Events Posted Nov 01, 2023

PIPPA GARNER BOOK SIGNING 11/18!!!

Saturday, November 18th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM, renowned Los Angeles-based artist Pippa Garner will be joining us for a very special book signing. Available will be the much-anticipated catalogue for Ms. Garner's current career-spanning retrospective - Act Like You Know Me, along with the 2023 edition of her iconic, long-unavailable Philip Garner's Better Living Catalog.

If you cannot attend and would like to order a signed copy of either - or both - to have shipped or to pick up at the shop, please place your order here! We look forward to seeing you this Saturday!

Act Like You Know Me is the first comprehensive monograph on innovative American artist Pippa Garner. Encompassing Garner’s most iconic works, from the Backwards Car to the Half-Suit, alongside never-before-seen photographs and ephemera, it surveys fifty years of her transdisciplinary art practice, from the late 1960s to the early 2010s, through photography, illustration, ephemera, and original writings. "Act Like You Know Me" supplements exclusive visuals and texts by Garner with archival press materials on the artist from such notable figures as Glenn O’Brien, Ralph Rugoff, and Hayden Dunham in addition to three new original commissions from contemporary, award-winning authors Shola von Reinhold, Dodie Bellamy, and Fiona Alison Duncan, and serves to introduce a highly-influential, under-recognized artist whose uncompromising approach to life and practice has allowed her to interact with the worlds of illustration, editorial, television, and art without ever becoming beholden to them. Pippa Garner’s Better Living Catalogue - originally published in 1982, takes the form of a mail order catalog featuring clever and whimsical inventions that parody consumer goods while simultaneously critiquing America’s obsession with ingenuity, efficiency, leisure, and comfort. These works, which were made as prototypes and photographed for the publication, take the form of improbable accessories, clothing, footwear, home appliances, and office gadgets. For example, the “Reactiononometer,” a portable wristband, instantly measures social success, while the “Digital Diet Loafers” display the wearer’s weight with every step. If the “Munch-o-Matic” reduces deskwork interruptions by flinging a snack right into the user’s mouth, other items promise financial solvency (the controlled cash flow “Autowallet”), sustainable waste management, or mess-free companionship (the “Pet-a-Vision” TV console). The artist asserts that all of the products in the book are “absolute necessities for contemporary survival.” Many of the prototypes Garner created for the publication were ultimately repurposed or recycled, making this previously rare gem of an artist book one of the artist’s few works to now be widely available. Born in the suburbs of Chicago in 1942, the artist formerly known as Philip Garner has satirized American-style consumerism for decades, reifying the joys of everyday life and personal liberation along her way. With her prankish sense of humour and conceptual dedication to experimental engineering, she has altered materials of mass production - from Fordism through the pharmacopornographic era - subverting commercial binaries to reveal the transitory nature of material life and her own transpersonal identity.

Events Posted Oct 15, 2023

JIM GOLDBERG BOOK SIGNING + DISCUSSION 10/28

JIM GOLDBERG: COMING AND GOING DISCUSSION + BOOK SIGNING
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28TH, 3:00 - 5:00 PM
AT 8707 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD

Please join us Saturday, October 28th for a discussion with Jim Goldberg and Douglas Fogle for Goldberg's new book Coming and Going, published by MACK.

* PLEASE NOTE *

The discussion will begin at 3:20 and will be followed by the book signing.

Coming and Going will be available for purchase beginning at 3:00 at the event space (8707 Washington Blvd.) and is available for pre-order on our website now.

Mr. Goldberg's schedule is tight and he will prioritize signing Coming and Going over other material brought to the event.

All seating has been reserved by those who have RSVP'd. But there is plenty of standing room, so please do join us. If you have already RSVP'd please arrive by 3:15 to insure your seat. Seats will be open to all after 3:15 regardless of RSVP.

