This summer my full time position as Estate Manager is being sunsetted. For the past three years it has been my honor to fortify and promote (and seriously organize) the Peter Alexander Estate.

A highlight of my career as an art business professional, I am proud and humbled to have been at the helm of legacy building; it is unique, important work that I believe to be an essential aspect to the enduring power of art.

I am looking for new opportunities in Art Administration, Project Management, Legacy Building, Estate / Studio Management, or as an Executive Personal Assistant to a creative. In any role I will likely be the most organized person in the room.

Please keep me in mind. Let’s talk! DM / email me.

I am delighted to have six collages in a fun, small works, salon-style show at the community-driven gallery The Middle Room in Atwater Village. A bunch of friends and artists I admire also have work in the show, which opens on November 15, 6-8 p.m.

All of the works are selling for $500 or less—which is fantastic for those who want to start their collection and/or get a jump on holiday shopping.

Come through! The opening is gonna be a paaaaarty. Ride share / Metro is recommended. I took the 92 bus to drop off my work and the stop is right out front.

Sending a big thanks to the delightful Shannon Fincke, who runs the gallery for including me. And Instagram, which made my work visible.

#makemore

Each begins with self reflection and note taking on a particular event. I then pair two (perhaps disparate, depending on your point of view) words that illustrate in some form what I am dwelling on. I’m particularly interested in Janus words. Next I explore definitions, making lists of meanings and associations. On black matboard I use an acrylic paint pen to write a free association diary entry (beginning with “Recently…”). I fill the surface, ending with a complete sentence. I then paint the reference phrase on top of my prose, which of course obscures some of the text.

I don’t know anything about painting. Except that it is impossible? I found being naïve about process to be freeing. A sort of forever “child’s mind” approach to art making.

These images are iPhone documentation, some of which I posted as IG stories. Just like I don’t know anything about painting, I also don’t know anything about photography. But at some point I’ll endeavor to take better images of these and get them on my website. Maybe.

Pilates class is challenging (it never gets easier, but I get stronger). l head home, my endorphins are pumping, the neighborhood is too—businesses are opening and people are milling about. The exercise has sharpened my perception. I marvel at the beauty and banality of this neighborhood I love so much. I proceed down an alley and notice the buildings create negative space in the sky. Snap, type “Hi.” in the sky space, share.

My #DTLAWalkabout (as I tag it) is studio research. And it will be a busy day in my home studio. First up is continuing a collage project that reimagines ancient marbles using images extracted from a Sotheby’s auction catalog. As I’m cutting and shuffling paper around I reflect on the problematic nature of the sculpture. My reworked configurations place it in a new context without silencing its fraught origins. A Janus coin in the catalog has me thinking of Janus words. I switch my attention to a series of diaristic paintings (begun this winter) focusing on language. Just as my collages combine paper to create new forms, in the paintings I combine disparate words, exploring and construing perception. 

I pause to make notes on a new project that encompasses various aspects of my practice: the extensive DTLA photographic archive, collage, and word paintings. I sketch ideas for life-sized collaged monuments on downtown photographs, using the language of my journals and paintings as context and a backdrop. My love of publishing also enters the mix: incorporating studio documentation and finished work into a zine or book. 

It’s early afternoon. I wrap up and transition to the remainder of the day: hopping on the 60 bus to catch an artist’s talk on S Santa Fe and visiting exhibitions. Later I’ll go to a couple of openings, which includes celebrating the work of friends and peers. This too is studio research. Both in its parts and as a whole, this Saturday is the embodiment of my practice: it is my way of seeing, making, and being in the world as an artist.

This 500 word essay was written for my application to the Quinn Emanuel Artist-In-Residence Program. Instead of proposing a specific project or using art speak to describe my work, I opted to share my Saturday (which happened to be the day before the application was due.)

The first two volumes share my love of downtown Los Angeles, each featuring over 400 images I took on my smartphones, dating back to 2014. They differ in the tone of their covers (triadic color wheel, ftw) and their index. The 2022 / color hex #4a122f offers painstakingly documented map coordinates for each image, while the 2023 / color hex #122f4a volume index is grouped by category.

