It seems that artist and photographer Daniel J. Martinez, my co-director on the holographic exhibition The Peoples of Los Angeles is going to get some well-deserved attention.  A grad student is writing his dissertation about him.  One of my grad students is doing reseach on women in border art, so I thought that it was a good moment to discuss collaborations.

Lisa Melandri, who used to work in Santa Monica, is going to St. Louis.  While there, I am sure that she will hear about the Kemper family.  Julianne Kemper Gilliam funded many of the projects that Martinez and I did in LA, including The Peoples of Los Angeles.  This exhibition was located at the Atelier Gallery in Santa Monica Place during the 1984 Olympics.  We had the opportunity to work with physicist and holographer Lloyd Cross and holographer Sharon McCormack.  The show consisted of nine holographic portraits shot on location.  The audience listened to texts/stories shared by the subjects of the holograms.  These were translated into nine languages.  The sound installation was composed by Mark Deutrom.  Abbe Don and I created an information wall about holography.

Since the catalog for this holographic exhibition (which as a 3-D image on the cover) is hard to get, and since some of the people who helped us are connected to LA art history (and that history is undergoing a bifurcation at MOCA), I have decided to share some history.  Two big names helped us,  Stanley Grinstein and Merry Norris.  Stanley Grinstein served as a project consultant.  We set up a nonprofit organization, Werkplace.  We served as board members along with Julianne Kemper Gilliam and Merry Norris.  MIchael Holzman and Marti Scott were also board members.

Cognizant of how women rarely get credit in the art world, here are some women who participated, in addition to Sharon MacCormack.  Diane Gamboa was a subject of one of the holgraphic portraits.  Lori Black was a subject of a test portrait.  Marie de Alcuaz Kish was the USC Fischer Art Gallery curator.  Ida Foreman was a consultant.  My aunt, Barbara Moskowitz, provided some support.  Next blog, I'll mention the men, but for now the women:  Rita Cortini, Vicki Kechekian, Audrey Yen-hui Li, Andrea Wellinghoff and Edda Zimmerman served as translators.  The voices used to read the translations were provided by the following speakers:  Audrey Yen-hui Li and Rita Cortini.  Mary Smith and Yuh Lan were subjects of the portraits.

Now for how this art and technology is linked to the history of punk.  Lori Black played bass for the band Melvyns as did Mark Deutrom.  Lori Black knew Exene, and that connection leads to Lydia Lunch.  Daniel J. Martinez was a photographer for Black Flag.  Be patient LA readers.  You already know the rest, but others may not.  Greg Ginn is the brother of Raymond Pettibon.  Pettibon has a link to Rosamund Felsen Gallery.  That gallery represented Man Ray.  Man Ray and his wife Juliet were friends of Mary Wescher, and Mary Wescher was a close friend of Julieanne Kemper Gilliam.  Back to punk history.  Here's the trajectory:  Black Flag, Keith Morris-Off-Mario Rubalcaba, John Reis, Rocket from the Crypt, Beehive and the Barracudas, Dustin Millsap.  Dustin played at a punk/underground hip hop event that I put together on the San Diego State campus in the mid-2000s. 

How is this all linked to The Vex?  Here's the  Chicana/o punk  trajectory:  Diane Gamboa, Marisela Norte, The Vex.

If none of these names are familiar, here's another link.  Cindy Sherman and the Rosamund Felsen Gallery.  In my next blog about the history of The Peoples of Los Angeles, I'll mention more about what the male participants did.  I forgot to add my own contribution.  I was a post-doc at USC.  Michael Holzman, with whom I had attended grad school at UCSD, got me that position.  Daniel and I met with him and slowly, things fell into place.  In addition to co-directing (raising money, endless meetings,designing, planning, implementing, making drawings, etc.), testing the holographic cart and learning everything I could about holography,  I edited the cine films with Martinez (old school, with tape)  and edited the catalog (which included essays by Noel Korten, John Brumfield and Joan Hugo.  I am currently collaborating with a geophysicist at Scripps, UC San Diego.  We are testing models that came out of my work on The Peoples of Los Angeles and we are using agent-based modelling and tools from complexity science.