Art Show

The Elements of Style Art Show was this past Saturday night. We got a really good turnout considering all the promoting we did on Facebook and all the fliers we printed and passed out at the Pomona Art Walk.

I did take some pictures but unfortunately I didn't take as many as I wish I would've. Either way my camera, like most point and shoot digital cameras, doesn't work well in low light conditions so alot of them came out too dark or too blurry. Well, that and the fact that by then I was a little too tipsy to care. But I may post them in a separate blog post.

The event started at 6pm, but we encountered some technical problems with trying to hang my artwork since we couldn't put any nails into the wall I was going to be using. But we were able to remedy that with industrial strength velcro which actually turned out to work really well. I think I might use it to hang the unsold drawings in my rooms. Speaking of which, I was able to sell two of my pieces.

But my friend Aldo of Aster Magazine was there to properly document the event. All of the pictures in this post were taken by him and featured on Aster Magazine's Facebook. Which reminds me that they recently did a profile about this blog and my artwork on their website. So hopefully that will give me more exposure so that I can sell some more artwork. Speaking of which, I was able to sell the two following pieces that night. Which I'm pretty happy about.



I didn't actually title any of the pieces. I'm not the type to usually do that with completed works. The drawing above I had previously posted in color but these pictures are in black & white. If you go to my older post there's a scan of it in color. It's 8x10 framed.

The one to the left is 11x17 and is accurately colored as shown in black & white.

All in all, it was a good evening. And I think we're planning on doing it again next month. There were plenty of drinks, great music and a good diverse amount of people.

Elements of Style Art Show

I finally finished the flier for the art show next Saturday, January 22nd. I decided to hand draw it because I couldn't find a font I liked. That, and the fact that I lagged on starting it. I have a really bad habit of procrastinating.

So I had finished the Elements part and was going to scan it in and fill in the rest in Photoshop but we needed the fliers printed out for the Pomona Artwalk this past Saturday night so I just free handed the rest of it in pen.

The art show also features artwork by Nere. She's another talent artist currently in downtown Pomona. Some of the work she does is stenciled and goes well with what I'm going to be having up. She scanned the flier for me and touched it up quite a bit. It's a lot more online-friendly now. Also that night

ELEMENTS of Style Art Show

Art by MikL & Nere
Music by dj estereo & BlockCity

music, drinks and art

Saturday, January 22nd
@
Elements of Style Salon
415 W. Foothill Blvd.
Claremont, CA 91711
6pm

Graffiti (Old Belmont Tunnel, Los Angeles)

Back in 2004, and really before that even, I used to go out and photograph graffiti. It wasn't anything professional, just a point and shoot digital camera. I had a few spots I would hit up every now and then and the Belmont Tunnel was one of them. It was located at the intersection of Lucas Ave where Glendale and Beverly Blvd begin and at w1st and w2nd Street (sounds more confusing than it is). A couple of years later, actually sooner than that, the city decided to sell it and tear it down and build an apartment complex on the yard. There's a good L.A. Times article about it here and how they wanted to turn it into a legal paint yard.

I don't even remember how I came upon it, if I looked it up or just stumbled on it (which is unlikely because it'd be too much of a coincidence). It was kind of a hassle to get to the bottom because it was fenced off and the rest of it was more or less the ruins of the old tunnel. Concrete stairs, missing rails that ended abruptly, slick grass and on top of that the first time I went with my friend there was this really vicious looking dog following us. But once you got to the bottom there was alot of good graffiti and graffiti artists painting freely.

Here are a few of the pictures I took that day in November of 2004 before it was torn down. The link takes you to my Picasa album with all the pictures and more graffiti.