PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Dave Tourjé was born and raised in the culturally eclectic Northeast L.A. of the 1970s and his upbringing amongst the skaters, gangs, and the area’s tribal friction play heavily in his work. Also a musician, Tourjé was a member of the influential L.A. band the Dissidents, playing shows with Camper Van Beethoven, Saccharine Trust, The Minutemen to name a few. Tourjé’s artwork oscillates between high and low, punk and institutional hegemony and was the subject of a one-man exhibition covering 15 years of paintings on acrylic glass at the Riverside Art Museum in 2002. It has been featured at the Oceanside Museum of Art, the Orange County Museum of Art, and Laguna Art Museum. In 1998, Tourjé helped to form the Chouinard Foundation after purchasing the home of Nelbert Chouinard, in order to help restore the lost history of one of the great art schools in the world.
Not unlike a gritty rock 'n' roll band, but with paint and brushes, colors and forms ... they are crazy-passionate about their work. That's the integral connection they share, even as their backgrounds are as varied and divergent as the sprawling metropolis from which they've emerged --Bondo Wyszpolski California Locos in Manhattan Beach The multicultural idea of the California Locos is a shared experience, a common one in Los Angeles with its melting pot reality for centuries. Neither I nor the other original Locos invented it as much as we observed and expressed it in our time, being involved variously in the early formation of surf and skate, graffiti, west coast art, punk rock and blues. We and the idea were born and raised in the eclectic cultural milieu of our City of Los Angeles and we celebrate the aesthetic, ethnic and cultural zeitgeist alive and well here, which has now expanded internationally as a given. The original Locos do not claim ownership - we claim our place and role in it as representatives in that we were all there as it began and then unfurled. Before the fame of these subcultures were the unknown and unsung builders of it - those who did it for no other reason than their love for it and the fact that it must be done. They helped lay the foundation and we each know many. --Dave Tourje Book
