A few weeks ago I did manage to brush my intimidation aside and pay a first-time visit to MOCA to see the cool exhibition of Weegee’s Hollywood period photographs, but — pardon the digression — then I wandered around the museum’s permanent exhibit and found this piece of crap stuck to the wall, which reinforced both my abject disdain for “contemporary art” and my urge to punish whoever curated it with an extended indian-burn session to the forearm of his or her choosing.

Detail from the 1938 Kirkman-Harriman map depicting Los Angeles County in 1860.

So instead of getting all wound up trying to eenie-meanie-miney-mo to which big box the next I’d go, instead I brought along my inner map geek and together we ventured yesterday to the first floor galleries of the Central Library downtown where I spent an extended segment of the afternoon marveling at the selection of kick-ass cartography displayed as part of  its “As The City Grew: Historical Maps of Los Angeles” exhibit.

The 34 maps arrayed go back to the mid-1800s and offer an awesome and up-close glimpse back into our city as it was and as it became. Unlike the aforementioned contemporary bullshit I encountered, some of the maps are true and intricate works of art, and I would highly recommend paying them a visit whether you just find yourself in the library’s vicinity or are in between far better-decided visits than mine to the myriad Pacific Standard Time venues.

WHERE: Los Angeles Public Library, Central Branch, 630 W. 5th St, 90071
WHEN: Through November 4, 2012
COST: Free

Click the above to enlargify it a bit, but if you wanna truly pore over aaaaall those details* in their high-resolution glory than boogie on over to its Big Map Blog page and download away!

* Such as a very interesting omission: the entire Los Angeles River.

To kick off the series, Cornerstone is hosting “Creative Seeds: An Exploration of Hunger,” a two-week event starting November 7 and stuffed full of panels, discussions, art events, workshops, and demonstrations with Farmers, chefs, artists, performers, and food writers.  On the 10th, for example, popular organic peach farmer David Mas Masumoto will be part of a “Who’s Your Farmer?” roundtable (if you haven’t read his Epitaph for a Peach, go and get it, now), and on the 15th, our homegrown Jonathan Gold will part of a “Food Critics” panel discussing what “different generations of food critics hunger for.”  And, because this is a theater company after all, there will be an evening of one-minute plays for those whose attention lasts as long as their (in)ability to compose an wildly interesting 140-character tweet

The panel discussions are free, and most of the other events request just a modest donation.  See the full schedule here, and reserve your tickets here. And, if you want to start your food drive contributions straight away, you can donate non-perishable food items at all Creative Seeds events.  This looks like a good one, guys.  Go on. Five years will be here and gone before you know it.

Philip Lumbang Mural, click to embiggen

Call it what you want.  Urban art, street art, its all good art in my book.  Rarely do the practitioners get a legit forum to practice and share their art.  Tom’s has commissioned 3 such works as part of the World Sight Day, which is dedicated to bringing recognition to blindness and vision impairment as a global public health issue.  One of these paintings will actually be done live at tonight’s Downtown LA Art Walk.  Your list of artists and locations of their work for this project:

• Philip Lumbang, 826LA EAST, 1714 W. Sunset Blvd.Echo Park, CA 90026 (213) 413-3388
• Septerhed, First Friday @ Abbot Kinney, 1118 Abbot Kinney Blvd. Venice, CA
• Aaron Axelrod, DTLA Artwalk, ArtWalk Lounge,634 S. Spring St, Los Angeles

Pic courtesy of and used with permission of Tom’s.

Rex Bruce’s exhibit “Moving Violations” opens for a 2 month run at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art on October 13.  The opening reception will be that day held in conjunction with the Downtown LA Art Walk.

Moving Violations is a capture of life in LA through the windows of a moving car.  It is really a commentary on the destruction of the city and its environment done by the cars that we pretty much live in getting from place to place.  The exhibit is still images and video aimed at a sensory overload with a political message.  The full artists bio and description of the show can be found HERE.  In the artists words:

The work is pretty self explanatory—toxic SoCal overkill and maximum carbon emission, but it is informed by a particular vision of my era that has coalesced in my mind.

Deets:October 13-December 3, Reception Thursday October 13, 7-9pm, 102 W 5th Street, Los Angeles CA 90013 MAP HERE.

