DTLA Art Night and Why We Gather

Tonight I'll be hanging out at The Los Angeles Makery for DTLA Art Night, and I keep thinking about what it means that downtown is open for business again. Not just business business—art business. Community business. The kind of gathering that reminds you why cities exist in the first place.

"The Architecture of Perception" with Julie O'Sullivan has been up for a few days now, and watching people interact with the work has been... wow. People are touching the "Mechanism of Change" fragments, rearranging them, building their own sculptures from my cut-up past. That's exactly what I hoped would happen, but seeing it in real time still takes my breath away.

Aleka Corwin and Dellis Frank creating...

Sunday's Reception Was Everything

That afternoon reminded me that art is medicine and community is everything. People drove across LA on a holiday Sunday (in this heat!), found parking somehow (which in DTLA is its own art form), brought us flowers, played with the fragments, created space to breathe together.

Watching someone build their own sculpture from pieces of paintings I made twenty years ago—this is transformation in real time. Not metaphorical transformation. Actual, physical, you-can-see-it-happening change.

Julie's Work Radiates Joy

Julie O'Sullivan paints the sounds of Los Angeles, and her canvases literally vibrate with urban energy. She takes the sirens bouncing off Little Tokyo buildings, the ocean waves near her home, the beautiful cacophony of city life, and transforms it all into frequencies of color that make you feel alive just looking at them.

Her piece "Traffic" captures what it's like to learn patience in LA gridlock, to find music in what could be frustration. "Community" shows us as orbs of energy dancing together in this city by the sea. Standing next to my reconstructed fragments, her work creates this perfect dialogue about how we each process reality differently—she celebrates what she receives, I excavate what I need to release.

DTLA Is Alive Again

There's something happening in downtown right now that feels important. The Makery sits in the heart of Little Tokyo, where culture layers upon culture, where you can step outside and walk into another country just by crossing the street. During the reception, I watched people discover not just our show but the whole neighborhood—the galleries, the restaurants, the energy of a place that's been quietly building community this whole time.

Art Night brings it all together. Galleries open their doors, artists hang out with their work, strangers become friends over shared wonder at something they've never seen before. It's democracy in action—art accessible to anyone willing to show up.

The Work That's Waiting

My four pieces in the show tell the story of a decade spent cutting up everything—"Archive of Becoming" holds twenty-five years of paintings released from their frames and fixed meanings, "POW!!!" contains the sound of refusing to stay contained, "Losing Weight" represents shedding everything that kept me small, and "Mechanism of Change" invites you to participate in ongoing transformation.

Each piece started as something complete and "finished." I couldn't let them stay that way. The cutting became meditation, methodology, a way of refusing to be trapped by who I was when I made the original work.

Now they're fragments waiting for your hands, your arrangement, your interpretation. Art that only exists when you engage with it.

Me with Marthe Aponte and A Laura Brody

Tonight's Invitation

Starting at 6pm, I'll be in the Subterra Gallery just hanging out. Come play with the pieces, ask me anything about making work right now, or just sit with the art and see what happens.

Let's talk about being an artist today. About making work in this political moment. About why gathering around art feels necessary rather than nice-to-have. About how downtown keeps reinventing itself, how community keeps showing up, how transformation happens one fragment at a time.

Real conversations with real people. That's what tonight is for.

DTLA is open for business, and that business is hope made visible. Come see what we're building together.

"The Architecture of Perception" Through July 31 The Los Angeles Makery - Subterra Gallery 533 S Los Angeles Street

DTLA Art Night

Tonight, 5-9pm

Free and open to everyone

Street parking available

See you there!