Friday, August 26th at 8 p.m.
Pre-Service Reception: 7 – 8 p.m.
RSVP required for reception: 323-658-9100

Capers Funnye, a cousin of Michelle Obama, is the chief rabbi of the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, one of the largest African-American synagogues in America.

Rabbi Funnye earned a Bachelor of Arts in Hebrew Literature and rabbinic ordination from the Israelite Board of Rabbis, Inc., Queens, NY. He also earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Jewish Studies and Master of Science in Human Service Administration from Spertus Institute of Judaica, Chicago, IL.

Rabbi Funnye is married and he and his wife Mary have four children and are the proud grandparents of seven grandsons and two granddaughters.

Also appearing with Rabbi Funnye are the Mendes Brothers.

Date: Sunday 8/28/11

This festive day features 24 free mini-classes and panel discussions in creative writing and screenwriting, hosted by fall Writers’ Program instructors. Students get free writing instruction, chat with instructors, register for most fall courses at a 10 percent discount, learn more about the Writers’ Program, discuss goals with advisors, and visit with graduate writing programs, community and professional organizations, and writing-allied businesses. The event will be held in the Young Hall Courtyard on the UCLA campus.

Lisa Doctor will be on the panel, “Creating Compelling Fictional Characters.” 11am – 11:40am. Boulter, 3400.

Beginning Monday, October 3rd (7 PM – 10 PM) for 10 weeks

Course # X466.16 Registration # W6917
Before You Begin the Novel: An Exploration of Character and Story
Facing the blank page can be an intimidating experience. What is the universal theme you’re trying to communicate? What does the protagonist really want? In this workshop, you create a personalized “encyclopedia” of material to use as a reference when writing the novel. Through individualized exercises tailored to each writer in the room, you explore the protagonist’s history, fears, and desires, as well as his or her relationship to the antagonist. You identify the larger theme that draws you to this particular story, a basic outline of the beginning, middle, and end, and the emotional arc of the protagonist. By the end of the workshop, you have in your arsenal many important elements to get you started so that the blank page remains blank no more. This course is open to writers of all levels who are eager to begin writing their novel.

To enroll online: www.uclaextension.edu

By phone:
(310)825-9971
(818) 784-7006

By mail:
UCLA Extension
P.O. Box 24901
Department K
Los Angeles, CA 90024-0901

Week of September 25-30, 2011

Lisa Doctor

The characters we create can and will evolve from caricatures into real people if we allow them to speak in their own voices without interference. But how do our characters turn into dynamic beings? How do they find their own truths?

Through a series of writing exercises and discussion, we will create the profile of a character and then allow him or her to answer challenging questions designed to reveal hidden truths. Each prompt will be chosen specifically for the character; no two characters will receive the same questions. As the week progresses, these emerging people will open up about that which haunts and thrills them. They will explore their personal histories, their concerns about aging, their longings, disappointments, and uncertainties. We will ask them to speak freely about old wounds and their compassion for others. They will tell us what used to be important to them but no longer is. By the end of the week the character each writer has created will have begun to emerge into a separate being with an authentic voice and a distinct identity.

This workshop is designed for writers of every level, including beginners, who are seeking a group writing experience in a safe and nurturing environment. The method used is particularly effective for those wishing to begin or are in the midst of writing a novel, memoir, short story, screenplay, or stage play, where a richly drawn character takes center stage.

Reservations Information (Accommodations & Pricing)

www.Esalen.org

JUDY ZEIDLER is a well-known food authority and author of the widely acclaimed The Gourmet Jewish Cook and Judy Zeidler’s International Deli Cookbook, 30-Minute Kosher Cook andMaster Chefs Cook Kosher, which is based on her syndicated television show “Judy’s Kitchen”.

She has also co-authored a cookbook with French chef Michel Richard, “Home Cooking with a French Accent”.

She and her husband are founders of the popular Citrus restaurant in Los Angeles and the Broadway Deli and Capo and Cora’s restaurants in Santa Monica, California, Brentwood Restaurant in Brentwood, California, and recently opened, Brass Cap in Santa Monica. She is also consulting at the Zeidler’s Cafe, which is located in the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Los Angeles readers look forward to Ms Zeidler’s Jewish holiday articles which appear in the Los Angeles Times and the Jewish Journal. Her Potato Latke recipe has won a Los Angeles Times Best Recipe Award. She is often a guest on national television and radio programs and is on the board of several food and wine societies.

