Create: Fixate Presents
I Art You
Ten Year Anniversary Valentine-Themed Art & Music Celebration
At Premiere Events Center in Downtown Los Angeles
Saturday, February 11, 2012

LOS ANGELES, CA – January 16, 2012 – Arts organization Create:Fixate (C:F) celebrates 10 years of existence with its next exhibit I Art You on Saturday, February 11, 2012 at the Premiere Events Center in Downtown Los Angeles. C:F’s signature blend features vibrant artwork and music produced by over forty local artists, DJs, and musicians. The excitement begins at 4:00pm with a three-hour gallery preview.  The main event starts at 7:00pm and closes at 2:00am.  Admission is $15.00 before 9:00pm and $20.00 for the remainder of the night. Premiere Events Center is located at 613 Imperial St., Los Angeles, CA 90021. For more information, including an image gallery of participating artists works, please visit www.createfixate.com. C:F can be reached by phone at 310-590-7199 for other inquiries.

The evening begins with a preview of the exhibit from 4:00pm to 7:00pm. There is a $5 suggested donation during this period but kids twelve-years old and younger are allowed free entry.  Parents are encouraged to bring the whole family during the preview hours and take advantage of the Kids Kreativity Zone.  Overflowing with art supplies, the Zone provides a supervised space where youth can dive into their own expression while parents explore the exhibit.  While all ages are welcome during the preview, attendees must be 21-years old or older to enter after 7:00pm.

I Art You will be filled with Valentine-themed merriment:

• The Love Car Art Competition – a live painting face-off on a 2003 Nissan Sentra
LA’s favorite live painters take on a Nissan Sentra in an art competition like no other! Through a live drawing on the spot, each artist will be assigned a section of the car and then randomly assigned a rock song title - love ballad, of course - to paint their own interpretation of the song on the car!  They have two hours to complete their painting.  Who might the winner be?  The crowd will be called upon to express their inner art critic when their cheers are measured by our judges!  Participating live painters include some of LA favorites  – John Park, Christina Angelina, Max Neutra, and Michael Pukac.

• Valentine’s Day Card Making Station Open All Night Long – Adult Friendly!

• The Art of Romance: Singles Mingle – Guided by relationship & passion consultant Barry Selby
Barry is The Passion Consultant, and his life purpose is inspiring people to live authentic lives. The vehicle that most effectively expresses his purpose is his facilitation and guidance with singles and couples to have amazing relationships, living purposefully and authentically, and fulfilling their highest potential.  About to be released through Amazon, his new book, Rules of Romance – 50 ways to love your lover, is your answer to many questions.  Comprised of 50 powerful relationship and romance principles, it will inspire and give you food for thought and will show you how to have what you want (in relationship and romance), whether you are single or in relationship.

Create:Fixate Founder and Artistic Director Michelle Berc explains the Valentine’s Day theme… “For ten years, we’ve been loving Los Angeles with art, music, and all things creative. I Art You seemed like the perfect title to express this accomplishment of serving our mission and reaching this milestone.  And as always, I love using our event themes to inspire people to think about who they are and who they are becoming.

“I Art You focuses on appreciating the special people in our lives and how we can express our gratitude by giving a gift that is made with our very own hands. I teamed up with a dear friend, Jessica Viola, who helped write our theme, which opens up with the line “We are how we hold each other.” It continues to say “to understand another, selflessly, purely and with good intention is the fire that feeds the desire to give and to find new ways of expressing our love… True love knows the greatest joys are not in receiving as much as in giving.”  This Valentine’s Day, we want to inspire everyone to remember that some of the greatest gifts can only be felt by the heart and to touch those hearts with art!”

All participating artists along with high school students from C:F’s community partner A Place Called Home will be creating one piece of artwork that expresses the show’s theme.

As part of Create:Fixate’s community outreach efforts the organization continues to empower youth through arts education projects. For the first time C:F will join forces with A Place Called Home (APCH).  APCH is a safe haven in South Central Los Angeles where underserved youth are empowered to take ownership of the quality and direction of their lives through programs in education, arts, and well being; and are inspired to make a meaningful difference in their community and the world.

I Art You will feature the creativity of over twenty visual artists in the Optical Lounge, the evening’s visual feast, presenting a stunning array of painting, photography, multi-media, interactive installation, and performance art. Highlights include:
• Curtis Brooks, who is motivated and driven most by the materials he works with in the home improvement industry, uses sheets of acrylic and latex enamel paint skins to create paint sculptures.
• Brian Robertson bridges the terrain between abstraction and representation. One finds in his collaged paintings meticulous geometric patterning and a highly developed sense of rhythm and movement.
• Emily White works with code to explore the aesthetics of inundation. Her recent drawings exist at the threshold between control and chaos. She has exhibited, lectured and published on topics ranging from manufactured islands to the use of code in engineered textiles.

The Audio Lab, otherwise known as the music portion of the evening, completes Create:Fixate’s vision.  Highlights include:
• John Tejada – “LA’s own techno hero” – LA Weekly
• Silver Pesos – a blend of tropical bass rhythms, soulful Spanish & English female vocals, and West African guitar psychedelia
• Valida – as heard on KCRW’s The Lab, late-night Saturday’s
• Aimé – electronic artist/hip-hop beat-maker, occasionally likened to artists such as Boards of Canada, Ulrich Schnauss, Amiina and Air

Create:Fixate is an arts organization that has now completed a decade of serving the emerging art and music community of Los Angeles.  The organization is best know for its signature blend of art and music, along with thousands of art lovers and party goers in massive – and at times intimate – warehouse locations and alternative spaces on a quarterly basis.  Founder Michelle Berc curates, produces and hosts these ambitious group art shows that present creative beings from around the globe with an emphasis on the local talent of Los Angeles. The production team also includes Music Coordinator Andrea Giardina, and a core team of volunteers and dedicated advisory board members. Awe-inspiring painters, photographers, sculptors, and multi-media artists exhibit alongside an equally impressive array of Los Angeles’ finest DJs and musicians. Each event’s aural artists are poised to create a soundtrack for the night that transforms this from a simple art show into one of the city’s most anticipated art events.

Optical Lounge:

Annie Terrazzo
Annie Terrazzo has been creating mixed media portraiture for almost 10 years and has sold over 450 works of art in that time. “Detritus”, Terrazzo’s current artistic endeavor is made completely out of newspapers from around the world. Her latest series, entitled “Head Lines” will be completed  in January 2012. Her latest work, Power Lines had a very well received exhibition in Toronto, Canada in September 2011 at Communication Art Gallery And Toast Gallery. 6 out of 10 pieces sold in 3 weeks time. Other projects include “Art Is Trash”, born in 2001, which mainly focused on creating portraits made with objects found on the streets of L.A. at 3am.

Annie spends most of her down time in Los Angeles, but travels most of the year doing shows in other countries and collecting new newspapers. She is inspired by the likes of Ralph Steadman, JR, Roy Lichstenstine, strippers that don’t speak English, box tape and expensive champagne.

Art Weeks
Formerly an advertising Art Director for over 20 years, Art Weeks had always had a dream to one day quit the advertising world to become a full time artist, and in 2007 he did just that.  His work often incorporates graphic elements, patterns and precisely rendered shapes, an obvious influence from his former career.  Since then, Weeks has participated in over 60 group shows, including five solo shows, even having had the prestigious honor of being chosen to exhibit a painting at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

Brian Robertson
Los Angeles based artist, Brian Robertson bridges the terrain between abstraction and representation. Within the artist’s figurative works, a convergence of disparate styles and technique combine to create a blended aesthetic. One finds in his collaged paintings meticulous geometric patterning and a highly developed sense of rhythm and movement. Robertson’s highly graphic and vibrant pieces – themselves a hybrid of processes – invoke a fusion of personal and referenced mythologies to create works of great emotional weight.

Curtis Brooks
Curtis Brooks is a southern California native and self-taught artist living in Santa Monica. A carpenter and house painter by trade, his work has evolved out of his twenty years of experience in the construction industry.  His wood sculptures and paintings, each with their own unique visible history, are inspired by and created with the left over paint, paint sticks, and scraps of wood used in his work as a home improvement contractor.

Donna Trousdale
Donna Trousdale considers herself more of a scientist than an artist – a scientist of Consciousness. She became interested in Sacred Geometry several years ago as a way to understand the fundamental structure of the Universe. Her paintings depict the Flower of Life and the Torus, which represent the underlying architecture of Conscious Vibration. It’s the geometry that naturally forms as Unity divides and expands itself. The sacred image of the Flower of Life has been found across the globe and its formation holds innumerable secrets to the mysteries of Creation. Its structure is a divine expression of L.O.V.E. – the Law of Vibrational Equilibrium. Trousdale has spent the last several years studying the dynamics of this Universal principle and has given talks around the world regarding the constant whole number solution to the Pi ratio, which was revealed to her while working with and painting this geometry.

Emily White
Emily White is an artist and architect working in Los Angeles. She graduated from Barnard College and holds a Master in Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Together with partner Lisa Little, she runs the design office LAYER. LAYER’s installations and buildings have appeared in the LA Times, Interior Design magazine, the 2010 California Design Biennial, the New Children’s Museum and the Skirball Cultural Center. White has exhibited, lectured, and published on topics ranging from manufactured islands to the aesthetics of inundation. She is currently on the faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Erik Abel
Born in Ventura County, Erik Abel is an artist inspired by the subtle dynamics of the ocean, ancient cultures, and patterns of the natural world. With over 15 years experience as a freelance designer, Abel has fused his curiosity of nature and design with his passion for surfing and the sea. Through his unique mix of acrylic paint, markers, and colored pencil, Abel’s pieces intrigue clients and collectors to explore their affinity for the environment and appreciation of visual balance. Abel’s clients include private collectors along with notable brands such as Reef, Patagonia, Billabong, and Oxbow. His work has been featured in Surfing Magazine, Fluir, Tide, Juxtapoz, PDX Magazine, Citizen LA, and Oddica.

Gus Harper
Gus Harper was born and raised in Santa Monica.  For the last eleven years he has worked full time as an artist.  His first show was at Ground Zero in Marina Del Rey and since then has shown his work in New York, Denver, New Orleans, Mexico City, and Puerto Vallarta.  His best known work is from the series, “Signs of A Benevolent Universe.”  His most recent solo show, Daydreams, the Awakening was at Gus Harper studios, which he maintains full time at 11306 Venice Blvd. (90066).  His art can be viewed at www.gusharperart.com.  The work on display at Create:Fixate is from the “Signs of Life” series.

Isabelle Alford-Lago
Originally from Santa Cruz, CA, Isabelle Alford-Lago came to Los Angeles to receive her BA from University of Southern California, and has since been working as a painter.  Her current work is distinctly defined by her Gorilla portraits, which are both oils on canvas as well as large public murals.  The Gorillas are a satirical representation of classic portraiture, using an unlikely subject to portray real human emotion and individualized presence.  Alford-Lago is now based in Venice, CA.

