New Healthcare Law Provisions Take Effect Amid Controversy

By Roger Linnett

This is part of a continuing series, summarizing recently activated benefits that are part of the Afford- able Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. These new provisions were based on a 2011 report from the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, which relied on inde- pendent physicians, nurses, scientists and other ex- perts as well as evidence-based research to develop its recommendations. They take effect at the in- sured’s next policy renewal date on or after August 1.

Increased Access –

With about 7 million uninsured Californians, nearly 20 percent of the population, California will greatly benefit this year because of these new provi- sions:

• As much as $15 billion per year in new federal funding for the state to help imple- mentation.
• “Bridge” insurance programs that now cover low-income people and those with pre-existing conditions will remain in force until health care reform is fully imple- mented.

• Establishment of The California Health Benefits Exchange, which will act as a de- fined marketplace, much like the stock mar- ket, for consumers to buy insurance and apply for subsidies as needed. The ex- change will begin enrolling prospective policyholders in 2014.

Increased coverage –

Forty seven million women, more than 5 million in California, who are now covered by individual or group insurance or Medicare will now be able to schedule preventive screening and counseling with- out incurring any additional out-of-pocket co-pays or deductibles.

Women and their doctors, not insurance compa- nies, will now make decisions about their health needs, increasing the chance of catching potentially serious conditions at an earlier stage and substan- tially reducing the possibility of crushing medical bills for them and their families.

And, although women are the major beneficiar- ies of these new provisions, men and children can also take advantage of covered preventive services that includes flu shots and other immunizations, screenings for cancers, high blood pressure, choles- terol and depression.

The health care law has already helped women gain access to potentially life-saving tests and serv- ices such as mammograms, cholesterol screenings and flu shots without co-insurance or deductibles, and women under Medicare also receive screenings and tests for diabetes and osteoporosis.

The following preventative services for women are now also covered:

• Annual “Well Woman” visits for all women who are sexually active or over age 21, including a physical, Pap test and clini- cal breast and pelvic exams.

• For women who are pregnant or nurs- ing, gestational diabetes screening, breast- feeding support, supplies and counseling have been added to already available tests for Hepatitis B and anemia and folic acid supplements.

• Screening and counseling for domes- tic and interpersonal violence.
• HPV (Human PapillomaVirus) DNA testing for women 30 or older.

• Screening and counseling for HIV/ AIDS and other sexually transmitted dis- ease.
• FDA-approved contraceptive meth- ods, and contraceptive education and counseling.

This last item has caused a storm of controversy, driving opponents of the law to paroxysms of eccle- siastical fervor, claiming government intrusion into religious freedom. Bear in mind, though, that these are the same people who are relentlessly trying to plant their flag in the national vagina.

The Obama administration has said it will make common-sense accommodations with regard to con- flicting religious dogma. Additionally, the admini- stration announced that non-profit, religious employ- ers who do not currently offer contraceptive cover- age would not have to comply with the requirement for a year, and new regulations would be developed and finalized by the end of the year to accommodate religious concerns while ensuring access to these benefits for their employees.

Plus, group health plans and issuers that have maintained grandfathered status are not required to cover these services and certain nonprofit religious organizations, such as churches and religious schools, will not be required to cover these services.

Nevertheless, insurance companies know it is way more cost-effective to prevent a pregnancy than to pay for it.

Lowered Costs and Rebates –

According to a February 2012 brief by the Asst. Sec. for Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Dep’t. of Health and Human Services called “The Cost of Covering Contraceptives Through Health Insurance”: “When medical costs associated with unintended pregnancies are taken into account, including costs of prenatal care, pregnancy com- plications and deliveries, the net effect on premi- ums is close to zero.” (http://1.usa.gov/zNTGuv)

The brief also found that taxpayers realize a saving of $4 for every dollar spent on publicly- funded family planning.

Because of a provision that went in effect January 1, 2012, called the Medical Loss Ratio (MLR), which was inserted into the health care law by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), insurers had to issue rebates to policy holders by August 1, if they spent more than 15 percent of premiums on admin- istrative items for companies with more than 50 employees, or 20 percent with fewer than 50 or those with individual policies.