8707 WASHINGTON BOULEVARD (350 FEET WEST OF ARCANA)
FREE VALET PARKING AVAILABLE ADJACENT TO THE EVENT VENUE AT 8711 WASHINGTON

"Coming and Going is Jim Goldberg’s unique work of autobiography. Since 1999, Goldberg has been photographing his daily life through all its vicissitudes and returning to his studio to re-imagine and investigate these images through a practice of collage, annotation, montage, and reconstruction for which he has become renowned. This book charts a course through the grief following the death of one’s parents, the life-altering birth of a child, the heartbreak of divorce, and the rediscovery of love. Told using a correspondingly tumultuous blend of singular and combined imagery, personal notes, collages, and ephemera, the book captures the bittersweet realities of an individual life while reflecting on the universal, inescapable comings and goings that shape us and the ways we grow to understand ourselves. Familiar from celebrated works such as Rich and Poor (1985), Raised by Wolves (1995) and Open See (2009), Goldberg’s visual language employs sequence and narrative with a feverish intensity. History, memory, and imagination collide in a vividly material practice to which the influences of fiction and film, and the book form itself, are central. Coming and Going offers a fierce, vulnerable, and at times overwhelming account of a life and a search for the elusive universals of experience – an achievement that constitutes Goldberg’s masterwork and a significant contribution to contemporary bookmaking."

If you cannot attend and would like to purchase a signed copy of Coming and Going please do so here.

Events Posted Oct 01, 2023

RICHARD EDSON: YEAR ZERO - LOCKDOWN JOURNAL BOOK SIGN

Please join us Saturday, October 7th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM for a very special book signing with photographer Richard Edson.

"I began the Year Zero - Lockdown Journal on March 20th, 2020. On the first day I took my bicycle and camera and rode through the empty, silent streets of Los Angeles. Everything looked the same, but everything was completely different. I took photos and came back and wrote about it. And I kept it up for next twelve months, through our personal and collective isolation, through the ups and downs of the pandemic, the slow, halting opening of society, the politicization of the virus, the George Floyd protests, the elections, the Stop-the-Steal movement, and the storming of the Capital. Covid-19 was beyond anything we thought possible or could even imagine. It's the stuff of science fiction and dystopian nightmares. But the writers and doomsayers were right. And here we are. Each of us who have lived through Year Zero have our own stories to tell. This, in photographs and texts, is mine." Published by Artvoices Books, Year Zero - Lockdown Journal features two beautifully packaged hardcover books in a slipcase subtitled, "Spring & Summer" and "Fall & Winter."

Richard Edson has been acting in films for nearly forty years and has appeared in over one hundred movies and television shows. His more notable roles include a disreputable parking garage attendant in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Howard the Duck (1986), Jim Jarmusch's cult film Stranger Than Paradise (1984), Eight Men Out, and Joey Breaker (1993). He also appeared in Platoon (1986), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Tougher Than Leather (1988), Let It Ride (1989), and Do the Right Thing (1989). He starred in the 1993 movie Super Mario Bros as Spike (1987). As a photographer he has had four solo exhibitions in Los Angeles and has been in countless group exhibits. He has also appeared in Juxtapose, Puta, and The Propagandist magazines and has had photography assignments for Wax Poetics, American Apparel, and many others. Until recently he had a monthly photo spread / column in the Los Angeles downtown arts magazine, Citizen LA. In addition to acting and photography he was a founding member and first drummer for the seminal art rock band Sonic Youth, and drummer / trumpet player for the legendary New York Afro-dance band, Konk.

If you cannot attend and would like to purchase a signed copy of Year Zero - Lockdown Journal, please place your order here!

Events Posted Aug 08, 2023

JERRY HSU BOOKSIGNING - LONLEY CITY - SATURDAY 8/19!

Please join us on Saturday, 8/19 from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM to celebrate Jerry Hsu's new book, LONLEY CITY.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Events Posted Jul 14, 2023

AWOL ERIZKU: MYSTIC PARALLAX!

JOIN US SATURDAY,
JULY 15th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
FOR A BOOK SIGNING WITH
AWOL ERIZKU!

Please join us Saturday, July 15th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM for a very special book signing with esteemed artist Awol Erizku.

