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Artbound Season 3 Episode 4

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Artbound's fourth episode brings one-of-a-kind arts and culture stories that celebrate the creative spirit of Southern California. Culled from Artbound articles selected by our audience, these documentary segments include:

Under the Green Moon

Detail of one of Turounet's site-specific installations on the U.S.-Mexican Border. | Photo: © 2012 Paul Turounet.

Paul Turounet is a photographer whose site-specific photographic retablo-like portraits explore the various migrants in found traveling along the U.S.-Mexico Border, especially in areas shared by Mexico, California and Arizona using a technique harkening to the 19th-century tintype effigies of the deceased found among the headstones and above ground caskets in many Mexican and Hispanic cemeteries.


Preserving the Watts Towers

Deemed outsider art, folk art, and other similarly nondescript and fluid labels, the Watts Towers do not necessarily fit the bill for a standard definition or understanding of art. But no matter what they are called, the Towers remain a cultural jewel of Los Angeles. And within the cracks and structure of these Towers lies an unfolding story and scientific mystery of sorts. Due to its unconventional construction, new scientific methods are being used to repair and stabilize the Watts Towers.


Gary Baseman and Me

Gary Baseman's mid-career retrospective "The Door is Always Open" examines a long and varied career while focusing on his family. It is a love letter to the Fairfax district in LA and takes a deep look at Gary's recent discovery of his family's past and the legacy of Jewish history in Eastern Europe.


Getting Lost in the High Desert

Diane Best personifies the creative spirit found throughout the High Desert, but especially in Joshua Tree proper. She has been a vital multi-talented creative force here of years now. Artbound explores her practice, from landscape paintings to immersive video art installations.


Best Coast

Best Coast

It's been said that California isn't a place, that it's a philosophy, a way of life that you hold in your heart whether you live here or not. The music of Best Coast is a postcard to our state, tipping a hat to the Beach Boys and Laurel Canyon girls, to Orange County punk and that old-school Bakersfield twang.

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An 8mm film still "The Kitchen" (1975) by Alile Sharon Larkin. The still features an image of a young Black woman being escorted by two individuals in white coats. The image is a purple monochrome.

8 Essential Project One Films From the L.A. Rebellion Film Movement

For years, Project One films have been a rite of passage for aspiring filmmakers at UCLA's School of Theater, Film and Television. Here are eight Project One pieces born out of the L.A. Rebellion film movement from notable filmmakers like Ben Caldwell, Jacqueline Frazier and Haile Gerima.
A 2-by-3 grid of Razorcake zine front covers.

Last Punks in Print: Razorcake Has Been the Platform for Punks of Color For Over Two Decades

While many quintessential L.A. punk zines like "Flipside," "HeartattaCk," and "Profane Existence" have folded or only exist in the digital space, "Razorcake" stands as one of the lone print survivors and a decades-long beacon for people — and punks — of color.
Estevan Escobedo is wearing a navy blue long sleeve button up shirt, a silk blue tie around his neck, a large wide-brim hat on his head, and brown cowboy pants as he twirls a lasso around his body. Various musicians playing string instruments and trumpets stand behind him, performing.

The Art of the Rope: How This Charro Completo is Preserving Trick Roping in the United States

Esteban Escobedo is one of only a handful of professional floreadores — Mexican trick ropers — in the United States, and one of a few instructors of the technical expression performing floreo de reata (also known as floreo de soga "making flowers with a rope"), an art form in itself and one of Mexico's longest standing traditions.