Mark Bava

2012-01-27T22:13:00.000-08:00

Reach
42" Bronze
2012

2011-09-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

Reach Torso
Plaster 28"
2011

Hierographix

2010-04-04T20:44:00.000-07:00

Bronze
48" 2010

2010-03-22T12:20:00.001-07:00

Matador's Lament
Bronze 25"
2010

2010-03-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

Mark Bava
w/installation of "The Last Supper"

2010-01-29T11:48:00.000-08:00

Between the Pillars
Bronze 19"

Fallen Angel

2010-01-28T20:55:00.001-08:00

Bronze 22"
2010

2009-08-17T06:58:00.001-07:00

The Lotus Eater
(sans patina)
Bronze 32"
2009

2009-08-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

"The Queue"
Bronze
26"
2001

2009-08-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

Torso-Lot's Wife

Bronze 2009

22"

2008-01-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

"The Spectators"
Bronze
26"
2001

2008-01-31T14:00:00.000-08:00

"Burden"

Bronze 17"

2002

2008-01-31T13:50:00.001-08:00

"Crowd Scene"
Bronze 12"
2008
(maquette)

2008-01-31T13:49:00.001-08:00

"Crowd Scene 2"
Bronze 22"
2008

2008-01-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

Temple Keeper 2

Bronze (unique)

22" 2008

2008-01-30T14:32:00.001-08:00

Temple Keeper (enlargement)
42" Bronze 2011

2008-01-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

"Temple Keeper"
Bronze
24"
2002

2008-01-30T11:00:00.000-08:00

Power Brokers 18"

2007-08-16T09:45:00.000-07:00

"20th Century Idol II"
Bronze
2007
36"

2006-07-20T20:17:00.000-07:00

"Sounding Brass"
Bronze
18"
1998

2006-07-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

"20th Century Gothic"
Bronze
36"
1998

2006-07-20T20:11:00.000-07:00

"Triad"
Bronze 18"
2008

2006-07-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

"From The Clothes Hangs The Man"
Bronze
"22"
2001

2006-07-20T20:08:00.002-07:00

"9 AM, A Train"
Bronze
22"
2000

2006-07-20T20:07:00.000-07:00

"Wall"
Bronze
"26"
2000

2006-07-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

"Man Losing Everything"
Bronze
22"
1998

2006-07-20T20:05:00.001-07:00

Against a Wall
Bronze and Steel
2008

2006-07-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

"The Committee"
Bronze
26"
1998

2006-07-20T14:33:00.000-07:00

"The Judges"
Bronze
22"
2000

"Mark Bava conveys in his bronzes the complexities within the relationships between modern man and society. Uniquely using space and mass, Bava gives a satirical glimpse into the contemporary roles we play. Through his figures Bava reveals the necessity of interdependence while reminding the viewer of the vitality of individuality."

-Victoria Blazanach

2006-07-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

The Sirens

2006-07-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

"Odysseus"
Bronze
32"
1998

2006-07-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

"Waiting for Odysseus"
Bronze
29"
1998

2006-07-20T14:25:00.000-07:00

"Sparten"
Bronze
28"
1999

2006-07-20T14:24:00.001-07:00

"Minotaur"
Bronze
28"
1998

2006-07-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

"Pillar of Salt"
Bronze
22"
1991

2006-07-20T14:23:00.001-07:00

"Icarus"
Bronze
"21"
1997

2006-07-20T14:23:00.000-07:00

The Ferryman"
Bronze
45"
1992

2006-07-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

"Pandora"
Bronze
42"
1991

2006-07-20T14:20:00.002-07:00

Daedalus
Bronze 20"
1996

2006-07-20T14:20:00.001-07:00

"Hermes"
Bronze
28"
1999

2006-07-20T14:19:00.003-07:00

"Torn"
Bronze
22"
1996

2006-07-20T14:19:00.002-07:00

"Matador 2"
Bronze
26"
1996

2006-07-20T14:19:00.001-07:00

"Walking Matador 2"
Bronze
68"
1997

2006-07-20T14:18:00.001-07:00

"Walking Matador"
Bronze
36"
1996

2006-07-20T14:17:00.003-07:00

Taurus 2011 Bronze 9 x 18"

About Mark Bava

2006-07-20T14:17:00.002-07:00

“The first thing…is to get a respectable suit”
- Jason Robard, A Thousand Clowns

Mark Bava typifies human character and behavior in his figurative sculpture and gives us that character isolated and exemplified.