"Working across photography, film, video, painting, and installation, Awol Erizku's work references and re-imagines African-American and African visual culture, from hip hop vernacular to Nefertiti, while nodding to traditions of spirituality and Surrealism. This comprehensive monograph spans the artist’s career, blending his studio practice with his work as an in-demand editorial photographer working regularly for the New Yorker, New York magazine, Time, and GQ, among others, and features his conceptual portraits of Black cultural icons such as Solange, Amanda Gorman,

and Michael B. Jordan. As Erizku recently told the New York Times, 'It’s important for me to create confident, powerful, downright regal images of Black people.' Featuring essays by critically acclaimed author Ishmael Reed, curator Ashley James, and writer Doreen St. Félix, and interviews with the artist by Urs Fischer and Antwaun Sargent, Mystic Parallax is a luminous and arresting testament to the artist’s tremendous power and originality."

If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed example of Mystic Parallax, please place your order here, or call 310-458-1499.

Events Posted Jun 07, 2023

JASON LEE BOOK SIGNING: TX | CA 17

PLEASE JOIN US SATURDAY, JUNE 17th, 4:00 - 6:00 PM FOR A BOOK SIGNING WITH JASON LEE: TX | CA 17

Please join us Saturday, June 17th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM for a very special book signing with esteemed photographer / publisher / actor / director / skate legend Jason Lee!

Hot off the press from the UK's Stanley / Barker is this elegant document of his 2017 road trip by automobile from his then adopted home in Texas to Los Angeles.

Like all of Mr. Lee's beautiful photography books, this is likely to sell out quickly. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed example of TX | CA 17, or our last few copies of his out of print In the Gold Dust Rush or Galveston, please place your order here or call 310-458-1499.

Events Posted Mar 28, 2023

Book Signing 4/8/23! Casa Santa Fe: Design, Style, Arts, and Tradition

Please join us Saturday, April 8th between 4:00 and 6:00 PM for a book signing with Melba Levick and Dr. Rubén G. Mendoza. If you cannot attend but would like to order a signed copy, please place your order here or call 310-458-1499.

"Desert hues, natural materials, thick hand-plastered walls, and adobe brick construction are hallmarks of the Santa Fe Style, which is as much an expression in architecture, interior design, art, and crafts as it is a way of life. Rooted in a sense of earthy comfort inspired by its history, the surrounding desert, and Native American and Hispanic design influences, the style has a timeless appeal and vibrant ongoing life that has resulted in these extraordinary homes.

With features such as eighteenth-century peeled vigas, tin chandeliers, romantic iron sconces, and hand-hewn wood-beamed ceilings, each house is a rich yet harmonious invitation that will engage the senses and speak to the soul. Beyond the houses, the writer and photographer spotlight those details and spaces that together convey the magic of this very special place, including patios and gardens; fireplaces, kivas, and hornos; ceramics; Native American arts; cabinets and trasteros; folk art; and weaving.

Casa Santa Fe is the definitive sourcebook for architects, designers, builders, homeowners, and interior decorators seeking to expand their visual repertoire of historically defined and classically inspired architectural details and interior appointments."

Melba Levick is an internationally renowned photographer based in Los Angeles and Paris, with more than sixty books to her name. Her most recent publications from Rizzoli include The Spanish Style House, The California Missions, The Ranches: Home on the Range in California, The California Casa, and Classic Homes of Los Angeles.

Dr. Rubén G. Mendoza is an archaeologist, photographer, and founding faculty member of the California State University, Monterey Bay. He is the author of several books including The Spanish Style House, The California Missions, and Mission San Miguel Arcángel.

Events Posted Mar 14, 2023

Join us Sunday, March 26th for a Discussion and Book Signing with Isis Aquarian, Jodi Wille and Charlie KItchings for "The Source Family Scrapbook!"

We are delighted to invite you to attend a very special Sunday afternoon presentation with authors Isis Aquarian, Jodi Wille, and Charlie Kitchings to celebrate the publication of Family: The Source Family Scrapbook. Panel moderated by FAMILY associate editor Steffie Nelson.

For the event the four will host an exhibition of rare photographs and printed materials from the Source Family Archive housed at the UC Santa Barbara Library's Special Research Collections, engage in a discussion about the Family and the book, and sign copies afterwards. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy of this, or one of the other Source Family items we will be offering in limited supply, please place your order here, or call 310-458-1499.