Each image in both books is unique, but true to their titles, there is a repetition in sites and subject matter. Carolina Miranda generously wrote of the project for the Los Angeles Times: ”…as you pore over her book, the forms begin to repeat — like those knobby fire hydrants or the baroque facade of the Los Angeles Theatre, the faded-yet-glamorous 1931 movie palace designed by S. Charles Lee and S. Tilden Norton. Though the subjects of her photos reoccur, they are never the same. Sometimes the light is stark; other times it has been diffused by morning fog. At times, the shadows are long; at others, barely perceptible. Here you might see the facade of a theater; elsewhere you’ll find the industrial backside.”

Purchase (and preview) STEP and REPEAT on the Merch page of my website, via Blurb.com, or skip the middle person and just Venmo me. I’m happy to ship or let’s meet up DTLA.

Artist’s: I’m down for a trade: reach out!

Big thanks for your continued support!

This is 30: On being a passenger

BY INDIA MANDELKERN , JUNE 21, 2023

Sacha Halona Baumann is an artist and photographer living in downtown Los Angeles. Her latest book, STEP and REPEAT (2022), explores the shifting dynamics and details of Downtown Los Angeles through hundreds of images––faded signs, traffic cones, street scenes taken from a bus stop––that she recorded on her smartphone. What connects the dots for her? Two words: Public transit. Read on to learn about the beauty of sitting back and enjoying the ride. 

By Sacha Halona Baumann  

I’m an artist and I consider LA my muse (and best friend). Walking and taking buses and trains are an essential part of my practice––both my source material and inspiration. From my loft on South Broadway in the Historic Core district of Downtown Los Angeles, it’s incredibly easy to access transit, and I avail myself to it, for work and pleasure, nearly every day of the week. I haven’t had a car for over 3 years, but even when I did, I rarely used it. Having a car downtown strikes me as a foolish and frustrating enterprise.  

Although I was born here (Hollywood Community Hospital, represent!), I didn’t begin living full time in LA until 1993, when I moved to Skid Row in DTLA. I’ve been taking transit and making images of the city ever since. Over the last few years I most often use the 7th Street / Metro Center station, which is a 15-20 minute walk from where I live. I don’t rely on one route to get there. Instead, I turn this way or that depending on how the light changes. I inevitably take pictures on my phone along the way––often versions of which I have taken dozens of times for months or even years. I post many of the images to my Instagram stories as I’m walking. It’s part of my process of making art—a kind of performance, in which I am broadcasting my activity and sharing the way I observe my environment. 

Although the Historic Broadway station just opened two blocks from my loft, I will likely continue to use the 7th Street / Metro Center station. I enjoy the walk there and often I will get off the train early so that I can explore the destination’s neighborhood by foot. I love that you can pop on and off a bus or a train whenever you want––it offers so many opportunities to see something new.  

Four days a week I commute to Santa Monica via the Expo Line. I take the train nearly to the end, getting off at the 17th Street station. Having a passive commute is a treat—I can work, goof off on my phone, or just watch the view. The train is above ground 95% of the time and I enjoy the natural light and the changing scenery. Heading home I maybe smirk a bit when the train runs alongside the 10 and passes hundreds of cars stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Just as I take pictures on my morning walks to the station, I’ll often take a video of my reflection in the door of the train car when the train enters the tunnel as it approaches my stop. I like the moment when my image fades as the train enters the illuminated station, and the doors open again.   

Recently I had a job that took me once or twice a month to South Broadway at 73rd. I took the 45 bus, one of my favorite routes. It starts in Lincoln Heights and I would catch it on the corner of Spring and 4th Street before it runs down South Broadway for miles and miles. Riding the bus is a fantastic way to see the city and I have a real fondness for Broadway, my street, where I can watch the high rises of the Historic Core give way to slick South Park to industrial buildings to the wonderful hand-painted storefronts as it continues south. The 45 is also great traveling northwards to Chinatown and LincolnHeights, where I see government buildings transform into the vernacular architecture of Chinatown before they give way to the “cornfields” [now the Los Angeles State Historic Park] and finally become a residential neighborhood.  

