{"id":40518,"date":"2013-04-24T11:50:53","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T15:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=40518"},"modified":"2019-03-10T13:48:16","modified_gmt":"2019-03-10T17:48:16","slug":"filming-james-griffiths-tar-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=40518","title":{"rendered":"Filming James Griffith&#8217;s Tar Paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just voted for tar, and I know you want to as well, which is why I&#8217;m making it easy.  Click, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/arts\/artbound\/vote\/vote-boyle-heights-radio-sombra-vs-tar-paintings-james-griffith.html\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a> and it&#8217;s done.<\/p>\n<p>Your reward?  Should James win the vote, our reward is getting the full story of the genesis of the tar paintings in a short documentary to be made by the Los Angeles public television station <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/arts\/artbound\/counties\/los-angeles\/james-griffiths-tar-paintings.html\">KCET<\/a>.  (And maybe we can twist James&#8217; arm for an invite for all of us to their summer concert series held at the <a href=\"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=7006\">Folly Bowl.<\/a>  I forget how many it holds.)<\/p>\n<p>Five years ago artist <a href=\"http:\/\/jamesgriffithpainting.com\/\">James Griffith<\/a> uncovered the answer to a mystery at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tarpits.org\/\">La Brea Tar Pits<\/a> that we&#8217;ve all  pondered since schoolchildren visits to the site &#8212; just how exciting are the social lives of paleontologists working among the saber-toothed tiger  bones on Wilshire Boulevard?  And the answer turns out to be not very. Lonely and isolated in their workspace beneath the auto-infested environs of Wilshire Boulevard where it intersects the Tar Pits, these hard-working scientists responded to a knock on their lab door and an improbable request for a bucket of tar with surprising alacrity.  Aside from being starved for human interaction, that&#8217;s also due to the fact that the request was made by James Griffith, who could charm a mastodon out of its tusks.  As interested in science as art, James instantly made co-conspirators of the scientists in his new project, his &#8220;tar&#8221; paintings, which I&#8217;ve posted about before <a href=\"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=34316\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=37451\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8221;<em>When I thought of tar as a material, I loved it because on one hand it is this primordial goo. At the same time, it&#8217;s at the heart of the whole environmental problem. It has a contemporary quality and but also an incredibly ancient timeline quality. I just love that<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The search for the proper fixatives, the furtive trips back to the scientists&#8217; lair for more tar, the first paintings taking form and clinging to the canvas, I&#8217;d love to see this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/arts\/artbound\/vote\/vote-boyle-heights-radio-sombra-vs-tar-paintings-james-griffith.html\">story<\/a> and work filmed.  This tar artist needs your <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/arts\/artbound\/vote\/vote-boyle-heights-radio-sombra-vs-tar-paintings-james-griffith.html\"><strong>vote<\/strong><\/a> now.  Voting closes Monday, April 29, 2013.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i52.photobucket.com\/albums\/g23\/botanizeme\/april2013\/NaturalSelectionTaronCanvas36x282012-1.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\" photo NaturalSelectionTaronCanvas36x282012-1.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Did I mention you can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kcet.org\/arts\/artbound\/vote\/vote-boyle-heights-radio-sombra-vs-tar-paintings-james-griffith.html\">vote<\/a> here?  Click, click&#8230;(vote for tar &#8212; pass it on!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just voted for tar, and I know you want to as well, which is why I&#8217;m making it easy. Click, click here and it&#8217;s done. Your reward? Should James win the vote, our reward is getting the full story &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=40518\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2628,1897],"tags":[186,2772,2404,2771],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-axw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40518"}],"version-history":[{"count":38,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89786,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40518\/revisions\/89786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}