Greg Lamarche has painted murals in a whopping three rooms at Ace Hotel New York. His show Timeless is up at the Joshua Liner Gallery through Saturday. Get ye.
Parra flew in and painted a woman and her familiar on the walls of room 1201 at Ace Hotel New York. Then he kindly made the bed.
INTERVIEW : REGGIE WATTS
Reggie Watts performs tonight at Ace Hotel New York with The Dance Cartel at On the Floor in Liberty Hall. He woke up early to do his hair and found a few moments to talk to us about life, love, luxury problems and Comedy Bang Bang.
How is your morning, er afternoon, going?
Uh, it’s going good. Not out of bed yet, but I’m getting there.
You’ve just been taking interviews from bed? That sounds pretty good.
It’s not bad, it’s fun.
You’re a busy man. Last week when we were having technical problems you were like “Okay you have ten minutes. I have another one in ten minutes, then ten minutes before that.” That doesn’t sound like very much fun for you. Or maybe it is.
Well sometimes it can be. It’s just a matter of it lining up or not. Sometimes people will not call or they will forget. Something like that. Then sometimes they will call a little bit later and then the whole thing is derailed. “I’ll call you ten minutes later, then ten minutes later.” That can be weird, but it’s fine. Literally almost everything is worse than that.
They are first world problems, it’s true. Have things been kind of blowing up since Comedy Bang Bang premiered?
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think I definitely noticed people a little bit more. I mean people notice me more is what I meant to say. Ha.
You and Alex (Calderwood) are old friends from Seattle.
Yeah, I’ve known him probably since, I’m going to guess like 1996 or something like that maybe. He was throwing parties at — I can’t remember the name of the club, it was right under the monorail. It was the only thing in town that really had any elegance or sophistication to it when it comes to parties. They were killin’ it. But yeah they were cool guys, I’ve known them forever. I love the Ace.
I interviewed Vijay Iyer recently when he was coming to Portland for the Jazz Festival. We were talking about jazz being this democratic wildland where anything can happen. And I was watching some videos of your work on YouTube and various places over the last week, and thinking that jazz and comedy feel kind of related. Especially the sort of performance you do — it’s pretty singular — you have peers in the comedy world and peers in the music world, but what you do with them is sort of unprecedented. I was wondering if you feel like there is some feedback loop with how you approach comedy and how you think about improvisational music, and if they feel related to you in any way?
Yeah, they are definitely related. I mean, if you can improvise in music and if you have a love of music you can just transpose that to being more lyrical. It’s the same technique, it just depends on what you understand. Improvisation is inherent in any art form.
Sonic Trace is the brainchild of radio producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortes — working with the LocaLore Initiative, she and her team are gathering stories from Latin American communities in and around Los Angeles in public (noisy) places about their experiences coming to, going from, staying in and returning to the US. They sent a call out to designers to pitch a portable sound booth and the winners, La Burbuja, have been working with Mat-ter to build this shiny, hypnotic orb pictured above — an illustration Mat-ter made of the booth at Plaza Mexico in LA. They have 48 hours to finish raising money for the project on Kickstarter so give them some strong love. We’re captivated, and very excited to see what’s on the horizon for this team.
Sainted comedienne and American sweetheart Phyllis Diller will be so sorely missed. In tribute, our friends Thomas Lauderdale and Philip Iosca shared this recording of Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile” — Phyllis’ last — that she made with Thomas in her living room in LA in February. The photo is a Polaroid taken by Thomas that afternoon.
Our pal Steven Harrington is the proud father of a new solo show of paintings, prints, drawings and, yes, sculptures, Inside Out, at Known Gallery in LA. If we could have a life where we lived exclusively among Steven Harrington sculptures, we would be eternally happy. Join Generic Surplus and a gaggle of friendly and awesome people at the opening party tomorrow evening, August 18, from 8 to 11pm at 411 N. Fairfax. If you can’t make the party, the show is up through September 1.
Jordan Hufnagel made these bikes for Ace Hotel Portland with his own two hands as part of a project with Levi’s. They’re so beautiful, it brings a grease-tinged tear your eye. We rode them from Jordan’s SE Portland workshop to Ace at sundown, watching all the new shiny parts glisten like gold teeth in the waning afternoon rays, and ringing our sparkly bells annoyingly often at all whom we passed, including a troupe of mounted officers watering their fawns under the iconic Thompson Elk.
These are the last four bicycles Jordan, who’s been making bikes for half a decade, might ever build; he’s selling everything he owns except a motorcycle and some basic necessities and riding off into the West American sunset in a couple months with no plan, no route and one really good friend. He’s giving us very, very tempting ideas. The operation of this very blog may be in danger! But for now, a swing around the Park Blocks on these hot rods will thoroughly suffice. Try them out when you’re staying in town with us.
Rudy’s is our newest neighbor at Ace NYC. They’ve only been here a few weeks and it’s already fireworks and balloon drops every day. We love Rudy’s. Remember — if you’re staying with us, you get priority real estate at the guillotine and a friendly deal on cuts, products and everything else.
The one and only Chris Johanson held a percussion workshop at Summer School 2012 at Ace Hotel & Swim Club. This is the track he recorded with a bunch of Ace guests by the pool, a painting he made about it, and a picture of Chris and folks. And here’s what Chris had to say about it:
This is an art making situation where everyone is going to make some new art. We are going to talk about life though stories, percussion and paint. When we are done everyone will leave with a CD of music that they will never forget making. I have an idea what we are going to do but as we know in this trip called life, you never know how it is going to go. There could be some detours, a bump in the road, an unexpected beautiful who knows what, etc. I can tell you this, it will be fun and at the very least awkward. So come on into the art class and have a good time.
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