Insights @ the CSULB University Art Museum

Photos by Barbara Navarro.

LB author, poet Paul G. Maziar tells me his secrets!

Barbara is on Pacific Time: 8 p.m., San Pedro. Feeling spy-like, password: Mommy.

That's almost a line from Paul G. Maziar's book "What It Is: What It Is." I found it at {Open} Bookstore in Long Beach in late March, right after visiting Matt Maust's teeny art show going on inside. Maust, being 1/4 of the Cold War Kids, as well as an extraordinary graphic artist, collaborated with the prose writer that is Maziar and voila: "What It Is: What It Is."

In preparing a book review of Maziar's latest, I got in touch with the author where he revealed more on his book's title, his friendship with Maust and his relationship with Long Beach (and what it means to come back). You'll be able to find my review of "What It Is: What It Is" in Monday's paper. For now, here are a few excerpts taken from our correspondence:

On his relationship with Long Beach...
My relationship with Long Beach has been on an elevator. The place stirs my mind and all my senses, (and) so far has been the place where I’ve been the most productive as a writer.

Where he hangs out in Long Beach...
My favorite place to get a burrito is La Taqueria, I think it’s the best.

On the title of the book, "What It Is: What It Is"...
The title of the book is partly nonsense jive, which we wanted to be something fun that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Plus Maust and I have long been saying “What it is?” as a greeting to each other and friends.

On meeting Matt Maust...
The first time Maust and I met, we hit it off— talking about music and art and books. When he began showing me some things he has been inspired by as an artist— I realized it would make perfect sense to collaborate on our own project. Two years, and a few versions of WHAT IT IS later, here we are.

On Matt Maust...
Maust is an immense talent, someone who’s so true to what he does he is at all times a creative soul— in various ways, whether it is in speech, comradery, travel, or interpreting music/art/literature.

Mingle with Paul G. Maziar and his special musical guests, along with Matt Maust, at the {Open} Bookstore tonight in Long Beach.

Visit Maziar's MySpace page for the complete 411 and flyer. The event is free and truly one of a kind. (http://www.myspace.com/whatitisbook)

Book cover by Matt Maust, courtesy of Paul G. Maziar. Other photos by Barbara Navarro.

ISM: In Long Beach, they're totally an IN-ism

Juicy bits of those ISM magazines do a good job of catching my eye whenever I shop at my favorite local bookstores. How I wish every bookstore anywhere carried these 8-by-6-inch, colorful things. The magazine stands for something interesting, coming from an official non-profit organization and all, and it’s got even more interesting content, always pushing forward local artistes (writers, photographers, painters and the like) into the limelight with interviews and full-colored spreads.

But looking beyond the soft matte finish of the magazine, and looking beyond the simple ISM logo stamped across every one of their covers, I found an even greater community that simply calls itself ISM. Altogether they are, in fact, “ISM: A Community Project.”

What do they do as a community? Party and celebrate their fabulous existence, for one. To embellish the atmosphere, they do a good deed of hanging their even more fabulous collectibles—photography art and such. Everybody who contributes to the magazine, and those people whose names we see on the masthead, gather their things and shower them into various local art galleries, leaving their mark as ISM: Gallery.

And the parade doesn’t stop there, they have their own place online, too—ISM: Online, a place outside the random, every-now-and-then ISM: Gallery gatherings or the even rarer two-times-a-year business of the ISM: Magazine.

During spring break, I had the happy chance of joining the fun at the ISM: Gallery, taking residence inside Long Beach’s Koo’s Art Center on Broadway. Apparently, the two—Koo’s and ISM—have been sharing space for the last two exhibits heard of out of this place (“Hello, My Name Is” and “Shudder,” the one that kicked off my weekend of spring break), so it’d be healthy speculation if eventually Koo’s turned into ISM’s.

ISM’s relentless affection of breaking into Long Beach art scene seems to be working for them, especially with their latest exhibit, the fashionable-looking “Prelude,” which will open on Sunday at Koo’s Art Center, or the ISM: Gallery. So, if you’re into fashion, and the fashion shows of late on campus aren’t cutting it for you, then perhaps this will satisfy your fashionista appetite and should also quench your curiosity of who or what exactly ISM is all about.

Kevin Staniec, founder and executive creative director of ISM, will be in full swing on the 11th, catering to all Long Beach art darlings. He’ll be presenting new artists to the ISM: Wall (something described as an ISM ritual), and the night will be lit up by the fashions created by UCLA students for their fashion show FAST.

ISM says they’re promising that everybody will be sharing oohs and ahhs over the original sketches on display, the runway shows, over-the-top accessories, the one of a kind wearable masterpieces... All of which will be lovingly showcased. But if this event will turn out to be as fun as “Shudder’s” opening, I’ll come prepared with my best face for all the fun photo booth action and my dancing shoes for the hot DJ music.