Jeremy Crabtree
Jeremy Crabtree’s paintings are made to evoke a comparison between the dreams when we sleep and the dreams of our waking existence. Behind the many layers of color and texture lie varying methods of communication felt collectively from moment to moment, or from space to time. He uses whatever forms of paint or plaster is convenient at the time to maintain the spontaneity felt in our daily lives. He lives and works in downtown Los Angeles.

JK Wasson
JK Wasson is a Venice-based painter and filmmaker. His current series explores the heart– it’s mechanics as a pump, it’s place within the body, it’s rhythms, it’s mood swings. He draws inspiration from his own heart’s struggle to balance order and chaos.

John Park
John Park is an artist and teacher living in Venice.  He received his training at the Rhode Island School of Design where he studied classical figure drawing, painting, sculpture and anatomy.  His current body of work is an attempt to reconcile these classical influences with the modern aesthetic of the New Contemporary Art movement.  The paintings themselves are executed in a public setting in front of an audience at the various galleries, clubs, bars and music festivals that serve as his studio.  He teaches drawing and painting at Concord Prep in Santa Monica.

Jon Measures
Jon Measures is a British artist, designer, and educator based in Los Angeles. Measures produces intriguing mixed media images depicting Los Angeles, and in particular, the East side of LA. These pieces often combine multiple views; slicing and dicing bits of the city’s rich fabric together. The images are usually digitally edited, and collaged together with painted elements. Paint is used to stylize or emphasize aspects of the photographic materials and to add texture and layering. Measures has described his approach to image making as a hybrid between painting, photography, and collage.

Kat Shoa
Kat Shoa is an artist, a world traveler, and a businesswoman. A self taught artist, she combines her art influences from late 19th century to early 20th century impressionism with her unique ink drawing style. As an art collector from around the world, she uses acrylic painting as her creative outlet. She’s a late bloomer who discovered her artistic talents in 2008 with custom portrait paintings, and quickly expanded to figurative paintings, trees, vines, and other subject matters.

In real life, she’s the Managing Director of The Directive Group, a management consulting practice providing strategic business services to companies developing products, services, and intellectual properties. She also sits on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Boys & Girls Club, a 60 year old nonprofit organization helping disadvantaged youth with education, sports, and citizenry programs. She has degrees in Computer Engineering and Executive Management.

L. Croskey
Inspired by vintage pin up art, design, and advertising, LC creates a world of imagination, a very distinct world of his own, an image that reflects a metaphor or fantasy or delusion, a false paradise. By using magazines and books ranging from vintage pin up to children’s books and numerous others, he takes these classic beauties and other collected images and places them in a modern design setting. Years of collected wrapping paper, wallpaper, scrap booking paper, and magazines are the materials LC uses to build this girl inspired world, luring you in to find out that the story might actually be saying more than what it may have initially alluded to.

LC’s art is a diary of emotions from his past and the lessons he has learned from these various, funny, sometimes dark relationships, and sometimes just good old fashioned sex.

Luis Sanchez
For his paintings, Luis Sanchez utilizes a number of mediums, including acrylic, dry pigments and stucco. His two-dimensional works are often noted for his masterful use of trompe l’oeil, leaving viewers with the impression that he has used photography, collage, or other techniques when he has only used the brush. His work seamlessly combines the past, present and the future.

Born in 1968, Sanchez lived the first ten years of his life in Mexico City with his family (a Cuban born father, a Mexican-Lebanese mother, and an older brother and sister.) He and his family immigrated to Seattle, WA in 1979.  He attended Cornish College of the Arts and the Academy of Realist Art in Seattle, WA.  In 2002 Sanchez moved to Los Angeles to pursue painting and sculpture full time. He exhibits in Los Angeles, Indiana, Chicago, Miami and New York.

Michelle Nielsen
Michelle Nielsen is a young Bolivian visual artist educated in San Francisco, Chile, and Mexico. Her oil paintings use a combination of narrative figuration and pop influence inspired by fashion and photography. Letting the canvas capture frozen moments in liquid environments filled with color and transparency, her latest work shows a different stroke of what her development as an artist can offer to the eye. Determined to stay true to her feminine sensibility, imagination, and sense of humor, Michelle’s artwork invites the spectator to enjoy the pleasure of looking.

Mike Russek
Mike Russek graduated with an MFA from Maryland Institute of Art in 2001, with a focus in sculpture. He started his own company,1028 Designs, in 2005. 1028 Designs is a custom design and fabrication facility utilizing laser tooling to create furniture, interiors and various products and solutions. Russek is also the co-owner and curator of d i a l e c t satellite gallery, a cutting edge mobile gallery which travels to special events and festivals around the country, showcasing works from established and emerging local and global talents.

Sal Escobar
An advertising creative during the day and conceptual artist at night, Sal Escobar originally from Puebla, Mexico, started his artistic expression in Mexico City doing videos and installations. In 2005 he moved to Los Angeles where he explores new techniques using recycled materials to create diverse objects. For his collection “Banderas” (Flags), he uses mixed-media to express the wear and tear of relationships and the confrontation of ideals where love is the battlefield.

Sean “Chango” Caffey
Sean Caffey came into the arts naturally with a painter for a mother and a jazz composer of a father. With a family full of artists ranging from photographers and graphic designers to fine mixed media artists, he was exposed to the raw knowledge used to create art.  At a young age, Caffey learned drawing, painting, carpentry, costume design and various forms of dance all before he entered high school.  Over the last ten years he has developed into a metal artist.  His latest permanent installation can be found at the Holy Cow night club in San Francisco where he integrated edge glowing fiber optics into his sculpture to make a dynamic lighting display over the DJ booth that pulses to life with the music.  As of late “Chango” has found perforated sheet metal to be his favorite material, the Moiré patterns from stacking the material allow for significant light and shadow play.

Sebastian Halmagean
Residing in San Diego, Sebastian Halmagean is an emerging artist whose education in art is rooted at the Watts Atelier in Encinitas, CA. His paintings can be defined as “snapshot narratives” that have a tale to tell… an asymmetric and riddled tale that is fueled by longings, nuanced by reverie, laced with a dreamy romanticism, and punctuated by a flare for elegance.

Stephanie Han
Stephanie Han emigrated to the U.S. in 1978 from Seoul, S. Korea. She obtained her MFA degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1999 and now pursues careers in painting and graphic design.  She exhibits all over Southern California and also works as an Art Director at a graphic design firm in Long Beach. She explores themes of loss and hope with her current series of abstract expressionist paintings.

Tari Karkanen (Video Projections)
- bio coming soon

Terry Hutton
Terry Hutton was born in London, England in 1960. With no formal education, apart from a long spell in Florence, Italy, and some junior college credit, he is self-taught. Undecided if this is an advantage or not, he works closely with a silent voice, many call it a natural instinct, or intuition. As a direct result of this, he is setting a new purpose, by veering away from representational work he’s known for, to peer closely into color and just sheer paint. There is nothing under the sun that has not been done before, so with this in mind, a new endeavor has evolved to let the paint sing louder then his brush.

Zig Gron
A performing musician (percussionist) born in Detroit, sound and rhythm are often integral components of Zig Gron’s films and videos, which he has been making for the past 25 years.  Fascinated with the way seemingly insignificant images can merge to form something more powerful than any individual part (the way a musical ensemble is the culmination of separate instruments), his work often results in complex visual graphics based on simple tropes, using time-honored compositional techniques such as theme and variation, repetition and counterpoint.

• Fashion / Jewelry / Crafts:

Irene LAVA Jewels
Irene LAVA jewels, a line of vintage-inspired beaded jewelry, was started by Interior Designer/Personal Shopper/Photographer Janet Grey as an antidote to a debilitating e-bay habit.  Thankfully, it worked out!  Named after her two grandmothers, Irene Jeanette Goldman and Leona Lava, each one-of-a-kind Irene LAVA creation is lovingly hand-assembled by Grey using a unique combination of vintage, czech glass, Swarovski Crystal, gemstone, rare, unusual and just simply SPECTACULAR beads from the early 20th century through current times. Gems include onyx, amethyst, labradorite, garnet, peridot, jade, aventurine and more.

Delevo Designs
After graduating from Columbia College, Deborah Vogt became a founding member of The Conjugate Projekt, Transamoeba Studios and The Chicago Art Department, participating in the creation of many collectives, multitudes of events and performance art installations throughout Chicago. She began creating her line of jewelry, Delevo designs, in the year 2000, even traveling to Bali to teach her stylized designs to the master artisans there. Upon landing in Los Angeles, she worked with several high end designers, and early in 2010 co-founded d i a l e c t gallery on 6th Street downtown. She now divides her time between curating and singing in her band, Early Bird Circus. Her jewelry is hand-crafted, elegant and simple, using fine woods, sterling silver and gold, precious and semi-precious stones and recycled materials to create universal and distinctive designs.

Luv Warrior/WittyKitty
Witty Kitty is all about fashion with flavor!  We are inspired by anything and everything Witty! Our “Kittys” also known as leather sleeves or fingerless gloves are all handmade, no two “Kittys” are a like!  Whether casually worn or dressy they complete any look! The buttery soft leather makes them so comfortable, and there is no thumb or finger cut-outs so your fingers are literally free! Our “Kittys” definitely qualify as a classic in the right wardrobe! Enjoy!

Viola Living Jewels
Jessica Viola is a botanical designer and the founder of Viola Living Jewels and Viola Gardens. For the past thirteen years, Viola has been cultivating her design portfolio and practice based on sustainability, whole-system solutions and artistic vision.  Viola Gardens was born nearly six years ago, specializing in permaculture-based botanical design, CA native plant restoration, drought-tolerant water-wise artscapes, edible gardens and organics.  Viola Gardens has worked with a large range of clients throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, both residentially and commercially.  Viola lectures on sustainable landscape design and permaculture at Santa Monica College, Venice Community Housing and Pepperdine University.  After many years of working in design, studying, stretching, exploring holistic living, traveling to South and Central America, playing music, singing, making art, creating gardens and teaching, Viola Living Jewels was born.  The collection features fashion-forward botanical jewelry; amulets of our wild essence.

Jenneration Fix
Jenneration Fix is a small company made up of two Jennifers:  two women who wanted to help the environment in their own way.  They aim to make a difference in the world by transforming rescued materials into art and supporting various non-profit organizations at the same time.  Jenneration Fix, in effect, makes a complete circle back into the community by taking potential pollutants in the world from businesses and individuals, creating fun and useful items and then donating a portion of their profits back into a wide variety of charities.  The crafty ladies use materials such as discarded fabrics and clothing pieces, leather, scrap wood, e-waste, warped vinyl records, corks, and plastic packaging to make art work, jewelry, purses and clutches, pet toys, clocks, greeting cards and other quirky and fun gifts!

(soy’-ka designs)
Natalie Sojka found her first elements of inspiration for this line at an antique shop in rural Pennsylvania. After seeing the unique blend of metal shapes and textures she was inspired to produce her current line of jewelry.  Her goal with this line is to give her clients something unique, sexy, authentic, and edgy to wear, as well as a conversation starter.  All pieces are handmade, one of a kind, and made from all recycled materials.

