A (juicy) disquisition on the arts between yours truly and the host of the dawning Never Meet Your Heroes Podcast, juggling topics from forty thousand years of painting, Blade Runner, Hieronymus Bosch, and the Baja Desert, to darkroom shenanigans, the Mayor of L.A., dissing Isabel Allende, and much more. Feel free to forward to your art-loving friends, family, and foes! Enjoy!
Something witchy this way comes…
All new work, emerging in the time of the Thin Veil.
Stay tuned.
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A portrait session for Anthony Moses Sanchez.
January, 2010.
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Over the years, my work in photography has covered many territories. There is however, an area at which I have developed something of a specialty: largely as a result of documenting my own work as a painter, I’ve become quite adept at photographing artwork, doing so for artists such as Gronk, Raul Pizarro, Kirk Kain, Ruben Acosta, Guadalupe Vidales, and Steve Comba. I was however, still surprised when I was asked by my friend and former colleague, Pilar Tompkins, to aid in the documentation of artwork for an exhibition catalog. Acting as a guest curator for the Getty Research Institute’s initiative Pacific Standard Time, her research and exhibition project would be titled Civic Virtue.
Like a tidal wave, Pacific Standard Time swept over the Los Angeles artscape, affecting everything it touched in one form or another. An unprecedented collaboration between dozens of art institutions, Pacific Standard Time set out to historicize and celebrate the artistic developement of the Los Angeles area between 1945 and 1980.
Civic Virtue: The Impact of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Watts Towers Arts Center is a formidable work, documenting the history of these two seminal institutions and their influence on the Los Angeles cultural landscape.
Images of works by Noah Purifoy, Charles White, and Richard Wyatt were needed. The pieces were to be photographed under natural light at their locations in the offices of the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the Hollyhock House.
At the Hollyhock House, space was limited and light was challenging, but I managed to capture Purifoy’s large works in their complex splendor just fine.
I had to be careful with the color balance on Charles White’s lithograph so as to not compromise the paper tone.
Richard Wyatt’s pencil on paper I Like Bread was photographed in its glass frame. The final image for print is in fact a digital composite of best exposures without reflections.
Both the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the Hollyhock House sent me copies of the catalog, along with nice thank you notes. I had all but forgotten about it when the books arrived. It’s nice to see one’s name in the credits. 🙂
Many thanks to Pilar Tompkins-Rivas for the opportunity to contribute to such seminal work, and my sincerest commendation on the caliber of the work. This is top-notch art history research!
Thank you for reading. Cheers,
~A.V.
This photo essay was culled from more than 1300 shots taken over 7 days and 1500 miles of travel.
The complete selection contains many more images; you’ll have to wait for the book. 🙂
To Max, my friend and host: my deepest gratitude for sharing your spectacular world with me.
Cheers,
~A. Villanueva
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My dear friend and colleague Delaine Ureño, Development Coordinator for the dA Center for the Arts, asked me to answer a short yet complex set of questions regarding my work, life, and philosophy, in relation to the Center’s yearly Chicano art exhibition, which I am currently participating in. I would like to share this with you. I hope you will enjoy the stories in this brief tour of an eccentric man’s mind:
“dA: You’ve expressed to me before that you don’t really consider yourself to be a “Chicano Artist”. Can you please also speak to this a little bit?
I see you wield the key to Pandora’s box. This is a challenging issue to address, because both Chicano art history and my own history are complex documents in constant revision as our self-understanding matures and evolves. There are strong identifiers between my sensibilities and those of Chicano art, but also some radical divergences. My parents were illegal immigrants, farm laborers. I was born in a California barn…”
You can read the full interview on the dA’s blog at:
Interview: Angel Villanueva
http://thedacenterforthearts.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/interview-angel-villanueva/
I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Delaine and the dA Center for the Arts for the opportunity to express my views, and for highlighting my work during this show.
Cheers,
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The Tree of Knowledge
Oil on Canvas, 24 x 36 in
This is the gate.
These are its guardians.
Are you ready to fly?
~A.V.
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A detail of the first in a series of paintings about forces at play in the time before time.
The rest will follow shortly. I for one am excited.
Thank you for your continued presence,
~Angel Villanueva
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D.C., Milan, Turin, Ceva, Garessio, Mondovi, Serralunga d’Alba, Barki, Monaco, Rome, The Vatican, London, Gravesend (the final resting place of Pocahontas), St. Monans, Dublin, Peebleshire, Paris, Edinburgh. And the great crossing, racing against the forward edge of the night, West across the Ocean Sea…
~A
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My host, teacher, guide, and companion of wonders.
Thank you Max, now and always.
~A