RSVP for Sunday night's opening of "Prelude" like a VIP at ISM: Online. (www.ISMcommunity.org/)

All photos were taken by Barbara Navarro at the opening of "Shudder" on Saturday, March 29.

Tae-Hoon Kim’s Ceramic Friends: Cute!

Tae-Hoon Kim’s art is simply cute.

His collections of ceramic creatures look like they’re from their own happy universe, if not from the same strange family. Their heads are round like big, juicy honeydew melons, while their bodies are compact and genderless. Kim dresses his little friends in a colorful wardrobe, often involving a simple pattern, a lot like children’s clothes—stripes, dots, checkers. Some of them simply have hearts or bouncy letters going across their chests, like “I Love U.” Others exhibit subtle hints of their happiness—their left arm hanging up at a 90-degree angle, as if they’re perpetually waving hello to you.

“I like to make people happy,” says this Cal State Long Beach artist. “I like simplicity and childlike innocence.”

He sites Paul Klee, Damien Hirst and Pieter Bruegel as inspiration to his art. Klee’s simplicity, Hirst’s unprecedented work, and Bruegel’s pleasant colors and wit, he says, make him happy.



Most of Kim’s art is created at his corner office space found on the first floor of Fine Arts Building 2. Anybody within a 100-feet radius seems to know who he is. When I met him last Friday, his visiting friends came at random times, snapping candid shots of the giddy artist. Then his neighbor, working on a few ceramic pieces of her own, would periodically offer us bits of her rich, dark chocolate candy bar filled with chunky raisins.



This seems like a place filled with many voices and the perfect setting for constant play, but Kim, a South Korean native whose been studying at CSULB under a special student program since the summer of 2006, holds focus on a lot of things, especially his artwork.

He started showing his work in his home city of Seoul in 2005, then with moving to California shortly after he’s shown his work in dozens of art shows throughout the Orange County and Long Beach areas, including last year’s Annual Student Art Exhibition at the University Art Museum. (News broke earlier, that on May 15 his pieces will be showcased for this year's annual show.)



Kim also gained the attention of Giant Robot last year around fall, landing him a two-page feature spread in this art magazine that defines itself by covering “cool aspects of Asian and Asian-American pop culture.”

It’s a thriving idea for Kim. He’s refreshed and stimulated by American modernism and its freer customs (compared to South Korea’s constant struggle to remain traditional, he says). Here, he crosses the challenge of not being too commercial, carefully studying the balance between creating and selling.

Besides working with clay—making cute little creatures and plates and "happy pills" (these oversized capsule-looking ceramic things)—Kim also likes to paint and draw, and he spends a lot of time with learning new movies, poetry, and art. He doesn’t enjoy the fussing with traveling, but, interestingly, he's planning to make a trip to designer stores like Gucci and Ferragamo over the summer, Kim says, to study their design and “color-matching” expertise.

See all of Kim’s cute ceramic friends and "happy pills" currently showing in a joint art show with fellow ceramics artist Matt Causey in the Merlino Gallery. The show, “Dancing with Angma,” will end Thursday.

All photos were taken by Barbara Navarro in Tae-Hoon Kim's ceramics studio on Friday, April 25.

Behind the Scenes with Tae-Hoon Kim

Tae-Hoon Kim's art pieces are cute!
Return for a full story on this Cal State Long Beach ceramics artist tomorrow! In the meantime, you can see Kim's art in a joint show with fellow CSULB artist Matt Causey, "Dancing with Angma," now at the Merlino Gallery.

Details of images above: (Photo, above) A random statue taking residence in Fine Arts Building 2, where Kim's ceramics studio is behind one of those doors; (video, below) sneaking around Kim's studio as he prepares his art pieces for the "Dancing with Angma" show, now at the Merlino Gallery. Both images were taken last week. Photo and video by Barbara Navarro.

Finding Tina Lai in a good 'somewhere'

This week senior printmaking student Tina Lai is showing "In a Lot of Somewheres," a collection of etchings and lithographs she calls very personal. Emphasizing the personal aspect of this collection, which is at the Merlino gallery space in the south campus, Lai has also placed a few items she considers revealing of her philosophy and personality. These objects include a guitar and its case (which she keeps open for donations), a working typewriter, a vintage record player, a kid's toy dangling from a silkscreen, and then a tower with a few, buzzing blades of green grass.

I found Lai in her gallery space last night, reading a bulky copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." I asked her, Why Rand? and a whole lot more about her pieces. Her responses are below. And if you'd like to meet her today, or simply stop by to leave her a note, don't walk, run! The show ends at 5 p.m.


Lai's flyers read, "25¢ admission." And though Lai means serious business, she or more less goes on having a Joshua Bell moment as visitors come and go. The fee, Lai says, is more of a donation for the artist—the print (shown above) serves as a reminder, and the accompanying guitar case laying on the floor below it adds more to the request. Lai explains that this set-up came as an inspiration from "Atlas Shrugged." "In the book, people create things and others say 'We need those things, so we should get this for free.' But there's a process (to creating), whether you're a scientist, artist or musician. It requires a vision, then work and going through series of trial and error to have art, a symphony, a new technology. In our world people say art should be free. But why? People pay to go to concerts and theaters, why not art shows and art galleries?"


