Art Walk for Art Walk's Sake
Brewery Art Walk, Los Angeles
I'm a writer; Yuri's an artist. We've built a lot out of our commonalities -- Ravel, Korean BBQ, red wines -- but, in many ways, difference has nourished our relationship even more. Difference paves the way for synergy, dynamics, life-long learning, give and take.
Writing, I once read, is a decision to see the world as language; art, likewise, could be a decision to see the world as color and line, form and space. She takes me to galleries and museums; I take her to readings.
The L.A. Skyline from the Brewery
This week, she took me to the Brewery Art Walk in Los Angeles, a bi-annual exhibition at one of the largest art colonies in the world. Over 100 artists live and work in this huge complex, which is a short drive from Olvera St. in downtown.
Half the fun was seeing how different artists have molded their living spaces -- some with cool, unfinished wood colors and clean lines; others with darkly stylized, goth chain and pipe fixtures, blind corners, church-like parapets.
David Lefner
Yuri and I both loved the work of David Lefner, whose linocuts are easily mistaken for Photoshop'd photographs, but are actually prints painstakingly rendered one color at a time.
I loved how distinctively L.A. his work was. By rescaling sections of L.A.'s dated signage and facades and rendering them with a reduced palette, he created something recognizable for its flavor, but fresh and electric in its look, clean but engrossing.
Best of all, my love and I were able to sip cold Pinot Grigio while we climbed and crawled through all The Brewery's rooms and passages.
Hemingway wrote that Hunger made him see paintings more clearly: Love makes me see them more generously, more fully, with greater intensity.