Bava was born in 1954 in the agricultural Central Valley of California but raised with an artistic background as his mother was an impressionist painter. From the beginning he took a strong interest in art. He painted his first painting- an impressionistic still life when he was nine years old. By high school the family had temporarily moved to Carmel, California where many of the Carmel artists and painters came to visit. Family members moved to Capri in the late 1960's where Bava visited as a teenager and traveled through Italy and Greece seeing the art, antiquities and ancient ruins at Pompeii, Rome and Athens.

In the mid-70s he attended art school at CSUStanislaus whose instructors were largely from New York and at the time boasted a contemporary curriculum. Through the school's art programs, some winter semesters were spent in New York under sculptor Ralf Parton which he cites as a major pivot point; “My knowledge of art at that time was pretty much only through the Impressionists that I was raised with however contemporary art history along with studying in New York opened my eyes to post-war abstract expressionism as well as all the 50's and 60's movements in pop, op, minimalism, installation art, art happenings and all that. It was still a pretty vibrant time in the arts in New York. Not only was the Soho and uptown gallery scene still intact, but also in theater and music; the whole CBGBs and Studio 54 thing was still going on, Saturday Night Live had just debuted, the off-Broadway Theater Row playhouses were just starting up. I was glad to catch some of that.

Despite my mother being a painter and my interest in painting as a child, while there I somehow turned to sculpture rather than painting. I started working in plaster emphasizing surface textures and body language doing Giocometti/Neri-ish pieces but with my subject matter being statements on society. I did plaster studies of down and out street characters that I was seeing hanging out down on the Lower East Side and in the Bowery... however I was also always a history buff and loved Greek mythology and Biblical stories growing up...the archetypes weren't so far apart. I also loved the ruins and the fragmented sculpture and bits that I had seen in Italy and Greece when I had visited my family on Capri, like those ashen and lava covered figures at Pompeii...

So there's a combination of both modern and ancient myths and statements on human character through body language... I try to create a kind of "modern relic".

Mr. Bava also has considerable foundry and mold making experience working at Monterey Sculpture Foundries for 8 years. He is noted for his surface textures complete with chips, hacks, tool marks and casting flaws. He sites his influences as Giacometti, Lynn Chadwick, Manuel Neri and Kenneth Armitage as a few examples. His work is sold in galleries in Chicago, Washington DC, Carmel, Atlanta and Napa. In addition, he is a musician as a hobbyist and is also well known for his productions of large multi- media events in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

2006-07-20T14:17:00.001-07:00

Artist Statement:

My work is more conceptual in that I focus on texture and body language over form and design to create a character commentary. I save my mistakes and sometimes utilize casting flaws. I try to give the figures an "iconic" quality or the look of primitive relics. I'm a history and sociology buff. I love old ruins and broken statuary. I get a lot of my ideas just looking at those forms and surfaces.

Galleries:
Current:
Gruen Gallery-Chicago, Ill

Renaissance Fine Arts, Baltimore, Bethesda, Md. and Haverford, Pa.