Audio Lab:

Silver Pesos
The Silver Pesos blend tropical bass rhythms, soulful female vocals in Spanish and English, and West African guitar psychedelia. Formed in 2009 by producer/instrumentalist Peter Brambl, singer Chloe Conger, and guitarist Robert Weber, the group’s debut album Born at Midnight features the single “Regresando,” which has created a buzz on and offline.  Currently based in Los Angeles, the Silver Pesos also feature jazz bassist John von Seggern, percussionist Jason Kadlec, drummer Krishnanda Adipurba and vocalist/keyboardist Joanna Ellis.
www.thesilverpesos.com For free download of album, enter: http://www.thesilverpesos.com/create-fixate

John Tejada (Palette)
Normally associated with his peers in techno from Detroit, Europe and elsewhere, John Tejada has embraced electronic music as a personal frontier, expanding on his formidable resume as a techno recording artist as producer and remixer, DJ, and label owner. With dozens of singles, remixes, some film and TV work, and contributions to sample CDs to his credit, this recent expansion has born a slew of tracks deeply informed by his uncompromised aesthetic honed over years of diligent production, which finds its roots in Detroit techno but references a far broader range of music, both in and outside of electronic music. His musically formative years were steeped in classical music, growing up in family of performing artists – his mother a soprano singer and his father a conductor – which then widened to include hip hop, DJing and finally, electronic music. www.paletterecordings.com

Valida (KCRW)
Dubbed by LA.com as “one of the most important figures in L.A.’s nightlife scene,” Valida’s steady rise comes from her uncanny ability to seamlessly blend a variety of music styles that include house, hip-hop, indie rock, b-more/electro, and some classic 80s, disco and pop tracks thrown in for good measure. Since purchasing her first set of turntables in 1998, Valida has straddled the music and modeling arena with skills and ease. Worldwide bookings have brought her musical eloquence to Winter Music Conference in Miami, Regine in Paris, Dragon-I in Hong Kong, Mystique in Kuala Lumpur, Budoir in Dubai, Nuphoria event in Tokyo, Candela Party in Puerto Rico, Organic Party in Mexico, Barbados and her native Bosnia.  She can be heard on air on KCRW (89.9 FM) in Los Angeles on rotating Sundays from 3:00 to 6:00am as part of their program The Lab. www.valida.com

HouseMates (Venice)
HouseMates are a DJ trio reigning from Venice Beach consisting of founders Jacob Vaynshtok & Aidan Ramos of Jacob’s List and Matt Xavier of Railyard Recordings. After a series of convivial Venice gatherings the trio continue to provide an indubitable source of thoughtful art and house music events at unique venues along LA’s westside.  http://facebook.com/housemates.venice

Mr. NumberOnederful (Cannibal Flower)
LC has been passionately spinning vinyl since 82’. Specializing in remixes, mash ups and covers. But what creates LC’s sound is the hip hop, lounge, reggae, trip hop, dance and some pop music mixed together to harmonize this DJ’s acoustic signature. A sound that has made him a vital piece of the musical group Bitter:Sweet, as featured on 89.9fm KCRW.  LC spreads his vibe and sound around to various events around LA such as, Cannibal Flower, Bacchanal,  at the Del Monte Speak Easy, L.A. Beatdown at the Henry Fonda, the Mar Vista Farmers Market every second and third Saturday of the month, and is the tour DJ for Shana Halligan formerly of Bitter:Sweet. But his creative spirit doesn’t end there. Out from behind the DJ booth, LC is a collage artist and also a co-owner and curator of Thinkspace Gallery and Cannibal Flower. If you like the vibe LC spins you can download mixes, contact, and book him at www.lcroskeyart.com

Santana (TruthSeekers Radio | KPFK)
Santana Westbrook is the host of TruthSeekers which airs Midnight-2am every Friday Night/Saturday morning on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles. The musical selections cover a wide range of genres from downtempo electronic instrumentals to soul and beyond. Santana also produces music under the aliases of BuddhaSupreme and Nexus102. The show can be heard on demand at www.truthseekersradio.org.

Aimé (Aimemusic ltd)
Los Angeles resident Fran Dominguez a.k.a. Aimé is an electronic artist/hip-hop beat-maker, occasionally likened to artists such as Boards of Canada, Ulrich Schnauss and the Icelandic band Amiina and French duo Air, for his more hybridized orchestral styles. Following the success of his first album Place Your Hands Over Your Eyes, that included accolades (Los Angeles Music Awards “Electronic Album of the Year” 2007) and diverse college and internet radio airplay, Aimé has since gone on to produce music for cable channels (Plum Television, Comcast Cable Programming), short films (“Cop” 2009) and has remixed the work of artists both mainstream (Radiohead, Minus The Bear, Gorillaz, Brian Eno & David Byrne) and underground (Pinklogik, The Dead Amps). A highly anticipated follow up album titled Times When I Know You Will Watch the Sky will be out in 2012. http://www.facebook.com/aimespace

Dj Sebiseb (SD Mixmasters)
Originally from France, DJ Sebiseb  brings European feels to her mixes. Her versatile skills on either vinyl or CDs lets her play different style of music to accommodate many different types of music lovers. She has started to incorporate her music skills into the music producing world. For more info, schedules and booking www.djsebiseb.com.

Theory Abstract (Deep funk records)
Theory Abstract is a 20 year experienced DJ coming from a strong family musical background. He has embraced many styles of music and incorporated them into his sets. He has appeared in small lounges & LA underground events to large clubs in Vegas. He has opened and performed with the likes of MAW, Osunlade, Mark Farina, Doc Martin, Nickodemos, Dj AM, MixMasterMike, Thievery Corporation, and the list goes on. He has collaborations with live bands such as the funk sensation “Kool In The Gang”, as well as the live nujazz project “Modern Groove Assembly”, with singer Sy Smith. www.mixcrate.com/theoryabstract

Charles Guilterre (Fallen Fronds)
Producer/DJ Charles Guilterre is a recent transplant from Brooklyn to LA. Best known for his Hump Wednesday parties in New York City’s East Village in the late 1990s, his electronic sound incorporates elements of lounge, experimental, electro, synthwave, heady house, and a hint of industrial, the latter heavily influenced by music from Chicago’s WaxTrax! label from the mid-1980s. He is currently concentrating his production/remixing efforts on his production team, Fallen Fronds.  http://www.facebook.com/guilterre

Christos Kedras (Kapa Music, SOAK Brasil) -
Originally from Greece and based in Los Angeles, Christos Kedras is a globetrotting ambassador of music sophistication thanks to his ultra-unique music style. Kedras hand-picks the finest ingredients from all over the world: African & Latin rhythms, Disco/Funk/Soul grooves, Brazilian bossa, Jazzy brass & pianos, and dancefloor-adorned Deep House beats. He mixes these into unmatched music cocktails that caress the senses, move the body, and expand the mind. With DJ gigs in Europe, Japan, Brazil and several US cities, a radio show that airs globally, and a constant supply of high-quality productions, Christos Kedras is one of the most international Los Angelinos in the house/electronic genre! www.christoskedras.com

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For more information, images, or to request interviews, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

NextSpace Hosts
Award-Winning Photographer Sam Comen’s
28 at 28
A Solo Exhibition in Culver City
October 22, 2011 – January 22, 2012
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 22, 2011, 6-9pm

LOS ANGELES, CA – September 29, 2011 – Award-winning photographer Sam Comen’s first solo exhibition, 28 at 28, premieres with an installation of over 100 works at Culver City’s NextSpace starting on Saturday, October 22, 2011.  28 at 28 is a serial portraiture study that captures the evolving lives of Comen’s peer group in a crisp, saturated style.  Comen unveils the first three years of this new body of work at a free public reception on October 22, 2011 from 6:00 to 9:00pm – on his 31st birthday. The choice of this date to debut the ongoing project calls attention to time’s passage, the integral throughline in 28 at 28. The two-story atrium of NextSpace will be transformed into a larger-than life timeline of Comen’s subjects in a taxonomic display of environmental and studio photographs. Beverages will be provided by Crispin Cider. The exhibition will run for three months through Sunday, January 22, 2012. NextSpace, a creative collaborative community workspace, is open to the public Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 5:30pm at 9415 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232. To learn more about the artist, please visit www.samcomen.com. To view 28 at 28 online, please visit www.28at28.com.

Carla Blieden, Nick Fowler, and Jerome Gordon from Sam Comen's 29 at 29.

In 2009, when Comen was 28, he initiated the project by shooting twenty-eight 28-year-olds. The next year he shot twenty-nine 29-year-olds – 29 at 29 – and he is currently shooting the same 29 people, plus one, for this year’s installment – 30 at 30. In the years to come, Comen will continue to follow this growing group and investigate how perspective and sense-of-self evolve with age.

28 at 28 is a photographic exploration of Comen’s peers – artists, actors, musicians, scientists, corporate managers, and municipal employees – as they embrace adulthood. The project, shot annually, occupies the photographic space that straddles document and fiction, incorporating both storytelling and portraiture.  Comen frames these subjects in their environments – their homes, backyards, neighborhoods, places of work – to examine how they define themselves as they search for meaning and authenticity in their evolving lives. A successful photojournalist and editorial photographer for national magazines, Comen fittingly applies the motifs and vernacular of commercial photography to his subjects, capturing the essence of his generation in the current cultural context.

“In my late 20s, I sensed that my peers and I were on the cusp – we were all either making strides in our careers and personal lives or searching for direction,” says Comen, a native Angeleno, “I felt like the next few years would inform the rest of our lives – it seemed a perfect time to begin a document of my peers, and by extension, my generation.”

Sam Comen –
Sam Comen seeks out stories that are salient in the American conscience, often working on a project for years at a time. Concurrent with shooting for Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Details, Entertainment Weekly, MTV, and Fortune in recent years, Comen has garnered awards and honors for his ongoing documentary photo essays. In 2010, he was awarded a Santa Fe Center for Photography grant in recognition of his Lost Hills series, which documented a small California community of Latino farmworkers struggling to create a new American Dream. Also in 2010, his 22 Miles of Normandie Avenue, an ongoing exploration of social and ethnic identity in the city, was featured in the Month of Photography Los Angeles’ (MOPLA) exhibition Dear Diary. Work from the two documentary series was also honored in 2011 when Comen was named one of the Critical Mass Top 50 and his work toured the Pacific Northwest in a series of exhibitions. Prints from Lost Hills and Normandie Avenue were also featured in MOPLA’s A Place in the Sun: Picturing California exhibition, also in 2011.

Sam Comen’s Newsweek-assigned portrait series, Watts Votes Obama, which documented Obama’s supporters on election day in the LA neighborhood synonymous with the racial tension in America, was included in the Photo District News Photo Annual 2008.  Comen’s work was also chosen for American Photo 26 in 2008.  He has been nominated for the PDN 30 and received a grant from The Penland School of Crafts in photography. He has shown work in galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, OR and Santa Fe.

