Saturday, July 18, 2009

VLA Friends and Members,

Please join us at a garden reception to thank our supporters and for the First Annual Presentation of VLA’s
The David Alfaro Siqueiros Awards. This year’s awards recognize and celebrate the work of two individuals and one philanthropic organization who represent David Alfaro Siqueiros’ artistic philosophy and integrity.

This event is being held at the stunning Dia:Beacon, a nearly 300,000-square-foot former factory located on the Hudson River. The museum was designed, in collaboration with the Dia Art Foundation, by the American artist Robert Irwin and architect OpenOffice. Robert Irwin’s masterplan includes gardens for the exterior (where we’ll have our party) and a grove of flowering fruit trees. The museum’s renowned permanent collection includes works by some of the most important artists of the 1960s and 1970s, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, John Chamberlain, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Michael Heizer, Robert Irwin, Donald Judd, On Kawara, Imi Knoebel, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Blinky Palermo, Robert Ryman, Gerhard Richter, Fred Sandback, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner and Robert Whitman.

We have also arranged a private, guided tour starting at 5:00pm. I hope you’ll be able to come out for this event-a perfect “mini-break” from the city. Most importantly, join us in recognizing the important work of our honorees, while helping us raise additional support for both the creation of new student works of art and VLA’s mission of service.

2009 Award Recipients:

Christoph Büchel, Artist
Erin Donnelly, LMCC
The Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, New York

Save the date!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
4:30 – 7:30 pm
5:00pm: Guided Gallery Tour, RSVP Required
6:30pm: Award Presentations

Dia:Beacon
Riggio Galleries
3 Beekman Street
Beacon, NY 12508

Proceeds will support VLA’s mission and student projects at the CalArts School of Art.

Click here for ticket information and to order tickets for this event. If you have any questions, or would like to purchase tickets via phone, please email Kelly Kocinski, Director of Development, at kkocinski@vlany.org, or contact her via phone at 212.319.2787 x18.

James Owen has written an excellent post about the whole “selling out” thang, and why we don’t spend more time doing our more personal projects, like A Distant Soil and Starchild. I do hope you read it. Click the link he provides and read that, too.

We haven’t sold out by doing work which provides us a living. We’re just focused on different projects right now. The perception that I’ve (largely) moved away from comics is just that – I still love them, I still want to do them. And it’s not as if I’m slacking on the IG novels. One a year, fully illustrated, is a decent pace. That’s a lot of material. And as I said, I’m building a bigger audience to whom I can sell other work.

I love to create these books. I love the stories I’m telling, and I love it when one of the illustrations simply sings from start to finish. I’m thrilled that so many readers all over the world are enjoying them – and perhaps moreso that I have a publisher that does.

As you can see in my previous essays (scroll down), I have sacrificed plenty for A Distant Soil, and as much as I love the book, there is only so much I can reasonably do to keep producing it full time.

Working on A Distant Soil is a joy. I absolutely love it.

Who wouldn’t? Look at those glam guys in their costumes. Somewhere, Michael Jackson is looking down and wondering who pinched his jacket.

I love A Distant Soil so much, I am willing to do the next 200 pages of it with absolutely no guarantees. No guarantee anyone will like it, no guarantee anyone will pay for it. And I am going to have a very, very good time drawing it between the projects that pay me more money. And they are outstanding stories. I hope you will love them, too.

And now, a few posts you may want to read:

Daryl Cagle on the Future of Political Cartooning.

JK Rowling gets sued again by another wannabe. Don’t you wish people would leave that woman alone? How can she possibly have stolen Harry Potter from THAT many people?

This is about a month old, but in case you missed it, here’s a Doctor Who funeral.

I just heard this morning that Tori Amos: Comic Book Tattoo was nominated for Best Anthology in the Harvey Awards. To go along with that Best Anthology Eisner nomination. Go us! And congrats to all the nominees. And I confess I have read almost nothing else on the list, so can’t comment…though I am sure everyone else will.

A bit of an odd story about Louis Vuitton being sued for fraud. The Murakami prints used in gallery exhibits are said to have been culled from Vuitton handbags. Murakami is known to the geekarati for his striking manga-influenced pop art.

Paul Schimmel, admitted that he was “surprised” that Murakami “took the materials that he had printed for various [Vuitton] products . . . and he had them stretched like paintings and made into a very large but numbered edition” of prints to be sold in the boutique. Schimmel had invited the artist and Louis Vuitton to set up the store inside the Geffen exhibition — a rare, if not unprecedented, move for a major art museum.

Just keep telling yourself it’s all about context.

A masquerade ball in LA based on Labyrinth, the Henson film starring David Bowie.

Labyrinth of Jareth Masquerade Ball – 2009 – labyrinthmasquerade.com

Two Enchanting Nights within the Court
July 10th and 11th 2009
The Labyrinth of Jareth Fantasy Masquerade Ball

At the historic Henry Fonda MusicBox Theatre
6126 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028
Join our mailing list to get an inside glimpse of 2009