Sculpture Site/New Leaf Gallery, Sonoma, Ca
Christopher Hill Gallery, St Helena, Ca.
Gallery 21, Carmel, Ca.
Del Jou Art Group, Atlanta, Ga

Selected Solo Shows:
Braico Gallery, Myths and Modern Legends 1997
Sculpture House and Gardens, Recent Works 1998
Bradford/Smock Gallery, San Francisco, Ca. 1999
Alvarado Gallery/Monterey Conference Center, Meditations 2000
Pacific Grove Art Center, Urban Myths and Heros 1999

Mary Titus Gallery, Monterey, Ca 2009

Anon Salon Gallery, San Francisco, Ca. 2009
Gallery 21, Carmel, Ca Mark Bava New Works, 2010

Selected Group Shows:
Beux Arts, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Tx 2002
Pacific Grove Art Center, Pacific Grove, Ca
Pacific Rim Group, Monterey, Ca. 1996
Autumn Lights, Los Angeles, Ca. 2007
Anon Salon, San Francisco, Ca. 2004
Seaside City Hall, Seaside, Ca. 2001
Braico/Lewis Gallery, Carmel, Ca. 2004
Sunset Cultural Center, Carmel, Ca 2009

Associations:
LARABA (Los Angeles River Arts Business Association) - Board Member
Downtown Artist Project, Los Angeles - Member
Pacific Grove Art Center, Pacific Grove, Ca. - Board Member
Siggraph, Los Angeles, Ca. - Executive Council

Self Portrait

2006-07-20T14:17:00.000-07:00

Distraction
Bronze
2001

Not seen closely: a pig on a porsche wearing a peter pan hat.

2006-07-20T14:16:00.001-07:00

"Ascension"
Steel and Bronze
84"
2001

2006-07-20T14:16:00.000-07:00

"Whole"
Bronze
16"
2001

2006-07-20T14:08:00.000-07:00

From "Meditation Series"
Sculpure House and Gardens
Carmel, Ca.

2006-07-20T14:07:00.000-07:00

"Om"
Steel and Bronze
36"
2001

2006-07-20T14:05:00.000-07:00

"Namaste"
Steel and Bronze
40"
2001

2006-07-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

"Strength"
Steel and Bronze
48"
2001

2006-07-20T14:00:00.001-07:00

"Head Level" Installation
Resin, wood and chicken wire
72" x 60" x 28"
1999

2006-07-20T13:59:00.000-07:00

"The Last Supper" (detail)
Resin
30" x 30" x 120"
1999

2006-07-20T13:30:00.001-07:00

"You're the Man"

Talking red power tie
Painted steel
60" x 10" x 4"
2007

Reprinted from Monterey Herald

2006-07-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Off To The Office

Mark Bava's sculpture offers reflections on the rat race.

Jul 16, 1998

By Sarah Givens

Mark Bava’s work is unlike that of most Monterey-area artists. Instead of drawing inspiration from the region’s natural beauty, Bava’s work--at least the body of his work currently on display at the Sculpture House and Gardens in Carmel Highlands--focuses on the corporate-controlled, urban 9-to-5 rat race that detaches, dehumanizes, and de-individualizes people.

The Italian master, Giacometti’s influence is sometimes present. Several of Bava’s pieces resemble Giacometti''s elongated human forms, and even in pieces that don't follow Giacometti's style, Bava exhibits a similar penchant for experimenting with space and mass. Some of his human figures are shortened and broadened, even as they remain largely two-dimensional.

Bava leaves Giacometti's shadow, however, in the social issues he tackles. Whereas Giacometti may have explored how we visually perceive space, Bava’s work comments on the individual’s place in society today. His human figures, even those that are sculpted with a second human figure, exist independently of anyone around them. The image-conscious, money-centered, modern world has divided and conquered their souls. As he explains it, "There tends to be a lonely sentinel expression to my figures. The characters are ones who are sealed in their fate."

In his piece "Power Brokers," two businessmen stand side by side as clones. While their broad-shouldered business suits give them authority, there is no rapport between them; they are more business-suited drones than they are humans. Their heads are too small for their bodies, and they have no facial features. The somewhat flattened, two-dimensional quality of the figures completes the effect.

Mark Bava's work is currently on display at the Sculpture House and Gardens. A new, more abstract body of his work will be shown at the Monterey Conference Center beginning on July 26.