Nearly two million Californians recently re- ceived almost $74 million in rebates from their health insurers based on 2011 financial records. Individual policyholders received rebates directly. Group policyholders, who paid either part or all of the premiums, are entitled to either a rebate or credit toward future premiums. Consult your em- ployer’s plan administrator for details.

If you have an individual or a group policy and your insurance provider complied with the MLR provision, you probably received a letter in which they congratulated themselves for not ripping you off.

Information for this article was compiled from: whitehouse.gov, kaiserhealthnews.org, aspe.hhs.gov, insurance.ca.gov and healthcare.gov.

Venice Art Scene Heavyweights Square Off Over Proposed Mural Ordinance

By Roger Linnett

What had begun nearly a year ago as a way to replace the current ban on new murals in the city of L.A. and jump start the moribund municipal public art works process came to an abrupt halt in raucous debate before the L.A. Planning Commission and illuminated a schism in L.A.’s mural community, including prominent Venice art institutions. The moratorium was prompted in the first place by the pell-mell invasion by commercial interests into the realm of the muralist in a dispute over the use of private wall spaces.

The proposed ordinance “amends Article 4.4 (the Sign Code) of the Los Angeles Municipal Code . . . [to] carve out a distinct space for murals in the City’s sign regulations . . . Additionally, Public Art Installations are included in the proposed ordinance to ensure that all public art (whether a mural or other object) is treated similarly and does not conflict with the City’s regulations pertaining to commercial messages and signage.”

But, the L.A. Department of City Planning’s (DCP) Recommendation Report was amended to include several surreptious provisions prior to its presentation, creating a furor at the July 12 Planning Commission hearing.

Among those present at the hearing was Anna Siqueiros, a prominent L.A. artist and muralist, who was among many that were outraged that the ordinance she and many others had passionately worked on for six months had been unilaterally revised. (See her report of the hearing below)

Two of these new provisions in particular caused considerable uproar.

The most egregious to traditional muralists was the re-defining of Original Art Mural to include “digitally printed images” – computerized reproduction an existing mural on vinyl, or other such substrate, installed over the original.

The muralists were particularly exercised over this expanded definition of a mural, which they contend means ‘painting on a wall’, period.

Besides being an assault on the aesthetic fundamentals of murals, traditional muralists fear these new methods will significantly impact the amount of future work available to them, hence their ability to make a living as artists.

But, more importantly to the muralists, the process of creating a work of art in the community, interacting with the local peoples so they see the mural being created and begin to think of it as something organic and integral to the neighborhood is completely lost.

A digitally created mural comes from someone in front of a computer screen, virtually alone. When the finished printed work is installed the artist may only set foot on the location for a day, or just a few hours. There is no connection made with the environs the work exists in. And isn’t a major function of art to help people connect?

The issue has also been raised as to whether these “installations” will be afforded the protections granted under the federal Visual Artists Rights Act, which ensures copyrights for the artists, but is limited to visual works that fall within a narrowly defined category.

Furthermore, they contend that painting or ink-jet printing on these artificial materials is inferior to the original process and may substantially deteriorate before the end of the two year minimum lifespan requirement that was also added to the ordinance.

Additionally, because installations are affixed to buildings or walls as opposed to being painted directly on them, the L.A. Department of Building Safety will also have to sign off on any such project, which is not an issue with traditional murals.

Emily Winters, president of the Venice Arts Council, was among those who spoke against the other contentious provision that states “No new Original Art Mural shall be placed on a lot that has an exclusively residential structure with fewer than five dwelling units.”

This provision was apparently added by the DCP in answer to a Commissioner’s concerns about a proliferation of murals on single family homes and alley walls.

But an important part of the permit process states that “The Mural Ordinance Administrative Rules to be adopted by the Department of Cultural Affairs shall include a neighborhood involvement requirement for any applicant of a new Original Art Mural to provide notice of and to hold a community meeting on the mural proposal at which interested members of the public may review and comment upon the proposed mural. No new Original Art Mural shall be registered until the applicant certifies that he or she has completed the Neighborhood Involvement Requirement.”

