Los Angeles Eats Itself is a brand Studio that was an extension of the event series Los Angeles Eats Itself.
A cross-section of exhibitions where I either provided the exhibition design, assisted in production or provided oversight for the installation of each of the following shows. Shows included: Tu-2, I to i, Mind to Heart, Andy Fedak: 3D/VR/AR, Andy Warhol: Faces and Names, Tropical Vulture: The Films Of George Kuchar
For the 2019 Trieannel CURRENT LA, the Department of Cultural Affairs, Los Angeles I produced and creatively oversaw a month-long activation at Barnsdall park called S/H/0/0/K: Surviving Humans Of Other Kinds. During this time I coordinated chefs and artists for earthquake centered workshops along with finding relevant brands for partnerships such as Cosmik ice cream, Backpackers Pantry, and Acme Whistles.
Additionally, I designed the event website, symbology used in the branding of the vent along with all tertiary earthquake-based elements included in the survival kit such as the bandana, whistle, and food packaging. Lastly, I oversaw the installation of a prepper pantry, working with architecture firm Spacial Affairs Bureau and artist and sculptor Tony Bañuelos. This structure was filled with a curated M.R.E. comprised of local flavors from communities in and around Hollywood.
As the visiting Research Design Professor at Woodbury University and the 2016-2017 Researcher in Residence at Impact Hub Los Angeles, I created the graphic assets for iterative based workshops for the Hub, created design thinking inspired prompts for creative professionals as well as the visual identities of organizational initiatives for both the Impact Hub Los Angeles and the Interdisciplinary Studies program.
In addition to informational layouts, I researched and wrote on topics related to the evolution of authenticity and experience based activities and the cultivation of memory and transformation. Currently I'm working on experience based production and it's use in the design of relationships between brands and people. Lastly I look at the future of experienced based design and its eventual evolution into what is called transformative ideality and aspirant identities.
*Underperforming Privilege was a personal essay written during the pandemic with an accompanying line of t-shirts. This project was about investigating how the most capable of generations became consumed with the gnawing doubt that even with all the access and advantages, we always feel we are not living up to the expectations of ourselves and the privileges afforded to us. It’s to have so much at our fingers tips only to cramp up on the keyboard. It’s about the inevitable reality that we are doing less with more. It’s that special anxiety of an asterisk hanging over our accomplishments.
As a college professor in Applied Aesthetics, Experience design and Research Design, I created educational programming and curriculum around problem centered topics that addressed the most pressing issues in the respective fields of my research expertise. Such topics included Aesthetics in an age of deficit spending, Experience based designs and the Four fundamental experiences (memory, authenticity, transformative and aesthetic), Antifragility as the new merger of existentialism and probability as well as humor in the age of Western decline.
I produced and oversaw different external facing marketing materials for for the Luckman Performing Art Complex as a whole and currently as the acting Assistant curator of the Luckman art gallery, I over see the design of the gallery's visual identity as well as develop programming for the educational arts program hosted at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex.
In collaboration with designer James Melinat and hosted at Actual Size Gallery of Los Angeles, I was the co-creator of the month-long activation Locker Number 5, a memorial exhibition for late artist Chris Burden who passed earlier that year. I conceived of the cavity for the activation, designed the exhibition poster (above image), oversaw the design and production of the lapel pin, and wrote the copy for marketing relating material.
Locker Number 5 featured an exact replica of the same locker used by Chris Burden to perform what later became known as his Five Day Locker Piece in August of 1971. Locker Number 5 was a ‘reenactment,’ and provided the audience an opportunity to experience the work by inhabiting the exact dimensions of the locker number 5 via a cavity built into the physical gallery space. If a viewer actively participated with the installation by crawling and sitting in the cavity, they were issued a lapel pin based off of the original locker number tag Burden himself inhabited.
Los Angeles Eats Itself is an experience based event series that I created in 2013 that merges culinary arts, visual arts and product design in an event centered around one infamous moment in Los Angeles’ history. I am the lead creative director of the ten part series which means I choose the participating artist(s) and chef(s) who will collaborate during each meal as well as over see the staging of the venue and the site specific installations. Additionally I play a direct part in the design and production of key elements such as an edition of products, food concepts and how the sequence of the event eventually unfolds.
