Book of the day > Sam Contis: Deep Springs. Published by MACK. " 'Contis’s photographs capture the strange beauty of macro and microcosmic views in the high desert. The indistinguishableness of earth and body and the sensual echoes of human and animal give her works an Ovidian sense of imminent metamorphoses.' – Lawrence Rinder

The images in Sam Contis's Deep Springs were made in a remote desert valley east of the Sierra Nevada. The work centers on a small, all-male liberal arts college, founded in 1917 by the educational pioneer L. L. Nunn.

The college and its surroundings provide a stage on which Contis explores the construction of myth, place, and masculine identity. Bringing together new photographs with pictures made by the first students at the college a century ago, Deep Springs engages with the enduring image of the American West––one that Hollywood, mass media, and the history of American photography have imprinted into the collective psyche."

Book(s) of the day > Dayanita Singh: Museum Bhavan. Published by Steidl. “With Museum Bhavan, Dayanita Singh (forges a new space between publishing and the museum, an experience where books have the same--if not greater--artistic value as prints hanging on a gallery wall. Consisting of 10 individual “museums” in book form, Museum Bhavan is a miniature version of Singh’s eponymous traveling exhibition, with prints placed in folding expanding wooden structures.

The images in Museum Bhavan have been intuitively grouped into lyrical chapters in a visual story such as 'Little Ladies Museum' and 'Ongoing Museum,' as well as more specific series such as 'Museum of Machines' As in Singh’s first project, Sent a Letter (2008), the books are housed in a handmade box and fold out into accordion-like strips which the artist encourages viewers to install and curate as they wish in their own homes. The exhibition thus becomes a book, and the book an exhibition."

Book of the day > Frank Walter: The Last Universal Man, 1926–2009. Published by Radius Books @radius_books.  “Antiguan artist and writer Frank Walter was an eccentric character now considered to be vastly under-recognized. Intellectually brilliant, Walter entertained delusions of aristocratic grandeur, namely the belief that the white slave-owners in his family linked him to the noble houses of Europe. The self-styled “7th Prince of the West Indies, Lord of Follies and the Ding-a-Ding Nook” produced paintings that dealt with race, class and social identity, as well as abstract explorations of nuclear energy, portraits both real and imagined—including Hitler playing cricket, and Prince Charles and Princess Diana as Adam and Eve—and miniature landscapes of Scotland, the country that he fell in love with during a visit in 1960. Walter typically painted in oil on rudimentary materials, with a marked immediacy and naivety. The first man of color to manage an Antiguan sugar plantation, Walter spent the last decades of his life in an isolated rustic home in Antigua, surrounded by his writings, paintings, and carvings. Coinciding with Antigua and Barbuda’s inaugural National Pavilion at Venice Biennale 2017, The Last Universal Man is the first comprehensive monograph of this important Caribbean artist. Defying categorization as an outsider or self-taught artist, Walter worked as a writer, composer, sculptor, and painter.”

Book of the day > Vineland by Dan Monick and Clint Woodside (@danmonickphoto + @clintwoodside) . Co-published by Cash Machine (@cashmachinela) + Dead Beat Club (@deadbeatclub). Only a few copies remain from the big show at  Voilld (with Communee) in Tokyo!  Woodside and Monick present here "a visual road trip through the forgotten neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley, a place 'where the American dream was peddled, then crashed and burned as much as, if not more than, anywhere in the US'." 

SUNDAY, JUNE 18th, 4:00 to 6:00 PM

DAN HICKS: I SCARE MYSELF - A MEMOIR

Book Signing, Panel Discussion, and Performance

with editor Kristine McKenna,

Hot Licks guitarist Paul Robinson,

Van Dyke Parks, Maria Muldaur, and Jim Kweskin!

Please join us on Sunday, June 18th for a special event to celebrate the publication of the late, great Dan Hicks' autobiography I Scare Myself. Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of “The Summer of Love”, Dan’s editor and close collaborator Kristine McKenna will be signing copies of the book and moderating a panel discussion about Dan’s life and music featuring Van Dyke Parks, Maria Muldaur, Jim Kweskin, and Hot Licks guitarist Paul Robinson. There will also be a short musical performance by the participants following the discussion. 

Dan Hicks didn’t have his heart set on a career in music. It all just sort of happened to him. It didn’t hurt, of course, that he was in the right place at the right time - San Francisco, 1966 - and had a front-row seat for the birth and death of the counterculture.

Among other things, I Scare Myself is a classic story of the sixties. More importantly, though, it’s a story of musical genius. By the time “The Summer of Love” limped to a close in the fall of ’67, Dan Hicks had quit The Charlatans - the pioneering psych-rock band with whom he played the drums - and turned to jazz; the music he’d secretly loved all along, as he began building his own band.

