By Alex Distefano | April 9, 2024

The Bergamot Comedy Festival in Santa Monica last week was more than just a comedy festival. Sure, there were lots of funny comedians, but more than just stand-up performances at The Crow, the fest was focused on mental health awareness, and inclusion for all: women, members of the LGBTQ community, and more were welcome for a night of laughs, panels, Q&A sessions, and other creative workshops and special events with professional writers and stand-up comics, as well as chances for professionals and amateurs to network and mingle.

With a week full of diverse panels for creatives, comics, and writers in the entertainment industry, topics such as how to break into the comedy clubs, how to pitch your script/pilot, how to improve your joke-writing skills, and more were offered. Plus, there were tarot readings, a meditation workshop, panels about women in comedy, and even a panel about how to get press coverage for your comedy show, led by The Times’ own Arts and Entertainment Deputy Editor Nate Jackson, and longtime comedy journalist Julie Seabaugh. As if this weren’t enough, each night ended with stand-up comedy shows featuring more than 50 comics throughout the entire festival.

By Julie Seabaugh | DEC. 27, 2023 11:53 AM PT

It was a banner year for stand-up fans in 2023, with the number of hourlong specials released clearing more than 200 titles. Why such record-breaking output? For one, following the 2021 reopening of comedy venues, the entire industry clicked into the same two-year-ish cycle typical of laboriously honing material, filming, editing, releasing and promoting.

“There was a big bump in stand-up because everybody was on strike,” notes “Laugh After Dark” director Kelsey Borlan. With partner Robert E. Lee, Borlan independently produced seven 2023 specials from L.A. and Las Vegas comics, kicking off with Kalea McNeill at Santa Monica comedy club the Crow. Additionally, she says, “A lot of people who’ve been in the game for a long time are proud of everything they’ve accomplished. And now, just like with music and most creative endeavors, the bar to entry has lowered and become more egalitarian. It’s an independent economy.”

By Julie Seabaugh | Oct. 5, 2023 5 AM PT

They enter the venue doors hesitantly, first ensuring they’re in the right place, then introducing themselves as students of the storytelling class beginning tonight. The details stay sparse for now. There is time for full introductions over the next three hours of the class. Besides, a few of the eight haven’t even decided if they want to do this cancer show anyway.

Owner and founder Nicole Blaine welcomes them to the Crow, a progressive comedy theater off Olympic and 26th Street, tucked discreetly behind the art galleries and tasteful desert shrubbery populating Bergamot Station Arts Center.

With Storyectomy — the Crow’s new storytelling class, and upcoming podcast series — Blaine is helping people laugh in the face of cancer. The goal is to help a group of beginners find their voices, refine their stories and jokes onstage and prepare a short showcase of material by the end of the course. After a final Thursday class, the Crow presents two Storyectomy showcases, at 7 and 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 6, featuring pro stand-ups Robin Tran, Alex Hooper, Jerry Rocha and Dan Telfer.

The 65-seat venue celebrated its first anniversary on June 2. National submissions are open for the collective’s debut Bergamot Comedy Fest running April 1-6, 2024. Michelle Edgar, the new arts commissioner for the city of Santa Monica, recently stopped in to discuss the American Cancer Society’s Oct. 28 Making Strides walk.

Disorienting and mysterious, the stunning works of Tania Franco Klein—both her photographs and her exhibition design—are studies in tension, space and texture. Her photographs of female subjects in mostly domestic settings are suspenseful and cinematic: a woman walks away from a stove with a pan on fire, another sits in a bathtub of water wearing a bra and skirt, about to poke her eye with a metal fork. Alluding to the feeling of being trapped in the home, these photos touch on loneliness and self-destruction while looking at the environments in a new way (in some of them, it’s hard to tell where the photo was taken), and the gallery is similarly transformed. Golden streamers cover several of the walls, highlighting the warmth in many of her images, while the photos vary in size and placement, some overlapping or ascending the walls. The overall effect is moving, both beautiful and uncomfortable, slightly surreal, making the familiar strange.

