​As you've probably gathered if you've read my rave review of the current Bowers Museum exhibition on the life of Benjamin Franklin, I've become a bit of a Franklin enthusiast overnight. So profound is my admiration for the show--and for Franklin himself--I rented documentaries from Netflix and spent the weekend on the Internet reading just about anything I could find on him. When the Bowers' cheery publicist, Rick Weinberg, offered to put me in touch with the exhibition's consultant scholar, UC San Diego professor of political science Alan C. Houston (an authority on all things Benjamin), I took the opportunity to try the limitations of my newfound knowledge and asked the professor to tell me all the dirt he knew on the Founding Father.

"The good particular men may do separately . . . is small, compared with what they may do collectively."--Benjamin Franklin

"Is that freaking cardboard?" was my first thought as I stepped into Irvine Fine Arts Center's exhibition of artist Bill Jaros' work. Taking a closer look, I saw that it was indeed corrugated paper, but suffice it to say, the work was not the sum of my first perception. The boxes had been broken down, some flaps flattened, others left upright, the torn paper and rough, corrugated edges smoothed and made stiff with plaster. The precisely installed, colorfully painted sculptures practically jumped off the wall in rainbow bursts of crimson, brown, purple, pink, yellow, pale blue, orange and red.

ART WHORE likes the sexy.
So this week's blog--an assemblage of links with brief commentary--is dedicated to the sexy in recent Arts & Culture.