Al Dente: 6 books

This is the second of the "lost ArtBender Weekend stories" that I recently uncovered (the other being "Bender Ender"). In this one, The Gallery At The End Of The World was in full swing. It was December, the last show of our first full year of operations. Al Dente and Kris Blaze had just moved to...

When Al Dente and Kris Blaze first arrived on the central coast of California, they were fresh off a year-long sabbatical in the desert after spending the previous infinity of years immersed in the L.A. underground arts scene. To go from a world occupied by transvestite hookers and striving blond...

You've just spent the better part of a decade establishing yourself in the brutally competitive but incredibly invigorating Los Angeles "lowbrow / underground" art scene. You've gained some traction, you're in lots of exciting art shows, and you're even selling art and gaining...

For exactly 5 years, The Gallery At The End Of The World in Altadena, CA was the center of the world for a ragtag group of young artists who met there and strode together into the wilderness of the L.A. "underground" art scene. There was nothing overly dramatic about how it all ended. The lease just...

So what happens if you are a solid decade into the career of your dreams, and all of a sudden, technology changes, and suddenly not just your job but practically the entire industry vanishes in the space of just a few short years, and there you are at "middle age" having to start all over again at...

When Qishtika Adam started getting strange recurring dreams about her grandmother, she instantly knew the omens were unfavorable. The problem was that her family, especially her father—whose mother she'd dreamt of—simply refused to believe her. One hundred days after the dreams first started,...