Circus Animals Depart Staples

The evening of Tuesday, July 17, 2012, I looked at my clock and hurried to downtown

LA so I would catch the elephants leaving Staples where they had completed their final performance with Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I snagged a terrific parking spot at Flower and 11th arriving just before 11pm which was the appointed hour per the LAPD for the beginning of the Departure of the circus animals who were to head up Pico to Alameda to Washington continuing up to the railyard for the 3 mile walk of the elephants with a half dozen or so ponies following on hoof.  The other animals are transported in animal trailers, but the elephants and ponies get a tourist's view of LA under moonlight.

I talked to a few people who didn't know anything and talked with police and security guards who wouldn't say anything about the animal departure -- because PETA members had set themselves on the curb with their posters claiming animal cruelty as they had the entire week during the Circus' run.

Due to their hysterical antics, the elephant walk was delayed while the circus moved all the other animals and all its equipment first in order to out-stay the possibly contentious intercourse with the protesters that could most probably cause the animals to be distressed.

The idiot PETA women were the real perpetrators of cruelty to the circus animals causing undue stress by waiting to heckle them and their handlers as they headed to the train after their long work day.

So, I left without any photos as I couldn't tell when the walk would occur and I figured that if I were the circus I'd just route them up Pico directly instead of down 11th to Flower to Pico as reported in the Police announcement. I'm all for correct treatment of animals but PETA seems to have other motives. There was no one around that night for PETA's message to work on; they were just being bullies.

The photos in this report were made by me in 2009 when the circus animals arrived at Staples on the day of Michael Jackson's memorial service. The streets were quiet at about 4am and occasionally you'd hear an elephant sound a muffled trumpet call as he/she was anxious to arrive at the stall filled with soft hay following a journey on the train.



Hopefully, the next time the circus visits, I'll be able to view the elephant walk and experience the magic between the handlers and their animals who seem quite content to walk through the streets to their next destination to perform.

I just wish I'd taken a photo of the self-possessed woman giving clear, decisive orders to the circus workers who were packing up the trucks; she was a pretty heroic figure... focused and determined.

"Made in LA 2012" Filled with Vapid Work

I like the Hammer Museum. It always has its yin and its yang, I know, but their latest exhibit, Made in L.A. 2012, has no real up to its many downs.

There were only four artists who had work in the show at the Hammer that were warranted to be on exhibit. One older artist, Channa Horwitz, had 2D work that illustrated a system of art making that showed awareness of an subconscious ordering

and one painter, Meleko Mokgosi, held up a mirror to events affecting his life.

Two other artists made work that illustrated inventive craftsmanship in the form of frames (Zach Harris)

and of table tops (Joel Otterson)

that were joyful expressions. But the work of these 4 artists were merely life saver buoys

enabling me to get through the wasteland of the rest of this exhibit.

Most of the work in the show "Made In LA 2012" is like bad art student work. Most of the work has no idea behind it. There are no revelations, no transcending moments, no meditations. It is filled with poorly made consumer products by a lost generation. Lost in its purpose, perpetually acting the part of the coddled child who gets bored quickly and so throws its food at the wall.

What do instructors say to these students in their classes? Do they say nothing? There is evidence of some art historical information as a few artists have chosen to be derivative of, if not outright rip- offs of Oldenburg, Red Grooms and Baldessari. It is obvious that there is no technical information being passed to this generation. It is disheartening that the artists in the show have no ideas with any life experience to them ... there is no pondering, no soul searching, no emotion.

Is this exhibit evidence of the secularization of our world? Has the youngest generation not discovered its soul? Even when artists were being demonized by politicians in order to attempt to completely abolish the NEA, they drew from a spiritual place. Serrano's photo "Piss Christ" was obviously a struggle with his faith and Mapplethorpe's photos of S&M were staged in a similarly dramatic questioning of morals arising out of religious teachings. And it is not that I'm looking for work that takes on organized religion. But I am seeking artwork that has a soul, that questions and seeks answers to the dilemmas of conscious living.

Just because work is made in Los Angeles does not have to illustrate there is no there there.