VISIT EXTENDED AUDIO INTERVIEWS AND ARTICLES
THE JUNE EDITION of BUREAU of ARTS in CULTURE :
We are very pleased to bring you a New Slate of Interviews featuring an intimate Audio Conversation with David Fahey of FAHEY/KLEIN Gallery Los Angeles. Our Guest Artist this Edition is TOM GREGG the Kansas City Painter is represented on both coasts by The GEORGE BILLIS Gallery. We are also welcoming DOWNTOWN RECORDS into The BUREAU this edition as Official Media Sponsors & showcasing music from the band, VACATIONER at The BUREAU of ARTS and CULTURE Site. From San Diego, we take you into FEEL IT Boutique and from Santa Barbara we visit with ADAMA VEGAN Cuisine for an In depth Audio Interview & The LOST HORIZON Book Store for a Casual Conversation regarding Book Collecting. Eric 'BIRD' Huffman shares his views on the importance of The Traditions of SURFING. The Artist Patrick LEE gives us a Gallery Tour of his recent Exhibit at Western Project. Cinematographer Jacek LASKUS talks shop with The Bureau about Film making & his newly published book. Ten Questions and a Photo Essay with East Coast Photographer Ms. Robin Holland. Comedienne Wendy McColm Graphic Designer Alex Tomlinson . Audio with Artist Mark Jenkins . An Essay by Maria Triliegi FICTION: They Call It The City of ANGELS . Gary CALAMAR . Author Michelle ARBEAU . HERE are a few samples ...
We are very proud to introduce VACATIONER to The BUREAU of Arts and CULTURE Readership and Music fans. DOWNTOWN RECORDS is an outstanding label with a very wide variety of Music to purchase & enjoy. The band has been currently touring and we will be featuring their MUSIC at The BUREAU of Arts and Culture site as well as giving away Music promotional Compact Discs to readers throughout The Summer. Listen to tunes, check out the DOWNTOWN RECORDS website and order the new Album and CD's to be released on JUNE 23rd 2014. RELIEF is a very hip and upbeat selection of songs that are perfectly timed for a Summer release. Conscious Lyrics, Upbeat Vibes and a Steadfast Rhythm with Catchy Hooks and an Easy Tempo Nature that will definitely be breaking new ground with a growing fan base, surely to hit the National Radio Waves sooner than not. We featured Photographer Matt Schwartz of She Hit Pause Studio in the most recent edition of BUREAU Magazine & he turned us onto them:Thats his cover image . Look for an INTERVIEW with The band in JULY's Edition and be sure to check their tour schedule & future release dates by signing up for notices at Downtown Records. Tap Hear New Tune.
THE BUREAU MAGAZINE GUEST ARTIST JUNE 2014
by Joshua TRILIEGI
Tom Gregg's paintings have a vibrancy, a super saturated presence that are difficult not to look at. Although based in realism, Gregg has taken the realist school of painting and cranked it up a bit. Sort of power popped it. Size is not really the issue here: style, color, shadow and light are. He's a very conscious painter with a clear understanding of whats happening on the canvas. As articulate on the page as off the page. Here at the Bureau of Arts and Culture, we talk a lot about craft. Tom Gregg is a master craftsman. Extremely dedicated to the personification of the object. Be it the American flag, a bottle full of candy, a crumpled piece of fabric, a disney curio toy or his famous on - going hand grenade series.
American Realist painters through the years have often been attracted to the Americana of yesteryear and the new America of tomorrow, check out the works of Richard Estes and Ralph Goings. They took signage, chrome, cars, everyday commonplace objects and locales and hyper fascinated them into extremely lush and rich tapestries. Mr Gregg is doing just that, but within a kind of candy coated lens, he's taken the rose colored glasses and used them accordingly to look at objects that sometimes by their very nature carry a much more loaded symbology and made us simply look at how the color, light and vibrato relate to one another. The single object in a Tom Gregg painting becomes a sort of icon due to the amount of time, positioning, scale and fascination with tonal studies. More than one object becomes a strange interlude, an odd marriage, a pairing of the Sesame Street variety where the question was asked to the viewer, ' Which one of these objects doesn't belong ? ' But here, Mr Gregg does not differentiate that view. On the contrary, he makes them belong together and indeed, somehow they do. Through style, tone, association and placement his choices simply make us see the union and with his saturated palette, his uber craftsmanship, his outright exuberance that radiates from the actual object, we are mystified in some way.
Where Estes and Going awed us with the fact that we could hardly believe it was a painting, Gregg takes us into a whole other ephemeral and wacked out hyper color experience that we need to see. Once focused on it, we may find it difficult to turn away, a kind of seduction of the visceral variety. An optical dessert of sorts, one bite leads to another and suddenly, we have gobbled it up. Not exactly eye candy, due to the sense of style and commitment to a serious painting, but possibly a rare delicacy. Once you have spent time with a Tom Gregg painting, the world itself may seem a bit heightened in reality, the way the light hits a color, the very sense of how colors will relate to one another, he is transferring a special experience that stays with the observer long after the viewing. It is Art.