In this lithograph, a sort of variation of a pointillism drawing (and, moreover, a recreation of Gustave Caillebotte's "Paris Street, Rainy Day"), Lai delves even deeper into the general meaning behind her show. She says, "My pieces deal with people and their identity and their space, and how (when you freeze them) they fit into their surroundings. It's almost a mundane moment." Lai also points out the gay couple and their modern clothes, compared to Caillebotte's late 19th century apparel.


Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" gets remade here, too. Lai pointed out the two male ducks and abundance of gay partners. In front of this painting you'll find a tower with a few blades of grass buzzing around at random times. Lai says she added this (and a few other pieces) to her show so that there'd be more than just flat prints to adorn the room.


This is by far Lai's most abstract piece in "In a Lot of Somewheres." "These are all accidents. I had to figure out how the white could come together. It's similar to life, how I find randomness interesting." This piece is made of Lai's postcards made of silkscreen prints. Whereas the usual is to make perfect duplicates (in the silkscreen process), Lai used the imperfect outcomes to make this piece. "The postcards (their pattern) are all imperfect individually, but as a whole they work together. In life, horrible circumstances seem to occur when things don't go together, but I like to think of the different possibilities of all they ways things could happen... Or is happening, you're just not in that space right now."



The portrait here is one of a musician who works at a hospital as a technician. It's an etching with watercolor; the drawing on the record (which is right below this drawing in the gallery) is a silkscreen. Lai says she used a photograph for inspiration to this piece, and hopes this inspires many more viewers to wonder, especially, she notes, with all that space she left on the drawing.




Here, Lai expresses her relationship with her mom, the most personal piece in the show. Lai explains the dual-tone silkscreen: "You see a face and couch, but really, the space is between all these unspoken thoughts. It reflects my philosophy of growing up, how as a daughter, there's less to rely on your parents and grow up and realize they're just people. And still, there is a special bond... My mom gave birth to me, and that means that there will always be a strand of her in me."


"The 'LOST' sign is meant to be whimsical. It's the one piece that most reflects my personality; it's very random. I do things like this." What did she lose? "It's a poster I made with pen and posted them around the art department. For 10 years, I had a (one-of-a-kind) retractable knife. But I lost it, and I never have found it. It's something that's being in different spaces and being in different somewheres."

All artwork by art student Tina Lai!
All photos by Barbara Navarro.

A love note to Tina Lai

4/23/08

Dear Ms. Lai,

Golden dreams and good wishes, like buzzing money in the pocket. 'Tis good, you know, art to relate this is what I like to see... Thank you for such fun...

Sincerely, Daniel Helman (geology dept.)

Tina Lai saves these notes in a special somewhere! Here she is, the artist herself, showing me all the notes admirers have left for her on her typewriter. (And then I get distracted by the that sign that says "LOST." Hmmm... Tina explains that to me, too. My notes coming soon! For now, play the video!)

Out with the old, in with the new?

I discovered Acres of Books for the first time in mid-January, and I truly fell into a narrative wonderland, an escape within a giant maze of towering reads. …Ooooh. But after a few weeks (er, days… I work for a daily, remember?) of research and hanging around the place, I learned of the store’s dimming truth: it could be knocked down. The stinky trend was finally catching up to Acres at their lot on Fourth Street and Long Beach Boulevard—a trend involving beautification of the immediate and surrounding blemished street blocks by Acres, which included a possible buyout from the city.

At Friday's weekly poetry night (or how the owner Jackie Smith calls it, “a psychobabble fest”) the store finally made the announcement: the city would be moving them out, that they had "negotiated the sale of our property... to the Redevelopment Agency," meaning Acres of Books would be knocked down.

Sad, stinky news. And, I don't get the city's fixation with demolishing history for lofts that nobody's buying. What will be left for Long Beach's future bibliophilic communities? This dusty downtown dinosaur is the place.

The truth is, there is another bookstore in town that I've also developed a crush on—{Open}, an independent store on Fourth Street (in the "Retro Row" neighborhood). It's a special little place that thoroughly stocks books by local literary stars, or simply draws large crowds when they invite them in for readings. Their art shows make a good draw, too. (Art di Matt Maust, anyone?)

So much to choose from... The wonderfully old, and charming new!



See these places for yourself...
Acres of Books, 240 Long Beach Boulevard, Long Beach. (562) 437-6980
{Open} Bookstore, 2226 East Fourth Street, Long Beach. (562) 499-OPEN

Pictured above: (Left) Acres of Books' towering shelves; (right) Echo Park photographer Marleah Tobin at the current art show happening at {open}, taken on opening night (3-29-08).

Pictured below: Snapshots of the shelves at {open}. Photos by Barbara Navarro.