NextSpace –
NextSpace is a workplace for the new economy, providing innovative physical and virtual infrastructure for freelancers, entrepreneurs, and creative class professionals to succeed in the 21st Century knowledge economy. In an increasingly disconnected world, NextSpace creates a collaborative community that is revolutionizing the nature of work. For more information please call 310-606-2716 or visit http://nextspace.us.

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For more information, to request images, or arrange interviews please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

The complete set of Comen's initial group of subjects for 28 at 28.

Create:Fixate Presents
Stop-Pause-Now
At Premiere Events Center in Downtown Los Angeles
Saturday, July 16, 2011

LOS ANGELES, CA – Arts organization Create:Fixate (C:F) is once again up to some good with their next exhibit Stop-Pause-Now on Saturday, July 16, 2011 at the Premiere Events Center. C:F’s signature blend features vibrant artwork and music produced by over forty local artists, DJs, land musicians. The excitement begins at 4:00pm with a gallery preview.  The main event starts at 7:00pm and closes at 2:00am.  Admission is $15.00 before 9:00pm and $20.00 for the remainder of the night. Premiere Events Center is located at 613 Imperial St., Los Angeles, CA 90021. For more information, including an image gallery of participating artists’ works, please visit www.createfixate.com. C:F can be reached by phone at 310-590-7199 for other inquiries.

The evening begins with a preview of the exhibit from 4:00pm to 7:00pm. There is a $5 suggested donation during this period but kids twelve-years old and younger are allowed free entry.  Parents are encouraged to bring the whole family during the preview hours and take advantage of the Kids Kreativity Zone.  Overflowing with art supplies, the Zone provides a supervised space where youth can dive into their own expression while parents explore the evening’s exhibit. While all ages are welcome during the preview, attendees must be 21-years old or older to enter after 7:00pm.

Create:Fixate Founder and Artistic Director Michelle Berc explains the event’s theme, “Sometimes, you’ve got to take a moment, with all that’s whizzing by.  The noise level rises and it becomes an ever-increasing challenge to just be, much less Be Present. So take a moment. Let go of that angst about the past and your worries about the future. Give your undivided attention to what’s going on right in front of you. Pause. Center. Focus.  And when you’re ready, Take Action. Find your way to Now and make it happen!”

All participating artists along with high school students from Sun Valley High School will be creating one piece of artwork that expresses the show’s theme.

Stop-Pause-Now will feature the creativity of over thirty visual artists in the “Optical Lounge” – the evening’s visual feast – presenting a stunning array of painting, photography, multi-media, interactive installation, and performance art. Highlights include:

• Kenneth Ober’s current paintings are meditations exploring and defining time and space through complex fields created by using the excessive repetition of simple, small lines.  The paintings are made primarily with a tool designed for pin-striping automobiles, which is used to apply relentlessly consistent lines of paint to subtly textured canvas.

• At first distance Michelle Matthews‘ works are typically read as photographs. It is only when the viewer steps closer to the piece that they become disoriented by the materiality of the thread. Anonymous spaces become materialized in tens of thousands of stitches, and the thread supplants the photographic pixel.

• In her assemblages, Jena Priebe uses a myriad of media such as mirrors, glass, antiquated found objects, metals, adhesives and the guts of machines.

• Mark Dugally’s love of motorcycles and passion for the extraordinary come together in the rolling creations that are functional pieces of art. His designs are exotic materiality mixed with an aesthetic that questions what we know as “motorcycle.”

• Ken Murphy is a musician, programmer, artist, and tinkerer living in San Francisco, who is interested in the intersection of art and technology.  His latest creation “A History of the Sky” is a time-lapse visualization of the sky, clouds, weather and light.

• Chase, named one of Italian Vogue’s favorite 2006 street artists in the world (alongside Shepard Fairey and Banksy), is an artist/designer and Belgium transplant now based in Los Angeles.  He spends most of his time painting free murals containing uplifting messages in cities around the world. Chase will be doing a live painting installation during the event, which will be auctioned off to raise money for Create:Fixate’s community outreach programs for at-risk youth.

• In 2006, Kat Dawes traveled to Africa seeking to intimately understand the Laws of the Universe, hitchhiking from South to Central Africa and back again for a year with minimal possessions and financial resources.  Her vision inspired her to create a unifying word – NOWism™– that celebrates the practice of wisdom expressed throughout all cultures and ages.  In addition to live painting, Dawes will be giving a short talk about her campaign for the NOW.

The “Audio Lab” – otherwise known as the music portion of the evening – completes Create:Fixate’s vision.  Highlights include:

• Love in the Circus features unique and seductive melodies that combine and blur the lines of electronica, rock, jazz and blues with sultry, edgy, museful hooks. The group has recently played at festivals in Bali, Europe and recently toured Australia and Indonesia over New Years. C:F will be offering a free download of their latest album!

• As a continuation of an alliance with KCRW, C:F welcomes the one and only Jason Bentley who serves as the Music Director of the station and host of their signature program “Morning Becomes Eclectic.”  Bentley, who maintains a distinguished career as a Music Supervisor for film and advertising, is a tireless champion of new music and culture with an influence close to home and around the globe.

• Idiot Savant is the DJ collaboration between Jesse Wright and Ron Levy, the founders of Pocket Underground.  Since 2004, they have been a staple in California house and techno communities.

• DJ Wiseacre, the co-creator of three very successful LA parties, including Lift, will continue his quest to bridge genres of music and people by spinning fine tunes from all over the world, ranging from Brooklyn to the Balkans, from South America to Sweden, from house, to disco, to Afro-Latin broken beat and dub.

As part of Create:Fixate’s community outreach efforts the organization continues to empower youth through arts education projects. For the second time, C:F and Sun Valley High School will join forces. The exhibit will feature a collection of work from the students of Andrea Graham, who weave the concepts of emotional and spiritual health with art.  Using the show’s theme, Graham teaches her students to become aware of their preoccupations, so that they can move beyond and learn the benefits of living in the present.

Create:Fixate is an arts organization based in Los Angeles.  It is completing its 9th year of producing art/music events that bring together emerging artists and musicians, along with thousands of art lovers and party goers in massive – and at times intimate – warehouse locations and alternative spaces on a quarterly basis.  Founder Michelle Berc curates, produces and hosts these ambitious group art shows that present creative beings from around the globe with an emphasis on the local talent of Los Angeles. The production team also includes Music Coordinator Andrea Giardina, and a core team of volunteers and dedicated advisory board members. Awe-inspiring painters, photographers, sculptors, and multi-media artists exhibit alongside an equally impressive array of Los Angeles’ finest DJs and musicians. Each event’s aural artists are poised to create a soundtrack for the night that transforms this from a simple ‘art show’ into one of the city’s most anticipated art events.

~The Optical Lounge~

Adam Diaz
Adam Diaz was born and raised in Los Angeles. He attended college at California State University Northridge, obtaining a degree in English literature, with extensive course study in traditional art techniques. He is currently working as an animator for cable television programs, having channeled his traditional visual skills into the world of 3D graphics and animation. The focus in his mature art is both visual and narrative as he includes passages from his verse writings into his paintings. His aim is to form a new experience for the viewer by marrying imagery and hints of narrative–always with a nod to the comic culture.

Alexander Drecun
Born and raised in Houston, Texas, Alexander Drecun moved to Los Angeles in 2004 to attend Occidental College where he received his B.A. in Art History and Visual Arts (Film Emphasis) and his minor in English and Contemporary Literature.  As part of his course work, he studied film-based black and white photography, a pursuit that quickly changed from academic requirement to passion.  Based in Los Angeles, he now divides his time between street photography and his work as a director of photography on feature films, documentaries, and commercials.  The images displayed represent two facets of Drecun’s street work: candid moments of intimacy, humor, or melancholy that speak to the strangeness of the human experience and portraiture documenting the breadth of a singular human experience manifested in appearance.

Ali Matin
Born in Iran, in 1972, Ali Matin started his journey as a freelance photographer in 1991.  He traveled throughout Iran and captured the uniqueness of its diverse nature and culture. His work has been widely published by UNESCO, the Cultural Ministry of Iran, and private publishers.  Today, he pursues his passion in documentary photography; catching the synchronic moments of the unfolding time and defining it symbolically.  Matin is showcasing “Man and Nature” in this exhibition.

Anthony Kraus
A Native American from the Watanak tribe, Anthony Kraus now lives in San Francisco where he is pursuing his masters in Indigenous and Buddhist philosophy at San Francisco State University.  In his free time, Kraus trains as a cage-fighter.  His work as a live-painter and muralist has won awards while at the same time stirring controversy.  He thinks art will save the world.

Ashleigh Sumner
Ashleigh Sumner is a self-taught artist living in Los Angeles. Originally from North Carolina, Sumner received her B.A. in Theatre Arts before moving west to pursue an acting career in stage, film, and television. Influenced and inspired by the social, physical, and artistic environment of California, Sumner expanded her creative pursuits beyond the stage to the canvas. While Sumner is still professionally involved in the collaborative process of performance, she finds tranquility in the solitary process of painting.

Ben Encarnacion aka Benedigital
Ben Encarnacion aka Benedigital escaped the streets of South Central Los Angeles over 13 years ago to become a successful graphic designer and interactive art director. He draws upon a background in graphic design, architecture, fine arts, and animation to produce work for his extensive client list, which includes Warner Brothers, Lucas Arts, Relativity Media, Discovery Channel, Disney, HBO, General Motors, and Kia, just to name a few.

Inspired by his vocation, his avocation began to emerge and 2 years ago Benedigital began creating his own art in earnest. Channeling his personal experiences thru graffiti, painting, computer graphics, and creating mixed media, he addressed issues of gang violence, social injustice, and his rich heritage.  The evolution of his art is a fusion of the underground electronic music scene and his digital fantasy world. Embracing this energy, Benedigital has become a fixture in the growing live painting community in Los Angeles.

Boris Litvinov
Boris Litvinov started sculpting at an early age using materials harvested from broken home appliances and any hardware he could find. More recently, Litvinov has added stone sculpture to his repertoire. As in his early works, the prevailing theme for his art remains a change in physical form, a metamorphosis from a cold, dead media to life-like shapes and forms. As a sculptor, Litvinov reaches into his professional experience as a physical therapist.  He has come into contact with many bodies, resulting in art that often reminds people of natural body curves or shapes.

Chase
Chase is an artist/designer and Belgium transplant now based in Los Angeles. He spends most of his time painting free murals that contain uplifting messages in cities around the world. Best known for his “Remember Who You Are” and “Awareness Geezers” campaigns, the intent behind his work is to inspire people to follow their hearts and to remind them to stay connected to their inner child. In 2006 Chase was named as one of Italian Vogue’s favorite street artists, alongside Shepard Fairey and Banksy.