What’s on LA’s
PICK OF THE WEEk

ALEX HEDISON: A BRIEF INFINITY
VON LINTEL GALLERY
April 22 - June 10, 2023

by Jody Zellen | May 18, 2023

WHAT’S ON LOS ANGELES

During the pandemic when people were confined to their homes, photographer Alex Hedison began to experiment with "chemigram" works that explore the interactions of chemicals and light on black and white photographic paper and are made without a camera, so they are devoid of a "representational" subject. She applied different "resists" to the paper to block its exposure to light and changed the duration of time the paper was exposed.

Even after learning how to control these elements the results were often surprising and somewhat unexpected particularly in terms of color and texture. Due to the fact their existence on unfixed photographic paper, they also continue to change over time. Knowing the images would begin to fade, Hedison "photographed" them at different stages to preserve specific instants and even applied silver metallic paint to parts if the surfaces. These photographs of the original "chemigrams" comprise her exhibition, A Brief Infinity.

Barack Obama: Santa Monica Auctions the Most Famous Political Artwork Painted This Century, On May 7th, 2023.

Standing Up for Students:
College-age comedian creates comedy for her peers

BY BRIDGETTE M. REDMAN
Mar 23, 2023

A competitive gymnast, Zoe Zakson was driving home from a state meet that went poorly when she had an epiphany.

She told her mom she wanted to be a stand-up comedian. 

“I just decided that was it for me,” Zakson said. “I was like, I’m not going to be an Olympian. Then in the car ride home I was like — I’m going to be a stand-up comedian.

And since that time, that is the path she has traveled. Her first step was to start researching comedy. At the time, she was living in Chicago and learned that Second City had teen classes for improv. She signed up and immediately began making her life plans.

“I owned my own destiny,” Zakson said. “This is what I want to do now that I’m done with gymnastics. So that was that.”

After taking classes with Second City, she auditioned for its teen ensemble, which performs on the mainstage.

“They have the kookiest teenagers you’ve ever seen,” Zakson said. “I auditioned and I got in and met my favorite people ever there. It’s kids from all over the city and we all came from different backgrounds. It’s very structured and organized with a director and we had a 14-week run of shows. I did that for five years. That’s when the spark lit where I was like this is very cool and this is something that I would like to do.”

Now a junior at Loyola Marymount, she has teamed up with Nicole Blaine, owner of The Crow at the Bergamot Art Center, to create a monthly stand-up show that is for and by college students.

The show, titled “The Kids Are Fine, Not Great,” pairs three college-aged stand-up comics with three seasoned professional comedians. It’s a show that aims to be inclusive and provide opportunities, job training and empowerment for all college students, especially young women, women of color, Indigenous women and LGBTQ+ students.

BY EVA RECINOS | MARCH 1, 2023

In her early years as an artist, Pamela Smith Hudson often heard a familiar refrain: Stick to one medium. “I was told that ‘you’re either a printmaker or a painter: Stay in your own lane. Stay in one lane,’” Hudson recalls. Instead, she had another idea: Why not merge disciplines together, combining techniques and artistic forms to create her own unique mixed media? So she did. “I didn’t listen to them,” she says. “I’m glad I didn’t.”

The artist’s current solo show, “Empty Space” at Craig Krull Gallery, features abstract mixed media with limited palettes . The pieces include clear nods to the natural environment while also creating a feeling of being transported. The mixed media works often echo the texture of sand or craters, bringing to mind sidewalks or striations. The Earth-like feel of many pieces comes from Hudson’s experimentation with materials like clay, graphite, watercolor and encaustic elements.

Former Los Angeles train depot, transformed into an arts centre in the 1990s, bounces back with influx of new galleries

Municipal support during the pandemic and an influx of new tenants is helping to restore Santa Monica's Bergamot Station Arts Center to its former glory.

Scarlet Cheng | 16 February 2023

In the past decade Bergamot Station Arts Center and its galleries were threatened with erasure. For years it was the single largest concentration of art galleries in Los Angeles—up to 30 at one point—with its convenient location and reduced rents, due in part to most of the land being owned by the municipality of Santa Monica and also because the project was managed by a partner in one of the galleries, Wayne Blank of Shoshana Wayne.