Transit is also my conduit to the galleries and exhibitions that form another part of my practice: standing…in front of art. Each week I go to exhibitions all over the city. If I’m visiting galleries in the southern Arts District, I’ll take the 18 or 60 bus. Both routes go through Skid Row and the views are intense, with blocks of unhoused people living in encampments and some of my favorite graffiti in the city. A few years ago I lived in the northern part of the Arts District and although I had a car, I opted to take these bus lines to my job on Bunker Hill. I’ve long felt that every elected official in Los Angeles County should be required to take the 18 and 60 lines at least once a year.  

On both the buses and trains I have favorite seats, both for comfort and for the view they provide for making images. It always feels like a bonus if they are empty when I hop on. For the trains, it’s the first seat with a window view on the lefthand side of the train. It’s got extra legroom and a makeshift footrest made by the frame of the seats for disabled persons directly in front of it. On the bus system, I love the seat on the lefthand side of the bus that shares a row with the rear doors. When the bus comes to a stop and the doors open, a unique view of the street is suddenly revealed. I often have my phone ready to capture this never-quite-the-same perspective. 

I’ve got my gripes with the system. Where are those benches and bus shelters at many stops? Why is it so dark in the stations? Why so much scolding on the PA system? Why often no janitorial services during rides? But I tend to focus on the positive in most things in life, including my means of getting around LA.   

I appreciate public transportation because it is incredibly democratic. All passengers use the same vehicles, seats, and walkways. They all receive the same service. There is no hierarchy. I appreciate being amongst fellow citizens. Sometimes conversations strike up, or maybe just a nod of acknowledgement, but every trip on transit is an opportunity to interact. I believe the way to make a city work is to actively participate in it. Talk to strangers; offer your help; cast your ballot; walk the streets; take public transportation. (And, ALWAYS, thank the driver.) 

Follow Sacha’s DTLA wanderings on Instagram at @sacha_halona_baumann and pick up a copy of STEP and REPEAT right here!  

For my contribution to the show, curator Galia Linn asked that I chose works from my series STEP and REPEAT: A romance., which features images of pylons. My book of photography, STEP and REPEAT is also on view.

I’ve copied and pasted the feature here and you can also view it on LA Time’s website. #DTLAWalkabout 4eva!

Artist Sacha Halona Baumann makes a portrait of downtown L.A. one (literal) step at a time

BY CAROLINA A. MIRANDA COLUMNIST 

APRIL 22, 20238 AM PT

Walkabout

“I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour,” wrote Rebecca Solnit in her 2001 book “Wanderlust: A History of Walking.” “If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.”

For artist Sacha Halona Baumann, walking is not only locomotive, it is where she clears her mind by examining the city’s ever-changing landscape. That‘s downtown Los Angeles, the neighborhood she has inhabited since the early 1990s and assiduously recorded — first with cameras, now an iPhone. “I’ll often walk randomly,” she says. “I’ll turn when a light changes. I take the subway three times a week. And my eyes will drift to something repeatedly and I’ll notice changes.”

That shifting downtown landscape is at the core of her book, “Step and Repeat,” published last year, which gathers hundreds of images captured between 2014 and 2022 exclusively on a smartphone.

These are not grand images of the L.A. skyline with its recognizable architectural icons. Instead, they are quickly snapped smartphone pics that zero in on the small details that Baumann observes on her walks: the pattern of a brick wall, the shadows cast by a fire hydrant studded with an array of knobs, a faded graphic of roasted chickens, a hand-painted sign laced with eyes that offers gold barato barato — cheap cheap.

Some of these details might seem mundane. But as you pore over her book, the forms begin to repeat — like those knobby fire hydrants or the baroque facade of the Los Angeles Theatre, the faded-yet-glamorous 1931 movie palace designed by S. Charles Lee and S. Tilden Norton. Though the subjects of her photos reoccur, they are never the same. Sometimes the light is stark; other times it has been diffused by morning fog. At times, the shadows are long; at others, barely perceptible. Here you might see the facade of a theater; elsewhere you’ll find the industrial backside.

One repeating theme is the image of scorpion pendants in jewelry store windows. Baumann, who is a Scorpio, says , “Scorpios are sort of like vegans — they like it when everybody knows it.” (As a fellow Scorpio, I can confirm this.)