Christina Angelina
Christina Angelina has been an artist her entire life. After attending NYU, the Art Center College of Design, and OTIS, she graduated with a BFA from UCLA in 2008. Additionally, through UCLA she has attended universities in Italy and Greece, focusing on Art History and Classics. Angelina has owned, curated and co-owned four galleries, with her present space being Starfighter Studios in Venice, Ca.  Her work has also been featured at the Oscar suites at the Pacific Design Center, LA Fashion Week, the Brewery Art Walk, the Downtown Art Walk, the Venice Art Walk, the Venice Art Crawl, the Abbot Kinney Festival, Equality California Events, the Catalina Art Walk and Lightning in a Bottle. Her work is constantly changing so you can look forward to some new and exciting pieces this summer at Create:Fixate.

Farzad Kohan
The thought provoking works of Farzad Kohan range from drawings and paintings to sculpture, installation and photography. Kohan is widely known for his experimental work using unconventional methods and mediums.

Kohan comments that his work is merely a reflection of how he sees the world around him. “My art reflects what is often a simultaneous experience of both the struggle and beauty that comprises life. With my art, I communicate across cultural divides, language barriers, religion and gender.  I’m a citizen of this world.”

General.LA
General.LA has shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), the Geffen, A+D Museum of Architecture and Design, and the prestigious Art Center College of Design, where he was top of his class. He was creative consultant for the first graphic tee campaign with American Apparel, designer and consultant of Coachella’s 2008 center stage with Pulse Architecture, has just finished designing and co-producing a 300M Major-Studio feature film yet-to-be released, and is principle of his own design firm General.LA and Co-founder of the agency Monumental International Ltd. He has been a guest critic at Art Center College of Design’s Environmental Design and Fine Art program, UCLA AUD, and Southern California Institute of Architecture SCI-Arc. General.LA is currently developing the next evolution of 2001’s Parametricism, this time microgenre-izing specific evolutionary “lexicon.genetics” as well as creating its primary manifestation known as the phenomena of “General.ization,” the unifying formula of the universe.

Hagop Belian
Hagop Belian was born and raised in Syria before moving to the United States in his early teens.  His creative process began while studying at UC Santa Cruz, where he earned a BA in Mathematics. His work explores the possibilities of illusion and how nothing is ever as it seems. It is about the deconstruction of the human condition and the “unlearning” of one’s own belief system.  Each piece allows Belian to reveal another layer of the hologram of life.  He currently lives in Venice Beach where he continues to explore the unreal.

Jaja Dario
Born in Los Angeles in 1979, Jaja Dario was raised in Manila where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts-Painting at the University of the Philippines in 2004. Dario’s creative approach revolves around the mystical and transpersonal realms of consciousness, and was brought about by a deeply felt experience of oneness with the universe. Her artistic process begins by being intuitively informed of the song that she names each painting after, then she drafts multiple points of concentric circles with a compass on a wooden panel frame. Dario then sets the stage for a visual journey of exploration in color perspective through value, intensity, and layers of emulsion. She carefully plays with the intervals of time and space, spinning around the wooden panel as she paints, composing and creating her lively geometric tones and harmonious forms in attempt to visually vibrate the music of the spheres.

James Ketover
James Ketover was born in Salt Lake City, UT.  During secondary school in New York he was privileged to study art with the distinguished illustrator, Bill Parsons.  He credits Mr. Parsons with teaching him the importance of careful observation, creativity and execution.  Ketover regards art and design as a constant reminder that there are no creative restraints except those individuals place upon themselves.

This work investigates different modes of representation in order to reveal various qualitative aspects of spatial organization.  The art was inspired by Louis Sullivan’s A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers (1922).

Jasko Begovic
Born in Bosnia, Jasko Begovic creates art that is both probing and poignant, and although his pieces are conspicuously filled with anguish, they are also about alacrity and elation. His art breathes into his memories and has no rules or borders.

Jena Priebe
Conceptual sculptor Jena Priebe lives and works in Los Angeles, California. In her studio in downtown LA, she works to achieve a symbiotic relationship with her life and the creation of her art. She uses a myriad of media and her assemblages include mirrors, glass, antiquated found objects, metals, adhesives and the guts of machines. Some things are haggled over, bartered for, unearthed in a forgotten family attic or pulled from the depths of tangled industrial salvage yards. Her pieces are meant to give the mechanical metaphor of the path we take through the complexities of life.

Ultimately, she wants to express the magic of those things we often take for granted. To capture the simplicity of wonder and joy we sometimes forget for our everyday surroundings.

John Lavezzo
John Lavezzo makes orb paintings.  The space created is threefold: optical illusion, abstraction and relief.  The optical illusion occurs when tinted, cast and painted plaster hemispheres are perceived as a two dimensional surface.  The abstraction exists in the form of colors, shapes and patterns made up of orbs and the space of the canvas.  The relief is revealed in the physical presence of the work. Changes within the orbs and their placement are made in an improvisational way as influenced by his mood, energy level, and intuition.

Justin Snyder
The Long Beach based artist Justin Snyder is an emerging painter living in Long Beach, CA. After spending 8 years working as a film editor for Twentieth Century FOX, he has now taken his art career full time. His latest body of work, consisting of paintings on canvas and wood, has been described as dimensional layouts of echoing harmonics, distorted body forms, and organic abstraction.  Snyder is an active figure in the Los Angeles Art Community and has become an activist and outreach worker around issues on homelessness and starvation.

Kenneth Ober
Kenneth Houghton Ober was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on February 22, 1972.  He studied Art, Art History, and Literature at the University of Maryland in College Park for two years. The art and culture of Asia served as an introduction to Buddhist philosophy, which led him to Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.  The desire to connect with a larger art world brought Ober to California, where he graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in 2001.

Ober’s current paintings are meditations, exploring and defining time and space through complex fields created by using the excessive repetition of simple, small lines.  The paintings are made primarily with a tool designed for pin-striping automobiles, which is used to apply relentlessly consistent lines of paint to subtly textured canvas.

Kuger Peterson
Kuger Peterson is an artist based in Los Angeles.  His surrealistic assemblages ventilate his political concerns and ignite a dialogue between the viewer and the subject.  Ironic situations and rhetorical subversions inspired by the media and our dominant institutions fuel each piece.  Instead of passively absorbing the work, the viewer is confronted with moral dilemmas, implied narratives, and familiar imagery.

Mark Dugally
Mark Dugally is an artist, designer and bike builder in the Los Angeles area. A native to the area, he grew up around architectural design and a family business of custom homes. His love of motorcycles and passion for the extraordinary come together in the rolling creations he creates, which are also functional pieces of art. Dugally’s work is all about exotic materiality mixed with an aesthetic that questions what we know as “motorcycle.”

Michelle Matthews
Michelle Matthews is a photographer, artist and graphic designer.  Since 2007 she has been creating a body of work that relates to the representation of photography through embroidery. From a distance, these works are typically read as photographs. It is only when the viewer steps closer to the piece that they become disoriented by the materiality of the thread. Anonymous spaces become materialized in tens of thousands of stitches, and the thread supplants the photographic pixel. What has been typically a medium of celebration, national pride, corporate championing and consumer trade, becomes a place for making the banal and insignificant heroic, bringing into focus, the history, consequence and potential of our built environment. Although we build it, at the end of the day, Matthews’s work brings attention to how space defines us as both individuals, and as a society.

Mister Pike
Mister Pike produces art in the time and space of inspiration, on street walks, using discarded materials.  This disregards the art object, instead encouraging art as a re-arrangement of what is already there.  It is “art” only for the time it remains intact, the digital photograph being the record of art taking place.  Mister Pike creates a story using comic strip narration, a medium easily understood by anyone. Graffiti, vandalism, and invasion of public space are also brought forth in his art, yet the materials in the pieces were already there and can easily be removed.  The messages are typically playful with a humorous approach to serious topics.

Patrick Haemmerlein
A native of Kinderhook, NY, Patrick Haemmerlein is a freelance designer and artist living in Los Angeles. After receiving his BFA from The Savannah College of Art and Design in 2000, Haemmerlein took a long road trip across the country and settled down in LA.  There he began to obsessively photograph the city and its components. He gradually moved into a new art form as he started to combine and create the images he was shooting. Reflecting on the issues of the day, Haemmerlein explores themes of nature versus industry and how they can coexist or clash.

Rebecca Cabage
Rebecca Cabage graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a BFA in Photographic Illustration. After graduation Cabbage moved to Los Angeles, seeking solace in the California warmth and sunshine after 4 years in the cold, cold winters of upstate New York.

Cabage has worked for clients such as Honda/Acura (via Genex) and Virgin Records.  She has also shown her work in various galleries in Los Angeles, including MOPLA and AFTA. In addition to photography, she works as the Director for Studio Bookings at Smashbox Studios. She is currently in production for her book “Save the Salton Sea.”

Sonja Solinas
Los Angeles artist Sonja Salinas, a.k.a. Little Sonrisa, paints quirky worlds that might exist in the gap between reality and dreams. These whimsical creations are influenced by the dark lowbrow movement and the strange universe of surrealism.

Having a strong background in graphic design, the artist works not only digitally, but also in oil and colored pencil on wood panel and canvas.  Her latest body of work, a collection of eccentric humanlike birds telling nostalgic stories to the child within is her interpretation of mythology, in which birds have been symbols of power and freedom, linking the human world to surreal realms that lie beyond ordinary experience.

Stephan Canthal
Technology is a key component in the work of Stephan Canthal.  He began experimenting with the photographic medium while pursuing a Fine Arts degree at California State University of Long Beach.  His interest in advancing this medium and its process has led him to printing on multiple surfaces, including aluminum, wood, film, and specialty papers. As he explores the idea of printing images on different surfaces, he has begun to use texture not only to accent the image, but also to create a communication between substrate and imagery.

Yu Cotton-well
Yu Cotton-well was born and grew up in Yokohama, Japan.  A decade ago, she decided to move to California to expand her cultural and artistic experience. She uses fiber as her main medium and often blends different kinds of materials, including every day objects.  She seeks to create a relationship between her personal life and her artwork, as well as to convey a message that she believes is always hidden in everyday life.

Cotton-well also likes to combine written materials with her visual media to deepen the meanings both visually and conceptually. Her recent piece “3yrs 9mons 25dys” transforms ordinary diaries into a three-dimensional piece with her personal memories placed in drawers.  Cotton-well wishes to capture those delicate moments in life where we pause and look inward to reflect.

~Video Artists~

Stuart Scanlon
For the last decade and a half Stuart Scanlon has created animation, motion graphics and visual effects for commercials, film titles and theme parks. In recent years he has fused those talents and his formal music training to create musically inspired video work. His desire to return to his live performance roots and his love of the underground dance music scene has inspired his process of designing fixed visual compositions which he deconstructs and reassembles in real-time. His work can be seen on permanent installation in Anaheim, Orlando, Paris, Tokyo and Hong Kong as well as appearing temporarily in the hills of San Diego, the deserts of Nevada, the warehouses of Los Angeles and televisions near you.

Ken Murphy
Ken Murphy is a musician, programmer, artist, and tinkerer living in San Francisco.  He is interested in the intersection of art and technology.  His past projects include abstract, luminescent artworks using LEDs and “Blinkybugs”–simple, blinking electronic insects that can be built from few parts.  They are now available in the form of a combination book and kit.  He also has written how-to articles for Popular Science and Make Magazine.  His musical background includes film scoring, as well as producing “music buttons” used by NPR programs such as “All Things Considered.”