Within the cozy theater on that sold-out night I was to see the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater Company’s premiere staging of Clifford Odets’ landmark 1935 agit-prop drama “Waiting For Lefty,” directed by Don K. Williams. And what I saw was a brilliant embrace of a classic that was absolute magic.

Consisting of a series of vignettes threaded through the framework of meeting of cab drivers (with the title character being their absent and expected leader), Odets’ masterpiece is what launched the Group Theatre into the minds of the social conscience in the 1930s. “Waiting for Lefty” centers on union members meeting to discuss a possible strike while offering glimpses into their desperate lives as they search for a way out of poverty in a world where greed outweighs the value of human life and the only way to escape was to fight together.

Though written in the midst of the Great Depression, given the suffering of so many through the ongoing bleak economic conditions effecting the country today, “Waiting For Lefty” speaks just as clearly and powerfully and poignantly in building to its angry and defiant crescendo as it did to audiences more than three-quarters of a century ago.

It does so in this exquisitely staged production because it’s passionately delivered without restraint or reservation from every last committed member of the large ensemble cast (with a special nod to the entirely riveting Darren Keefe who holds nothing back in the role of Agate) — all of them no doubt skilfully guided by Williams’ adept direction and understanding of the enduring relevance of Odets’ creation.

In the program it states that the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theatre Company’s mission “is to produce theater committed to the standards and ideals set out by Stella Adler, Harold Clurman and the Group Theatre.” With “Waiting For Lefty” the company has completely and extraordinarily succeeded in that mission.

Where: Art of Acting Studio, 1017 North Orange Drive, Los Angeles, 90038
What: “Waiting For Lefty,” by Clifford Odets
When: Fridays & Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., through October 8
Tickets: $15 (available in advance through Brown Paper Tickets)
Photo gallery info (from top left to bottom right): Jacque Freydont (left) and David Lengel; Dan Evans (left) and J. Claude Deering; Adam Bitterman; Jesse Steccato and Katharine Brandt; Chase Fein and Emily Jackson; (left to right) Dan Evans, Jesse Steccato, Darren Keefe, and David Lengel.

I, for on, think the above epically detailed and amazing celebration of Rod Serling and his “The Twilight Zone,” which I found today next to the vacant lot on the corner of Beverly Boulevard at Commonwealth (pinpoint map) in Historic Filipinotown is The Most Awesome Mural Ever — and not just because as a diehard “zoner” geek it’s my favorite television series of all time. Along with a portrait of Serling, you’ve got iconic characters such as Talking Tina from “Living Doll”, one of the aliens from “The Invaders,” the doc from “Eye of the Beholder” and the jet and wing-dancing gremlin from “Nightmare at 20,000 feet.”

The 2011 work is signed by “DOCBAMCKRH” but Google gave me nothing when searching for that as the keyword. Anyone know who did this?

Ruscha’s Back of Hollywood will be part of the exhibit, which opens 1 October at MoCA’s Geffen Contemporary, along with 500-some other pieces “including documentary, staged, and conceptual photographs; abstract and representational paintings; freestanding sculptures, installations, and environments; performances and public demonstrations; narrative and documentary films and videos; zines and posters; ceramics and models; works on paper; decorative crafts and design objects; and ephemera.” Well okay then! I guess the last sensory overload at the Geffen, the street art exhibit, was so successful why not overstimulate us again, right?

If October 1 seems too long to wait, you can whet your appetite with the Ruscha exhibit at the Hammer. I haven’t been yet, but it’s on my short list. It a small show with just six large Ruscha canvases that all use text from Kerouac’s On the Road in front of snow capped mountains.

“This town is magic to me and it hasn’t grown old, and I love the colors and the layout and the mountains and the ocean and desert,” says Anthony Kiedis to Edward Ruscha as they drive down Sunset Boulevard.

Amen to that, say I.

Sayeth Moby’s website:

Destroyed introduces us to a side of touring that is often unexposed; secluded time spent in artificial spaces like hotel rooms and backstage waiting areas. The combined album and photo book provides an intimate look at Moby’s world and his creative process as an artist, both the music and photos were created in the same period and draw inspiration from the strange and sublime world of touring.

So … Linda McCartney meets Lost In Translation? Could be very interesting.