The artist’s images do not obscure downtown L.A.’s more brutal aspects: the inhuman scale of its loading docks or the myriad architectural barriers that are erected to purportedly protect the city from its people. But neither do they exploit or fetishize the city’s grit. The pictures are straightforward and sympathetic. As Baumann puts it: “I think of them as being generous.”

In the same way that she lets certain limitations shape some of her walks downtown — such as simply turning if she is unable to cross a street — she likewise set a series of arbitrary conditions for “Step and Repeat.” One, she only selected photos dating back to 2014 because that’s how far back she has smartphone images warehoused on her iCloud account. And the book’s length — 480 pages — was determined by the maximum allowable by Blurb, the service she used to publish the work.

Images were then chosen at random, though once these were selected, she organized them in ways that create interesting juxtapositions of color and form.

“You can open it up to any page and you can find a story,” she says.

Baumann also works as a curator, art consultant and graphic designer. For two years, she published the arts broadsheet “Full Blede” featuring the work of artists — mostly imagery, but also short stories, essays and poems.

On Saturday, 17 images from her downtown series — devoted to orange traffic cones — will be on display at the Brand Library and Art Center in Glendale as part of the group show “Don’t Believe Everything You Think.” Also on display will be a copy of the book.

But it’s worth hanging out with her book beyond the gallery, sitting with it, revisiting it and letting the little corners of L.A. engage in their relentless chatter.

Appearing more than once in Baumann’s book is an image of a dental billboard that features a smiling mouth rising from a building’s rooftop. It’s Cheshire Cat-like grin is unconnected to any face and depending on the angle, the mouth can feel friendly or strained — L.A.’s answer to the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, the fictional billboard that plays an all-seeing role in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”

The dental billboard — for the practice of one Dr. Lee — is one I’ve long been fascinated by and have, in fact, photographed in the past.

What is the mouth trying to tell us? The answer to that depends on when or how you look.

“Don’t Believe Everything You Think,” curated by Galia Linn, opens at the Brand Library 6 p.m. Saturday. Find details at brandlibrary.art. You can find Sacha Halona Baumann’s “Step and Repeat” available for purchase at sachabaumann.com.

I'm thrilled to exhibit my photography for the first time in an upcoming exhibition at The Brand Library and Art Center. The opening reception is April 22, 2023, from 6–9:00 p.m.

Don't Believe Everything You Think addresses thought distortions. I often work through this universal experience by taking a walk around my neighborhood,  snapping pics on my phone. I find beauty, joy, and humor in the banal surroundings. If you follow me on IG you've witnessed this!

I'm maybe obsessed with the many pylons I spy on my walks. I often anthropomorphize them, keep track of them over time, and in general enjoy their jaunty, constant presence. I call my traffic cone photographs STEP and REPEAT: A romance. The "romance" stems from the coupling I imagine between the pylons and other objects, as well as my own love for them. A selection from the series will be on view alongside my book STEP and REPEAT in the exhibition.

If you are in the Southland, I hope you can make it to the opening or catch the exhibition before it closes. The Brand is a beautiful place—make a day out of it to explore the grounds, browse the book collection, go for a hike, have a picnic, and in general enjoy this wonderful Glendale cultural center.

The Brand Library and Art Center is located at 1601 West Mountain Street, Glendale, CA 91201. The exhibition runs April 22–June 16, 2023, with an opening reception on April 22, 6-9 p.m. The full line up of artists: Amanda Maciel Antunes, Sacha Halona Baumann, Adrienne Devine, Iva Gueorguieva, Alexandra Grant, Bettina Hubby, Janna Ireland, Galia Linn, Erin Morrison, Jacky Perez, Alicia Piller, Madaline Riley, Elena Stonaker, Camilla Taylor.

I'll have copies of my book on hand at the opening reception for Don't Believe Everything You Think. The 480 page, full color trade paperback features photographs I took between 2014–2022 of my beloved neighborhood. The images are often repeated, but never the same—reflecting changes in the neighborhood and my own focus of attention. The index offers longitude/latitude coordinates of the image's location, making it a kind of treasure hunt of #DTLA goodness. I'm thrilled to share it with you—it's been a pure pleasure project to put together and publish. If you can't make it to the opening, you can also order the book at sachabaumann.com or anonymously at blurb.com. 