For the All White Bronco Brunch I created a mobile event along the route of the original chase. I designed a 'running hat' based on the 1993 bronco car design, an 8 hour sound track and a slow speed chase pennant flag to commemorate one of the most widely televised car chases if not events in the history of media. I over saw the design of a newsprint publication centered on June 17th 1994 that doubled as a proof of life poster for participants to use when taking photos. To get as close to a faithful embodiment of what that day may have been like, participants were encouraged to seal their phones into a black plastic bag and only use 35mm disposable cameras to document the event. The only images of the event are those taken by the participants of the chase on their disposable cameras. If they completed the entire chase they were given a vintage 1994 brass pog as a commemorative challenge coin for the completion of the route.
Lastly, utilizing the original route AC and OJ drove during the chase, participants explored the city by stopping at food spots on a map we designed which only had food establishments that had been and were still in operation since 1994. Additionally we collaborated with DK Donuts (also a family owned and operated food establishment of 30 plus years), who made a custom box of donuts that referenced other famous car chases throughout Los Angeles history.
Los Angeles Eats Itself is an experience based event series that I created in 2013 that merges culinary arts, visual arts and product design in an event centered around one infamous moment in Los Angeles’ history. I am the lead creative director of the ten part series which means I choose the participating artist(s) and chef(s) who will collaborate during each meal as well as over see the staging of the venue and the site specific installations. Additionally I play a direct part in the design and production of key elements such as an edition of products, food concepts and how the sequence of the event eventually unfolds.
For the Fleiss Feast I acted as producer and creative consultant and worked with Artist Chris Reynolds, head Chef Teresa Montaño (formerly the head chef and owner of the renowned Racion) and Chef Mia Wasilevich, author of Ugly Little Greens. As the producer of one of the first culinary biographies, I also assisted in developing the visual identity of the logo as well as overseeing the installation and staging of the main event area.
Los Angeles Eats Itself is an experience based event series that I created in 2013 that merges culinary arts, visual arts and product design in an event centered around one infamous moment in Los Angeles’ history. I am the lead creative director of the ten part series which means I choose the participating artist(s) and chef(s) who will collaborate during each meal as well as over see the staging of the venue and the site specific installations. Additionally I play a direct part in the design and production of key elements such as an edition of products, food concepts and how the sequence of the event eventually unfolds.
Working with Artist Julie Orser and Chef Jonathan Moulton of the Block and Wheel underground dinner series, I produced a meal centered around the infamous murder of Elizabeth Short, titled Black Dahlia Dinner. My central contribution was in the experiential design of the meal's core concept that merged the P.O.V. first person of video game design with an IRL meal. The menu itself was curated in such a way so that all the participants could hypothetically occupy Elizabeth Short's last night on Sunset Blvd before her eventual disappearance.
The meal's concept was to create a menu that may have mimicked a typical night of an escort in the 1940s. Meeting different men at cafes along Sunset Blvd, the premise of the meal was to experience an out of sequence meal throughout the night. What Elizabeth most likely would have possibly eaten was less a full meal with courses but a smattering of dishes which had little to do with each other, both in order and ingredients. The menu itself had no names of dishes, but only street locations of restaurants where she could hypothetically meet her suitors.
Los Angeles Eats Itself was conceived as a trilogy; an event series which looks at the past, a web series that explores the present, and a science-fiction series centered around the future of our metropolis. The event series focuses on the infamous moments from our city's past using food and art as a medium for an immersive experience. Los Angeles Eats Itself, the web series, dedicates 24 hours - breakfast, brunch, lunch, dunch, dinner and a night cap - to one particular food identity. And, finally, Los Angeles Eats Itself, the science fiction series looks at the future of the city through the lens of a post-apocalyptic narrative that merges all the themes from the event and web series (edible realities, natural disasters, noir murders, celebrity cults and lots and lots of driving) into one speculative idea on the future of our city.
For the All White Bronco Brunch we produced a sizzle real and spec footage for what would be episode 4 in the ten episode series. Episode 4, begins with Robert Kardashian's former home where OJ Simpson notoriously started his infamous chase as a fugitive from justice in 1994. Episode 4 explores the impact of Armenian culture on Los Angeles with a 24 straight hour straight culinary crawl from one Armenian food spot to another. From the iconic Carousel, to the bohemian Mh Zh, to the street stylings of Dave's Hot Chicken, this episode will attempt to transverse as much of the Armenian food scene in 24 hours that the human gut will allow.