DOWNLOAD THE MAGAZINE TO READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW AND VIEW HIS PAINTINGS
DAVID FAHEY : The Fahey / Klein Art Gallery
By Joshua A. Triliegi
Spending time with a man like David Fahey is sort of difficult to describe. He's affable, funny, irreverent, but also knows exactly what he's doing and he's pretty damn aware of what you are doing too. Several days prior to our visit with David Fahey, a picture of Brad Pitt exiting the Fahey/Klein gallery was splayed across the internet. The image was taken by the current Hollywood paparazzi. It is safe to say that this image was not created by an artist and most likely will not be hanging in a gallery in twenty-five years. So what is it that makes some images art and others simply images ? Thats a rather difficult question to answer as, much of what we like as a society and as individuals, is subjective. One thing we learn rather quickly while spending time with Mr. Fahey is that the art of selling an image is equally as important as the art of creating one. Our ongoing series of Interviews with the owners, art dealers and curators attempts to lift the veil of mystery that shrouds much of what we call the art world. Were not giving away trade secrets or formulas, that would be sacrilegious. What we are doing is simply creating a common dialogue and taking you, the reader and now via the internet, the listener, into a world you may not likely access otherwise. So, lets step into the back office with Los Angeles' top Photographic Art Dealer.
" I Really Understood The Power Of The Image… "
- David Fahey
INTERVIEW: ROBIN HOLLAND
The East Coast Portrait Photographer Talks Shop With The Bureau Magazine Editor Joshua Triliegi about her extensive catalog of Portraits and the Craft of photography. Robin Holland is a very candid and up front Artist and Writer who just happens to take pictures for a living.
BUREAU: PHOTOGRAPHY
INTERVIEW: ROBIN HOLLAND
Robin Holland has been documenting Artists, Actors, Writers and Directors as well as media related individuals for decades and somehow been able to discover and capture her own take on these very interesting individuals. Here is The unedited BUREAU Interview .
BUREAU: Can you remember early on, the first time an image actually spoke to you in a personal way ?
Of course I grew up surrounded by images (but in comparison to today’s childhood, it was a visual void)--TV (Flintstones, Jetsons), movies (Disney, Hayley Mills), Look, Life (I remember a strange, very blue image of Nixon shopping for real estate, peering into a window of the guest house at San Clemente, and on the cover of that issue, a black and white group portrait of three men in sharp suits (whom years later, coming across the magazine in my parents’ basement, I was surprised to recognize as John Cassavetes, Peter Falk and Ben Gazarra). But the first visual images that I remember wowing me were the portraits of Simon and Garfunkel (on the cover of “Bookends”--but it would literally be a decade before I knew it was shot by Avedon and who he was), and the Beatles (+ everyone) for “Sgt. Pepper.” But studying/working with images, for me, first, it was words, reading: Nikos Kazantzakis, Ai (Florence Anthony), Richard Hugo, Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Bishop--I studied literature and creative writing in school; writing: my attempts at poetry in classes with Ai, Milton Kessler and John Vernon. Some of the most powerful images for me are still words--I just watched (staying up way too late) “True Detective” (great performances, gorgeously shot) and the Handsome Family’s song over the opening credits, “Far From Any Road” has a line, “and when I touched her skin my fingers ran with blood.” Beautiful, horrible, perfectly paired with the visual images in the credit sequence. I actually became a photographer by fortuitous accident, but that’s a separate story.
INTERVIEW: COMEDIENNE WENDY McCOLM
BUREAU: What is Funny ?
WM: Mannerisms. Characteristics that are true and almost too in depth to be acted accidentally.
Funny has always changed through the years. When I was a kid, it was about Richard Pryor.Real, real, real, old funny would be court jesters. But, if we go back as far as possible, say cave man funny, I sometimes wonder what that would have been like, any ideas ?
Looking at the sky was all the rage in side splitting comedy I’ve heard. In fact, if you look up when you’re bored I’m sure it still has the chops.
BUREAU: Your the future of funny. How far does a comedian have to go these days to keep an edge ?
WM: I am? Well, I would hope not too far. For me, I just do what I like. But if you want to know the actual distance I can’t tell you- I was never good at math.
BUREAU: Strangely enough, its sort of a hazardous occupation, next to drummers in rock bands, many comedians tend to leave early. Why do you think that is ?
WM: I think it is easy to give up. Every few months after the first few years I wonder if it’s worth still doing anything in this industry. I think that is common. But, unfortunately, I don’t think I could breathe right if it wasn’t creating in some way or another. We just need to find our reason why we do anything [inside or out of the industry] and it just might be enough to keep us at ease in those questioning times.
BUREAU: Your film directing IS very insightful, playful, even sort of sexy. Tell us about your process.
