Venice Loses Ed Moses

Two days after an opening of new works at the Runway Gallery next to Hal's in Playa Vista, Venice is mourning the loss of legendary artist, Ed Moses. I regret that I missed that opening, and the chance to celebrate this founding member of the "Cool School" of art one more time.

                                                                                                                 Portrait: Kwaku Alston

There was a massive Moses At 90 retrospective featuring decades of Moses' art a couple of years ago at Bergamot Station that was packed to the rafters, as everyone marveled at how very prolific Moses was, even at 91 years old.

The L.A. Times ran a comprehensive article on the life and career of Moses yesterday that will tell you everything you need to know about his history, but all of Venice will miss just seeing him around with that ever-present twinkle in his eye. A notorious flirt, one could always count on Moses for a good bon mot or story. The old Hal's was always good for a Moses sighting, as he held court there often - usually under one of his massive pieces that the main wall was always reserved for. I remember him saying at an anniversary celebration for Hal's at Electric Lodge that "Hal's has B+ food, which I like, because I can always get a table." Everyone cracked up, mainly because Moses would never have a problem getting a table at Hal's - or anywhere.

His loss has left a gaping hole in the art world, and in Venice, but the beautiful thing is that his wonderful work will live on forever.

Deepest sympathy and love to all who loved Mr. Ed Moses. He was one of a kind.

The Wino-Strut of Artist David Phillips

I first learned about the art of David Phillips in probably the best way possible. I was walking down the beach last year when I came upon this crazy piece of art (that I now know is called "Birth") just sitting there in the sand.


It had the curious name "Wino-Strut" across the front of it, compelling enough for me to write a little story about it at the time. Then I got an email from the artist - David Phillips - who somehow had seen the Blogtown article, and contacted me to invite me to his studio. THEN I got a random email from a reader - Matt - that they had come upon some more Wino Strutting on the beach and thought I might find it interesting. I did.


So time flies and things pile up and I didn't get to the studio, but then I got an invitation from Phillips to the Hotel Erwin for his opening during the Art Crawl last Summer.


I went, it was great, and I had a new friend in Mr. Phillips. But I still didn't know the whole story. So a bunch more time passed, exchanging messages and trying to find a time to sit down and tell the tale, until it's a new year and you gotta make things happen, so we finally sorted it out and here we go.

Phillips is from Tulsa, Oklahoma (Sooners!). His Grandmother was a painter, so from a very early age, Phillips knew that he too wanted to be a painter - in fact, he started with oils. He grew up and wanted a larger audience for his art than perhaps Oklahoma offered, so "Art brought me here" - Here being Venice, California. He had come out and stayed on a friend's couch in Venice, and knew that was the only place that made sense for him to settle. Which he did, right on Abbot Kinney. He got a job as a PA, which let him afford to get a studio (which he says is in Venice, but really it's Marina Del Rey...Ha, David!) and he was off to the races.

Phillips would load up his truck with paintings and just hound gallery owners to see his stuff. Soon enough, after not taking no for an answer ever ("I was gonna be a painter whether they liked it or not!"), he got a gallery rep. This led to a spot on CBS News about his art, and he's been able to work on his painting full-time ever since. He IS a painter.


{At this point, we decided to leave the beach-adjacent studio and conduct our interview on the sand. I thought this appropriate as it's where I first discovered his work, and I feel great guilt and oppression over being inside when I know a remarkable sunset is shaping up outside. See below.}


He's been hired by Urban Outfitters to do works, he gets a bunch of private commissions, but with all the edge and fun and good times and free wheelin' vibe of the beach, he started thinking about doing art that was more accessible to an even larger audience ...


Willem De Kooning is "the end all, be all for me", says Phillips, and he recalled a story about De Kooning selling a painting (One of his "Woman" paintings, which later sold for $20 million) to a guy for a case of wine. De Kooning had to walk the outsized painting all the way uptown to claim his payment, and Phillips thought that would be called a "Wino Strut". This would become his name for his otherwise anonymous pieces that he leaves behind. He figured why let the graffiti artists have all the fun, and maybe the next step beyond graffiti as public art would be a contemporary artist leaving behind works that people could actually take home!


This began the Wino-Strut practice and Brand of "Giving someone a HAPPENING ... The experience IS the art!" So the installation like "Birth", that first led me to this interesting fellow, and his studio. Then he painted 500 bottles, inserting painted scrolls of abstract faces inside, and placed them all along the coast, from Venice (Marina Del Rey) to Malibu, for people to discover along their morning walks and keep. This little caper did earn him a call from the LAPD, who thought that he might be planting pipe bombs all over vs. just making someone's day. Sigh.


