Art Beat

It’s just a butt on a door. Most of Beachcomber Café’s patrons either display amusement or remain oblivious — more concerned with acquiring coffee and a Trinidad Special to notice. Sometimes, co-owner Alice says, folks walking by will do a double-take, stop, point, laugh and "then the camera comes out." But joy and acceptance of […]

Dance is the only art in which we ourselves are the stuff of which it is made.  – Ted Shawn The performance of a fine dancer triggers admiration. Beholding an entire company dance with all the grace, elegance, power and strength necessary offers art’s most desired effect: transcendence. One’s self is absorbed by the alchemy […]

January’s Arts Alive! is as notorious for its low attendance as the December one is for its celebratory crowd — especially when it falls two days into the new year, two days before the official end of the holiday season. People can be forgiven for opting to stay home polishing their resolutions and packing up […]

Ask people and most will agree adolescence is an especially intense time. Feelings overwhelm; desire consumes; fear paralyzes; triumph burns pure and sweet. Even through the most slothful of teens, a mysterious energy triggers the transformation from child to adult. This metamorphosis demands so much. The world looms, full of complexity, danger and dreams, yet […]

Anyone who’s seen Victor “Vico” Hernandez’s art work will recognize a similar vibrancy and ambition in his new venture, Humboldt Arts Project, a nonprofit visual and performing arts space. Described as a “fluid” group of artists, HAP’s first exhibition takes place Friday, Nov. 13, from 6 to 9 p.m.  in the Feuerwerker building, 854 9th […]

This is a tale of two artists: the one determined to die without a legacy and the one determined to preserve it. Jack Mays and Carrie Grant met in Ferndale, back in ancient times. She was 19 and had no idea what a stunning, accomplished woman she’d one day become — she just wanted to […]

It began with the notion of auctioning off a poem. A friend had asked poet/filmmaker Anthony Lucero if he might contribute one of his poems for a benefit auction she was putting together. "I told her you can’t really do that," said Lucero over lunch at his Arcata bungalow. He figured that only works by […]

"But why is a big blue dot on a big white canvas an important enough painting to hang in a museum?" I asked the professor this during a Los Angeles County Museum of Art field trip years ago. My husband was enrolled in art history. I’d tagged along for fun. We stood in front of […]

Several years ago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hosted a comprehensive exhibition of work by Vincent Van Gogh. The paintings brought to life images already culturally ubiquitous. I knew what we’d find because we’ve already seen his work reproduced on everything from notebooks to umbrellas. What I didn’t expect was to be overwhelmed […]

At first glance, Monica Schill’s boulders appear to be of the earth, something one might view along the highway as a "rock slide area" warning sign flashes by the car window. But something more cunning than nature’s whims lurks here. Multicolored mosaic tiles adorn a quarter of the 88 boulders splayed across the Morris Graves […]