Correction, by Fiona Tan
No matter who you are and what you think, this number has got to disappoint you: in America, there are 2.2 million people in prison.
At the The Hammer Museum in Westwood, a show by the artist Fiona Tan doesn't say this or that about
"the state of imprisonment in America" or try to score political points one way or another.
Instead, it shows, simply, on video screens, larger than life portraits of the many, many people who live and work in our nations prisons. Ben Adair speaks to Fiona Tan.
The Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90024
T: 310.443.7000
map
Prison Diary
John Mills was 21 years old when he picked up a tape recorder and started recording his own daily life. John Mills is a prisoner at the Polk Youth Institution in Butner, North Carolina. Polk houses men between the ages of 18 and 22 who are sentenced anywhere from a few months to life
in prison. John Mills said he committed, maybe 75 armed robberies before he was locked up at age 17.
One of those got him 7 to 9.
John Mills' radio diary was produced by Joe Richman for the Prison Diary series. Find out more about Joe Richman's Prison Diaries series
Song Break: My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me
by the Geto Boys
High Fashion Crime Scenes
Artist Melanie Pullen focuses
on crime pictures in her show
at Ace Gallery in Beverly Hills.
Her photographs are all elaborately designed and posed and are both critiques and a homage to
the genre of crime photography. Queena Kim met up with Melanie Pullen at Ace Gallery.
Ace Gallery Beverly Hills
9430 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
T: 310.858.9090
map
Miss Mickey Champion
Mickey Champion is NOT a household name, but she is one of LA's most storied blues talents.
Alexis Rivera runs a bar called Little Pedro's Blue Bongo
and he picks Miss Mickey up at her home in the Crenshaw district and then drops her off at Little Pedro's where she plays every Tuesday night.
Little Pedros
901 E. 1st St.
Los Angeles, CA
T - 213.687.3766
map
Original Pride: The Satyrs Motorcycle Club
The 23rd annual Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival... aka OUTFEST...
runs July 7 through 18th, features mainstream feature films as well as more experimental shorts, documentaries, etc.
One of the more interesting, directly Southern California-related items comes from first time director and motorcycle enthusiast Scott Bloom. Scott's documentary, Original Pride
documents the longest, continuously active gay organization in the country – the Satyrs Motorcycle club. Imagine... Marlon Brando, straight from the Wild One... or the Hell's Angels... only one little difference. Queena Kim met up with Scott Bloom earlier this week.
See OUTFEST's 2005 program
If
Andrew Salter was, at one point, a curious, funny child in a very serious place: The New Children's Hospital at Westmead is located in Syndey, Australia and it's a bit of an experiment. It has an extraordinary art collection, an aviary and sweeping gardens
The doctors there treat sick kids with medicine and also with laughter, drawing and painting.
And that gets us back to young Andrew Salter. The transformative and healing power of creativity
can often be found in a simple question. What if you weren't sick? What if you were normal kid?
What if?
"If" was produced for the Australian Broadcasting Company
by Sherre DeLys
and John Jacobs.