She and her husband spend several months in Italy and France, each year, visiting restaurants, food and wine purveyors, and collecting new recipe ideas and food inspirations. She is currently working on a cookbook based on her adventures in Italy.

Ms. Zeidler believes that the shared enjoyment of food and wine is one of the most fulfilling elements in life and that cooking and entertaining should be fun. Through her cooking classes she thrives to inspire her students to cook and entertain at home. She is never too busy to open her kitchen, and to donate cooking classes to benefit charitable organizations.

Judy Zeidler can be reached at judy at mostardapress dot com

[SINGLEEVENT single_event_id="wpn-meeting-9-12-11"]

Check out the list of registered attendees to see who’s coming!

Saturday, August 06, 2011 at 8:00 PM
Orpheum Theater
842 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90014
Phone: (332) 730-1102

CATS for Cats – a celebrity concert version of the musical CATS will held at downtown Los Angeles at the historic Orpheum Theater August 6th. The show will feature a number of celebrities (sans cat costumes) singing the hit Broadway songs and performing Eliot’s poems. The premise of the show is based on TS Eliot as he writes the letters/poems to his Godchildren that will become the book OLD POSSUM’S BOOK OF PRACTICAL CATS and later much the Broadway musical. 0ur musical director, is Broadway’s Phil Reno (ELF, THE PRODUCERS, PROMISES, PROMISES, THE DROWSY CHAPERONE and yes, even CATS)!

All of the proceeds for the event are going to Kitty Bungalow: Charm School for Wayward Cats, a 501c3 nonprofit, dedicated to the humane treatment, socialization, adoption and TNR of feral cats, to procure a larger permanent location for their rescue facility and expand their programming. Kitty Bungalow focuses their outreach efforts on responsibility pet ownership, spay neuter and TNR in the often neglected South LA area. www.kittybungalow.org

Confirmed celebs so far are: James Cromwell, Hunter Parrish, Peter Gallagher, Mandy Moore, Chyler Leigh, Fred Willard, Anna Gunn, Kevin Nealon, “So You Think You Can Dance” Dancers and more for this star studded upbeat event. A fabulous cause rolled up in furry karma!

Los Angeles County Walk
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Santa Monica City Hall

The ALS Association symbolizes the hopes of people everywhere that Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis will one day be a disease of the past relegated to historical status, studied in medical textbooks, conquered by the dedication of thousands who have worked ceaselessly to understand and eradicate this perplexing killer.

Until that day comes, The ALS Association relentlessly pursues its mission to help people living with ALS and to leave no stone unturned in search for the cure of the progressive neurodegenerative disease that took the life and name of Baseball Legend Lou Gehrig.

As the only not-for-profit voluntary health agency dedicated solely to the fight against ALS, we direct the largest privately-funded research enterprise engaged to uncover the mystery of a disease that affects as many as 30,000 annually. With more than 5,600 people diagnosed each year an average of 15 new cases each day our mission is urgent. The search for answers knows no bounds.

The ALS Association’s far-reaching efforts extend to Capitol Hill and some of the world’s finest research laboratories. Over the last decade, we have committed close to $48 million to ALS research. We’ve brought the ALS community the historic Medicare waiver of the 24-month waiting period and a 100% increase in funding since our advocacy campaign began.

But nowhere does this battle reach deepest than in our work with ALS patients and their families. We embrace thousands of those stricken with the disease with the world’s most comprehensive program of care and services. Our network of 39 chapters coordinates services with care and compassion making a difference in the lives of people with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Our hallmark of quality is exemplified in centers and clinics that deliver advanced care and meet The ALS Association’s rigorous criteria for certification.

Our accomplishments are made possible by the generosity of others. From the smallest donation to the largest gift, donors touch the ALS community with hope for the future. This terrible disease knows no racial, ethnic or socioeconomic boundaries. It can strike anyone at any time.