“A History of the Sky” is a time-lapse visualization of the sky, clouds, weather and light over a long period of time.  An image of the sky is captured every 10 seconds for a full year; the images from each day are assembled into a movie, and the days are arranged chronologically.  The mosaic of time-lapse movies reveals the cyclical patterns of sunrise and sunset over the course of the year.

~Live Painting~

Kat Dawes
Dynamic and charismatic, Kat Dawes can be recognized by her signature double braids and head wrap. Communicating with her entire being, Dawes’s contagious energy makes her compelling and memorable.

In 2006, Dawes traveled Africa to intimately understand the Laws of the Universe, hitchhiking from South to Central Africa and back again for a year with minimal possessions and financial resources.  Her vision inspired her to create a unifying word – NOWism™ – that celebrates the practice of wisdom expressed throughout all cultures and ages. NOWism™ is a universal reminder service, encouraging people to participate in the present moment by BEING their desired results…NOW.

In addition to live painting, Dawes will be giving a short talk about her campaign for the NOW.

~Fashion and Jewelry Designers~

Delevo Designs
After graduating from Columbia College, Deborah Vogt became a founding member of The Conjugate Projekt, Transamoeba Studios and The Chicago Art Department, participating in the creation of many collectives, multitudes of events and performance art installations throughout Chicago. She began creating her line of jewelry, Delevo designs, in the year 2000, even traveling to Bali to teach her stylized designs to the master artisans there. Upon landing in Los Angeles, she worked with several high end designers, and early in 2010 co-founded d i a l e c t gallery on 6th Street downtown. She now divides her time between curating and singing in her band, Early Bird Circus. Her jewelry is hand-crafted, elegant and simple, using fine woods, sterling silver and gold, precious and semi-precious stones and recycled materials to create universal and distinctive designs.

ONA Los Angeles
Leona Giddings, aka Ona, began her mission to be a fashion designer in 1999. She attended a fashion program in her home town of Tucson AZ, then in 2000 moved to Los Angeles when accepted to FIDM.  For ten years she worked in the fashion industry, learning and developing her skills, working as a pattern maker, assistant designer at Fredericks of Hollywood and eventually moving on to “ready to wear” in technical design.

ONA Los Angeles can be described as a fiercely elegant collection of Men’s and Women’s contemporary clothing. Dresses and tops for women are often versatile, making them wearable several different ways. Many of the printed styles feature exclusive and original textile artwork.

Viola Living Jewels
Jessica Viola is a botanical designer and the founder of Viola Living Jewels and Viola Gardens. For the past thirteen years, Viola has been cultivating her design portfolio and practice based on sustainability, whole-system solutions and artistic vision.  Viola Gardens was born nearly six years ago, specializing in permaculture-based botanical design, CA native plant restoration, drought-tolerant water-wise artscapes, edible gardens and organics.  Viola Gardens has worked with a large range of clients throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, both residentially and commercially.  Viola lectures on sustainable landscape design and permaculture at Santa Monica College, Venice Community Housing and Pepperdine University.  After many years of working in design, studying, stretching, exploring holistic living, traveling to South and Central America, playing music, singing, making art, creating gardens and teaching,  Viola Living Jewels was born.  The collection features fashion-forward botanical jewelry; amulets of our wild essence.

Fahmina
Topanga eco-designer Fahmina is tarnishing the thought that leather can’t be green. The Bangladeshi New Yorker model reconstructs gorgeous, handmade leather accessories from reclaimed and pre-cycled leather. 100% of the leather used is pre-consumer waste, salvaged from factory cutting tables.  Mixing colors and textures fearlessly, she creates elegant design that is chic, urban and utilitarian, hand made with excellent quality.  The fanny clutches are an instant hit because they are a chic rendition of the good ol’ fanny pack. Other merchandise includes bangle style Slit Cuffs, gauntlets, Komorbondhs, and belts for men and women. Earrings are constructed with leather and14K gold hooks or sterling silver hooks, and are therefore are hypoallergenic.  Everything is designed and engineered with ingenious simplicity.  This is an eco-conscious company paving the way towards a green and sustainable world. Leather art from the heart.

Mamacita Jewelry
Mamacita Jewelry by Erin Ferro began in 1996. Each piece is handcrafted and one of a kind. Usually made from 18k gold filled wire and chain, each piece is wire-wrapped with love. Mamacita gathers inspiration from her family and friends, Quintano Roo, the ocean, the desert, and the semi- precious stones, wood, shells, feathers and beads that she collects along the way. You can find Mamacita at the outdoor artist market on Abbott Kinney in Venice on Sundays and in various boutiques.

Jenneration Fix
Jenneration Fix is a small company made up of two Jennifers:  two women who wanted to help the environment in their own way.  They aim to make a difference in the world by transforming rescued materials into art and supporting various non-profit organizations at the same time.  Jenneration Fix, in effect, makes a complete circle back into the community by taking potential pollutants in the world from businesses and individuals, creating fun and useful items and then donating a portion of their profits back into a wide variety of charities.

The crafty ladies use materials such as discarded fabrics and clothing pieces, leather, scrap wood, e-waste, warped vinyl records, corks, and plastic packaging to make art work, jewelry, purses and clutches, pet toys, clocks, greeting cards and other quirky and fun gifts!

Solsis Clothing for the Soul

~The Audio Lab~

Slash Fiction
Slash Fiction is the remix-slash-DJ duo comprised of Henry Slash and Mick Fiction (with additional production from Chris Winston) and signed to Sleazetone Records. They are the resident DJs at Full Frontal Disco and have lovingly destroyed the dance floor at other clubs, parties and events too numerous to list.
http://www.myspace.com/slashfiction
http://soundcloud.com/slashfiction

DJ Miss Bliss
DJ Miss Bliss is one of the only female DJs in town that still spins vinyl records.  You can catch her all over Hollywood at places like The Viper room, The Foundation Room, King King and Cinespace. When she is not digging for records or spinning her bliss, she is surfing waves at the beach.  Don’t miss the bliss.
www.julieji.com

Jason Bentley (KCRW)
Jason Bentley serves as Music Director of KCRW and host of their signature program “Morning Becomes Eclectic.”  He has had a distinguished career as a music supervisor for film and advertising, and has worked an exhaustive DJ schedule in bohemian Los Angeles. Bentley is a tireless champion of new music and culture with an influence close to home and around the globe. Bentley is no stranger to the business side of music, having worked in A&R at Maverick and Island Records, music supervising the Matrix trilogy, and consulting for countless advertisements, video games, and live events. While acting as the Music Director of the station where he’s grown up – literally and figuratively – is a challenging task, Bentley is devoted to leading KCRW’s team of talented DJs into a new era.
www.kcrw.com/jasonbentley

Love in the Circus
Love in the Circus features unique and seductive melodies that combine and blur the lines of electronica, rock, jazz and blues with sultry, edgy, museful hooks. The group was formed by singer/bassist Leanna Rachel and multimedia producer/guitarist Chris Brickler. Curtis Cunningham joins the group on drums, Eric Hargett on keys/saxophone and Cha Chi on percussion/synths. The High Priestess and Leah Zeger add beautiful textures on the harp and violin, respectively. The group has recently played at festivals in Bali, Europe and just toured Australia and Indonesia over New Years.
www.loveinthecircus.com

Morgan Alexander (Bottom Floor)
Morgan Alexander began building a sonic home in house music during the early nineties.  Career highlights include a residency with LIFE, Boston’s largest deep house night, traveling with Mountain Dew’s entertainment presence for the X Games, regular features on the West Coast, and hosting “Wednesday Revolutions,” the deep installment of Boston’s revered electronic dance music show on WERS 88.9FM.  Alexander volunteers a healthy portion of his time to a board appointment with NextAid – the dance music community’s response to vulnerable children and youth in Africa.  2011 finds him very much at home in sunny Santa Monica, producing Bottom Floor.  The venture, formed with Halo of CityDeep Music, provides a multi-faceted platform for DJs and producers prolific in their ability to squeeze soul out of machines.
www.thebottomfloor.com
www.facebook.com/morgalex

WISEACRE (theLIFT – LA / LOUIE and CHAN / FOUND LOVE – NYC)
Living in the seaside republic of Venice for 20 years, DJ Wiseacre initially established a successful career as a commercial/fine art photographer. In 2003, he decided to pick up some vinyl, a couple of turntables, a mixer, two speakers and a few friends in orderto begin the labor of love we call “throwin’ parties”. Since this time, Wiseacre has put his love for photography on hold and co-created three very successful LA parties, FUNKY IN THE MIDDLE, CUSTOM SUNDAZE and now the LIFT, which after one year is expanding to San Francisco and New York.
http://www.facebook.com/djwiseacre
http://www.louieandchan.com
http://www.facebook.com/tryandfindus

Macaya
Disco to Afrobeat, funky house to electro, soul to punk, downtempo to rock– as long as it sounds good and makes heads bob, he’ll play it. Born in the Bay Area, raised in the Pacific NW via Chile, and now a ten year resident of LA, Macaya spent time behind the decks at LACMA, The Viper Room, Tarfest, CTA Theatre Project, The Echo, Mountain Bar, and many gallery openings and/or apartment parties. He paints when he’s not DJing: www.jasonmacaya.com

Idiot Savant (Pocket Underground :: the DoLaB/Woogie)
Idiot Savant is the DJ collaboration between Jesse Wright and Ron Levy.  They cofounded Pocket Underground in 2004 as an outlet for less obvious, fun-filled events in LA and have been a staple in the Southern California House and Techno communities for over a decade.  Jesse is the Managing Director for the Woogie Stage at the Lightning in a Bottle Festival, created by the amazing collective the DoLab.  Ron has released numerous records since 2001 and smells better than Jesse.
www.facebook.com/idiotsavantmusic

Ketchup Soup
“Accordion diva Mrs. Hobbs has a new project — a collaboration with singer/songwriter lovemando called Ketchup Soup, in which her penchant for torchy, slightly surreal, old-timey French jazz-inspired numbers finds a sympathetic, if slightly more gritty, urban counterpart. Together they compose and interpret music with an arresting, romantic, and slightly noir vision of the modern bohemian cabaret.”
- Shana Nys Dambrot, Flavorpill.com
www.ketchupsoupband.com
http://www.listn.to/ketchupsoup

Shayn Almeida
As former product specialist for Native Instruments and Stanton DJ, Almeida has held residencies at clubs such as Spundae, Avalon, and Sugar.  Mixing various styles of House, TechHouse, Breaks, and Dubstep, Almeida has  played at events ranging from Earthdance, Moontribe, and Boombox, to Burning Man and the Democratic National Convention.  After taking a five year hiatus to concentrate on his Yoga studies, Almeida is now back on the scene focused on DJing and Music Production. He is currently working on original music and remixes for the dance floor, as well as down-tempo, dubbed out tracks for the yoga community.
http://DjShayn.com
http://twitter.com/ShaynAlmeida

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For more information, images, or to request an interview, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

Alex Face graffiti image from Bomb It 2 (photo credit: Jon Reiss)

Jon Reiss, the director of Bomb It, the global graffiti documentary, and his team, have a lot to announce and celebrate this month.  Starting as early as today – November 1, 2010 – Bomb It can be seen in tens of millions of cable, satellite, and telco Video On Demand (VOD) homes.  In mid-November the Bomb It team will be releasing a free geo-location graffiti and street art application (app) for both iPhone and Android operating systems (tentative release date: 11/22/10).  And Bomb It 2, commissioned as a web series exclusively for the digital broadcast network Babelgum, is rolling out new weekly episodes at http://www.babelgum.com/bombit2.

