Save The Date: May 3–Angel City Brewery, LA Heritage Festival
Angel City Brewery, one of the cornerstones of the Downtown Los Angeles revival, celebrates city’s potential with their third annual Heritage Festival on Sunday May 3. Along with an art show and live painting, the Heritage Festival Sunday’s events will include live music presented by Echo Country Outpost including The Bloodhounds, Blackwater Jukebox and other acts, and cultural performances–Aztec dancers, Taiko drumming, Capoeira demonstrations and Native American dance–presented by Raven Gypsies. And yes there will be food trucks, including Border Grill, Kogi BBQ, Philippe the Original and Peaches Smokehouse & Southern Kitchen, plus a beer bazaar and special cellared beers.
Cartwheel Art is thrilled to curate the Angel City Brewery Heritage Festival art show, which this year will focus on Downtown Los Angeles and its micro-neighborhoods: The Arts District, Chinatown, the Historic Core, Little Tokyo, Olvera Street, and surrounding areas. The art and artists in the show will reflect the history, and heritage, the past, present and future of Los Angeles. Carthweel Art takes no curation fees for this, nor does Angel City Brewery take a gallery commission–all sales go to the participating artists or galleries.
Cindy Schwarzstein—founder of the art services, art tours and online art magazine Cartwheel Art company—will be curating the Downtown Arts District section, which will include artists associated with the area. Some of these artists began their careers there, while other still live and work in the district. Cartwheel Art is based in the Downtown Arts District, and Schwarzstein is an active community member who serves on various Art District boards and committees including the Los Angeles River Artists and Business Association. The creator of Cartwheel Art Tours, she leads regular tours that highlight the art, culture and dynamics of the Los Angeles’ most vibrant and rapidly changing neighborhood. Cindy has designed a special two-and-half-hour Cartwheel Art tour beginning at noon which will explore the area and give highlights about the artists and murals of the Downtown Arts District. For more details, click here.
Central to the Arts District exhibition is a wall featuring the UTI Crew and the UTI Crew plus friends installation in Angel City Brewery’s annex, The Shed. The UTI CREW is an interdisciplinary group of multi-skilled and multi-talented artists, with roots in the Arts District dating back to 1985. Their connection to the American Hotel, home to Al’s Bar, the legendary punk rock venue, represents a “passing of the torch” from those artists who were there during the Al’s Bar years. The American Hotel was important in providing a living and arts space for UTI’s earliest members. UTI crew carries on the punk rock, no-hold barred Al’s Bar attitude in its mural productions today, while at the same time, being a school and support group to nurture up and coming artists. Nuke One, UTI’s current archivist and gallery curator, will be presenting works of art by UTI members, which illustrate their role in the Arts District heritage.
The American Hotel and Al’s Bar are also recalled in an installation by filmmaker Steven Seemayer, writer/director of the documentary Tales from the American Hotel which details the building’s colorful and notorious history.
Linking the old with the new, graffiti historian Steve Grody, author of Graffiti LA and twenty-seven year old Arts District resident, will be showing his photos of Los Angeles’ distinct graffiti styles which have influenced murals and graffiti throughout the world. Many of LA’s distinct styles, as well as murals featuring other international styles are incorporated in murals throughout Los Angeles and examples can be seen in the Downtown Arts District.
CartwheelArt.com’s editorial director and prolific curatrix Lisa Derrick curates the wall showcasing artists whose work draws on Chinatown, the Historic Core, Little Tokyo, Olvera Street, and surrounding areas as inspiration and context. Some of the artists have lived, worked and played in these areas, while others are current residents. For the Heritage Festival Derrick has curated a wide range of artists who represent the shifting and entwined cultures of Los Angeles, a city whose multicultural energies combine in a constant reinvention while remaining true to the dreams, both realized and broken, in the City of Angels. This is her fourth curation for 2015.
The art show runs through May 19.
Angel City Brewery Heritage Festival
May 3, noon to 10pm
Angel City Brewery
216 South Alameda
Los Angeles, 90013
Art show runs through May 19