Event Productions

2006-07-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

CirkoSix New Years Eve-2006

2006-07-19T21:43:00.000-07:00

Mark Bava- Producer
Cirko Six
New Years Eve 2006
Los Angeles, Ca
www.sodla.com

Sea of Dreams New Years Eve 2000 to 2005

2006-07-19T21:39:00.000-07:00

Sea of Dreams New Years Eve
Regency Center, San Francisco, Ca
2000 to 2005

Producers:
Joegh Bullock, Mark Bava, Mark Petrakis and Marcia Crosby

LaDecom Street Fair

2006-07-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Mark Bava-Co-Producer LaDecom Street Fair
Benefit for Black Rock Arts Foundation
Founded 2003
www.la-burningman.com

Siggraph-Photon Ballet-2007

2006-07-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Photon Ballet-Projections on Moving Surfaces
Producers: Joan Carey (Chair), Mark Bava, Bob Gelman and Michael Masucci

Featuring Thomas Dolby and the Jazz Mafia Horns, Frank Sarafine, Gingger Shakar, Matt Venuti plus
Donna Sternberg Dancers, digital artists Michael Masucci & Kate Johnson of EZTV,
EXCERPT FROM "RAGE TO KNOW"
Marco Schindelmann, LITTERATI (synthetic Theater)
Arcane Realities-Additional Visuals

Sponsors: Microsoft, EZTV, Maxom

Valued Keepsake

2006-07-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

I had the great privilege to spend a late evening with one of my musical heroes and guitar influences after he performed for us in February of 1981. It struck me to have him sign one of his LPs that I happened to have.
He was surprised when I ran home and brought back an instructional LP he had once produced (If You Love These Blues, Play "Em As You Please) instead of the more obvious, acclaimed Super Session album. He joked that I must have found it in a bargain bin and must be one of the only people around to have a copy and then signed the album at left. I had found him to be such a warm and accessible person who genuinely shared his knowledge and talent with the world.
It was one of Michael Bloomfield's last performances just nights before he was found dead in his car of an apparent accidental drug overdose. He had suffered for years from insomnia.

Writings

2006-07-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

*My Back Pages
by Mark Bava

"The boys were chasing the city truck
spraying DDT
It kept the mosquitoes down...
That stuff won't hurt 'em none
I heard the neighbor lady say...."

-James McMurtry
from the song "12 O'clock Whistle"

In the central valley town of Hughson California, canal swimming was a recognized talent. One could almost become hailed in comparable stature to surfing champions on the coast for their prowess in the water. And just as surfers wore nicknames such as Duke, Woody or Steamboat, we had ace swimmers with names like Frog who could stay underwater at length and were rumored to have performed feats that made local legend such as diving from high bridges or shooting the most gnarly and dangerous waterfalls. To keep the flow of the water controlled over the downhill grade of the terrain, these waterfalls or "drops" were built at various stages along the large cement irrigation canals that criss-crossed their way through Central California from upland reservoirs, bringing precious water to the valley farm lands below. The most popular falls and bridges also had their nicknames, like Double Drop, The M or Russel's, named after the family who lived nearby. These favorite spots would often be magically crowded with guys drinking beer and showing off as girls in bikinis watched on. And just as the surfers cruised the coast to check the waves and action in their favorite bays, we would cruise to see who and what was going on at our favorite swimming spots. Some of the waterfalls were larger than others and most were forceful enough to drown an expert swimmer unless one knew the currents well. Despite that a number of people who accidently fell or drove their cars in were drowned every year, we grew up swimming in these canals and prided ourselves in our skill to navigate the rushing waters. But even for us, there were some falls with the fury of Niagara that remained unconquered.

Playing tag was the main pastime, with rules and boundaries conceived in some organic fashion within the unique parameters of a large cement canal, rushing waterfalls, canal banks and catwalks. Aside from tag, another reckless sport was "shooting the falls", which was daring to see who could go over the falls either head or feet first or on an inner tubes or some other random floating object.