For Immediate Release:
November 1, 2010

Bomb It
The Global Graffiti Documentary
Set To Introduce New iPhone and Android App
In November 2010
+ Bomb It VOD Launch This Month
+ Bomb It 2 Web Series Continues on Babelgum this Month

LOS ANGELES, CA – Jon Reiss, the director of Bomb It, the global graffiti documentary, and his team, have a lot to announce and celebrate this month.  Starting as early as today – November 1, 2010 – Bomb It can be seen in tens of millions of cable, satellite, and telco Video On Demand (VOD) homes.  In mid-November the Bomb It team will be releasing a free geo-location graffiti and street art application (app) for both iPhone and Android operating systems (tentative release date: 11/22/10).  And Bomb It 2, commissioned as a web series exclusively for the digital broadcast network Babelgum, is rolling out new weekly episodes at http://www.babelgum.com/bombit2.  Learn about these and more at http://www.bombit-themovie.com.

Bomb It’s VOD premiere goes out over 75 cable, satellite and telco operators including the following:
- Armstrong
- AT&T
- Atlantic Broadband
- Blue Ridge
- Bresnan
- Charter
- DIRECTV VOD
- DISH Network IPVOD
- Insight
- Mediacom
- RCN
- Service Electric
- Suddenlink
- Verizon
- Wave

Click on Alex Face graffiti image (above) to see Bomb It 2‘s Bangkok episode
on Babelgum (photo credit: Jon Reiss)

The FREE Bomb It geo-location graffiti and street art app will work on both iPhone and Android operating systems when it’s released later this month (11/22/10 tentative but visit the Bomb It site for updates).  This app will allow users to take photos of graffiti and street art in any city in the world and upload images to Google maps.  Simultaneously – anyone in any city will be able to press a button to see on Google maps where others have posted exciting street art. Award-winning director Jon Reiss, named one of Daily Variety’s “10 Digital Directors to Watch,” views this as a natural extension of the Bomb It project – “We are connected with artists and fans throughout the world – how wonderful would it be to have a tool in which they could share a love for this art form with each other.”  The app will also come loaded with Bomb It episodes.

In addition to the VOD launch and upcoming iPhone/Android app, Bomb It 2 launched on Babelgum in October 2010.  Bomb It 2 was commissioned as a web series exclusively for the digital broadcast network Babelgum and expands the global reach of Jon Reiss’ exploration of graffiti and street art into new and unexplored areas of Asia and South East Asia, the Middle East as well as Europe, the United States and Australia.  Reiss traveled by himself to Bangkok, Jakarta, Singapore, Hong Kong, Tel Aviv, Palestinian refugee camps on the West Bank, Perth, Melbourne, Copenhagen, Chicago and Austin.  Artists featured include Klone, KnowHope, GreatBates, Zero, Darbotz, Killer Gerbil, Bon, Alex Face, Sloke, Husk Mit Navn, Ash, Phibs, Stormie Mills, Beejoir and many more.

“I was inspired to explore how and where graffiti and street art had penetrated the globe into some of the most unlikely places – such as Singapore.    I am especially fascinated in how each culture (and each person) takes this art form and makes it their own – and how the local culture affects the development of graffiti in each place that I visited. Tel Aviv and the refugee camps of Bethlehem couldn’t be more different.  The former is on the verge of a street art explosion similar to Barcelona in the early 90s.  In the West Bank, graffiti is much more about a political statement and “art” is often viewed as reconciliation.  At the same time it was interesting to see how some of the constants of graffiti exist nearly everywhere – from Perth to Copenhagen: the need to express oneself in public – and the addictive nature of getting up!”

Read more about the making of the Bomb It 2 web series here: http://blog.bombit-themovie.com/2010/10/loving-the-webseries-form

About Babelgum:
Founded in 2005, Babelgum is a free, revolutionary Internet and Mobile TV platform supported by advertising.  Babelgum combines the full-screen video quality of traditional television with the interactive capabilities of the Internet and offers professionally produced programming on-demand to a global audience.  Babelgum’s goal is to act as an international ‘glue,’ bringing a huge range of professional and semi-professional content to a global audience – like a modern-day Tower of Babel.  Bomb It 2 is the latest evidence of Babelgum’s growing involvement with street art culture, both in terms of its extensive collection of street art feature films and videos and its involvement with events such as the international Meeting of Styles and the recently launched Moniker Art Fair.

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For more information, images or to request interviews please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Tejada (née Hasty) at 213-840-1201 or lynn@greengalactic.com.

"Untitled" Roscoe Wilson

Following a successful launch in Beijing, the A&I Gallery in Hollywood will host the North American premiere of Common Ground 2010, an exhibition of fine art digital prints from across the globe, all with an environmental theme. The exhibition of new media work, at the intersection of art, technology, and eco-activism, opens on July 8, 2010 and runs through August 13, 2010. Over 1,000 artists from 40 countries submitted their digital art for consideration. The resulting curated collection contains work from 85 artists. A portion of all proceeds generated from the touring exhibition will benefit non-profit organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, Global Giving, and The Global Environmental Institute.For Immediate Release:  May 25, 2010

A&I Gallery in Hollywood Hosts
Common Ground 2010
An International Touring Digital Art Exhibition
At the Intersection of Art + Technology + Environmental Stewardship

Presented by Hewlett-Packard & FujiFilm

Exhibition Runs from July 8 through August 13, 2010
Eco-Friendly Opening Reception – Thursday, July 8, 2010

LOS ANGELES, CA – Following a successful launch in Beijing, the A&I Gallery in Hollywood will host the North American premiere of Common Ground 2010, an international touring exhibition of fine art digital prints from across the globe, all with an environmental theme. The exhibition of new media work opens on Thursday, July 8, 2010 with an eco-friendly opening reception and runs through August 13, 2010. Over 1,000 artists from 40 countries submitted their digital art for consideration. The resulting curated collection contains work from 85 artists. A portion of all proceeds generated from the touring exhibition will benefit non-profit organizations including the World Wildlife Fund, Global Giving, and The Global Environmental Institute. Common Ground is presented in part by Hewlett-Packard Company and FujiFilm. Join some of the artists for organic edibles, live music, and more on the 8^th from 7:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. at the A&I Gallery. The opening reception and exhibition are free and open to the public. A&I is located at 933 North Highland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038. Lot and street parking are available.  For gallery information, please visit http://www.aandi.com/gallery or call 323-856-5280.  To learn more about Common Ground’s international exhibition, please visit http://www.CommonGround2010.com.

The opening reception for Common Ground 2010’s Los Angeles exhibition of new media work – at the intersection of art, technology, and eco-activism – on Thursday, July 8^th is an environmentally-friendly affair featuring selected Common Ground artists in attendance including Clayton Spada and Victor Raphael from the US, and Duan Jia from Beijing, China.  The Eclipse Quartet will perform live a piece composed especially for Common Ground by classically trained film composer and conductor David Williams, while additional beats will be provided by DJ and local underground artist L.Croskey, a/k/a MrNumberOnederful.

In further keeping with the environmental sustainability theme of Common Ground, Cascade Peak Spirits will be pouring micro-distillery alcohol featuring its handcrafted ORGANIC NATION® vodka, gin, and whiskey, while Sonoma County’s Inman Family Wines will offer the attendees a taste of its world class wines from the Russian River Valley where they utilize healthy soil, employ natural winemaking and following sustainable business practices.

Every aspect of the Common Ground artwork at A&I Gallery has been supported by companies with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives that focus of the environment.  The LA exhibit includes frames from Larson-Juhl and their Global ReLeaf ecosystem restoration project, having planted over a quarter of a million trees throughout the world since 1991. Also supporting Common Ground is Nielsen Bainbridge, providing the backing, matting, and mounting boards as part of their eco-friendly product range. L.A. Art Exchange has been providing Southern Californian’s the ultimate professional custom framing service for over 25 years and will be handling all of the final framing and presentations for the exhibit.  Read more below about each of these companies.

Exhibition highlights for Common Ground 2010 in Los Angeles:
- A selection of 35 museum quality digital prints from the Common Ground Collection will be on display.
- The prints are provided by FujiFilm, the leading supplier of UV (Ultra Violet) cured inks, driving a positive environmental change in the printing industry. Limited editions of 50 will be available for purchase ($500 – $1000).
- A hardcover, limited edition commemorative book has been published with the support of Hewlett-Packard and will be available for purchase (79 art works, edition of 250, $60).
- A portion of the print and commemorative book sales will be donated to non-profit organizations The World Wildlife Fund, Global Giving, and The Global Environmental Institute.
- Large flat screen high definition monitors will present the entire Common Ground Collection.

Santa Monica-based Common Ground was born from founder Larry Richard‘s desire to support artists and technologists to use their artistic talents to communicate with each other – and by extension with the rest of the world – about issues common to every one of us on the planet: A clean environment for our communities and for our children. The Common Ground Collection speaks to this shared concern regardless of nationality, borders, or culture.

“There are a lot of buzz-words out there. Environmental responsibility. Green consciousness. Sustainable practices. We hear the words, but where’s the practical meaning beyond all the rhetoric and posturing? The truth is: We all inhabit the same home: Earth. Common Ground speaks clearly to this shared global experience,” says Richard.

Common Ground International Exhibiting Tour:
Common Ground successfully launched the first leg of its world tour in November 2008 at the Huan Tie Art Museum in Beijing, China to coincide with the Summer Olympics festivities in Beijing. Media coverage from the event can be reviewed at http://www.commonground2010.com/?page_id=6. The Los Angeles exhibition at A&I marks the North American premiere, to be followed by exhibitions throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico through 2011. An open call to artists worldwide for additional digital art will be held in the Spring of 2011 in order to expand the Common Ground collection as it travels to London to coincide with the Summer Olympics in 2012.

