Preview: Bobby Furst’s Desert Art Raises the Heat at La Luz de Jesus

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Preview: Bobby Furst’s Desert Art Raises the Heat at La Luz de Jesus

  Joshua Tree-based artist Bobby Furst  has been creating assemblage since he was little boy growing up in Laurel Canyon. Decades later, after meeting George Herms, Furst brought a portfolio of his own work to Santa Monica College of Design Art and Architecture’s administration on the first day of classes, and was admitted into Herm’s…

Logophilia: Maxime Jacquet Designs His Life

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Logophilia: Maxime Jacquet Designs His Life

  Belgian-born interior designer Maxine Jacquet threw a party to celebrate the design completion of the penthouse he shares with bowtie designer Ludo Barras and their French bulldogs, Hermès and Simba. The dogs weren’t there, but there certainly were a lot of people: friends, clients, and media. Jacquet, who calls himself a designer of lifestyles…

Meet Shrine On, the Artist Behind the Towering Coachella Installations

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Meet Shrine On, the Artist Behind the Towering Coachella Installations

One of the literal high points of Coachella over the years has been the one-of-a-kind, mind-blowing complex, giant, towering installations built entirely out of trash and reclaimed items that loom over the weekend music festival. These dominating sky rises are assembled by artist Shrine On who has been building shine towers for Coachella and other…

CARTWHEEL Mini Art Fair and Pop Up: Playing Music, Making Art, and Connecting

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CARTWHEEL Mini Art Fair and Pop Up: Playing Music, Making Art, and Connecting

  When Cindy Schwarzstein was planning the CARTWHEEL mini art fair and Pop Up with PROJECT Gallery, she wanted to bring the same  joy and excitement she’d experienced at art fairs across the country, from the elegance of Art Basel and the groove of SCOPE and Fountain to the spiritual community at Lightning in Bottle.…

Laluzapalooza Opening: Big, Bold, Bad-Assed, and Beautiful

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Laluzapalooza Opening: Big, Bold, Bad-Assed, and Beautiful

Packed with art, packed with with people, Laluzapalooza is La Luz de Jesus‘s best juried group show to date, with cleverly grouped pieces that embraced the La Luz aesthetic of Low Brow and Pop Surrealism while pushing its definitions  further: While one whole wall was devoted to skulls and skeletons, and throughout bunnies, octopi, saints…

CARTWHEEL Review: “Mitch O’Connell, The World’s Best Artist”

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CARTWHEEL Review: “Mitch O’Connell, The World’s Best Artist”

It takes a lotta guts–and a certain amount of glory–to call yourself “the world’s best artist” even with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek–or someone else’s.  But Mitch O’Connell’s gloriously good-natured, candy-colored art is just so much fun to well, wallow in, that   during many hours spent immersed in O’Connell’s career-spanning tome “Mitch O’Connell,…

CARTWHEEL: Highlights of 2012

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CARTWHEEL: Highlights of 2012

  Just six months ago CARTWHEEL launched our website, and in that time we’ve visited studios and galleries, interviewed artists and collectors, and explored art fairs, with nearly 300 posts and thousands of photos that document our excitement over the art scenes in Southern California and beyond.  One of the most thrilling things for us…

Ike Turner Killed JFK: A Conversation with Hudson Marquez

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Ike Turner Killed JFK: A Conversation with Hudson Marquez

Hudson Marquez is one of the most gifted raconteurs I’ve ever met. He has the kind of gift for gab that only comes from living a nomadic life peppered with thorny characters. His voice is loud but oddly soothing, with just the gentlest Louisiana lilt. Hudson has a salty tongue, and appears to have no…

Myron Conan Dyal and Christopher Ulrich: Alchemy, Love, and “The Reckoning”

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Myron Conan Dyal and Christopher Ulrich: Alchemy, Love, and “The Reckoning”

Sunday night mystic sculptor Myron Conan Dyal and painter Christopher Ulrich discussed their art, creativity, alchemy, religion, and love at La Luz de Jesus, further illuminating both artists’ works; Dyal has shown before at La Luz, and Ulrich’s monumental “The Christ Chronocator Series III: The Reckoning,” the final chapter in Ulrich’s six-year odyssey, the Demoneater…

Collector and Gallerist Thomas Negovan: On Collecting and Century Guild in Los Angeles

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Collector and Gallerist Thomas Negovan: On Collecting and Century Guild in Los Angeles

  Los Angeles has become a Great Art City, with hundreds of galleries, thousands of artists,  important art fairs and exhibitions, arts districts throughout the metropolitan and suburban areas, and a style–Low Brow–which was incubated and midwifed in the region. It’s a sign of our city’s embrace of art that the country’s leading Art Nouveau…

Cartwheel Recap: “The Mouseketeer Army” ~ New Works by Bob Dob

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Cartwheel Recap: “The Mouseketeer Army” ~ New Works by Bob Dob

The opening reception for the exhibit seemed packed with a bunch of rad players in the lowbrow art world like Anthony Ausgang, Andrew Hosner of Thinkspace Gallery,  Marc Trujillo, actress/singer Kate Flannery from NBC’s The Office who is also part of the Hollywood lounge duo The Lampshades. I wasn’t there to catch the action, but CARTWHEEL founder…