more positive and useful images. If a billboard selling "spirits" was ever placed outside of someone's house or near a middle school in Beverly Hills you better believe there would be a ruckus.

I'm getting off topic. Maybe I'll return to the morality of graffiti at a later date. Speaking of God, as a Christian I know that my spiritual heritage includes graffiti. Under the city of Rome early followers of Christ refered to themselves as "fishers of men" or "pisciculi" which means little fish. These students of Christ were hated by the Roman powers and often hid and met in the catacombs. Since much of their practices had to be done in secret (or get arrested and killed) they had to communicate who they were to each other. Below is an image of how they would do that through images on catacomb walls.
Creating art on walls or on the ground was a very important system for these people. They had to communicate who they were to others in the know as a means for survival. In the Biblical book of Daniel chapter 5 there is a story where God relays a message to king Belshazzar by writing on the king's wall. This is where the term "The writing on the wall" comes from.

(Belshazzar's Feast by: Rembrandt)

I could go into the Egyptian and Mayan glyphs on the walls of temples, altars, sun dials, and tombs. I could also write endlessly about fresco paintings or Japanese calligraphy, and their influence on graffiti, but that would take quite some time to get through. Generally, what I'm saying is that an art-form currently known as graffiti is as old as human history. There are deep historical reasons for a person to write or draw on a wall. I encourage all of us to not immediately link graffiti to crime. There are many forms. There are many reasons.

Please walk forward every day in a growing knowledge of the lives around you.