Years later at a Hughson class reunion, a suggestion that some of us go swimming in the canal for nostalgia sake was met incredulously with the fact that no one swims in these canals any longer because it is now recognized that pollutants and pesticides infest these waters, not to mention the liability issues that come into play in today's lawsuit happy world. It's another bygone era. We took chances then and no one was sued when kids got seriously injured trying to water ski behind cars or dive off telephone poles into the canal. As far as the pesticides, in the town of Hughson, California, as in the Texas hometown of songwriter James McMurty, on blistering hot summer days we would peddle our bikes behind a cool mist of DDT coming from the back of the "Mosquito Man's" truck whenever he came to town spraying to keep the local mosquito population down. Back then, DDT was recognized as some kind of miracle chemical that was even sprayed on immigrants arriving at Ellis Island to insure that they didn't bring foreign germs with them into our shining new country which, was equivalent to believing an advertising slogan at the time that smoking L&M cigarettes was "just what the doctor ordered". And just as McMurty's song suggests, our parents sat outside oblivious, fanning themselves with their evening cocktails in hand gushing, "oh looooook…awwww how cuuuute...kids...Mosquito Man..." and would laugh at how adorable we all looked smiling in ecstasy riding along in a cool, wet cloud of pure DDT. From those episodes, I have often stopped to wonder if that is why I have remained free of many viruses now feared, that by all odds, I should have contracted long ago with all my excessive bad habits through the years. Maybe DDT was a miracle drug of some kind.

Hughson was founded in 1907. It was named after Hiram Hughson, who owned much of the land at one time. The Indians had referred to it as "a place of sleep" and it wasn't really much more than a whistle stop along the Santa Fe railroad line. For no apparent reason, its main street is the remarkable width of a four lane freeway which is absurdly wide for only being seven blocks long. The buildings that lined the street bore facades much like towns of the old west but of concrete rather than wood. This was the style of architecture that was typical of California valley towns in the early 20th century that is now being replaced by the latest architectural contribution to the modern Americana aesthetic; the strip mall.

In 2007 the town will celebrate its centennial. There will be a parade down Main Street, the unveiling of a life size bronze sculpture of a migrant peach picker and a "bean feed" among other events. Somewhere deep in the nostalgia of this small town was this cherished annual event called The Bean Feed that is being resurrected from the annals of Hughson history that was little more than what it's name implies; a town feed of beans and a slice of white bread with butter on a paper plate. But the Bean Feed was a festive occasion. It equaled some of the local harvest parties where a pig would be sacrificed and roasted underground by some distinguished Mexican cooks, pallets of Lucky Lager beer would arrive, mariachi bands would play and everyone got drunk and danced while us kids tried to sneak off with 6 packs of beer.

There was something unique about this small town and the people it produced that is hard to put your finger on. Not that anyone will point out anyone of national importance from there, or a celebrity like neighboring Modesto with its George Lucas who epitomized his town with the movie American Graffiti, but much like the movie, coming of age in Hughson around that era had a very similar flavor of that which was portrayed that infused it's people with a rare down to earth quality that you rarely find in today's neurotic world.

The town on weekend nights was the scene of adolescent youth courting, flirting, getting drunk and creating general mayhem...cruising in cars back and forth on Main St, making U-turn after U-turn at each end and cruising back again, eventually pulling up to others who were parked either along the street or in the dirt parking lot of M & M's Drive-In that took up the whole block at the top of the street. M & M's was our Mel's Drive-In except occasionally some daring soul would fly into it's dirt lot with their car doing wild donuts and "rooster tails" satisfied at creating an enormous cloud of dust.

Across the street, standing side by side were the town's only two bars. One of these bars was frequented by Mexicans and the other one by whites and only a "bad ass" dared to go in either one. In valley towns like Hughson, you were either the toughest, had the fastest car, could drink the most or risked some other dare devil craziness to prove your manhood...that you were "bad". Fights and town rivalries over sports and anything else were the fashion. There were always "rumbles" between town football teams in school parking lots after the games and to even be caught cruising in a neighboring town could prove threatening.

