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 […]
ARTS
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, […]
GOOD THINGS OUT OF NAZARETH
The stock market is melting down, coronavirus is spreading its tentacles, we have in our day “no prince, prophet, or leader, no burnt offering, sacrifice, oblation, or incense, no place to offer first fruits, to find favor with you”…(Daniel 3:38). Yesterday morning on my way to Mass I pulled over to the curb in front of the […]
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 […]
CELEBRATE MARDI GRAS WITH MY TALK AT HOLY FAMILY IN SOUTH PAS
That’s right–the night before Ash Wednesday I’ll be giving a talk at Holy Family’s St. Joseph’s Center in South Pas. Here’s the flyer: LENT WITH SAINTS AND ARTISTS: Selling All We Have to Follow Our Passion Heather King came from a blue-collar New England family, excelled in school, imagined God as a cold, distant, high-school […]
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 […]
“OUTSIDER” ARTIST JAMES CASTLE
DEAF SINCE BIRTH, IDAHO ARTIST JAMES CASTLE LEFT AN ASTONISHING, 70-YEAR OUTPUT OF DRAWING, ASSEMBLAGES AND TEXT PIECES.
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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 […]
“ALL THINGS ARE PHOTOGRAPHABLE”
“I look at the pictures I have done up to now and they make me feel that who we are and how we feel and what is to become of us just doesn’t matter. Our aspirations and successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the columnists, some books, I look at some […]