This would seem to be a more bottom-up approach that would allow homeowners the freedom to pursue having a mural on their property than a ham-handed pronouncement from above by the city.

Supporters of the amended definition include Venice’s own SPARC, which is home to the UCLA/SPARC Digital Mural Lab that has developed a process for the digital reproduction and installation of murals.

In a July 19 guest editorial on KCET’s Departures website, SPARC co-founder Judy Baca wrote:

“Yes, fellow muralists, we do have a common enemy but it is not each other. It is corporations that claim the rights of individual personhood with resources so vast that people do not have to matter in a globalized world. The ban on murals goes into litigation because of the proliferation of billboards, super graphics and unchecked advertising. And there seems to be no end in sight for the use of every inch of space for advertising. This has created a visual glut in Los Angeles, and murals become almost invisible in such an environment, lost amongst the dominance of advertising image.”

SPARC is in the process of making a digital replica of “Calle de la Eternidad,” which was located in downtown L.A., on the sixty-something-year-old east facade of the 101-year-old Zobel Building on Broadway near Fourth St.

Under the current façade, on which the mural was painted in 1993, is the original façade, which has windows across the upper floors, and the owner wishes to restore the original façade as part of an over-all renovation.

The scan of the mural will be digitally restored by the original artist, Joanne Poethig, and then put on a canvas-like fabric made from recycled plastic and vinyl, and retouched again by hand, before being attached to the south side of the building once renovations are complete.

Thus, in this case, the replication process seems the only logical alternative to destroying this beautiful work. Obviously, there is a place for such a process in the L.A. art scene.

However, won’t the installation, being on the southern face of the building, be subjected to more intense degradation by sunlight, accelerating its fading and deterioration?

Recently, the last of a series of these “mural replicas” also referred to as “banners” of the works of six muralists was installed along the 101 Freeway between Alameda and Broadway as part of a seven-year study by Caltrans on a cost-effective way to maintain public art.

Caltrans main concerns are worker safety and cost of maintenance, and this method, which is purported to be more vandal- and graffiti-resistant, while not a “mural” in the strictest sense, is not without merit with regards to restoring art to public spaces and inspiring an aesthetic awareness in the community.

But people on both sides of the digital image divide have issues with the project on aesthetic and quality grounds.

Unable to decide on the ordinance’s final language, the Planning Commission has postponed the matter until Sept.13. But, the furor over what is a mural, and the possible economic and social implications for the artists and the citizens of L.A., will remain at the forefront of artistic politics in Venice and elsewhere in the city.

VNC Meeting: A Study in Patience and Stamina

By Roger Linnett

Reduced to what amounted to whining, Venice Stakeholders Association President Marc Ryavec continued his rancorous crusade against the unhoused element of Venice at the regular monthly VNC meeting with a motion titled Right of Way Enforcement, based on several L.A. Municipal Codes, the aim of which was to force the unfortunate of our community out of sight, and so out of mind.

Despite the fact that two of the codes cited, LAMC 41.18(d) which states that “No person shall lie, sit or sleep in or upon any street or sidewalk or other public way,” which, because of the Jones v. City of Los Angeles settlement, currently bars the LAPD from enforcing said code between 9 pm and 6 am, and  LAMC 56.11 which states “No person shall leave or permit to remain any merchandise, baggage or any article of personal property upon any parkway or sidewalk,” which, because of the Lavan v. City of Los Angeles settlement, mandates that any personal property seized during an arrest must be secured for 90 days by the LAPD.

In fact, last month’s VNC meeting featured L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, who made specific reference to these two codes and the city’s intention of not incurring further lawsuits.

The other three statutes, LAMC 62.61(b), LAMC 63.44(d) and LAMC 41.18(a), deal with obstructing any right of way except by permit, camping only at designated sites and obstructing or molesting pedestrians.

Citing these Hammurabic fundamentals of civilization, the motion asked “the VNC to call upon the LAPD to consistently enforce the cited laws, while offering referrals to those who may need services or housing.” What was insidiously omitted from that last part was – while handing out tickets.

Councilmember Ira Koslow presented a “substitute motion” that cleaned up the language, omitting some disparaging comments.

