MOCA In Crisis: Show Me The Money

LET me first note for the record, that it was I who spoke the question that, but for a handful of the blithe and benighted among the otherwise thoughtful souls in attendance at the MOCA "mobilization" on the afternoon of Sunday, November 23, 2008, seemed to be on everyone's mind. "Where is Jeremy Strick?" I inquired — apparently a bit too vocally for some of the milquetoasts muddled about me...

Let's Go To The Movies: McCarthy And Son And The Usual Suspects

PAUL and Damon McCarthy's Caribbean
Pirates received its Los Angeles premiere at REDCAT recentyl: a visual and aural multi-screen feast/assault that covered all four walls of the theater. The audience, many of whom sat on the floor, were surrounded like the victims of the raid taking place onscreen(s). The only way out was through the exit door, which guilty-looking art lovers frequently resorted to, smiling awkwardly as they fled.

Interview with Audrey Kawasaki

Three days before the opening of her latest show, "The Drawing Room," Audrey Kawasaki was busy re-creating her studio in the window of Thinkspace—a sort of artistic mannequin advertising the pencil and paper etchings within. Around 5'2, Audrey struggled a bit to hang a vintage Ouija Board above her desk before moving on to the decidedly easier (lower) sketch on an adjacent easel. Nearby: anatomical charts, vintage birdcages, porcelain owls, metallic keys to long-lost boxes and, of course, preserved butterflies and pieces of wood.

Private Eye

Manhattan builder Bill Webber's been a New Yorker for 40 years. I met him trolling Fountain, one of the smaller, avant-garde, guerilla-style fairs that cling to Art Basel Miami. He introduced himself as a collector of downtown '80s street art — as in avenues A and B. He reminisced about Saturdays 20 years ago, when he came down from the Upper East Side to spend half a day in an alternative lifestyle. "The rest of our world was pretty buttoned down," he says...