Monday, January 23, 2012

January Free Thing Recap

I did two free events in LA in January, and both were pretty neat.  The first was a free pipe organ concert by Hector Olivera.  Unlike many other musical concerts, for a pipe organ concert you have to go to where the pipe organ is, and seeing as pipe organs are generally in churches in the choir loft and the pews face the opposite direction, there was that awkwardness of sitting facing away from the performer.  The first half was just stuff on the pipe organ and it was super cool.  For the second half, he performed on his symphonic touring organ, which is the kind that has synthesizers for all the other instruments in the symphony.  While technically impressive to watch him hammer out all the instrument parts himself, unfortunately symphonic organs just don’t sound very good.  It’s like listening to a midi keyboard.  Nevertheless, the performance was good, and free, and they had homemade baked goods as refreshments, score!

The second event was a workshop given by graffiti artist, Galo “MAKE ONE” Canote.  It’s part of  a program by the Craft and Folk Art Museum called “Folk Art Everywhere,” which has various workshops held in different cultural centers all throughout LA.  He gave us a lecture about his work and LA street culture, then had a workshop on very basic lettering, showing us the most basic way to deform letters without losing their inherent structure, and we all practiced lettering our names with markers on papers.  Basically it was “How to make a locker sign.” It was cool, though, and I learned some things for sure.  As a bonus, everyone who came was given free passes for the Craft and Folk Art Museum. 

February Free Events that look promising:

  • Nature photography workshop at Franklin Canyon
  • Astronomy walk at the observatory
  • Staged reading of Sophocles’ Ajax

We’ll see what other events pop up

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