Formerly a train depot, Bergamot was converted into an arts centre in 1994. Two decades later, with the coming of the light-rail train system, the city began fielding proposals from developers for more profitable use of the land, while the Metro station cut into a corner of the complex. Several important dealers pulled out: Shoshana Wayne moved to the West Adams area and Track 16 to downtown Los Angeles.

Today, only 18 galleries are there but they are on much more secure ground, says William Turner, whose gallery is one of the longest lived. “The city could not have been more supportive in getting us through Covid,” he says, citing both a rent moratorium and rent reductions. Other galleries have moved in—including Marshall Gallery, Galerie XII and Von Lintel Gallery—and some spiffy architecture has been introduced by way of a talent agency (Range Media Partners) and a trendy restaurant (Birdie G’s).

This week, many of Bergamot Station’s galleries are opening new shows, several focused on photography. Turner will debut a show by Julian Lennon, Atmospheria; Rose Gallery is featuring the Surrealistic work of the Mexican artist Tania Franco Klein; and Berman Art Projects is showing works from a wide range of women photographers including Diane Arbus, Dorothea Lange and Graciela Iturbide.

Bergamot will be open all day and into the evening on 18 February, with receptions, curatorial walkthroughs and more. On 18 and 19 February, Danziger Gallery is presenting a small fair by the non-profit Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles.

Ready your comfiest shoes, flounciest outfits and edgiest eyewear — it’s art fair season.

BY DEBORAH VANKIN, FEB. 2, 2023 6 AM PT

Last spring, L.A.’s art fairs marched forward despite Omicron surges, an uncertain public and COVID precautions that, for many fairs, included limiting capacity. Fair dates were more staggered as well, with the L.A. Art Show opening in mid-January and three additional art fairs — Frieze Los Angeles, Felix LA and Spring/Break Art Show LA — running during what’s now referred to as Frieze Week in mid-February. This year, the fairs return in full force — and all at once. The 2023 season will be bigger than ever with more international participants, full visitor capacity and one new fair added to the mix. Five art fairs will run concurrently starting Feb. 15.

So what’s back, what’s new and where to start?

Call it the great Art Rush — but panning for affluent art collectors instead of gold nuggets.

The Los Angeles gallery scene is seeing an influx of established New York art galleries moving into town as of late — 11 so far are here or coming soon. Several venues opened this February, timed to the Frieze Los Angeles art fair; other openings are in the works for later this year or 2023.

Galleries tend to coagulate around other galleries, maximizing foot traffic. And the rash of incomers has created even more robust art hubs, particularly in Hollywood and the so-called Melrose Hill area of the city. New York’s Sean Kelly gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery and Lisson Gallery will join Regen Projects, Jeffrey Deitch, Kohn Gallery and others in Hollywood — already a bustling art pocket — where New York’s the Hole opened in April.

David Zwirner gallery, along with Shrine and Sargent’s Daughters, will join Morán Morán and the nonprofit art space LAXART in Melrose Hill. LAXART plans to debut its newly purchased building there in October.

Danziger Gallery opened a space in February in Santa Monica’s Bergamot Station; Pace in Los Angeles in April joined L.A.’s David Kordansky Gallery in the Mid-City area; Karma gallery will open in West Hollywood, where Albertz Benda opened a space in April.

Got all that?

Danziger GallerY

Danziger Gallery L.A presents Tod Papageorge's photographs of Los Angeles beachgoers
Art Daily - July 10, 2022

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Danziger Gallery L.A. is presenting the first showing of Tod Papageorge’s photographs of Los Angeles beachgoers, made in the late 1970s and early 80s.

An early participant in the American school of street photography Tod Papageorge’s path has taken him from the streets of New York to the capitals of Europe, from black and white to color, and from small to mid-sized cameras. Central to his art (if not his life) is the question of what makes a photograph extraordinary, even as he uses nothing more than direct observation of our common, physical world in his efforts to trace a revelatory moment.