On top of that, the town had a bit of its own racial tensions. Despite the demographic breakdown offered by consensus figures, in Hughson it seemed you were either Italian, Portuguese, Mexican or “Okie”. The Italians had come there to be farmers, the Portuguese to be dairymen and the Oakies were those who had poured in from Oklahoma after the Dustbowl to work the fields in classic Woody Guthrie narrative to be replaced by the Mexicans years later. There was friction between the latter that probably started over jobs. We knew little of the kind of prejudice that was prevalent towards blacks back then or of the anti-Semitism discussed in WW2 history for example. We had no "Afro Americans" in that town. We had mixtures of everything else. All we knew was that "Negros" produced most of the hit records on the charts and thought to be Jewish was just another religion. But there was this racism between the Oakies and the Mexicans and the two town bars frequently erupted in violence on the street outside.

The town was violent, but only to a point. I watched people get in fights, friends get killed racing cars and saw a policeman lie dying on the street, shot in a thwarted bank robbery attempt of our little town bank that shocked the town to it's core. It was still the Old West fifties style to be sure, but we never locked doors and the only big robbery we had heard about until then, was when the owner of the Five and Dime was rumored to have previously tried to tunnel into the same bank that was next door. For the most part, the most we feared was getting caught smoking in the school bathroom. Guns were for hunting or shooting mailboxes and stop signs and they were readily available on our farms but no one could even dream of using one for assault and certainly not to bring to school or town. It was all fists and feet.

Farming was the industry and peaches were king. The town once held the title of Peach Capital of the World (in cling peaches as Georgia held the title for freestone peaches). The town came alive in the summers as the harvest approached. It was hot, tipping 3 figures on the thermometer. We were out of school and working on family farms buzzing in the middle of the season with their smells of Mexican food and sounds of Mexican music filling the air from farmhand cabins. We eagerly waited for when we could sneak away and go swimming in the canals, race cars or cruise town in the hopes of finding a party or joining the ranks of couples making out on canal banks. On Sundays, neighboring Italian farm families got together following mass for huge meals at long tables with homemade wine and piles of ravioli.

It was a Norman Rockwell portrait of the golden age of post war bliss. A little ambition would buy the American Dream. Fathers worked and mothers stayed home and raised the kids. We had party lines and operators who knew family names. There were no answering machines to get a message if you weren't home. The latest news was commonly spread word of mouth or through town gossip and much of that was from Hamilton's Cafe, the community nerve center where farmers convened every morning to discuss their crops over breakfast. Families watched the same TV shows like Bonanza, Leave it to Beaver, Have Gun Will Travel, Twilight Zone, Ed Sullivan and Combat, a WW2 TV series showing the last just war our fathers had just won. Our mothers watched Jack La Lane, As the World Turns and Queen for a Day which had to be the most politically incorrect thing since Al Jolson wore blackface. We saw Mysterious Island for 10 cents at our local movie theater. Gas was 37 cents a gallon. We could burn piled leaves in our yards. Dry cleaning and milk was delivered to your door and the town doctor was a man who seemed to know everything who made house calls. It was all the latest in the modern nuclear age with TV trays, kidney shaped tables and the Space Race.

Teenagers watched American Bandstand and did the Twist. There was some hushed war in Korea that we knew little about. And then came something called the Cuban Missile Crisis and our town doctor who knew everything proudly built a fully functioning concrete bomb shelter and began rotating stocks of canned goods.

Soon after came the British Invasion and Mod was the fashion. We started watching Laugh In and Walter Chronkite began to talk about another hushed war in a place called Vietnam. Eventually that war began to claim even the lives of children from this town not on any maps that few had even heard of. People started to wonder as we started hearing of protests.

I watched Woodstock at the local drive in theater as the 1967 Summer of Love arrived in our town in 1969. Marijuana started to replace booze and we piled in cars to cruise country roads with nicknames like The Crooked Mile to smoke joints safely away from authoritarian eyes with our 8 tracks blaring, listening to the Rolling Stones, Ten Years After and Led Zeppelin.
There were no local police and we had driven trucks and tractors since the age of 10 and many of us could drive as early as Junior High School. Just as was portrayed in American Graffiti, we lived in our cars but all of a sudden cruising became slower as we got more stoned.