Councilmember Ivonne Guzman made a motion to “indefinitely table” the motion, which the council defeated, wanting to settle the matter then and there, and proceeded to public comment and council consideration.

Steve Clare of the Venice Community Housing Corporation said this motion would “make Venice the meanest neighborhood in the meanest city in the country” [with regard to how homeless persons are treated.]

Councilmember Kelley Willis reminded the council that “regardless of housing or not, we are all stakeholders.” And VNC President Linda Lucks declared this would amount to “micromanaging the police.”

In an earlier statement LAPD Pacific Division Capt. John Peters had pointed out that the LAPD was already mandated to “constitutionally enforce” all laws, but also commented that officers had to use discretion in enforcing certain laws.

They then voted on the substitute motion, which was soundly trounced. Then, because of the Rules of Order, they had to vote on the original motion, which suffered an even more ignominious end with a vote of 15 nay, 0 yea and 4 abstentions.

Community Improvement Projects Approved at July VNC Meeting

The VNC yearly sets aside part of its budget from the City of L.A. for use by local groups. The annual Community Improvement Projects for 2012 were presented by the Neighborhood Committee to the full VNC Board, which approved funding for the following projects:

Venice Boys & Girls Club “Sew What” Sewing Club $1,000
826LA Venice Wave Newspaper $1,000
Safe Place For Youth Venice Volunteer Fair $2,000
Westside Global Awareness Magnet Beautification $1,000
Marina Peninsula Neighborhood Ass’n. Doggie Bag Dispensers $2,000
Venice Vintage Motorcycle Club Spring Job Fair $1,000
Walgrove Elementary School Schoolyard Murals $1,000
Brady Walker Venice Surf & Skate Festival $2,000
Venice MoZaic Youth Poetry & Spoken Word $1,075
Venice Community Housing Corp. Centennial Park Improvement $2,000

Defaced Mural to be Restored

By Roger Linnett

Last month the beautiful old mural at the corner of Market and Main St., an iconic depiction of Venice in its heyday a century ago, was the target of a vandal’s spray can.  Unlike the usual, pathetic, garden-variety tagger, this self-loathing punk excreted large, red letters across a span of about thirty feet, nearly covering the mural from end to end and continuing around the corner, defacing more of the mural on the building’s side.

Clinical psychologists say that individuals who express themselves in this way do so in a desperate attempt to silence an incessant inner voice screaming their worthlessness, and definitely indicates an individual with deep-seated feelings of sexual inadequacy as the result of an embarrassing underdevelopment of the genitalia.

Other malignant misanthropes, emboldened by this rape of a public work of art, and probably suffering similar problems, have since added their pathetic scrawlings to this craven exhibition of mental masturbation.

The Oceanview Adult Day Health Center that owns the building is planning to restore the mural as they have after past desecrations of this wonderful public art piece. Someone began the work but has not returned after only one day’s effort. The Oceanview people are eager to have the mural returned to its original condition, and will pay for the work. Any interested muralist should contact the Oceanview administrator Anna Moyseyev at 310-581-6700.

Theater Review: Astral Dick

By Roger Linnett

As Director Hanna Hall writes in the program’s Director’s Note, “Chaos represents the thread in the universe that allows humanity free will. Even though it is wild and unpredictable, it is part of the human condition.”

And from the opening scene of James Mathers New play, when a crazed, ranting woman (Laura Peters) crawls into an oven, in a sort of extreme Sylvia Plath maneuver, you kind of wish your seat had a safety belt because you’re definitely going down the rabbit-hole.

Enter the Homicide Detectives – The Captain (Paul Tei) and his psychic sidekick, the eponymous “Astral Dick”, Lt. Leo Fleck (Marc Hickox), a parapsychological detective, i.e., a medium with a badge, under the recreationally abusive guidance of his captain, to investigate what they ultimately determine, by way of a fluid Abbot and Costello-style repartee, is the work of a serial killer – and that’s one of the more rational scenes.

Hall uses every inch of the compact Electric Lodge stage, accented by perfectly-executed lighting, to create a modernist noir reality upon which this existential mixing of terror and freedom struts and frets, framed by a nondescript hodgepodge of architectural styles and extraneous objects, complementing the sparse, multi-functional set pieces.