Such moments distinguish this exhibition, which, although the photographs were made more than 40 years ago, looks as if it was produced yesterday. By weaving together the unselfconscious beauty and physicality of the pictures’ subjects with the elemental landscape they move through into a series of distinct tableaux, time is suspended, even as the moments that the photographs memorialize startle us with their immediacy and vitality:

A slim man rises above a crowd, posed like a statue. A girl with a flower in her hair tenderly brushes her boyfriend’s hair. Surfers on their way to the waves arrange themselves in formation like a group of young heros.

In these lightstruck black and white pigment prints we are transported by a singular vision that eloquently reminds us of how the world and a camera can be brought together to create poetry.

The recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts grants, Papageorge’s work is represented in more than forty private and museum collections, including MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, SF MoMA, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; it has also been published in seven monographs. And, as the Director of the Yale MFA photography program from 1979 to 2013 Papageorge’s influence as both photographer and teacher continues to reverberate in the world of photography.

Photos To Intrigue, Amuse and Even Seduce You
Edward Goldman Newsletter - July 14, 2022

And now, let’s talk about two photo exhibitions that just opened at Danziger Gallery in Bergamot Station. Thirty years ago, very few people knew about Seydou Keïta (1921-2001), who lived his whole life in Bamako, Mali. “From 1948 through the 1950s he ran a successful portrait studio taking pictures of local individuals and families.” His women, men and children are not just posing, they look and stare at you as if there was no camera between them and you.

For some crazy reason, Keïta’s studio was shut down by the government and he started to support himself by repairing bicycles. Almost 40 years later, in the early 1990s, Keïta was “discovered” by a French collector who brought his photos to Paris where Keïta was given a solo show by the Fondation Cartier. Lucky me, on my first-ever trip to Paris in the early 1990s, friends brought me to someone’s studio where I saw and fell in love with Keïta’s photography. My French host asked me if I knew some galleries or collectors in Los Angeles that might be interested in Keïta photos. As the story goes, slowly but steadily, the interest in his art grew to the current point of well-deserved international fame.

The other exhibition at Danziger Gallery is by American photographer Tod Papageorge (b. 1940) known for his street photography, which made him travel from New York to Europe, and eventually to Los Angeles. I love looking at his Venice Beach scenes with so much naked skin hopefully covered with sunscreen. Prepare yourself to be slightly embarrassed by staring at totally naked beach goers who are unaware that the camera is capturing plenty of their flesh from less than complimentary angles?

The Papageorge exhibition, The Beaches, 1975 – 1981, covers the first few years of my life in LA and reminds me of one of the reasons why I chose to make Los Angeles my home—all these sun-kissed happy moments of shiny skin and art.

Both exhibitions at Danziger Gallery run through August 31.

Otherwise known as everything we swore to read this summer — but there’s still time! No books roundup is ever comprehensive, but this selection of eclectic and lively titles features books of and about art, creativity, poetry, prose, photography and design — especially, but not limited to, that which is inspired by the truly unruly muse that is Los Angeles.

Daniel Wheeler: Portrait: An Urban Tree Diary (Rose Gallery). A tree is a tree is a tree is a tree is a tree is a tree. Except when it isn’t. Every day for seven months, artist Daniel Wheeler drew a new tree. With the rapt attention to detail and difference of a portrait, Wheeler teased out variances in leaf and bark, cast and contour — and at the same time, this radical anti-smartphone, almost devotional present-ness transformed his consciousness. Part journaling, part field sketch, part mantra, as actor and nature-lover Nick Offerman observes in the book’s introduction, “This artist’s penchant for picking twigs out of the gutter and rendering them into heartbreaking works of inspiration or illuminating objects of delight or both at once certainly awakens my own affection. And admiration. And gratitude.” rosegallery.net

The exhibition Reflections On Our Warming Planet, at the Lois Lambert Gallery, signals that the time for reacting to our planetary warnings has now passed. We have transitioned into a new stage, that of reflection. This progression into a period of reflection may at first be difficult to accept. However, such a problematization of our actions through the assembled artworks ultimately proves apt. Conceived by Lucinda Luvaas, the selected participants not only raise awareness of, but also pose a relevant inquiry into the climate crisis of our day. Knowledge of climate change is no longer a novel concept. Awareness of global environmental change not only occupies our consciousness, but has become palpable. As year after year continues to pass with at best proportional reaction, the assembled works act as an archive of what has already been set into motion.

