Author Archives: craft captain

This Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 from 9pm to midnight, at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!
Project: MONSTERS!!!
$2 processing fee, please

Your Craft Captain is out of town this week officiating a wedding in the Big Apple, and in my place for this Wednesday will be two new Craft Lieutenants: Mike Che and Adrian Avila! These are the first two-fisted, red-blooded MEN running the craft table this week, they are devastatingly handsome, viral, macho and well… crafty. Please come in and see for yourself how the masculine mystique adds a robust and brawny energy to the Craft Table!
And what are we making this week?
We’re going to help you make MONSTERS out of fabric and assorted bits of this and that, some fur, some googly eyes, some yarn… if you aren’t sure what kind of monster to make, we’ll have some sort of schematic available to help guide you in the process.

So come on in and check out the new hunky CraftNight Lieutenants and the MONSTER festivities!
MONSTERS! ROWR! SNORT!

See you at the Craft Table!

JP Craft Captain

www.crafthead.com

www.akbarsilverlake.com

This Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 from 9pm til midnight at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!

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It’s Christmas at CraftNight! Mr. Matt Dunnerstick, writer and director of his movie, which starts shooting on the 13th of September, needs CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS! LOTS OF THEM! Come make one or two or three or twelve, and loan them to the movie, and get them back in time for the actual Christmas holiday!

Here’s the synopsis for Matt’s Movie:

With the help of a genius amateur scientist, Preachers Paul Sr and Paul Jr convince a girl in their parish, Mary, to get pregnant with the second coming of Christ. They believe when the baby is born the world will end. She conceives and bears the child, but when Jesus is born a little different than the priests had planned, they drop her and move onto other girls. Mary becomes a nervous wreck and breaks down. She heads to the desert for answers and there finds inner peace. She returns to Los Angeles and organizes a populist uprising. Throughout the story, Mary is helped by her friend Joe, an African American lowrider mechanic. Lowrider automobiles are a featured part of the film and appear throughout.

As you can see, it’s a very reverent and traditional story, nothing too crazy or flashy.

We’ll have a smattering of ornaments crying out for your signature style, we’ll have all the opulence, shimmer and twinkle needed to make enough for a veritable FOREST of Christmas trees. So yeah, when it’s HOT OUT, do what everyone does in LA when it’s hot: make Christmas ornaments!!! And then we’ll watch the movie when it comes out and you’ll say to friends and colleagues “That’s my ornament, oh yes it is.” Just don’t forget all the little people when the talent agents start calling, and the paparrazzi begin documenting your every step and publishers want to option you for the book. We’ve had enough trouble with that already.

See you at the Craft Table!

JP Craft Captain

www.crafthead.com

www.akbarsilverlake.com

PS- Did you miss the TIMESTAMP opening? I’ll be in the gallery Sept. 18th from 6 – 10pm, kind of like a little “Closing Ceremony!” Come and see me! Last Chance, as the show goes down on the 20th.

This Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 from 9pm til’ midnight at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!

Project: Peculiar Mini Statuettes!

$2 Processing fee, please

My oh my, the Olympics are now over, and so is Sunset Junction!

Due to blazingly hot temperatures, which gives one flair for the dramatic, we now present the CraftNight Bulletin in Iambic Pentameter, with an economy of no more than 5 iambs per line! Yay!

To paint the plaster creatures, is a quest
And in the hour of nine when we begin
At Akbar where to drink is not a sin
for crafters captivated it’s no jest

Arrive, escape the hot and broiling sun
Though many say that crafts are for the nerds,
We’ve monkeys faeries cats and bears and birds
Why there’s a figurine for everyone!

Sip from your flagon grand a cosmo fine
Brushes drunk with color will paint fancy
Evening music will make you feel dancy
A tiny statue thither shall be thine

See you at the craft table, and DON’T FORGET: The TIME STAMP SHOW is up and running until September 20th, go see it, write a postcard in the “Cozy Art Rumpus Room” and send it to someone special!

JP Craft Captain

www.crafthead.com

www.akbarsilverlake.com

This Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 from 9pm to midnight at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!