Designers solve problems, using tools, training, and intuition. Artists record history, and often create problems. STEP and REPEAT was an opportunity to perform both roles. It is a chronicle of my beloved neighborhood, but the images are not arbitrary—they are filled with intention and deliberation—each is a unique creation, made by me. What does one do with all these visuals? How about make a book. How does one go about doing that? Hmm, let me try to solve that problem.

STEP and REPEAT consists of images taken on my iPhones since 2014. I chose that year because that’s when my iCloud storage started. I did not have a specific or preconceived idea of the time span, but rather let outside forces determine it. I often do this when creating artwork: I give myself restrictions to work within. My iCloud storage contains over 45,000 image files. My process of deciding which to use began with rapidly swiping through Photos and dragging those that were taken during walks downtown into a Dropbox folder titled #DTLAWalkabout. (I’ve been using that hashtag on my social feeds since I’ve been on the feeds.) I was not precious in my selections in any way, avoiding deliberation.

I knew I wanted the book to be trade paperback size because I like the way that 6 x 9 inches feels in my hand and also the casualness of that shape. My plan was to use a print-on-demand service and I settled on blurb.com. I downloaded their InDesign template, again letting an outside force determine an aspect of the project. The largest trade paperback that Blurb will print is 480 pages—that became my number, minus a few for the title page, this introduction, and possibly an index. 

Despite the initial pass through my photo roll, the #DTLAWalkabout folder contained thousands and thousands of image files. I decided to be random in my selections. Over a period of about 3 months (in the evenings and on my day off, Sunday) I would open Finder on my Mac and scroll through the image list. I’d just randomly click and swipe to select a dozen or so files. Then I would open them in Photoshop and make a few minor adjustments. During this process the 480 page InDesign file was also open on my desktop. Once an image was formatted I would just arbitrarily place it on one of the pages. Slowly the .indd file filled-up. 

Unlike the other steps in the creation of this book, the spreads are not random. Once I began to get images placed I became more strategic about pairing them. Time and location were not considered, but rather I made aesthetic decisions. 

Once all the spreads were done, I struggled to figure how to handle or whether to even have an index. What information should be listed? A friend and fellow artist suggested that the index could be coordinates of where the images were taken. I loved this idea. This would allow for the book to become a kind of treasure hunt for those who were curious. It was a puzzle to figure out how to go about it, however. Eventually I found an app, Photos Metadata Export, that would do exactly that, creating a spreadsheet of the information. InDesign has live captioning of metadata, so I turned this on for each image and then found the file title in the spreadsheet, copying and pasting the information into a Google Doc.

In many cases the coordinates were not listed on the spreadsheet. I wasn’t sure why. I’ve always had location tracking turned on so it seemed strange that it would be missing. It took some investigating and trying out various scenarios of image taking on my phone to figure it out. What I discovered is that if I took an image directly in Instagram as a story, the file would not record location. If the coordinates were missing, in many cases I was able to recall where it was taken and scrolled around in Google Maps and captured the longitude and latitude from there. All of this is to say that: the index became a highly labor intensive task.

The title STEP and REPEAT is literal. I’ve been creating pictures of downtown for decades, snapping a pic at the same sites over and over and over again. When I walk down S Broadway from my current loft and see the Los Angeles Theater sign two blocks down, more often than not, I will take a picture of it. I’ve been doing this since 1993, when I lived on Wall Street in Skid Row. (At that time the pics were taken on a little 35mm camera and then later, my Blackberry.) Although the selection of images for STEP and REPEAT was random, I knew there would be a lot of repetition; I planned on and hoped for this. I love it.

I believe the way you can help make a city work is by participating in it—use its services, interact with others, smile at strangers, help someone cross the street, shop local, take the bus, take the subway, and yes…walk around it—walk around it all the time. Look at it. Relish in it. A phrase that goes through my head as I’m stomping around this neighborhood I love so much is: There is so much to see. These walks and the images I take are studio research. They are performance. They are a way of seeing. They are love.

Los Angeles is my best friend. Thank you, muse.

(explore and purchase STEP and REPEAT)

I’m grateful to LA TATE and the gregarious Alan Standen for the opportunity to share my work, to HK Zamani for hanging the show and his generous spirit, and all the folks who came to opening, have popped by, and shared their support from afar.