I tried LSD, listening to Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" over and over on my portable phonograph. I started wearing fringed jackets, paisley Nehru shirts, suede moccasins or black Beatle boots and I watched our town become less violent as people cruising in cars flipped peace signs instead of the finger. Rivalries and fighting stopped, replaced by brotherhood and our attempt at being flower children. As we neared graduation, we began to think about the draft and our options other than following the war blindly. We saw JFK assassinated, followed by Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. We saw civil rights movements and civil disobedience. It was the beginning of the end of the last innocent generation and I was about to graduate.

Following graduation, our doctor who knew everything took his life followed by my father, whose increasing bouts of depression from a little known syndrome called Manic Depression become too chronic for him to bear. With little time to think, the family farm was sold to pay the inheritance taxes and with what was left, I went off to art school and to see the world eventually moving to the coast. I never lived here again.

I never grew up. I never had kids. The rare times I have returned were either for a class reunion, a funeral or a quick sentimental journey down Main when passing within proximity on my way somewhere else and when I did, I sometimes wondered why anyone settled here in the first place. I have been physically, mentally and spiritually almost everywhere. I've had my picture taken with Jackie and Aristotle Onassis on the island of Capri. I've sunk a ship in the Caribbean, shot the rapids of the Pequari River, been thrown into a dungeon in Bangkok and made the pilgrimages to Burning Man in the Nevada Desert. I think I've been a puppet, a pauper, a poet, a pawn and maybe not quite a king, but to this day, no matter where I am, I get a maudlin feeling that comes over me with the end of a summer and the coming of fall. It's hard to shake. It's ingrained in me. It's the feeling of a time when the winds come and the leaves fall off the peach trees leaving nothing but bare branches as they go dormant for the cold season ahead. The Mexicans would leave town on their sojourns back home for the winter and the farm would become a deserted wasteland. The canals would go dry. Everything seemed to go black and white. And with all of this, I would have to face going back to school and wait for spring... when everything would blossom, the Mexicans would return, the music would begin and we could go swimming in the canals.

Mark Bava is an event producer, musician and artist now residing in Carmel California.

* My Back Pages - song by Bob Dylan (1964)
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now....."

Homeless on the Range

2006-07-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

Homeless on the Range

by Mark Bava

Downtown Los Angeles is the recent mecca for Urban Pioneers with it's recent gentrification and development of ultra hip loft/condo conversions from once boarded up historical banks, theaters and office buildings. Until now, this was a place of city workers, garment manufactures, immigrant variety stores and the homeless. Remnants still remain intermingled with this glistening new city. Most notably are the homeless that new residents need to learn to coexist with as some of the downtown streets contain more people living on them than those of Bombay. There are areas that are a daunting scene that most people in America have no idea exists on it's scale. It's not something revealed or portrayed in the press or on TV. There is a whole underground world that springs to life at night and folds up and hides by day, bustling with an economy and language all its own that thrives unseen alongside ours as if in another dimension .

Gone are the days of the American skid row and it's winos. They have been replaced with jungles of homeless encampments and cardboard sidewalk villages. Most of the inhabitants are crack addicts and/or the mentally ill from the Reagan turnout whose lives are caught in some self-medicating Groundhog Day. This world is buzzing at a constant speed of every waking moment spent trying to get enough money together to feed ravenous habits. To get this money, these people each have their own hustle...ones that the newly arriving Urban Pioneer should
become acquainted with if planning on staying here with any sanity.

Some of the homeless just come straight out and ask for money as is accustomed, however gone are the days of anyone asking for just a quarter for a cup of coffee. Its dollars now with the new standard as " a couple bucks I can borrow" (the idea of it as a loan is funny in itself).
Others try to work any odd job they can find or create. The most common is the unofficial (although
rather efficient), recycling program in downtown Los Angeles; dumpster diving and garbage collecting to retrieve enough bottles and cans to exchange at the local recycling center for the cash for their daily requirement of crack. The local recycling company will even issue shopping carts to anyone wanting to start collecting. Remember the next time you drink a Coca Cola, consider that the bottle or can in your hand may very soon be exchanged for coke of a different kind.