Despite the mysterious nature of ALS, breathtaking advances in science, medicine and technology are shaping a future of unparalleled hope for those with ALS. The ALS Association is at the forefront in this new world, encouraging young scientists to combine new thinking with these advances to unlock the mysteries of ALS to push the envelope in therapy and scientific research.

The ALS Association is waging the war against this killer 24/7. Every 90 minutes, an American dies of ALS. Time isn’t on the side of those afflicted.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
YVETTE GELLIS: EPHEMERA GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY
July 23 – August 27, 2011 Opening Reception: July 23, 2011, 6 – 8 pm

(Beverly Hills—July 2011) Ephemera is a series of large paintings by artist Yvette Gellis that appears abstract at first viewing but, upon closer examination, reveals discernible fragments of representation. Perhaps Gellis explains it best herself: ―the work teeters back and forth between the ambiguity of abstraction and the restraints of representation.‖ GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY now represents Yvette Gellis. Ephemera will be on view at the gallery’s Beverly Hills space, July 23 – August 27, 2011.

Gellis’ painting process begins as a gestural dialogue with particular homes and buildings near her 18th Street Arts Center studio, which she will often document in various states of destruction or decay. As Gellis liberally and deftly applies paint in a series of wide, muscular swaths offset by delicate calligraphic swipes, an impending sense of abstraction emerges. Vantage points are obscured, compositional liberty is taken, angles are askew, and ultimately, what began as a quasi- representational rendering is transformed into a phenomenological, psychological, or even a spiritual response.

There is an emotional charge to Gellis’ work. Her first major exhibition (a 2008 solo exhibition at LA’s impactful Kim Light Gallery) garnered critical praise in Art in America for its, ―lively repartee between the illusion of deep, infinite space and the immediate surface pleasure of energetic abstract painting.‖1 She was chosen in 2009 by artist Lita Albuquerque to participate in the group exhibition In Bed Together at ROYAL/T, with Albuquerque writing that in viewing Gellis’ work she finds herself, ―engaged in Theatre, where perception directs movement, an exchange of energy between the viewer and the performance of paint.‖2 She will also have a solo exhibition at Brunnhofer Galerie, Austria, in September 2011.

Gellis’ work invokes elements of the schools that came before her—Light and Space artists James Turrell and Robert Irwin in their push to explore perceptual phenomena; AbEx’s unremitting return to the ―mark‖; and the Hudson River School’s romanticism—yet there is no single word or movement that can encompass the work.

The artist likens her work to an event, a situational explication of the sublime, or as she prefers to quote philosopher Edmund Burke, ―tranquility tinged with terror.‖3 In recent projects—including her 2009 Violet Jolt sculptural installation at Stuyvesant and 9th outside of New York University—the event aspect is indeed clearly present in Gellis’ work, compelling the passerby to experience and engage the artist’s ―mark‖ in three dimensions. Yet the paintings in Ephemera are a return, and more importantly, an expansion of something much more essential to the artist—paint.

Holding a Master of Fine Arts degree from Claremont Graduate University, Gellis has both an exceptional vision and imagination, and the breadth of technical skill necessary to bring it to life. For all her creative capacity however, Gellis’ work is ultimately about the act of painting itself—about forgetting everything and allowing the work to take on a life of its own.

END NOTES
1. Constance Mallinson, Art in America (November 2008), pp 201-202
2. Lita Albuquerque on the occasion of the exhibition In Bed Together at ROYAL/T in Culver City, CA (2009-2010)
3. Edmund Burke, from ―A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” (1757)
Breaking Point; Interior, 2011, oil, acrylic, pencil on canvas, 66″ x 102″

WHAT
Ephemera – Large Paintings by Yvette Gellis

WHEN
Opening Reception: July 23, 2011, 6 – 8 pm
Exhibition: July 23 – August 27, 2011
Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm, or by appointment

WHERE
GARBOUSHIAN GALLERY
427 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310) 274-5205
www.garboushian.com

PRESS CONTACT
Brent Turner
the Campbells [ideas + communications for contemporary culture]
(323) 300-6132
brent@thecampbellspr.com

[SINGLEEVENT single_event_id="wpn-meeting-8-1-11"]

Check out the list of registered attendees to see who’s coming!