La Luz de Jesus on YouTube!

We've launched the La Luz de Jesus YouTube site!

Our first video is an interview and show statement from artist Danni Shinya Luo regarding her upcoming show, "Spiritual Deficiencies." The show runs February 5 - 28, 2010 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery, with an opening reception on Friday, February 5th, from 8-11 PM. Hers is one of four featured exhibitions that also include Kim Scott, Miran Kim and Transmission Atelier. Those shows are titled, "Peepholes and Magic Boxes," "Uncomplicated Treats," and "If the Shadows Could March," respectively.

We're continuing our website redesign over the next few weeks as we combine galleries, so check in here for updates. You can subscribe via RSS with Google Friend Connect by clicking the appropriate icon at top right.

In case you missed it, the Mark Todd "Juggernaut" show at Billy Shire Fine Arts got covered by USA Today. The resultant feedback has been amazing for both his and Owen Smith's "Long Gone." Mark's deconstruction of the comic book medium has never been more timely. In many ways, it's the perfect precedent to Dave McKean's New Works Inspired by Early Cinema, which opens on February 13th, as the final exhibition at BSFA. We're flying Dave to Los Angeles from England to sign books at Soap Plant / Wacko / La Luz de Jesus on Friday, February 12th and he'll attend his opening reception the following evening. A preview is in the works for Nitrate and Kinogeists. You'll know about it here first...

Welcome! Group Show submission deadline this week!

Welcome to Artofficial, the new La Luz de Jesus Gallery Blog!

2010 is a rebirth for La Luz de Jesus, and we've completely redesigned the website to reflect the changes we've got planned.

The biggest news of the year was our announcement to close our Culver City gallery, Billy Shire Fine Arts, and to rebuild our Silverlake complex into a more dedicated gallery space. The construction on the new, partially enclosed La Luz de Jesus begins in March, and immediately following the Kitsch 'N Sync group show, we'll be hosting the first BSFA show in the new space. BSFA will be dead, but long live the new La Luz!

The grand reopening will feature Max Grundy and Dennis Larkins in the front gallery and Scott Hove in the newly constructed rear gallery. There will be side entrance access on Rodney, and the rear gallery will be completely enclosed. The separation between the Soap Plant & Wacko retail spaces and the two gallery rooms will be vastly more pronounced. There will be a clear aesthetic difference between the shop and the exhibitions -without sacrificing the eclectic energy of either, but gallery visitors who don't wish to visit the storefront will be able to enter and exit the gallery without stepping foot in the shop. Shopgoers will still be able to access the gallery however, allowing a higher volume of visitors, and insuring that more sets of eyes have access to the exhibitions. Not having to split my time between two galleries will mean that there will be a gallery director in the gallery 90% of the time. The shorter commute is a personal triumph, and being able to access all documents and emails on a single computer (without having to constantly run back and forth between Silverlake and Culver City) will increase my quality of life a thousand fold. The benefit to our roster of artists will be having their work on display in a gallery that is opened seven days a week, in a destination shopping neighborhood, and with a happy and less road-weary gallery director representing their work. La Luz de Jesus was founded on the ideal of "art by the people, for the people" and now I'll be more accessible than ever.

Which reminds me: the deadline for submissions to this year's Everything But the Kitsch 'N Sync group show are due on January 22nd, which is this Friday. So please email your jpegs soon! Be sure to include your name, the title of the art work, the medium used to create it, the dimensions and the proposed retail price. Billy and I will be jurying your submissions next week, and I'll be emailing the acceptance letters the following week. Remember that our focus is figurative and narrative, and we don't accept photography or digitally created art nor do we showcase abstract art.

Send those submissions (up to seven images) to info@laluzdejesus.com. Subject line should read: Group Show Submission. Please make those jpegs low res (72dpi should be fine). If that doesn't capture the intricacies of your full piece, you can include a detail image jpeg, but please don't send huge files that will crash my email server. If you do that, even if I love your art, I probably won't be thanking you for emailing it to me.

Thanks, and welcome to my blog!

Matt Kennedy, gallery director
La Luz de Jesus
4633 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90027
(323) 666-7667
info@laluzdejesus.com