Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: I was scheduled to attend the performance of the play described below on Sunday, March 13. But like just about everything else in these uncertain times the opening has been postponed and the show was cancelled. Nonetheless, the theater says the set is up and everything’s […]
ANGELUS NEWS
EVEN THE DARK: POEMS BY LESLIE WILLIAMS
Award-winning poet Leslie Williams grew up in North Carolina, lived and worked in Washington D.C., Seattle, and Charlottesville (where she earned a grad degree in English), got married, moved to Chicago, had a son, moved back to DC, had another son, and moved to Boston area where she and her family have been for fifteen […]
ANGELA HEWITT PLAYS BACH
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins. Clearly the event took place pre-quarantine. Amazing how quickly things change! People think Angelenos are “laid back,” but the fact is a simple trip to a music concert requires nerves of steel, an encyclopedic memory for geographical layout, and a longing for transcendence that needs to […]
THE TEMPTATION IN THE DESERT: MAN ON WIRE AND FREE SOLO
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: “Then the devil took him to the holy city, and made him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: He will command his angels concerning you/and with their […]
VAN NUYS HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ ORATORIO TO OUR DYING HOME
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: “Requiem: This Earth, Our Home” is a new oratorio, written in conjunction with the LA Master Chorale’s Voices Within Oratorio Project. The piece will premiere, for fellow students, the evening of Friday, February 28th at the Van Nuys High School Auditorium. A performance the following day, […]
ICONICITY: ART IN THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DESERT
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: Director/producer Leo Zahn has made documentaries about mid-century architect William F. Cody and Frank Sinatra in Palm Springs. Now he brings us “Iconicity.” The core theme: “Why are artists attracted to the [Southern California] desert? There is something here, call it a mystical energy or what […]
THE LAMENESS OF SINGLES AWARENESS DAY
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column (which in fact is not in defense but rather a critique of) begins: Let me say up front that I am not one of these people who feels oppressed, discriminated against and marginalized by the mere fact and station of another’s existence. That you’re a man and […]
THE STORRIER STEARNS JAPANESE GARDEN
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Located at 270 Arlington Drive in Pasadena and comprising two acres, the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden is a hidden LA treasure. The pond-style stroll garden was created in the 1930s by Japanese immigrant Kinzuchi Fuji for his patrons Charles and Ellamae Storrier Stearns. After their deaths, […]
ALEXANDER GIRARD AT THE PALM SPRINGS MUSEUM
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins: Through March 1, the Palm Springs Museum is featuring “A Designer’s Universe,” an exhibit based on the multi-talented twentieth-century artist Alexander Girard (1907-1993). As the Museum points out: “Alexander Girard (1907–1993 in Santa Fe) was one of the most important and prolific designers of the 20th century. He […]
ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY
ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY IS A BENEDICTINE MONASTERY IN THE HIGH DESERT OUTSIDE OF LA. I HOPE TO BE BURIED THERE.
“OUTSIDER” ARTIST JAMES CASTLE
DEAF SINCE BIRTH, IDAHO ARTIST JAMES CASTLE LEFT AN ASTONISHING, 70-YEAR OUTPUT OF DRAWING, ASSEMBLAGES AND TEXT PIECES.
SUNDAYS LIVE AT ST. JAMES
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: For years during the 1990s when I lived in Koreatown, I’d attend the Sunday afternoon Bing Theater classical music concerts at LACMA. After almost a quarter of a century, the concerts have now moved a couple of miles east, to St. James Episcopal Church on Wilshire […]
HUMMINGBIRD IN UNDERWORLD, A MEMOIR
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: Deborah Tobola is known as a visionary pioneer in the field of arts in U.S. corrections. She is a graduate of the University of Montana, and has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Her prose and poetry have won […]
IN THIS PLACE CHRIST WANTS TO BE BORN
Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins: “Now he comes to be born in the narrowness of our lives, to be incarnate in us, to give his love to the world through us, through our flesh and blood. That is one meaning of the Incarnation. The reason why we are where we are this Christmas, […]