Wow, last night turned into a night chock full of awesome.
Starting with a delicious dinner at my favorite vegan restaurant (yes, I have a favorite vegan restaurant) Native Foods, we popped over to check out the Jophen Stein show. Loved the art, said hi to my hair dresser, and snickered at some art douchebags. Here are a few couple of our favorite pieces there (though it occurs to me that we didn't get any pics of the "5 Deadly Senses" pieces for which the show was named).
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We didn't stick around for very long at The Box, though. First off, I was curious if The Artery, across the street, was open. Secondly, I had learned the day before that Michael Pukac would be in Santa Ana doing a live painting (more on that later). So we headed across to The Artery which was indeed open and was also having a show opening reception. Yay free wine!
There were several great pieces there. Jeff Gillette had some awesome pieces that were relevant to our interests:
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But immediately catching our eye when we walked in was the work of Alex Chiu. Adorable little monster paintings. We liked them so much...we bought one! Our first ever original art purchase. It helped that the most expensive piece he was selling was $50 framed
After purchasing we chatted with the artist. He wants to be a comic artist and is turning out these little monster drawing just to get something going. He's like his own little sweatshop apparently, he says he can do about 10 of these guys a day! Anyway, say hello to
Seven Eyed Meatball Man, on display at The Artery in Costa Mesa until Nov 1, after which you can come see it at our place
(heehee, his arms are wiggling!)
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The artist
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So, fresh off our purchase we were definitely in the mood for more art. I looked up the email about the Michael Pukac show and realized that it was actually for a monthly art walk in Santa Ana. Who knew! Located in a series of lofts with commercial/garage space on ground floor, we spent the next couple of hours wandering dozens of little galleries. Unfortunately it seemed like we were too late to have seen Pukac doing his live painting, but no matter, lots of great stuff to see along with free candy, wine, and beer. Hooray! And now that we know this exists, the 3rd Saturday of every month is now booked for us