For nearly 20 years, the Californian architecture firm Montalba Architects has amassed a portfolio of discerning clients with its clean and considered approach to building and space. Founded by the Swiss-American architect David Montalba and based in Santa Monica in Los Angeles, the practice is probably best known for designing the Nobu Ryokan in Malibu, The Row boutique in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, as well as the Vertical Courtyard House in Santa Monica, completed in 2020, which has been lauded with accolades.

With offices in Lausanne and Los Angeles, the international firm has developed a distinctive design style with universal appeal. Its achievements have now been chronicled in a conceptual tome, titled ‘Place and Space’ and published by Artifice Press, that explores the duality of the firm’s magnetism. Through combining the radical experimentation that arose in California during the 1970s and 1980s with the calm precision of Swiss practice, Montalba’s motto of repeatedly paring things down and reducing stylistic elements to their fundamental essence is an inspiring thread through all of the firm’s projects. 

Dramatic drapes, retro accoutrements, and hapless, faceless women: These are the recurring themes in Anonymous Women, a splashy visual escapade by award-winning photographer Patty Carroll. In what may seem like domestic upheavals, unidentified women either elegantly blend – and sometimes chaotically collide – with their environments. This collection (created between 2016-2022) on view at Galerie XII, plunges the viewer into vivid, lush, and elaborate atmospheres, each piece possessing its own interrelating color theme and stylistic flair – some with earthy, pastel hues of an old-fashioned design, others with candy-coated, psychedelic whirlwinds.

In Sunflower Girl, a 70’s looking room has apparently engulfed its faceless inhabitant in a succession of large, bursting sunflowers. Everything in the room, from the upholstery, drapes, wallpaper, and notorious bouquet painted by Van Gogh on the back wall, are in keeping with this bright orange floral theme – so much so that perhaps it had no choice but to literally manifest itself.

Bright greens and cardinal reds induce a good old, deranged holiday spirit in Green Beaned, in which the task of cooking up a traditional casserole, unfortunately, looks to be grandma’s Christmas recipe gone wrong. Our poor subject, whose head is concealed by paisley curtains, has been inundated by a mass of the green vegetables that cascade from a baking pan and mixing bowl, extending onto the adjoining table and recipe book. A tower of unopened cans and an array of poinsettias add to this peculiar saccharine display…

• Art Now LA, Zara Kand, May 21, 2022

Santa Monica’s latest venue The Crow is not your typical comedy club. Founded by Santa Monica native and mother of two Nicole Blaine, The Crow seeks to elevate comedy culture and create a welcoming space for comics of all ages, gender and abilities.

Think a BYOB (bring your own baby) daytime comedy show for moms, a Boys Drool female/non-binary open mic night and kids summer comedy camp. These are just some of the many projects Blaine envisions works for her family-friendly, woman-centered comedy club, which is located within the Bergamot Station Art Center.

The Crow is “for Santa Monica, by Santa Monica,” says Nicole, who grew up attending Santa Monica schools and is now enrolling her two children in Lincoln Middle School and Santa Monica High School. She wants the club to serve as a community gathering space “welcome to all who welcome all,” and has rolled out several inclusivity initiatives, including scholarships for her kids comedy camp (thanks to a generous donation from “This is Us” actor Chris Sullivan and his wife Rachel)…

• Santa Monica Daily Press, Clara Harter, May. 25, 2022

Architect David Montalba on His Humanistic Approach to Design

A cosmopolitan childhood has influenced how the Swiss-American architect approaches his work. He tells Luxury Defined about his worldview and his dream commission. Although he wanted to be a surfer, architect David Montalba always had a fascination with making things. Our interview reveals how his peripatetic childhood and family background continues to influence his work today…