The use of wooden orange crates adds a playful, almost childlike, quality to the set.

Occasionally, amateurish Mummenschanz-like figures attempt to surreptitiously deliver to, or take props from, the characters, who continue unfazed, adding another delicious layer to this tiramisu of absurdity.

The use of pre-recorded audio as Lt. Fleck communes with the Captain from his “astral plane,” synchronized to the action on stage, helps draw the audience into the screwball multi-dimensionality of Mathers’ tour de farce.

After the Captain is “killed” at the end of Act I, the intrepid, albeit insipid, Lt. Fleck, wracked by totally over-the-top anguish, vows to find his killer. As he says: “I’m a dick. It’s my job to know things.”

The play is billed as a whodunit, but in the end it doesn’t really seem to matter that the mystery isn’t solved as Fleck’s investigation leads him into a web of sex and religion. One he wants, the other he despises, but at times you can’t tell which.

The subject/object of his investigation/desire is one Marlo Montecarlo (Kaytlin Borgen): “It rhymes and it’s alliterative,” she points out.

Abetted by her conniving, lascivious mother, Bunny (Rachel Robinson), Marlo sets her sights on the tall, dark and handsome, but conflicted Lt. Fleck. Then things get really kinky. (I’d just like to add a personal note to Mr. Mathers – Thanks for undoing years of therapy with that damned Sock Monkey (the late, crispy Laura Peters)).

Fleck’s interrogation of the cult leader Master Jeshu (Dan Lawler) and his sycophantic minions (Skyler Millicano and Jessica Farr) is a glib send-up of every bad cop show or movie you ever saw, and made even zanier by the appearance of their attorney Stan (Jordan Byrne), the best Satan incarnate smarmy lawyer since Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate.

The finale is a Fellini-esque amalgam of bodies, and amid all the craziness is a “message,” but it’s up to each audience member to figure out what that is after they emerge from Mathers’ darkly-wacky world.

Astral Dick will be performed at The Electric Lodge, 1415 Electric Ave., Venice for the next two weekends: May 31 – June 3 and June 7 – 10. Thu., Fri., Sat. evenings at 8p.m. and a Sun. matinee at 3 p.m.

Tickets are $20, and are available at carboncopyproductions.com or at the door.

Cinco de Mayo Pancake Breakfast

Venice’s own Fire Station #63 will hold its annual Pancake Breakfast on Saturday, May 5, from 8 am until noon at the firehouse at Venice Blvd. and Shell Ave., next to Beyond Baroque.

Come and meet Capt. Rex Vilaubi and his intrepid crew, check out the big red fire engines and equipment, tour the station and enjoy breakfast with your neighbors. Great fun for kids young and old!

All the proceeds from the breakfast are used to maintain and upgrade the station house. This is one case where revenues generated in Venice stay in Venice!

Last year Station #63 responded to an average of thirty calls a day in the Venice area, mainly medical emergencies and traffic accidents.

They are always there for us – here’s a tasty way to show your appreciation.

–Roger Linnett

Santa Monica College Students Blind-sided by Campus Police

By Roger Linnett

Santa Monica College has joined the list of places where the police have used pepper spray for crowd control under questionable circumstances. A dubious honor to be sure, SMC joins UC Davis and the original Occupy Wall Street in New York City, where, in the last year, police have callously pepper-sprayed participants.

To be fair, the action of the SMC campus police, unlike the other occasions, was more a reaction to a perceived loss of control than the flagrant and callous brutality exhibited at Davis and Wall Street. But that does not lessen its egregiousness.

Around thirty people, including a four-year-old girl, were doused with the capsaicin-based spray when campus police, reacting to the overflow crowd that gathered at the board’s meeting room that was woefully inadequate to handle the number of students that showed up.

Three needed to be rushed to a local hospital for treatment. The others were treated at the scene with low-pressure water hoses and gallon jugs of milk by Santa Monica Fire Dep’t. crews, summoned to assist the injured.

SMC student Monte Hawkins, one of those sprayed, told the SMC newspaper, The Corsair: “The board knew there would be this many students there. They should have relocated the meeting to a bigger venue.”