“I just started taking ingredients I liked and putting them together to see what came out,” he writes. What came out was an amazing blend of complex time signatures, unusual instrumentation, and intricate vocal harmonies that took him to the top of the seventies rock world as well as a downward spiral of drink and drug abuse.

Dan details it all with wit and candor in I Scare Myself Emerging from a long wilderness, he eventually returned to recording and performing, making a number of acclaimed albums, including Beatin’ The Heat, a set of duets with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Rickie Lee Jones, and more. Along the way, his music continued to subtly permeate the culture, turning up everywhere from The Sopranos to commercials for Levi’s and Bic.

Though he passed away in early 2016, Dan’s music, and the stories he tells here, remain as fresh and irresistible as ever. Combining those stories with dozens of rare photographs and a detailed discography by esteemed writer and critic Kristine McKenna, I Scare Myself takes readers on a journey behind the music, and into the life and mind of the fantastic artist who created it.

If you cannot attend but would like to purchase a copy of I Scare Myself signed by Kristine McKenna please click here or call us at 310-458-1499.

QUEER THREADS: CRAFTING IDENTITY AND COMMUNITY

BY JOHN CHAICH + TODD OLDHAM - LOS ANGELES BOOK LAUNCH
SATURDAY, JUNE 10th 4:00 - 6:00 PM
 

Join us Saturday, June 10th  for a book signing and exhibition with John Chaich as part of the Design Field Day at Helms! We'll be showing work from Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community and enjoying treats from our own Culver City community -  a special cocktail from Bar & Garden and the ice cream stylings of CoolHaus!

The exhibition, running through June 24th, will feature work by five Los Angeles-based artists. On view will be fiber and textile work by Diedrick Brackens, Ben Cuevas, Aubrey Longley-Cook, Maria E. Pineres, and Nathan Vincent. Spanning video to soft sculpture and wall-work, the pieces on view range from  life-sized knit and crochet urinals to a stop-motion animation based on needle-point scenes from RuPaul's "Supermodel" video.

Queer Threads: Crafting Identity and Community spotlights an international, inter-generational, inter-sectional mix of thirty artists who are remixing fiber craft traditions such as crochet, embroidery, quilting, and sewing while reconsidering the binaries of art and craft, masculine and feminine, and gay and straight.

Designed by Todd Oldham and edited by John Chaich, Queer Threads features full-color spreads of each artist's work, intimate details of selections and artist studios, and an introductory essay by Mr. Chaich, who curated the exhibition of the same name that inspired the book.

To further examine how queerness informs their work in fiber and textiles, the artists are interviewed by makers and thinkers from the worlds of dance, design, fashion, media, music, museums, scholarship, and more - many of whom are members of the LGBTQ community themselves and otherwise passionate allies. Queer Threads is not just an exploration of fiber art and crafts, but also a celebration of the creativity, diversity, and vibrancy of contemporary queer culture.
 

If you are unable to attend but would like a copy of Queer Threads signed by author and editor John Chaich,  please place your order on our website here, or call us at 310-458-1499.

The exhibition will be on display through June 24th. 

The Helms-wide "Design Field Day: This Modern Life" will be running all day Saturday. There are dozens of panels, specials, workshops, demonstrations, tastings throughout the Helms "campus" from 12 to 6. Here's a link to the schedule, including a panel lead by KCRW's Frances Anderton. Attendees can enter the "This Modern LIie" sweepstakes to win chairs from Vitra, lamps from Louis Poulson,  a gift certificate from Arcana, and more!

Book of the day > Dandy Lion: The Black Dandy and Street Style. Published by Aperture. " Suits that pop with loud colors and dazzling patterns, complete with a nearly ubiquitous bowtie, define the style of the new “dandy.” Described as “high-styled rebels” by author Shantrelle P. Lewis, black men with a penchant for color and refined fashion, both new and vintage, have gained popular attention in recent years, influencing mainstream fashion. But black dandyism itself is not new; originating in Enlightenment England’s slave culture, it has continued for generations in black cultures around the world. Now, set against the backdrop of hip-hop culture, this iteration of dandies is redefining what it means to be black, masculine, and fashionable. Dandy Lion presents and celebrates individual dandy personalities, designers and tailors, movements and events that define contemporary dandyism. Throughout the book, self-expression is communicated through personal style, clothing, shoes, hats, and swagger. Lewis’s carefully curated selection of contemporary photographs surveys the movement across the globe in spectacular form, with all of the vibrant patterns, electrifying colors, and fanciful poses of this brilliant style subculture."
 