Enjoy these install shots of my works in the show—all were made using pages of W Magazine from the early 90s and aughts.

Here is the checklist and press release for the exhibition. 🖤

Photos by Jeffrey Baker.

This summer Wönzimer gallery has been hosting bi-weekly film screenings curated by an array of different artists, directors, and collaborators​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​. I was honored to be asked to put together a program, which took place last night, Thursday, September 15.

The gallery got the word out about the screening by posting an image from one of the films on their Instagram a couple of days prior to the event. Several people, including myself, reposted the image of a Carolee Schneemann performance. The posts got lots of comments and hearts, but likes do not equal RSVPs, and I was very curious as to how many people would actually show up. Well…a lot! The seats filled-up quickly and it became a standing room only event.

I’m sharing my selections here, in the order in which they were played. (There was a brief intermission after the Bruce Conner trailer.)

The films and videos center around artist's studios as well as how artists interact with space in their practice and or present space in their work. I'm interested in how architecture becomes a collaborator. I spend six days a week working for artists, as Studio Manager and Estate Manager, and at least one day a week at my own studio, where I live. It is endlessly fascinating to me the environments in which artists work and how it becomes an integral part of their practice. The selections offer snippets on space and response.

10 Bullets. (21:07) Directed by Van Neistat; Written by John Furgason and Tom Sachs

OnLine: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, Carolee Schneeman Up To and Including Her Limits 1973-76 (2:46); The Museum of Modern Art

CASSILS Up to and Including Their Limits RAW (1:55); Gardiner Museum

Corridor (13:15); Lorna Simpson; Music by John Davis

Jay DeFeo’s The Rose (3:54); SF MOMA

The White Rose trailer (0:31); Bruce Conner

High Line Art Performance, Simone Forti Huddle (2:38); Friends of the High Line

2 & 4 Max Richter’s Recomposed Four Seasons (10:32); Directed & Filmed by Darrel Friidom Dunn and Mattew Et Gibbs

Kim Gordon plays MoCA Geffen (0:30); Sacha Baumann 

The Blues (21:16); Directed and Edited by Seejon Thomas; Produced by Mike Nesbit & Seejon Thomas

It was an enjoyable and also somewhat puzzling process to come up with the program. The theme immediately came to mind and I knew that I would begin with Tom Sach’s wonderful 10 Bullets., but I wasn’t quite sure where to go from there. I spoke to many artists friends and it sent me down lots of highly enjoyable rabbit holes. It was gratifying to share my final, carefully curated selections to a rapt crowd. Sending big thanks to Aidan and Alaïa for the gallery’s generous programming and the invitation to participate.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Double U
Sacha Halona Baumann and HK Zamani
September 10–October 8, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 10, 4:00–8:00 p.m.
Gallery hours: Monday–Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

LA TATE GALLERY is pleased to present Double U, a two person show featuring work by Los Angeles-based artists Sacha Halona Baumann and HK Zamani.

The exhibition centers around the artist’s shared use of a very specific medium: W magazine, in particular issues from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Visiting Zamani's solo exhibition Protagonists and Erasures at PRJCTLA in 2021, Baumann immediately recognized that the substrate for Zamani’s brush and ink drawings were pages of vintage Ws. The magazine during that period was oversized, 14 x 10 inches, and its editorial and advertising content had a uniquely recognizable aesthetic. Baumann knew this because she too creates art from this material, from the same era.

Baumann and Zamani agreed that this niche way of making art seemed too delicious of a coincidence to not exploit in some way. They jointly declared: “We should do a W show!” Double U offers each artist’s unique use of the medium but also their shared interest in the material itself—both in the images the pages depict and their united efforts to manipulate and redirect their original intention.

In his Fashion Erasures series, Zamani challenges class consciousness, standardization, and expectation. The obscuring of found images cancels their conventional orthodoxies while embellishing and empowering them to suggest both their primal origins and a potential undiscovered future. His Inadvertent Protagonists series allow for an unpredictable shifting of possibilities and imaginings in a dialogue between painting and sculpture. Mirroring, through their various juxtapositions, the cultural duality and overlap he brings to his work.

