Two New Shows and a True Blast From the Past
Studio Channel Islands 2023 “The Next Big Thing” Annual Show
Every year the Studio Channel Islands in Camarillo, CA invites artists to submit their most recent breakthrough pieces. This year's juror was Shana Nys Dambrot. She's an art critic and the Arts Editor for the L.A. Weekly and a contributor to Flaunt, Art & Cake and Artillery. I'm a big fan of Shana's writings so I was beyond excited to be chosen to hang among such talented artists.
I've found that sharing promotional giveaways related to my pieces like these "Fly Me" luggage tags makes a great conversation starter. They were such a hit that I've also made them available on my website.
Fly Me Luggage Tags
The show is up from August 5th – September 30th, 2023. You can see the show here.
The "Contemplating Boundaries" Show
Korean Cultural Center & Launch LA Group Show
This show took place at the Korea Cultural Center Los Angeles in partnership with LAUNCH LA. The show is about contemplating and reflecting on barriers, labels and limits. Juried by TeaYoun Kim-Kassor (Professor and Department Chair at Otis College of Art and Design) and Mika Cho (Professor of Art and Director at Cal State LA Fine Arts Gallery), 400 artworks were submitted by about 100 Southern California artists, and 40 works by 28 artists were finally selected. Both "Know Your Place" and "No Smoking" were chosen.
For this show, I gave away Lipalux branded candy cigarettes to promote the "No Smoking" piece. It's so fun to see people's face light up when they realize what I've just handed them. Everyone over 50 has fond memories of being indoctrinated with candy cigarettes. Ah, America and the tobacco industry!
Another Lipalux promotional giveaway!
A Blast from the Past
In late July I received a letter through my website from someone telling me they're a long-time admirer and asking for help with a Lipalux piece that was damaged. It turns out he has #130 and I had ZERO recollection of what he described and needed to see a picture of this early 1990s Lipalux piece! I offered to fix it and asked him to bring it to the opening of the "Contemplating Boundaries" show at the Korean Cultural Center so I could drop it in my car and bring it home. It was super fun to meet Alex, my first self-proclaimed "fan." Apparently he'd been looking for "Lipalux" for 15 years and his most recent googling of "Lipalux" delivered my website.
Upon inspection, it seemed as though overall the piece held up pretty well! The damaged part was a couple displaying the Three Mile Island towers*. The acrylic posts they were mounted on broke and needed to be replaced. The featured couple was also separating from the acrylic cut-out they were glued to. Back then I didn't know about resin. I freshened up the worn-off sawdust ground (yes, my hoarding paid off as I had a bag of fresh sawdust for just this occasion) and I sealed the couple back onto the acrylic. The new acrylic posts took longer to fix because I accidentally fused my tapping bit (that creates the threads in the drilled hole for the screw) to the acrylic, delaying this last step. I also signed the back of the work.
Alex seemed to be happy to have his freshened-up Lipalux piece back. Turns out he'd bought it from the original owner, Nely Galan (former President of Entertainment for Telemundo) and he no doubt paid more for it than its original price. So Lipalux pieces DO go up in value and apparently comes with a lifetime warranty!
A longtime Lipalux fan inspects new work.
Lipalux items have a lifetime warranty!