carolyn castaño

Panama:Tropical Paradise

Changing the Focus- Latin American Photography from 1996-2005 is an appropriate title for the new exhibition at the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach. If you haven't been out to MOLAA, you should. The museum has a new and much anticipated new focus on contemporary Latin American artists, probably you could say of the conceptual bent. The exhibition is organized around four themes- Subliminal Structures, Embodied Identities, Staged Irony, and Individual and Social Violence. The exhibition highlights the artists' response to social and global upheavals and how they have affected Latin America. What is interesting for me, is how we up here in Alta California can view and experience what the world feels like from down there , el sur from these photographs. Some of my favorites include, Jonathan Harker's Panama: Paraiso Tropical, the artist plays with our expectations of the tropical and exotic in postcards featuring the artist himself in mundane scenes around Panama, Luis Molina Pantin's Narco-Arquitecture mansions and fantasy parks around Colombia, Oscar Muñoz in Aliento ( Breath) about the transience of life, the violence and memory of those lost to it, is a beautiful installation of mirrors, that literally requires your breath to be complete.

Bookmeat Benefit Auction for Side Street Projects

Bookmeat is an exciting event benefiting Side Street Projects on November 21, 2009 from 6 pm-10 pm at the Brick Building in Culver City . For those of you not familiar with Side Street Projects, the program founded by Karen Atkinson and Joe Luttrel in 1992, is a completely mobile artist-run non-profit organization, which teaches artists to be self-reliant with workshops such as "Get Your Shit Together" bootcamp for artists, "Best Professional Practices Podcast Series" and the "Equipment Co-op", which provides access to equipment usually too expensive for some of us artist civilians to access. What I find really wonderful is Side Street Projects own resourcefulness, operating out of Pasadena in two restored vintage trailers with a solar energy array, Side Street is completely wireless, mobile, and self-sustaining. I've been wanting to have my mobile studio for years and this is really an inspiration!
The Side Street Project Offices

For the Bookmeat, artists were asked to donate a book that had influenced them or played some part in their art practice. I was having the toughest time trying to think of what to give. I have a wide collection of books and authors who have influenced me in some way. Do I give the catalogue of Lari Pittman's paintings, an artist and mentor who has influenced and supported my work? Or do I give "Smart Women Finish Rich" a very useful book on how to survive capitalism , written for women by a man. Thanks mom! Or Do I something more theory-ish..like say Rosalind Krauss, Bachelors, which influenced an earlier body of work? I saw some of the fine examples of artists who had turned in their copies early ( You eager beavers!) and saw the wonderful drawings by Steve Roden and Christopher Russell. A light bulb went off in my head the inscription can be more like an annotation or drawings in the form of annotations......aaaahhhhhh....