SATURDAY AUGUST 20, 2022, 5-10PM
OPENING RECEPTION:
“ALPHABET SOUP II” GROUP SHOW
EASTERN PROJECTS is proud to present our SUMMER 2022 GROUP SHOW: “ALPHABET SOUP II” with artists Big Sleeps, Chaz Bojorquez, Cryptic, Defer, Retna, and Prime. Join us this Saturday, August 20, 5-10pm, no reservations required. These artists are all ” HANDSTYLE” masters of their craft, traveling the world and representing Los Angeles and West Coast graffiti. The first “Alphabet Soup” show took place at the “Boathouse Gallery” in Lincoln Heights in the summer of 2013. Some of these artists were emerging, a few already established, come see the evolution of their practices 9 years later.
Each artist created a serigraph print for this occasion, they will be available for purchase starting Saturday August 20.
Alphabet Soup ll runs from August 20, 2022- September 17, 2022
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Alphabet Soup ll Group Show Artists Talk with David Brafman and Steve Grody
Saturday, September 3, 2022, from 5-7pm
Free admission, no reservation required
Conversation with Los Angeles leading artists, Chaz Bojorquez, David “Big Sleeps” Cavazos, Cryptik, Alex “Defer” Kizu, Jose “Prime” Reza, and moderated by David Brafman
With special guest Steve Grody.
David Brafman has been the Getty’s rare books curator since 2002. In 2011 Art collectors Ed and Brandy Sweeney wanted to amass and donate to Getty Research Institute (GRI) a master-piece book, a black book of graffiti and tattoo art that represented crews throughout LA. They were directed to Brafman, whose career stemmed from his favorite high school pastime: tagging D-trains with Egyptian hieroglyphs while they slept in the Brooklyn Rail Yards. Through the Sweeney’s Brafman invited art-crews from all over the city to GRI to view and page through books and manuscripts that somehow resonated with his nights in the Brooklyn yards. 151 of Los Angeles’s most renowned graffiti and tattoo artists pored through Renaissance writing manuals, emblem books, and catalogues of horse-brands, volumes on perspective and sacred geometry, virtuoso calligraphic penwork (both European and Islamic) and a 1751 book from Naples on Peruvian Quipu ‘knot-language.’ There were others.
In 2012 The 151 responded by donating 143 works on paper—some were collaborative—bound into a unique black-leather 4 x 1 foot volume (when opened), called Getty Graffiti Black Book. The artists, however, wanted another title. They had been struck by a 17th-century liber amicorum (“book of friends”), a genre of manuscript originally sold as bound blank leaves, passed from hand to hand to be filled with signatures, poetry, mottoes, and coats of arms—artistic symbols of social identity. A kindred object to a street writer’s black book. So, the artists insisted on the Getty Black Book’s real title: They named it LA Liber Amicorum, for it had transformed rival crews into an LA Book of Friends.
10 years later Getty published a mini-me trade version: LA Graffiti Black Book (Los Angeles, Getty Publications: 2022) with an intro. by Brafman.
Steve Grody has been documenting graffiti in Los Angeles since the early 1980’s, canvasing the neighborhoods with his camera. Over the last 20 plus years, he has amassed over 20,000 images of graffiti, murals, the artists, and their environments. In 2007, he published his first book from his archives,Graffiti L.A.: Street Styles and Art.
SONYA FE: “THREE BLOCKS FROM DOGTOWN”
JUNE 11, 2022- JULY 9, 2022
Eastern Projects is pleased to announce: “Three Blocks from Dogtown”, a solo exhibition by Sonya Fe. Show runs from Saturday, June 11, 2022, to Saturday, July 9, 2022. The opening reception takes place on Saturday, June 11, 2022, 5pm- 9pm. This event is free and open to the public.
This exhibition reflects social and cultural issues centering around women and children, a biographical depiction of the Fe’s own life and of those often overlooked. Most of these paintings reflect the many facets of being female and Fe’s own experiences as a woman. She paints for women, and to show them they are not alone with all their doubts, pain, confusion, sexuality, and joys.
