Culture Articles

Skira Martinez turns salvaged piano keys, speakers and tape decks into twelve works about Black music in The Music Stayed; Past, Present & Future Frequencies at the Historic Dunbar Hotel. Opens Sunday, Oct 25 with live jazz. Through Jan 30.

Kenneth Gatewood paints in watercolor, a medium that hides nothing. Three movements — music, children, legacy — hang at The Dunbar Aug 8–Sep 30, timed to the Central Ave Jazz Festival, where he’s the Arts Pavilion’s featured artist Sept 19.

And for the twelfth edition under its stewardship, dating back to 2014, La Mancha Gallery returns to curate the festival’s Arts Pavilion — the visual heartbeat of the day, housed in a 120-foot tent between Central Avenue and 41st Street, steps from the Dunbar itself.

Rent for permanent space in Los Angeles is a tax on ambition, and that tax falls heaviest on those artists and audiences I most want in the room together. So I took my gallery off its foundation. This is what we call the Alternative Venue Exhibition Model.