• Christie’s Real Estate, May 24, 2022

AIA Los Angeles recognizes crème de la crème of residential architecture and architectural photography

The Architectural Photography Awards were grouped into three categories: Best Image, Best Rendering, and Best Instagram Feed. A total of 18 images by 15 photographers were recognized based on how successfully they were able to create new ways of seeing well-known work. The panel deciding the Honor, Merit, and Citation awards consisted of architectural photographer Ashok Sinha, Montalba Architects founding partner David Montalba, and Elizabeth Parker, chief creative officer at Shimahara Visual…

• Arch Paper, Hannah Su, May 25, 2022

Ten wet rooms with a serene and relaxing feel

A wet room in an off-grid home in a former stable and a stark white wet room that frames views across Hollywood feature in our latest lookbook, which highlights this type of bathroom. A wet room is a fully waterproofed bathroom, which typically also includes a shower that is completely flush with the room's main floor. As they're completely waterproof, wet rooms remove the need for shower trays and even shower screens or curtains, since water can drain directly into the floor.

Nobu Ryokan Malibu, US, by Studio PCH and Montalba Architects

Nobu Ryokan Malibu is located within a former 1950s beachfront hotel. It was converted by Studio PCH and Montalba Architects, who created the Japanese restaurant and luxury hotel chain's first of a line of Japanese-inspired retreats.

The interiors take cues from Japanese design and boast clean, sharp lines mixed with natural materials. A suite's wet room features a wooden, freestanding tub and an overhead shower – both of which are set below a wooden, beam-lined skylight.

Find out more about Nobu Ryokan Malibu ›

• Dezeen, James Parkes, May 8, 2022

American Democracy' (American Democracy) is a large installation made up of 59 historical paintings : a pictorial portrait of the political history of the United States interpreted in a geometric key.

With this new project, the PSJM collective - Cynthia Viera from Gran Canaria and Pablo San José from Asturias - continues the development of its own language within the field of abstraction, a line that the collective has called "social geometry" in which geometric compositions are generated from statistical data or surveys.

The individual exhibition opened its doors yesterday at the Building Bridges Art Exchange in Santa Monica (Los Angeles) , where it will be exhibited until May 21.

The title of the work gives meaning to abstraction, a critical content that perverts the very tradition of formalist painting. The raw material processed by the knowledge society is information, and this is precisely what underlies the plastic strategy of «social geometry» , where computer graphics and the tradition of American color field painting are combined with sociological study to offer critical reflection.

Completion of this project entails rigorous research on presidential elections throughout United States history . A nation that was founded as a democracy and that has been maintained in this way uninterruptedly through time. "This fact provides us with a privileged timeline that crystallizes in a large installation that allows us to visually show the fluctuations of a democratic system," point out this couple of artists…

• Canary Islands 7, April 15, 2022

In Illusions and Deceptions, we can’t help but ask what really lies behind the veil in Tom Eckert’s enigmatic show at Lois Lambert Gallery. The title seems relevant, as the objects are indeed not what they seem. Indeed, the over-arching sculptural works appear to be light-weight arrangements made of soft fabric, yet at closer inspection, are hard as stone.

Furthermore, the viewer might guess that ceramic or porcelain may have been the medium used to achieve such smooth white forms: wrong again. These works were actually made from wood. Basswood, which has a soft, malleable texture, has lent itself perfectly to the various techniques, including carving, bending, laminating and painting, that the artist employed to create his effects. Additional 3-dimensional elements in the exhibit include common objects that are made from rocks, which are paired with the wooden cloth to suggest ambiguous narratives.

For example, Insidious (all works 2021), shows a rifle whose shiny black snout and rear end menacingly poke out from a piece of satiny draped cloth. The cognitive dissonance of brutality combined with sensuality that this image evokes is striking…

• Art Now LA, Zara Kand, April 23, 2022