Book of the day > Jim Jocoy: Order of Appearance. Published by TBW Books. "Almost 20 years after the release of his first monograph, We’re Desperate, produced with the help of Sonic Youth front man Thurston Moore and fashion designer Marc Jacobs and widely regarded as the definitive catalogue of early West Coast punk fashion, Jim Jocoy’s archive of previously unseen photographs has been re-examined and re-considered to compose Order of Appearance, a new body of work that humanizes his young subjects as they go through their daily lives sharing the tender moments of love and loss that came to encapsulate the late 70s and early 80s as the Summer of Love slowly eroded and gave way to punks’ disaffected view of the world.

Unknowingly foreshadowing the AIDS epidemic that would grip underground communities throughout the country, Jocoy’s poignant photos share an intimacy not unlike that found in the work of Nan Goldin, combined with the underground compulsion and clout that permeates the photos of Katsumi Watanabe, and Karlheinz Weinberger.

Spanning three short years from 1977 to 1980, the collection of images is structured in three chapters, vignettes from a one night affair where emotions range from delight to despair, sober to wasted, clear to blurry to half-way-clear-again by morning. 

Jocoy’s ability to reveal these touching moments of restless youth allows us to feel empathetic towards the bruised knees that start the book off and then laugh at the comical horror of a sunburst-yellow clownish car turned violently upside down from a accident. As a photographer, Jocoy has an uncanny capacity to make even a car wreck look like the best time ever." @tbwbooks #jimjocoy

JOIN US FOR A SPECIAL AFTERNOON OF:

NUDE FIGURE AND VEGETABLE LIFE DRAWING

ROSÉ SIPPING,

BOOK SIGNING,

CONVERSATION WITH JULIA SHERMAN + EVAN KLEIMAN

and, of course, SALAD

S A L A D   F O R   P R E S I D E N T

A COOKBOOK INSPIRED BY ARTISTS

BY JULIA SHERMAN

SUNDAY, JUNE 4TH, 3:00-5:00 PM

A salad is a composition. I am perfectly happy to see cars or clouds or salads as artworks. It’s what you do with them and how you contextualize them that matters.”—Laurie Anderson

The creator of the immensely popular Salad for President blog presents a visually rich collection of more than 75 salad recipes, with contributions and interviews by artists/creative professionals like William Wegman, Tauba Auerbach, Laurie Anderson, and Alice Waters. Sherman loves salad, and she encourages her readers to consider it an everyday indulgence that can include cocktails, soups, family style brunch dishes, and dinner-party entrées.

Salad—with its infinite possibilities—is a game of endless combinations, not stifling rules. And with that in mind, Salad for President offers a window into how artists approach preparing their favorite dishes. Sherman visits sculptors, painters, photographers, and musicians in their homes and gardens, interviewing and photographing them as they cook. Utterly unique in its look into the worlds of food, art, and everyday practices, Salad for President is at once a practical resource for healthy, satisfying recipes and an inspiring look at creativity

Please join us in collaboration with Aesop, June 4th between 3:00 and 5:00 PM for this extra special event as we celebrate the publication of Ms. Sherman's fantastic new Abrams book: Salad For President!

Q + A between Ms. Sherman and Evan Kleiman will begin around 3:30, concurrent with the nude figure and vegetable life drawing. Listen, sketch from life, snack on Sherman's Mexican Fruit Salad (recipe from the book!) and raise a glass! Bring your own art supplies or use the charcoal and newsprint that we will have.

If you are unable to attend but would like a signed copy, please place your order here, or call us at 310-458-1499.

Book of the day > Katherine Bernhardt. Published by CANADA. Edited by Dan Nadel. Text by Nicole Rudick. “This is the first book to provide a comprehensive overview of Katherine Bernhardt’s wildly popular pattern paintings. Spanning 2013 through 2016, it collects over 100 of her brightly colored canvases. Well known for paintings of super models ripped from glossy fashion magazines and, more recently, Morrocan rug motifs, in 2013 Bernhardt dropped all direct quotation and now paints straight from her imagination, mining her own fertile reservoir of experience, imagery and sensation. Since then, Bernhardt has produced paintings that mix an assortment of objects reflecting her daily experiences, from life in New York to her love of Puerto Rico, her Saint Louis roots and family life. The objects are painted with incredible verve and tenacity, and include a jumble of the following items on colorfully activated grounds: watermelon slices, boom boxes, computers, pizza slices, cassette tapes, hamburgers, basketballs, old cell phones, airplanes, fruit, sharks, water, sea turtles, cigarettes, sharpies and keyboards. Bernhardt presents a slightly delirious feeling of New York City, the out-of-date and the up-to-the-minute all in one.”