Arty Nelson

Good neighbors: Ebbink

Warner Ebbink and Brandon Boudet: Guys and Doms

Arty Nelson
Since December of 2001, restaurateur Warner Ebbink and his partner, chef Brandon Boudet, have been scoring big points on the wild and woolly landscape that is the L.A. food scene. First with the beloved 101 Coffee Shop in Hollywood, then the revamped Dominick’s in West Hollywood, and most recently Little......
Credit: Kevin Scanlon

Bryan Rabin

Arty Nelson
"L.A. is my lady,” Bryan Rabin is saying while enjoying a nosh at a Bronson Canyon hang. It’s the morning after an event Rabin produced at the Paul Smith boutique on Melrose, featuring Brit documentary photographer/photojournalist Martin Parr. When heavy hitters like Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Dior, Paul Smith, Volkswagen,......
Reflector Wizards/Between Loves Me and Not (1992)

Liz Larner at Regen Projects II

Arty Nelson
(Click to enlarge) Reflector Wizards/Between Loves Me and Not (1992) Liz Larner's new show at Regen Projects II is a rare opportunity to see four diverse and significant sculptures from an early creative phase in the development of one of this city's strongest practitioners. Ever since she hit the ground......
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The Never-ending Exploration

Arty Nelson
Setting foot inside Justin Beal’s studio, which is tucked behind an auto-repair shop along “Windshield Row” on Mission Street just north of downtown, one is struck by the multiple personalities of the artist’s practice. On one wall, there’s a large, framed text-based piece that reads, “We Want to Do Everything......
Microclimates: A-Z Warm and Cool Chambers prototypes (1993)

Be Your Own Guinea Pig

Arty Nelson
Going mobile? The A-Z Escape Vehicles (1996), ready for personal touches (Photos Courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery)Walking into Andrea Zittel’s new show “Critical Space” at MOCA/Geffen, a midcareer survey that first showed last winter at the New Museum in Chelsea, one runs head-on into Homestead Unit #1, a stealth, desert shack framed......
Fucked up and beautiful: Chris Johanson likes it like that

He Walks the Line

Arty Nelson
In his early 20s, Chris Johanson moved to San Francisco. It was there, in the early ’90s, that his real-life education began. “You know, I started working with dykes and gay dudes and pagan dudes, and you know, it was awesome to be around so many kinds of really amazing......
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Call Them the Dazzle Dogs

Arty Nelson
It’s a little after 9:30 on a Saturday night, and I’m watching a 7-foot-tall skeleton aptly named Sleepy Bones shuffle and pirouette about in an elongated cube crowded with people. Sleepy Bones is talking, somewhat cryptically, about how much planet Earth has changed in the last few centuries. Over in......
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Canadian Club

Arty Nelson
Drawings collection of the Royal Art College The Royal Art Lodge may be a "self-serving secret society," as one member put it, but whatever secrets they hold are currently all over Los Angeles, on display at three concurrent shows. If you want to get a better sense of what the......
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The Bear Essentials

Arty Nelson
Much of the art world is teetering on a blunted razor’s edge these days: On one side, it’s hard to stifle the yawns as the latest batch of half-assed figurative sketchwork — overly sentimental mushrooms sprouting out of the nothingness, user-friendly and ready to accent the fireplaces of the semi-rich......

’Toon Town

Arty Nelson
Photos by Craig Stecyk ORIGINALLY FROM THE HARBOR area of Los Angeles, Mr. Cartoon (his last name is Machado, first name’s a secret) knew that he was an artist by the time he was 8. From that point on, young ’Toon excelled in various forms of “low” art including sign......