In her various series of collages in the exhibition, Baumann makes aesthetic choices based on self-imposed restrictions; a collage may be made using only three cuts of paper, another is strictly black and white, and works may use only small cuts of black or a particular range of page numbers. In her Awkward series, Baumann creates collages from monochromatic images of beautiful models, using only their eyes, lips, arms, and hands. The new figures become unknowable creatures with no bodies, presenting themselves in uncomfortable poses and self conscious gestures.

Both artists appropriate, fracture, and delete the printed photographic and graphic material—frequently luxury advertising—to be re-choreographed into surreal configurations with effects ranging from the abstractly enigmatic to the theatrically psychological.

Doubling, a poem written by Zamani and then manipulated by Baumann:

Double U
It’s you and you
Male Female it’s you
Good and Evil it’s you
Double U
W
Double consciousness it’s you
Patriarchy Matriarchy it’s you
Your double is you
You walk and walk it’s you
You in the mirror is you
Word play with you
W
You cut and paste it’s you
You on the page it’s you
You block out the figure
You cut out the figure
It’s you
Double or nothing it’s you

Sacha Halona Baumann (b. 1970, Hollywood, CA) studied Visual Communication at San Francisco State University. She received her Master’s in Art Business from the Sotheby’s Institute of Art at Claremont Graduate University. Selected exhibitions in Los Angeles include Noysky Projects, Keystone Art Space, Idol Wild, Somewhere Something, and Ace Museum. She has curated exhibitions of emerging artists throughout Los Angeles. In 2017 she began publishing a broadsheet, FULL BLEDE, which she also designed and curated. There have been 10 issues to date, featuring the work and writing of over 250 artists. Beyond her collage work, Baumann also creates zines, slaps, and mostly recently published a 480 page book of her street photography. She is an Arts Professional, working closely with artists, galleries, studios, and Estates throughout Los Angeles.

HK Zamani (b. 1958, Tehran-Iran) studied Studio Arts and Design at California State University, Dominguez Hills and El Camino Community College. He received his Master’s of Fine Art in Painting from Claremont Graduate University. Selected regional exhibitions include Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Lancaster Museum of Art and History, A+D Museum, PRJCTLA, LA Louver, Municipal Gallery at Barnsdall. He has also exhibited nationally and internationally in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Berlin, Prague, Seoul, Saigon, and Bangkok. He is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and founder of PØST, an alternative exhibition space in Los Angeles (1995-2018), where more than five hundred exhibits were hosted. He has taught at University of California Los Angeles, University of California Santa Barbara, California State University at Long Beach, California State University at Dominguez Hills, Woodbury University, and been a Visiting Artist at numerous national and international institutions. He is a recipient of The City of Los Angeles Individual Master Artist Project (COLA-IMAP) and California Community Foundation grants, and his work is in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Berkeley Museum of Art, and Lancaster Museum of Art and History.

For more information please contact Alan Standen via latategallery@gmail.com or 310.409.7854

Some days you gotta jus wear the same thing you wore yesterday, by which I mean everyday you gotta do that. Umm. I didn't make the bed this morning and that is totally rare. Why do blankets and pillows always end up on the floor. If I was going to be a blanket, it would be a weighted blanket. A 20 pound, gray blanket that is not at all a substitute for a body, but totally is. I did go to the gym this morning and took a bunch of banal pictures on my walk there, and this is not at all rare. This happens all the time. I'm working from home today and on days like this I wear the same thing I wear everyday. The same thing I wore yesterday. But usually I make my bed.

Sometimes you find out your work will be featured in a group show because you get tagged in an Instagram post and read your name on the flier. This is one of those times. Ha ha.

I’m delighted to have four collages in this joyful show. Roll through, Los Angeles friends!

As in most of my work, I created a set of obstructions before making this series of work. In this case I used exactly three cuts from the pages of the sumptuous book John Rawlings: 30 Years in Vogue, by Kohle Yohannan.

If I stand
in this particular spot.
Right here.
Up against this window.
And look up.
If I stand
right here.
I can see a little sliver of the sky.

When I’m home
I always hear the city.
But some days
I don’t see it.
I stay in.
But.
If I stand
right here.
I can see a little sliver of the sky.
The same sliver the city sees.