Los Angeles Eats Itself is an experience based event series that I created in 2013 that merges culinary arts, visual arts and product design in an event centered around one infamous moment in Los Angeles’ history. I am the lead creative director of the ten part series which means I choose the participating artist(s) and chef(s) who will collaborate during each meal as well as over see the staging of the venue and the site specific installations. Additionally I play a direct part in the design and production of key elements such as an edition of products, food concepts and how the sequence of the event eventually unfolds.
For the Night Stalker Supper I created the central Logo for the event as well as assisted in the creation and layout of the event's major art work by Juan Capistran, a pentagram inspired table. For this event I created a small batch of bottled purified Los Angeles River Water called Los Angeles Drinks Itself.
Los Angeles Eats Itself was conceived as a trilogy; an event series which looks at the past, a web series that explores the present, and a science-fiction series centered around the future of our metropolis. The event series focuses on the infamous moments from our city's past using food and art as a medium for an immersive experience. Los Angeles Eats Itself, the web series, dedicates 24 hours - breakfast, brunch, lunch, dunch, dinner and a night cap - to one particular food identity. And, finally, Los Angeles Eats Itself, the science fiction series looks at the future of the city through the lens of a post-apocalyptic narrative that merges all the themes from the event and web series (edible realities, natural disasters, noir murders, celebrity cults and lots and lots of driving) into one speculative idea on the future of our city.
Below is the first episode of our 10 part Television series centered around the near future Los Angeles of 2035, 15 years out from the great earthquake of 2020.
As the visiting Experience and Research Design professor for the College of Liberal Arts at Woodbury University for 10 years, I also acted in service of both the Interdisciplinary Studies Department and the Art History Department as their in house artistic director. I designed the art history website as well as all external facing marketing materials for upcoming seminars, visiting lecturers, panel discussions, recruitment visuals as well as any department initiatives needing a visual identiy.
Micheal Poppyfield Gallery was an experiment in exhibition space design by James Melinat, a conceptual designer and artist. Utilizing the standard door peep-hole, the nomadic gallery could attach to any door, and from the inside out creating the illusion of a large exhibition space projecting a wall to wall video.
James approached me to conceive of an MP Projects that would be easier to construct and most importantly could be DIY. In 2008, I along with artist and collaborator Douglas Green, created MP Paper Projects, a foldable cardboard peep hole gallery space we called I.G.D (Improvised Gallery Device) for short. The project consisted of a downloadable pdf how-to-manual and origami inspired vector boxes layouts that could be purchased or printed and folded into a peep-hole exhibition space. instead of doors, the MP Paper Projects were to be installed guerrilla style in the walls and facades of existing museums and galleries in Los Angeles. What I called Prestige Parasites, the goal was to hack into the credibility of these places so artists could legally extract the prestige from these larger institutions.
When thinking of the mechanism of the apology and its social value, can apologies of the celebrity or icon still be sincere when scaled up to a mass audience? As David Brooks once wrote about the public apology in its sincerest form, "Their lives often follow a pattern of defeat, recognition, redemption. They have moments of pain and suffering. But they turn those moments into occasions of radical self-understanding." But often we are give the apology that mitigates public outrage and ameliorates the transgression to prevent the loss of real celebrity endorsements. The Anamorphic portrait series deals with impossible gulf that exists between the arm chair citizen and the celebrities they watch. Specifically I make a portrait every time a male celebrity issues an apology for more or less 'being themselves.' The anamorphic nature of my portraits echoes the nature of celebrity, in that we think we understand them but they are often minor planets in the attention economy, where media provides us with the productive illusion that we see them 'clearly' from our living room.
Starting in 2006, I created, edited and produced Agent Once, a conceptual film script made strictly from 11 different artists contributions. Similar in spirit to the exquisite corpse images created by the DaDa artists in the 19th century, Agent Once is a collection of unrelated visual props that create a story through the relationships that they inevitably develop. Imagine if you were to extract out certain 'props' from existing narratives: the glowing suitcase from Pulp fiction, the alien cutlass supreme from Repo Man, the orange room from Videodrome, the bleeding hallway from The Shinning, the infinity room from THX 1138. Then what if you attempted to compose another completely different narrative out of these uniquely singular 'props'? Each artist develops a proposal for a ‘prop,’ as one would cast a character, and the accumulated ensemble calls upon a writer/director to decipher the unknown plots that lie between the objects. The final booklet of visual 'props' is unpacked and synthesized into a new and unconventional film narrative ready for production, bridging the narrative gaps between the artist’s props.
