Last Sunday we unexpectedly came upon an open house at the El Segundo Museum of Art, parking right in front. The open house was in celebration of the current show, “Scratch”, which is all about graffiti and the artists creating it.

From the web site, here is a description of the show:

In 2013 more than 150 of LA’s leading graffiti artists responded to a 16th century manuscript from the vaults of the Getty Research Institute called a liber amicorum (book of friends) by contributing works on paper to be bound into a single book and created the Getty Graffiti Black Book. Street artists have used black books for decades to create a visual memory of drafts and to serve as a vehicle for the exchange of ideas. The extraordinary competition that occasionally arises among such artists can also lead to respect as rivals invite each other to “hit” their black books with original works. The contributing artists decided to give the Getty Black Book the title, LA Liber Amicorum, to capture the spirit of its transformation of rival ‘writing-crews’ into a Los Angeles Book of Friends.

Now, ESMoA and the Getty Research Institute have invited Getty Black Book artists Axis, Cre8, Defer, Eyeone, Fishe, and Miner to co-curate those crews of creative friends from the LA graffiti art community and turn the art laboratory of ESMoA into an open black book. Graffiti and tattoo artists will transform the space into a cathedral of urban art for the first presentation of the LA Liber Amicorum to the public with SCRATCH.

The show is absolutely fantastic, playing off the vaulted ceilings, making you feel like you have walked into a church cathedral, albeit, covered in graffiti. I’m excited to know that such contemporary art is going to be featured at our soon to be local museum.