WM: Well, I don’t know. I have an idea while riding my bike, or looking at people from afar and then my mind usually goes into this unreal world where everything is extreme and magnified. Music helps me see the visuals, and then I just write. I will write several different projects at once- ideas, scenes. It’s a good way to practice and once in a while if I really love something I will produce it.
BUREAU: Your short film," Rendezvous and other stories " played at TRIBECA Film festival is a lot of fun, our favorite short so far. Its in French and seems to spot on capture the ' spirit of FRENCH girls' . Are you a francophile ? Tell us how this project evolved.
WM: I do like french films. This originally was supposed to be in New York with an actress from there, but it spiraled, chaos happened, the actress bailed and two days later I was told Jeanne was in.
Which, ended it being perfect and inspiring to me. Her previous depictions inspired me to write something daring for her, and myself. I don’t think I could have ever made a french film if this didn’t happen. I am very pleased with the serendipitous adventure, and the final product.
BUREAU: Share with us the difference between your acting at say, Upright Citizens Brigade and working on a larger project for someone else .
WM: At UCB, I did sketch, and I do characters there. They are big, and wild- unreal, even though I would love to experiment with adding more down to earth qualities to them. When people do that, it is so inspiring to me. With anything else, that varies as well, but I am in a feature premiering at Newport Film Fest this weekend, ‘Ever’, and in that it is small, contained, and on camera work. You work with a director, and with Josh Beck he let me add my opinions and we found things that brought a certain beauty to this character’s pain. All projects and people are different, but instead of wondering what that difference is, I would like to say the similarity is finding a way to work together, lose ego, and create the best art you can with others.
BUREAU: How much does one project inform another ?
WM: Sometimes so much I have to choose between them. That is in my writing. If I am stuck on something I will start something else, and eventually drop the other one all together because it ended up shaping the new story. When it comes to acting, I believe all projects inform the other- you can always learn one thing, good or bad, from everything.
BUREAU: Who is / are your favorite comedian(s) and why ?
WM: Woody Allen because he is a genius. Nichols and May, because they fascinate me.
BUREAU: Thank You. It's been fun talking to you, before we go, would you make a list of the Ten funniest things you've ever seen ?
WM:
1. Someone missing a chair, because it is pulled from underneath them.
2. Woody Allen’s interview from 1971 just after the world release of Bananas
3. People falling
4. Mannerisms
5. My mother cutting off a big rig then not saying anything afterwards.
6. Drunk man on the street saying to get more confidence “John, give me a gun and a forty.”
7. People taking themselves too seriously.
8. Probably anything while I was intoxicated.
9. People with passionate rage.
10. The sky
INTERVIEW ALEX TOMLINSON
BUREAU: How long have you been creating typography ?
AT: Actually only a couple of years! I'm relatively new to the art although I've been sketching letters since at least the fourth grade.
BUREAU: What initially attracted your to graphic art ?
AT: Graphic art is ubiquitous. I guess I learned to love it since it's all around us.
BUREAU: As a young person, looking back, can you remember any logos or type faces that caught your eye ?
AT: That's a very difficult question. I remember visiting my Grandma's house a bunch and she had all sorts of old Nabisco advertisements on the walls from when she worked there. I've always considered those advertisements works of art.
BUREAU: What are the specific challenges in creating NEW designs for the alphabet ?
AT: A big challenge is that typography is not just A-Z. (Although a huge number of my earlier and poorer fonts only include, like, 26 characters.) There are a whole bunch of symbols, international characters, (and if you're designing a professional font), a number of different weights you have to design. Perhaps in the future I may undertake producing a professional typeface, but for now typography remains a fun and semi-profitable hobby. Serif fonts are also a little difficult for me right now- but I'm going to keep trying !
BUREAU: Do you have favorite Letters and Numbers, if so why ?
AT: My favorite letter is the capital R. I'm not well-versed in type-speak, yet, but let me try to explain myself. I love the little leg on it that differentiates it from a capital P. You can fit so much character in that little leg.
BUREAU: RED MOON RISING is a very interesting Design style, can you share with our readers what inspired this particular design ?
AT: There's an episode of Doctor Who that takes place on a space station called Platform One. Throughout the episode there's a really cool and completely custom sci-fi font used a lot of the space station's interfaces. Red Moon Rising also falls into the category of "experimental sans serifs" which was a popular design trend around last year that almost reached "tall handwritten lettering" status. Neither of which I can say I started, but I certainly feel like I've made my contribution.
BUREAU: A lot of everyday people, have no idea that an actual artistic individual creates letters and numbers, when did you first become conscious of this fact ?
AT: I think everyone knows deep down that *somebody* has to make fonts. I became conscious of that fact when I started to do some research on typography. I was astounded and inspired by what I found. Also sometimes horrified! Wikipedia "Eric Gill" and you'll never look at Gill Sans the same way again.
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