On the evening of April 3 the SMC Board of Trustees met in the campus’ Business Building to consider a measure to create a two-tier system for the high-demand requisite classes needed to transfer to four-year institutions. Students massed in the hall outside the meeting room intending to appear before the board to voice their opposition to the measure.

These transfer-requisite classes, which are always the first to be closed, necessitate waiting lists, and leave many desperate students attempting to crash the class on the first day. Most must be turned away, which can mean another semester, possibly a whole year, before they can transfer.

Ironically, SMC’s contention that it’s the country’s  #1 two-year school in transfers to UC and CSU schools, the source of much school pride, and its strongest recruiting tool, is the reason why the dual system had been proposed to begin with.

A common student complaint about the two-tier system is that the very students who attend SMC because of limited resources would not be able to afford the higher per unit fees. So they feel those students who have the money to pay the higher rates have an unfair advantage.

And some advocates for the measure are of the mistaken notion that the measure would actually make the regular classes more accessible, but who in their right mind would pay four times more for a class than necessary.

The state’s budget woes, necessitating drastic cuts in education funding, are the major factor in the board’s search for a way to satisfy the demand for these classes. Decreased funding will raise present credit-unit prices from $36 to $46 next semester, or $138 for the average three-credit class.

The proposed system would raise that to around $189 per unit, or $567 for the same class, which reflects the true cost to the school to offer a course. This subsidizing of these costs has always been understood as an investment the State of California makes to help improve the lives of its citizens, which every study shows results in a many-fold increase in future wages, productivity, standard of living and, ultimately, the tax revenues to the state, that more than justifies the initial cost.

Community colleges, of which SMC, established in 1957, was one of the first in the state, were founded so that those who could not afford, or meet the academic requirements to attend, a four-year college could bolster their academic record, enabling them to go on to earn a college degree, or, now long abandoned, to train for a good job in the trades like the automotive sector.

Associated Students President Harrison Wills told The Corsair that he feared that should ‘Contract Ed’ [as it is commonly known] pass, it would create a precedent for the state to allocate fewer funds for community colleges in the future, “It’s taking away the social equalizer which is open access to the college.”

In a letter to The Corsair board member Rob Rader made the case that the “at cost” rates were still lower than for-profit schools, and because it was widely-acknowledged that state funding would not recover for three to five years, the board faced the choice of either reducing the number of classes available, or figure a way to fund the classes internally by raising tuitions.

Photos of the incident, taken by The Corsair staff, can be seen at www.thecorsaironline.com. The photos apparently are property of Getty Images, which requires licensing fees our esteemed but humble publication refuses to pay.    

Daniel Kaufman – Art at the Speed of Heat

By Roger Linnett

Most art is the result of painstaking effort that can often take weeks or even months to complete. Daniel Kaufman was never the kind of guy who could sit still that long to see the results of his work, which is one of the reasons he took up photography, graduating from Amherst College in 1973 with a degree in fine arts. His photographs soon began appearing in Life and National Geographic and other national magazines.

In 1977 he became the first artist to be awarded a Fulbright Fellowship after inquiring of the Fulbright-Hays Foundation why no artist had ever been recognized by their prestigious organization. Thus he spent a year working in Ireland, producing a beautiful photo essay book titled IRELAND: PRESENCES, published by St. Martin’s Press. While there he also conducted workshops at the National College of Art in Dublin.

Insatiably curious Kaufman turned from photography to more conventional artistic media and created critically acclaimed works in oils, acrylics, gouache and watercolors, but he bridled at, what seemed to him, the torturously slow method of conventional painting, which was a constant irritant to his always amped disposition.

Then one day, while watching his daughter Anastasia trying to melt crayons with a magnifying glass, he had an AHA! moment. Heating a spatula on a stove, he started melting crayons, pressing and smearing them like paint, ecstatic at the immediacy of this simple medium Kaufman says recalls “the smell of childhood”.

