Had a good week. On Thursday went to the Fowler Museum for Zocalo’s Street Art panel discussion with a friend. Before we went in I ran into Shervin Shahbazi from Morono Kiang a great gallery in downtown LA. Also had a good talk with Carol Wells from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
The talk itself was nothing great. Had it not been for my good friend Retna and Man 1 from Crewest gallery the talk would have lacked in substance and been a bit boring. It would have been nice if the moderator, Jori Finkel from the LA Times would have brought up the topic which was “does street art humanize cities.” Also seems as if no one wanted to talk about the elephant in the room, censorship or more specifically the removal of Blu’s antiwar mural from MoCA. Perhaps they did not want to offend Jeffery Deitch who was in the audience.
The reception proved interesting with LA Raw setting out a long print of Blu’s mural before it’s removal as well as an image of the whitewashed wall. They also handed out some condom’s reading “Don’t be blu Deitch, Practice safe art.
My friend and fellow board member at Self Help Graphics, Rudy Espinoza and I got to chat a bit with Deitch but he seemed a bit frazzled and anxious to get out of there. Go figure.
*Photos by Aaron Salcido.