Angel City Eats. AT LONG LAST the show is opening!

Gallery KM is pleased to present Angel City Eats, a multi-media installation created as a collaboration between father and daughter Jackson and Sienna De Govia.  The exhibition explores two of Los Angeles's most notorious obsessions—celebrity and food—and does so through dueling yet complimentary visions of Los Angeles as it has been represented in the popular lexicon: that of the 1950's television show Dragnet , and that of contemporary Kardashian-dominated Reality TV.   The exhibition features larger-than-life painted characters on cutout wood flats by Jackson, and Baroque-styled food sculptures by Sienna made from materials including glass, clay, metal, fabric, edible candy and cake.  The sculptures and character paintings are combined to create tableaux that viewers are invited to move through and around as they navigate the exhibition space, as well as large wall-mounted pieces, including overlapping headshot portraits by Jackson and a rotating mechanical sculpture of diminutive kicking boots by Sienna. The gallery will hold a reception for the artists on December 10th, from 5-8pm, during which guests will be encouraged to consume several edible sculptures. In Angel City Eats, two artists who have spent their careers constructing fantasies for public consumption utilize the tools of their trade to deconstruct and re-examine those fantasies.  Jackson De Govia, production designer for iconic films such as Die Hard and The 40 Year Old Virgin, and Sienna De Govia, food stylist for print and television including reality shows like Grill It with Bobby Flay, take their personal perceptions and observations of our culture of consumption and turn them back on us, inviting us into a participatory experience of the City of Angels in two of its most memorable moments of simulation. The exhibition space is divided into two rooms, each of which will be devoted to one of the two time periods.  The main room of the gallery will be dominated by figure groups representing the caffeinated and nicotined 1950’s Los Angeles of Dragnet’s Joe Friday, and the smaller gallery room will be transformed into Kim Kardashian’s 21st century super-celebrity society.  In the Dragnet room, we stand next to Joe Friday and his partner Ben Alexander in front of a locker overflowing with cascading fabric doughnuts, while in the room next door Kim Kardashian’s entourage, here called the Celebritards, sport Byzantine halos of candy delicacies and worship the glorified Kim—bursting naked from a crumpled wedding dress. The sensory experience of Angel City Eats is purposefully overwhelming and hyper-saturated, meant to evoke an emotional response.  Jackson’s prettily constructed figures instill a reaction in the viewer similar to that of a theme park—fantasy at its populace-numbing and entertaining best—and when combined with the ornate detail and candied excess of Sienna’s food sculptures, the effect is disorienting and revealingly saccharine.  By inviting us into these scenes of crime, punishment and excess, the De Govia's remind us both of the consistency of our desire for dramatic simulation, and our complicity in the fantasies we consume. Jackson De Govia is an Emmy award winning production designer, with over four decades of experience in film, television, and theater.  Sienna De Govia received a BFA in sculpture from the California College of Arts in Oakland in 1999, and works as a food stylist for print, television and film.  This is their first professional artistic collaboration.

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Violence and Horsey Sauce

The talented Alex Blagg makes me want to get all crazy with a bag of fries.  I don't really need any extra encouragement in the drama and fast food departments but I'll take it any way I can get it.


http://FunnyOrDie.com/m/6agv

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Coffee, Milk and Cigs

Apparently in the 50's that's all you needed to survive.  Maybe the occasional donut.  Be careful though. According to Joe Friday those sweet little morsels of fried dough were siren hussies with a little too much jelly in their roll.  Indulge one too many times and you were headed for the gutter.  

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End of Summer Peach and Cardamom Pie

Stunning Cardamom Peach Pie shot by the talented Crystal Cartier.  For this bad boy I used a simple pastry crust and farmer's market peaches.  So easy and so freaking good.  Add whatever other stone fruit looks good, go crazy.  If the fruit is in season, you can't go wrong with this little baddy.

End of Summer Peach and Cardamom Pie

Simple Pastry Dough (I like this recipe)

1 vanilla bean

1/2 cup sugar plus a little extra for the crust

2 teaspoons cardamom

1 tablespoon butter

1 egg lightly beaten

5-8 ripe peaches, cut into 1 inch thick slices

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees.  Combine sugar and vanilla bean in food processor and process until finely ground and incorporated.  Add cardamom and pulse to combine.  In a large bowl toss peach slices with sugar mixture.  Roll out pastry dough to a 12 inch round and transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet.  Place peaches in center of pastry round.  Fold up the edges of the pastry to contain the juices of the peaches.  Brush crust with egg and sprinkle with extra sugar. Dot exposed peaches with butter.  Bake 40 minutes or until dough is nicely browned and crisp.  Unbelievable served warm with vanilla ice cream.  

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Head in an Art Hole

So I've been off the grid for a loooong time.  Here's the deal:  I'm working on a big gallery installation with my Dad (which is awesome on many levels) that opens in December at Gallery KM in Santa Monica.  Because I still have to pay my rent and buy food to eat, my time has been split pretty evenly between working on killer food styling gigs and hunching over my living room table with this ultra nerdy magnifying head lamp on painting teeny tiny sculptures of food.  Husband, cats and blog all terribly neglected due to the demands of the muse.  I can't help it if my muse calls for chili dogs on the heads of pins and streaming Grey's Anatomy marathons.  She wants what she wants.  This is her by the way:

I know!  It's really weird that Madonna the kitchen goat is the all powerful force behind my art making mania, but you love who you love.  At any rate, I figured the least I could do is start sharing some of the results of all this hunkering down:

 Celibritard Halo 1

Trust me folks, these will make a lot more sense in the context of the installation, so clear your schedule December 10th for the opening.  In the mean time amuse yourselves trying to find your favorite itty bitty junk food item and pondering whether or not Derek will EVER be able to forgive Meredith for compromising the results of the Alzheimer's trial and make a go of starting a family with the African baby they kinda adopted.  

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Escher in Cupcakes

My young friend Dutch Clark created this portrait of m.c. escher in cupcakes

a massive undertaking, and a good likeness. 

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The Female Form Continues to Inspire

The Hohle Fels Venus is about 35,000 years old proving that a good looking pair of gams and a nice set of knockers has been inspiring human kind to pay homage to the fairer sex for a great long while.  

In one of our many forays into the intersection of art and food photography Renee and I created this fried chicken in repose.  She's a little sassier than the Hohle Fels gal but the idea is the same.  Two hot babes, working it.

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