Phillips had just done an installation the very afternoon that we spoke, lining a bunch of bottles along the entrance to Groundworks on Main Street. Rather than think of the art as fleeting, Phillips sees it more as "Disrupting someone's monotony. This art HAPPENED. And now they have an illustration of a memory." How great is that?

We wound up our interview back in the studio, where there are multiple works in progress, as well as lots more bottles being prepared for a 3,000 bottle onslaught, perhaps somewhere near you. I was gifted with one, and it makes me smile just to glance at it and think of the lift one like it is going to give someone else, totally unexpectedly. Another day brightener in Venice.


Phillips is a big fan of the Ferus/"Cool School" of art, and loves to mingle with those guys (Bell, Lodato, etc...) around town at Larry's Venice, The Erwin, the Art Crawl, VENICE ... and keep that inspired torch burning.

I'm so happy to know the story behind it all now, and look so forward to hearing about - or just again stumbling upon - what new hijinks Phillips has in store for the unassuming audience. He has followed his dream, and both had and brought fun to many in doing it. And that's about the highest form of living one can do. May he long continue his wino strutting!


PS - 1.18.12

THEN today, after posting this story yesterday ... Wino-Strut strikes again! Perhaps in celebration ... it looks like one!


Right outside Casa Linda, brightening everyone's day!




David Phillips
www.Wino-Strut.com

Venice Double Feature - For When You're Strange

When you're feeling strange ... or just in the mood for an excellent double feature with Venice roots ... go for When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors and The Cool School.

The excellent PBS series, American Masters showed The Doors film last night on PBS, and we simply loved it. It showcases never before seen footage of the band, from its Venice Beach days "Until The End". Jim Morrison is intriguing as ever, and some clips from his own film project HWY: An American Pastoral looked so clear and great that it had us questioning the whole time if director Tom DeCillo had done some recreations with a Mr. Mojo Risin doppelganger. But it was all Jim ... and had us shaking our heads that the world lost yet another musical icon at the super young age of 27.


The Doors came together on the sands of Venice in 1965, and their music still floats on the wind all over town. Every time I stroll through the Canals, I hear "Love Street" somewhere in my mind, and think how the Venice vibe itself could be counted as a member of the band. Speaking of the band, Ray, Robbie, and John are all spotlit as the highly skilled musicians each is in their own right, and what they all put up with for the greater good. Thank goodness there remains such fantastic capturing of it all, as it happened. Jim is perhaps the best example we have of a true "Rock and Roll Poet", and his poetry remained the most important thing to him until the day he died in a Paris bathtub. Scenes of a wasted Jim rolling around on stage pull you back into a time when there were still guys who didn't care at all about what people thought of them, they just went for it ... making it bittersweet when Johnny Depp narrates, "You can't burn out if you're not on fire." (And none of their songs have ever been used in a car commercial). Watching this wonderful documentary, you feel wistful for the time when Jim still prowled around town.

The Cool School is all about building the Los Angeles Art Scene in the 1950's, led by the seminal Ferus Gallery. No one cared about what was happening art-wise here in those days, until Walter Hopps and Ed Keinholz lit the match with that place. Venice ("The Backwater of Bohemia") again played a big part in that, as it was a total slum (jarring pictures of extra ratty Canals and Oil derricks pumping all along what is now the Boardwalk), it was affordable for artists to live and work here ("Nobody wanted to be here, but Look! You can see the ocean right there!").

It also aired on PBS as part of the equally fantastic Independent Lens series, but you can just Netflix it up. Familiar Venice faces like Ed Moses, Ed Ruscha, and John Baldessari are all over the film, and it actually cuts back and forth between old footage and the Ferus Artists having a reunion lunch at our own Hal's.

These guys (and a few token gals) built the entire L.A. Art Scene (and were in fact the first to show Andy Warhol's Soup Cans, at the Ferus Gallery) into what it is today - with even MOCA now showing the "First 30 Years" exhibit right now, full of basically all these folks' greatest hits.

They were again, different times ... "When you could live a life of poetic poverty." (Though lots of us still do a pretty good job of that now). Having seen this insightful documentary, I can have a whole new appreciation for what these guys, who you see on the regular strolling about town, built up from absolutely nothing.

As Walter Hopps says toward the end of The Cool School, "Art offers the possibility of love with strangers." Having viewed these two stories back to back, I understood that element completely. As what The Doors did, what the L.A. art pioneers did, and what Venice continues to attract and promote at its very heart.

Love with strangers, and people who are strange, alike.