Curators:
Nearly 1,000 artists from 40 countries responded in 2008 to a global invitation for contributions to this art meets eco-activism collaboration. 85 pieces from 23 countries were curated into the collection by a diverse group of international artists, academics, and entrepreneurs with extensive experience in new media.
-  Duan Jia, writer, director, animator, and professor at the Beijing Film Academy
-  John & Margie Labadie, faculty at University of North Carolina at Pembroke
-  Amelia Pellegrini, artist in Italy
-  Zhou Ping, artist, professor at University Of China
-  Victor Raphael, artist in Los Angeles
-  Larry Richard, founder of Common Ground in Los Angeles
-  Lu Shengzhang, artist, filmmaker, professor at University Of China
-  Wang Shuipo, professor at Central Academy of Fine Art, China
-  Clayton Spada, artist, curator, teacher, lecturer and workshop leader in Los Angeles
-  Lu Xiaobo, vice chairman at Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Tsinghua University
-  Lu Xuguang, artist, professor at Beijing Film Academy

Common Ground Commemorative Book:
A limited edition hardcover commemorative book featuring 79 digital art works from the collection was sponsored by HP and by A&I Digital Labs. Books are available for purchase at the A&I Gallery, throughout the North American Common Ground tour, and online at http://www.commonground2010.com/?page_id=12 for $60. 100% of book proceeds will be donated to the World Wildlife Fund, Global Giving, and The Global Environmental Institute. The book was printed in Los Angeles on the HP Indigo 5000 press by A&I Photographic and Digital Services.

Larry Richard, Common Ground Founder:
As a marketer and promoter, Richard has produced nationally touring art and technology events for more than 20 years. Gathering together artists, corporate sponsors, and innovative technologies, he has produced exhibitions, conferences, and public events, each drawing thousands of attendees while generating significant media coverage and public awareness. Past projects include Shared Dreams, a collaboration of Cuban and US artists, the touring fine art photography exhibitions The Dezo Hoffman Collection and The Legends of Rock Collection, and Online Expo, a conference focused on internet technologies and opportunities. Since 2004, Richard has turned his attention to leveraging his experience to support his passion for a sustainable environment.

A&I Gallery:
A&I Gallery’s mission is to raise awareness of talented artists in the photographic world and of charitable organizations. A&I began exhibiting photography in July of 2006 and has hosted eighteen exhibits and opening receptions since. The work shown has ranged greatly in content with photography as the common thread tying them all together. A&I Photographic & Digital Services sets the standard for fine art printing. Clients include world renowned photographers whose work is displayed in some of the most prestigious museums and galleries worldwide. The A&I Gallery is open Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and Saturday 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

FujiFilm:
Fujifilm is a leading supplier of UV (Ultra Violet) cured inks, which are driving a positive environmental change in the printing industry. Fujifilm’s UV inks are free of harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and are cured using ultra violet light. UV inks also consume less energy in the printing process, eliminating the need for traditional drying systems. Fujifilm has also developed new VOC-free digital inks that have no hazardous air pollutants and allow printers to emit lower amounts of VOCs than conventional solvent inks.

Hewlett-Packard Company (HP):
HP has made a commitment to the environment by continuing to develop policies and initiatives that deliver increasingly high standards in all areas of environmental responsibility. “Environmental responsibility is good business. We’ve reached the tipping point where the price and performance of IT are no longer compromised by being green, but are now enhanced by it,” says Mark Hurd, Chairman and CEO.

L.A. Art Exchange
For over 20 years, L.A. Art Exchange has provided its individual and corporate customers with the largest selection of custom frames, moulding and mounting options in Southern California. L.A. Art Exchange’s Santa Monica gallery also features original art and photography from local and nationally renowned artists and photographers, as well as wide variety of fine art prints, giclees, posters, unique jewelry, gifts and home décor accessories.

Larson-Juhl
Larson-Juhl’s broad range of quality custom framing products provide design solutions to suit nearly anything one can have framed. Larson-Juhl offers a number of custom frame moulding collections that have earned PEFC certification as well as a vast selection of matboards which boast FSC certification.  As part of their long range sustainability initiative, Larson-Juhl has partnered with American Forests to begin the Global ReLeaf ecosystem restoration project. Since 1991, Larson-Juhl has planted over a quarter of a million trees throughout the world.

Nielsen Bainbridge
Nielsen Bainbridge is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of high-quality picture framing products. Its designs and innovations are driven by a passion for beauty in the presentation of art, and have helped to defined and – at times – redefined the industry. Nielsen Bainbridge products include high-end metal frames, wood frames, ready-made frame systems, as well as mountboards and matboards in over four hundred colors and textures.

Cascade Peak Spirits
Cascade Peak Spirits, Inc. (CPS) is a micro-distillery creating handcrafted ORGANIC NATION® vodka, gin, whiskey and other organic spirits. It works with local Organic Farmers and local suppliers to create a business that supports the local economy and the practices of Sustainability by “Buying local, Buying Green”. CPS is the first distillery in Oregon with organic certification, offering the consumer a socially responsible alternative.

Inman Family Wines
Inman Family Wines produce small lots of wine made from impeccably grown grapes in Sonoma County’s Russian River Valley. They believe that owning a vineyard and winery comes with more responsibility than just what is required by law and business obligations. They make world class wines that rely on healthy soil, natural winemaking and sustainable business practices including eco-friendly wine labels,  recyclable packaging, reduction of waste, use of renewable sources of energy and a commitment to seeking suppliers that share our vision.

World Wildlife Fund (WWF):
World Wildlife Fund’s mission is the conservation of nature. WWF works to preserve the diversity and abundance of life on Earth and the health of ecological systems, through promoting more efficient use of resources and energy and the maximum reduction of pollution; protecting natural areas and wild populations of plants and animals, including endangered species; and promoting sustainable approaches to the use of renewable natural resources. WWF is committed to reversing the degradation of our planet’s natural environment and to building a future in which human needs are met in harmony with nature.

Global Giving:
Global Giving is an online marketplace where individual and corporate donors can connect to community-based initiatives that need support. Visitors to the site can browse projects to help others around the world, pick philanthropic projects that they are passionate about, and give directly to the solution.

The Global Environmental Institute:
The Global Environmental Institute, established in Beijing, China in 2004, is a Chinese non-profit, non-governmental organization. Its mission is to design and implement market-based models for solving environmental problems in China in order to achieve development that is economically, ecologically, and socially sustainable.

“Artists throughout history have played a key role in shaping the world-view of their day,” says Richard, “Through Common Ground, artists from all corners of the globe can use the expressive language they know best — visual art — to share their concern for the fate of the earth. What’s more, they get to make a contribution in a tangible way since proceeds from the exhibition are donated to vital non-profit organizations such as Global Giving, World Wildlife Fund, and The Global Environmental Institute.”

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For more information, photos, or to arrange interviews, please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at 213.840.1201 and lynn@greengalactic.com

Photo by Jesse Freidin

Inspired by Polaroid’s newest spokesperson, Lady Gaga, award-winning Bay Area dog photographer Jesse Freidin – with the help of The Impossible Project (TIP) – created The Doggie Gaga Project, which has become a viral sensation.  Freidin dressed his canine models in five of Lady Gaga’s most celebrated outfits, and photographed them using two packs of Polaroid film from the last remaining supply in the world.  For Immediate Release: March 20, 2010

With Supplies of Polaroid Film Dwindling Worldwide,
The Impossible Project Graciously Provided Two Packs to
Award-Winning Bay Area Dog Photographer Jesse Freidin.
Inspired by Lady Gaga Fashion
“The Doggie Gaga Project” is a Viral Hit

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Inspired by Polaroid’s newest spokesperson, Lady Gaga, award-winning Bay Area dog photographer Jesse Freidin – with the help of The Impossible Project (TIP) – created The Doggie Gaga Project, which has become a viral sensation.  Freidin dressed his canine models in five of Lady Gaga’s most celebrated outfits, and photographed them using two packs of Polaroid film from the last remaining supply in the world.  The resulting photos went online the next morning, and within three days, have been tweeted by Perez Hilton, linked online by Entertainment Weekly, MTV, TMZ, and The Sundance Channel, and on 3/18/10 it was featured on ABC’s Live! with Regis & Kelly.  To view all the images please visit www.jessefreidin.com or http://www.facebook.com/pages/San-Francisco-CA/Jesse-Freidin-Photographer/97942918610.

Freidin proposed his idea for The Doggie Gaga Project to Netherland-based Impossible Project who has taken on the impossible: to re-invent and re-start production of analog integral film for vintage Polaroid cameras.  They graciously donated two packs of original Polaroid film (20 prints total).  Freidin and his small team went to work creating the custom-made, Gaga-inspired canine fashions for a Boston Terrier, a Mexican Hairless, a Shiba Inu, and two Pit Bulls.  Shooting in his San Francisco studio, Freidin employed a Horseman field camera with a Polaroid back using the increasingly rare T-669.  During the photo shoot, no animals were harmed – or even irritated.

More on Jesse Freidin:
Jesse Freidin, a traditional film photographer who characteristically photographs dog portraits with a Hasselblad, recently won Beast of the Bay’s 2010 award for “Best Dog Photographer.” With years of experience as a fine-art photographer and professional dog-handler, Freidin has a unique approach to animal photography that captures the deeply emotional tie that people have with their pets. As one of the last surviving traditional photographers in the Bay Area, he creates museum-quality black-and-white photographs with unbeatable richness and tone, that are produced, from start to finish, entirely by hand. His true passion for animals and loyalty to analog photography made it only natural that he would create “The Doggie Gaga Project.”

More on The Impossible Project:
By re-inventing a new analog integral film for vintage Polaroid cameras, The Impossible Project is saving analog instant photography.  They plan to release a new instant film for vintage Polaroid cameras in 2010.  The new licensee of the Polaroid® Brand – The Summit Global Group – will re-launch some of the most famous Polaroid Instant Cameras. Further details will be disclosed by TIP on Monday, March 22, 2010 at a press conference in NYC.  Please visithttp://www.the-impossible-project.com for more information.

In December 2008 Polaroid ceased production of its iconic instant film.  In early 2009, Impossible B.V. leased the former Polaroid production plant in Enschede, Netherlands, acquired the machinery, and engaged the most experienced team of Integral Film experts worldwide. The concrete aim is to re-invent and re-produce analog integral film for vintage Polaroid cameras.

The mission is therefore not to re-build Polaroid Integral film but to develop a new product with new characteristics, consisting of new optimized components, produced with a streamlined modern setup for an innovative and fresh analog material, sold under a new brand name that perfectly matches the global re-positioning of Integral Film. Polaroid is fully aware and supportive of this goal.

In the words of Edwin Land, the Inventor of Instant Photography, “Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.”

The Impossible Project’s Executive Director of Marketing and Business Development is Florian Kaps, who in 2001 championed the magic of analog photography as the leading manager of the Lomographic Society, developing their worldwide online community and shop platform. Since his childhood, Kaps has been attracted by the exercise of running in the opposite direction: he reacted to the digital revolution by founding a strictly analog company, establishing what is today’s biggest network of everything correlated to instant photography.

Lady Gaga was recently named creative director for a specialty line of Polaroid products.  Asked if he has met Lady Gaga, Freidin replied, “Not yet, but I’d love to. I hope she enjoys the pictures.”

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For more information, photos, or to set up interviews with Jesse Freidin please contact Green Galactic’s Lynn Hasty at lynn@greengalactic.com or 213-840-1201.  To learn more about The Impossible Project please contact Marlene Kelnreiter at 212-219-3254 or marlene@the-impossible-project.com.