Walking on Olive on my way home from the subway I glanced up a favorite parking ramp and saw this group of pylons hanging out with a chunk of black rubber. It was a cute little scene. They seemed like they were having a fun, chill time.

A giant suv style pickup truck came down the ramp and a guy I see on the block all the time stepped into the street to help him navigate the left hand turn unto the busy street. I walked up the ramp and snapped this pic, standing behind the big truck as it idled there. The driver eyeballed me.

I walked back down to the sidewalk and the guy kinda shouted at me: You parked up in there?

Nope. I’m walking.

At the same moment a woman I also see around was walking down the block and took offense to me appearing on the sidewalk from what must have seemed like out of nowhere. Get the fuck away from me with you’re big ass black outfit!

The guy directing traffic came to my defense. She’s not doing anything! She’s walking!

I stepped to the side so as to not crowd her. I flashed a little peace sign to them all and kept walking towards home.

Two self-publishing projects have got me doing a deep dive into my iCloud Photos, and it’s a lot. A lot of images, a lot of memories, a lot of Scorpio related screenshots of CoStar, a lot of gallery and museum shows, an extra double a lot of Meaux Meaux pics, and thankfully a lot of laughs too.

The first project is an idea I have for a book that centers on the iPhone pics I tend to compulsively take on my walks around downtown L.A. It will include images from the last seven years—I picked that timeline because my Photos album starts on May 15, 2015. And I like the number seven.

Since the pandemic these #DTLAWalkabout pics often included a graff tag I started noticing: Heavy. I’m convinced that once you begin to pay attention to something, it will reward you with frequent appearances (ask me about finding playing cards) and sure enough I see Heavy on every single walk I take. Sometimes I make a game of it to see how many I can find. I call it Heavy Hunting.

I typically post my images directly onto my IG stories. I do it with such regularity that people will often talk to me about Heavy, both in person and sliding into my DMs. Recently folks have started to send me images of the Heavys that they find and even post them on their own social feeds. I love to see it.

One of these people is Johnny, an IG friend (@blackmuseumist) that I met IRL at the 2021 Felix Art Fair. He reached out and said he was obsessed by my obsession, and invited me to participate in a zine he’s putting together with a Heavy spread.

I started going through my iCloud in earnest last week with both projects in mind. Umm, it’s not a small task: there were over 45,000 images. I’ve been methodically going through and putting select pictures in a Book album and/or my public, shared Heavy album. I’m also deleting a ton of nonsense, bad, mistake kind of pics along the way. I am proud to say that as of this morning I’m down to 42,350. Which still seems completely ludicrous, but…progress!

So far there are 179 Heavy photos and 842 images that fit my book idea. Ha ha. Gonna need a bigger zine and maybe that book is actually a volume set. So many images. There is just so much to see.

For a couple of weeks I’ve been writing nearly nightly the story of…me. It’s prompted by reading Julia Cameron’s The Vein of Gold, a continuation of sorts of her highly influential best seller The Artist’s Way.

The first batch of tasks in VoG (how I’ve been referring to it) is taking rapid, hand-written notes in 5 year chunks of one’s life, from birth to present day. Next is answering a list of specific questions for spans of time. And then this section of the book culminates in writing one’s Narrative Timeline. It’s intense!

She urges that we be compassionate with ourselves in the process, to write quickly with little concern for style, and to honor the nuances and small details recall. She also urges us to not focus on analysis or process; avoid rumination, offering explanations to others, and not to debate. We are to be our own counsel.

I’ve been doing Morning Pages for years now, the cornerstone of The Artist’s Way. I’ve become a devotee of her prompting to nurture this habit of daily stream of consciousness writing in the hazy, just-woke-up moments of the morning. Three pages, handwritten happens 5 or 6 days a week from my couch, while sipping coffee. I’m hooked.

The Narrative Timeline is a different beast. I’m pleased to be doing it, but find myself a bit overwhelmed, writing in small bursts, maybe 30 minutes at a time. Currently I’m 8 years old in my Timeline. This makes me laugh to myself, because at this pace it’s going to be weeks before I finish. But that’s okay. I’ll show myself some compassion.