Project: Popsicle Stick Freeform

$2 processing fee, please

Tonight we’ll celebrate the lowly popsicle stick.
Usually it helps you snack on a frozen confection. TONIGHT it becomes googly-eye puppets, log cabins, godseye holders, frames, trivets, whatever you can think of, by golly!
Very freeform, very suave and always chic, and for less than a gallon of gas!

“Oh but I’m not very crafty.”
Oh my goodness go the sighs and moans, the exasperated dirge from my solar plexus, as I drag you across the floor to the supplies already.

CraftNight has nothing to do with you being crafty, and everything to do with the ceasing of fretting and the beginning of making.

Touch just about anything near you right now. The overwhelming odds are that it was most probably built by robots, grown by others, sewn and assembled by nimble hands very far away, fabricated in factories, farms and laboratories.

The source of how things come to be escapes us.

We are so removed, so modern and adrift, the origins of our everyday items go unnoticed, unappreciated and unknown.
In this day and age, a thing built by you (and not “the man”) is not only unique, but rare and precious… dare I say even a form of activism!

How many people can say that they made something today?
Go ahead, tell me your popsicle stick sculpture doesn’t look the way you visualized it, tell me how it looks crooked or off-putting or weird, tell me of your new creation’s imperfections.
“Screw-ups” are perfection in disguise.
No urban movie billboard, studio-recorded top 40 schlock or glossy airbrushed centerfold pin-up is going to agree with me, they will refute your ill-attempts at creation and whisper in snarky voices “You’re doing it wrong.”

Well I gotta tell you, person reading this e-mail, beautiful, captivating foxy person,
that you are doing it RIGHT at CraftNight.

Arrive, get a cocktail, glue some sticks together and become one who takes a moment to understand the joys and agonies of the construction of things, of craftsmanship, of art!

And yes, I care about you very very much, because a one-time showing of Annie Hall is playing at the Arclight and I’m missing it to watch your ass drink cocktails and be creative, so for the love of Mary, throw me a bone here, come in and say HI!

See you at the craft table,
JP Craft Captain

www.crafthead.com

www.akbarsilverlake.com

www.juliannaparr.com/timestamp

Preemptive Horn Toot: Go see my work, it’s up until Sept. 20th! TIME STAMP

This Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 from 9pm to midnight at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!

As you may know, CraftNight completely eschews aggressive ambience featuring the display of incredible skills, feats of strength, balance, coordination, grace, or near perfect performances. As a matter of fact, things like perfection and competing under intense pressure are the reason CraftNight was invented.

We’re just going to ask you to paint a little wooden trinket on Wednesday. Most of the trinkets reflect the diversification of popular modes of transportation, but there are a few boxes and other intriguing items to paint as well. Curious? Thought so.
There will be no qualifying for team finals or individual event finals in Wooden Trinket Painting this year, as it is a winter sport, so no worries, you can just relax.

In rhythmic cocktail drinking however, here are the rules:

Control of the Apparatus: The bar patron should keep the cocktail stable, and should look as if she/he has complete control of it. Dropping the apparatus is a deduction. If the cocktail falls off the table or douses another crafter’s project, more penalties are incurred.

In addition to responsible drinking habits, we also encourage, in the Akbar Dance Rectangle Arena, choreographed routines with leaps, jumps and turns, and pirouettes. If you have your own hoop, ball, club or ribbon, feel free to use it, and if you wish to perform in true historic Athens-style (nude), no one will complain. Please be advised that there will be no judging sequence on good form and execution, we’ll just assume you do this sort of thing for fun.

Please no vaults: Not even the strongest pour in any Akbar cocktail has been able to unleash the gravity-defying fervor and kinesthetic awareness needed to propel one’s person off the counter into a handspring double front half-out.

And this just in, Mary Lou Retton, the most popular athlete in America and head of USA Gymnastics, will be unable to attend CraftNight after all. She was going to give us a “CraftNight workout” and promote the benefits of proper nutrition and regular exercise, but had a prior commitment in China that couldn’t be cancelled.
She says hello and don’t forget to practice your cocktail warm-ups, she’ll be back next year!

See you at the Craft Table!
JP Craft Captain

www.crafthead.com

www.akbarsilverlake.com