Not only did the crayons melt and then harden again in seconds, the melted wax was infinitely manipulable. He could reheat and rework any part of a piece with instantaneous results, giving him a freedom no other medium had allowed, and liberating him to try things other media had discouraged. “I don’t believe you can have fine art without some element of accident, but it’s not totally random,” he says.

A decade or so ago, after some experimentation, Kaufman discovered that applying several layers of gesso to whatever material – wood, flagstone, cement, masonite or canvas – he chose to work on, helped the base coat of wax to adhere, and helped prevent cracking. However, this base coat requires a dozen or more crayons of the same color for each piece.

Kaufman prefers white for this purpose, but since a box of crayons contains only one of each color, he was stymied. At one point he had resorted to using his daughter as a lookout at local drugstores while he changed out the white crayons from every box of Crayolas until he had a box of all whites.

Employing the same savvy that garnered him the Fulbright, he contacted the company that makes Crayolas, Binney & Smith in Easton, Pa., and sent them a sample of his work. Shortly thereafter he was visited by Crayola’s Manager for Inventor Relations and Innovation, who ended up staying three days to document Kaufman’s technique.

A week later a shipment of 20,000 white crayons arrived at his studio with their compliments. Several of his works now hang in the Crayola Factory Museum alongside Picasso and other famous artists who had created works of art using Crayolas.

Kaufman discovered better, faster methods of melting and working the hot wax, taking his art to a whole new level, and allowing him ever more freedom in its manipulation and the ability to create finished pieces in a remarkably short time.

Kaufman’s unique abtracts, what one art critic called “molten cloisonné,” have been exhibited in shows all across the country, where, despite commanding handsome prices, they have been eagerly snapped up by art collectors. He is currently represented by the Robert Berman Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, where his 2007 exhibition “Encaustic Perceptions” won citywide acclaim.

Kaufman recently completed two works commissioned by Binney & Smith for Oprah Winfrey based on two colors she liked so much she bought the rights to. One, of course, is purple – special shade dubbed “The Color Purple”, which he used for a piece called “Beauty In Motion” and the other called “Baby Grass Green”, for a piece he calls “Baby Grass Green Fairytale”. The two pieces, each 30” x 40”, complement each other beautifully.

Kaufman has donated one of his captivating pieces to the silent auction at this month’s Venice Family Clinic’s Art Walk. Be sure to make a point of seeing this unique work by one of Venice’s true artistic treasures.

What is Encaustic Painting?

 

The use of wax to create art, called encaustic painting, is one of the world’s oldest art forms. The earliest encaustic painting was done by the Ancient Greeks, and its name is derived from the Greek word “enkaustikos”, meaning “to burn in”. Greek artists used wax paint to adorn sculptures, murals, boats and architecture.

The Greeks introduced it to the Egyptians, who among other things, created portraits they affixed to the heads of mummies, which can still be seen today in museums. The encaustic portraits retain almost all of their original color and have remarkably little cracking or discoloration despite being over 2,000 years old.

And beautifully preserved encaustic wall murals, which somehow survived the hot volcanic ash and gases, were discovered during the excavation of the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

Metro Bus #733 Adds Stop at Abbot Kinney and Venice Blvds.

By Roger Linnett

When the Metro Rapid #733 bus line began last year it stopped at the corner of Venice Blvd. and Venice Way as did the Local #33. Then last fall the powers that be at the MTA decided to discontinue that stop for the #733. The result was that the #733 went from the Circle to Lincoln and Venice Blvds. without stopping in between, although the #33 continued to stop at both Venice Way and Abbot Kinney. However, only one of three buses that passed those intersections was a #33, causing riders to wait considerably longer.

This comes on the heels of the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus discontinuation of the #2 line in Venice and its partial replacement by the extension the #1 line. This reduced service through the heart of Venice to once each half hour. A lot of employees on Abbot Kinney Blvd. and local residents, who rely on public transportation, were forced to either wait an inordinate amount of time or walk to Lincoln for the #3 Blue Bus, or to the Circle to catch the #733.

Now, in their infinite, albeit glacial, wisdom the Metro powers have added a stop for the #733 at this major crossroads of our community. Since they rarely get an “Atta boy”, let the MTA know you appreciate their correcting this slight to Venetians at customerrelations@metro.net.