“I believe that children should be painted with honor. A child deserves the respect to be painted not as a cute little angel, but as a person with dignity. Not everything in a child’s world is simple. They are the best subject to paint because they host a wide spectrum of characters and personalities. I find that I can relate most closely with children, which is why I paint them so often.” – Sonya Fe
ABOUT SONYA FE
Sonya Fe grew up drawing with chalk and crayons on the cement floors of her family’s Los Angeles home known as Dogtown— Each day, a new masterpiece was created and then mopped clean by her mother each night. Her father, Joseph M. Williams would often take her to draw in parks and the neighborhood. Her brothers, sisters, and mother were supportive of her focused interest in art. At age 13, Sonya won an art scholarship to attend a summer program at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. She then went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Her beautifully executed paintings often focused on the plight of women and children.
During the pandemic, to protest the horrible treatment of migrant children being locked in cages, Fe created eight large-scale murals in Las Cruces, New Mexico – each 50 feet long – to document this inhuman travesty. These can be viewed at www.sonyafe.com/home/murals. Additionally, Sonya was commissioned by the California Lottery to paint a mural for Latino Heritage month, which hangs at the MALDEF headquarters located Downtown Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries throughout California, nationwide and also in Mexico and Japan. Fe’s work can be found in numerous private and public collections including the CCH Pounder Collection; the Cheech Marin Collection; the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard, California; and most notably, the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. Fe has taught at the College of the Redwoods in Humboldt County, California. She has published children’s stories and a drawing book, and is the co-founder of Publishing Children’s Stories, a program for elementary schools that teaches to integrate literacy, art, and technology. The artist is also an art editor and a writer for Joaquin magazine, a California-based publication, furthermore she has been published in numerous other magazines. Sonya has a book coming out soon called “Barrio Girl Goes to Europe” and other stories.
“RETURN TO PARADISE”
Paintings by Frank Romero on the beach at Hanalei Bay
MARCH 19, 2022- APRIL 30, 2022
“Return To Paradise” is an exhibition of new works on paper, canvas, and low relief sculptures of Hawaiian landscapes and classic cars seen on the island by the artist.
Romero first went to Kauai in the early 1980s with his family and old friend, Carlos Almaraz. He got to know the north shore around Hanalei Bay, and Carlos loved it so much that he stayed and ultimately purchased a house with his wife, Elsa. Frank went back occasionally to see Carlos and Elsa and got to know the area even better, particularly the ocean vistas and mountain views. Both Frank and Carlos have captured the mountains particularly when it rains, and the mountains come alive with waterfalls in their paintings and graphic works.
For many years, Frank and his wife, Sharon, have spent their spring and summers in the south of France where Frank painted many landscapes of Provence, still life drawings and paintings, and scenes of daily life in bistros, beaches, mountains, and valleys. He has also painted cars and Parisian cityscapes.
During the last two years when the Covid-19 pandemic restricted travel to Europe, Frank and Sharon decided to go to the Kauai near the village of Hanalei. They asked Elsa to recommend a house that they could rent and create artworks in paradise. They ended up in a seaside home at Tunnels Beach near Elsa’s and the entry to trails where long hikes could end up close to the Nā Pali Coast.
Frank spent the entire month of July 2021 painting in and around this special part of Kauai. His current exhibition at Eastern Projects is full of the images that caught Frank’s attention, the plants and flowers, the sea and beaches, the palm trees, the steep mountains with their waterfalls, and the magical sunsets from the north shore of Kauai.
Artist’s Bio
Frank Romero (Los Angeles, 1941) began his art career in the early 1970s as a participant in the art collective Los Four. The group defined and promoted awareness of the Chicano community in Los Angeles with their art. Romero’s murals and Los Four’s activism in the Chicano Civil Rights movement brought Chicano art to the attention of the mainstream art world and made an impact when the collective was invited to have the first Chicano exhibition in a mainstream museum at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in 1974.
For further information please contact the gallery at:
easternprojectsla@gmail.com or at (323)327-8020
@eastern_projects_gallery
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