In any case, whatever money comes to hand is a fleeting thing and the more money, the more fleeting in it's direct course to crack. And it doesn't take as much money with today's street prices to keep a crack habit going. An amount as small as a three dollar chip can be had which is enough to just start their day with larger target objectives in mind. The preference is to wait and to get at least a six or triumphant twelve dollar rock together with this whole process being repeated countless times throughout the day. Crack is ferociously compulsive and the more that is smoked, the more
that is craved.

This world remains thriving with no forthcoming solution to make it any less so and as things stand, the inhabitants will unquestionably die on these streets. However, our social norms withstanding, some of these homeless may just be more content being there than we are seeing them there. Carving out a life outside of our, many have developed routines and hustles into exalted King Rat like positions in their world and may want to be left alone to it.

But then there is the one hustle where worlds collide and becomes a problem for the Urban Pioneer to co-exist with; theft.

Having your stuff come up missing every now and then is a part of downtown life that a new resident needs to learn to deal with. Having been a new resident, I have never been so pissed off from getting ripped off down here. I have busted people red handed in the act, chased them down and physically caught them...only to then let my grip go and them slip away. Never have I had such a mixed emotion of absolute anger mixed with absolute pity. They had just stood there and just didn't get it. They were truly shocked that I would be so furious. Its like they felt they were only borrowing these things and my response was irrational. Everything is recycled down here, rotated...it's like fair game to them and I should be expected to know that they are homeless and if they can get at it, they have earned it.
One needs to learn the art of sharing down here.

Given all of this, consider the story of Mr. Dave:

Mr. Dave is probably the neighborhoods most illustrious homeless character but every neighborhood here has a Mr. Dave.

Mr. Dave has lived in the area for years. This is his back yard and his territory. He knows everything that's going on here; new construction projects, new people moving in, all the loft parties, gatherings of people and goods and where to get anything and everything. He also knows all of the neighborhood gossip and neighborhood melodrama. Dope fiends always have a lot of melodrama, if for no other reason than just because of their view of the world.
Mr. Dave is constantly on the move at high speed with an overbearing optimism and a patronizing salesmanship that's almost a parody of the quintessential used car salesman. He addresses everyone formally with "Mister" or "Miss" usually attached to a first name that lends an additional portrait of his service to you. He tells you what a glorious day it is, how rich you will soon be, how good you look and other transparent bola-bola. Mr. Dave could have made a fortune in the real world selling almost anything.
And everyday he does come with things to sell or pawn off on you that he's magically found, scarfed from some dumpster or moreover, maybe stolen. Things, he raves, that are 'specially just for you.
He's relentless...and annoying. So fucking annoying, that it goes beyond annoying to being funny and then back to annoying again. Plus, I'm sure half of this stuff really belongs to my neighbors and I'm waiting for the day he tries to sell me something that belongs to me.
Things disappear around here at a constant rate and when they do, I then go from being annoyed to going almost berserk. I have yelled and screamed at Dave some of the worst things I have ever said to another human being in my life. I've gone the gamut from being nice and understanding, to threatening to call the cops to just plain physically throwing him out the door and threatening violence. I have had the extreme pleasure of eighty-sixing him from the neighborhood for the absolute rest of eternity only to have him get back in again. He has an uncanny ability to worm his way back into your life just a millimeter within your tolerance level. He only needs that eye of the needle...
Its also just hard to not like Dave with all his boundless patronizing and optimism and then not eventually forgive him once again for the nine hundred and eighty sixth time.

Mark Bava
Mark Bava is an artist, event producer and one of the former partners of Little Pedros Cantina in the Artsit District of Los Angeles

2006-02-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

Pillar of Salt 2 (enlargement)
Bronze 40"
2011