Isis Aquarian is the Source Family’s archivist. As one of Father’s fourteen wives, she photographed and filmed Father and the Source Family, recorded audio, maintained scrapbooks, and helped manage the Family business. She is co-founder and Vice-President of the Source Foundation, and was an associate producer of The Source Family documentary. Isis has published her award-winning memoir, The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod: Ya Ho Wa 13 and The Source Family," and produced the record “Isis: The Crone." She has supervised the release of other Source Family music, created a Source Family comic book, and her own tee shirt line.

Jodi Wille is a filmmaker and curator known for her work exploring American subcultures. She is director of the feature documentary The Source Family, and the Co-Founder and editor of book publishing companies Otherworld, Process Media, and Dilettante Press. She has edited and published a number of award-winning books including The Source: The Untold Story of Father Yod, YaHoWha 13, and The Source Family; Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts!; Pure Country: The Leon Kagarise Archives 1961-1971; and Starstruck: Photographs from a Fan, by amateur photographer Gary Lee Boas. She has curated numerous museum and gallery exhibitions related to her book and film projects in Los Angeles, New York, Baltimore, Portland, and London.

Charlie Kitchings is an independent curator and art advisor. He founded AMBACH & RICE in 2009 and organized over fifty exhibits during the gallery’s six-year tenure in Seattle and Los Angeles. He is currently a partner in record manufacturing company SunPress Vinyl.

Events Posted Jan 24, 2023

Black Mass + LAXART at Arcana

We are excited to announce an in person discussion between LAXART's director Hamza Walker and Yusuf Hassan and Kwamé Sorrell of BlackMass Publishing. This Saturday, January 28th, 4pm.

Founded by Yusuf Hassan in 2019, BlackMass Publishing is a New York-based collective and independent press. At once a structure of coherent units and a collection of disjointed parts, BlackMass invokes an aggregate of Blackness, of matter in resistance. Combining archival photographs and found print material with poetry and jazz music, BlackMass grapples with the blurred lines and idiosyncrasies which make up the collective improvisation of African diasporic culture.

BlackMass have publications included in the permanent book collections of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, RAW Material Company, Dakar, Center for Book Arts, New York, The Thomas J. Watson Library, New York, The Whitney Museum Library, New York, The Houghton Library, Cambridge, The Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center, New York, The New York Public Library, and The Evergreen State College, Washington.

Their discussion will be held at Arcana Books in Culver City on January 28th at 4pm. We look forward to seeing you there!

Events Posted Jan 04, 2023

Book SIgning & DIscussion 1/14/22 > LAWRENCE WESCHLER + STEPHEN BERKMAN: A TROVE OF ZOHARS

A TROVE OF ZOHARS BY LAWRENCE WECHSLER

We are delighted to invite you to a book signing for Lawrence Weschler's brand new Hat & Beard publication, A Trove of Zohars. For the event Mr. Weschler will be joined by photographer and early-photographic process historian Stephen Berkman for a discussion about the book and the shrouded-in-mystery Zohar Studios. If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a signed copy, please place your order here, or call 310-458-1499.

"So Lawrence Weschler was minding his own business, as all his stories begin, when he got a call from Gravity Goldberg (her real name!) who introduced herself as the Director of Public Programs and Visitor Experience at The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. She was calling, she told him, to apprise him of an upcoming show - an inaugural exhibition, that is, of a recently uncovered trove of work by Shimmel Zohar, a mid-19th-century Lithuanian immigrant photographer. A contemporary of Mathew Brady, Zohar had chronicled the Jewish immigrant community of the Lower East Side of 1860s - 1870s Manhattan in unparalleled detail, compiling a complete inventory of professions and types. Or not. There was, she suggested, some slippage in the whole story, and they were trying to find someone who might be willing to investigate things, and they were wondering, might he be interested?

Thus begins an antic tale of investigative perplex and vertiginous inquiry, as Weschler tracks down Stephen Berkman, the wet-collodion devotee who claims to have discovered the trove in question, but it’s a long and loopy story. And indeed, Weschler’s account evolves into the fourth volume of his ongoing “Chronicles of Slippage” series, doing for the early history of photography and the long heritance of Judaism what the series’ first volume, the Pulitzer-shortlisted Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, once did for the history of museums and the phenomenology of marvel.

And that’s just the half of it, for the main text sprouts a veritable delirium of digressive footnotes (taking up more than half the book), constituting what may be the closest we are going to ever get by way of memoir from this confounding and beloved writer."