artists-from-los-angeles

"I think that there is a huge disparity in Los Angeles, as there is in the US in general, between the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy, the haves and the have-nots. And so many of the areas in which I photograph are areas where there are the have-nots."

"The city is a place where people feel free to do and be whatever they want."

"I was told that if there weren't any power wires, I wouldn't have a body of work. I tend to use them on a regular basis in designing my pictures. They're wonderful for filling the sky."

"Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us. I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily policed. I witnessed my brothers and my siblings continuously stopped and frisked by law enforcement. I remember my home being raided. And one of my questions as a child was, why? Why us? Black Lives Matter offers answers to the why. It offers a new vision for young black girls around the world that we deserve to be fought for, that we deserve to call on local governments to show up for us."

"For me, seeking spirituality had a lot to do with trying to seek understanding about my conditions—how these conditions shape me in my everyday life and how I understand them as part of a larger fight, a fight for my life."

"We have to invest in black leadership. That's what I've learned the most in the last few years... What we've seen is thousands of black people showing up for our lives with very little infrastructure and very little support. I think our work as movement leaders isn't just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible. How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody? And I also think leadership looks like everybody in this audience showing up for black lives. It's not just about coming and watching people on a stage, right? It's about how do you become that leader -- whether it's in your workplace, whether it's in your home -- and believe that the movement for black lives isn't just for us, but it's for everybody."

"I am hopeful for black futures. And I say that because we live in a society that's so obsessed with black death. We have images of our death on the TV screen, on our Twitter timelines, on our Facebook timelines, but what if instead we imagine black life? We imagine black people living and thriving. And that -- that inspires me."

"That’s what you want; you want your radical demands to become popular...Then they become actionable, and then your elected officials won’t feel as scared to pass something like stopping a $3.5 billion jail because, hey, everybody else is saying the idea of caging thousands of human beings who have mental-health issues isn’t a good idea anymore."

"We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories."

"After the shooting death of Michael Brown Jr. by officer Darren Wilson in 2014, a Freedom Ride to Ferguson, Missouri, came together. Cullors, writing with co-organizer Darnell L. Moore in The Guardian that September, described the bus ride with 40 others in the spirit of the Freedom Rides across the segregated South during the early 1960s as “a tangible example of self-determination in the face of anti-black violence on the part of Ferguson residents and those of us who traveled from across the country to join them.”"

"I call myself a citizen artist, because one of the things I do is try to get my playwrights — especially my graduate playwrights — interested in the world. It’s about how you connect art to culture and community here and now, and how we are vital to the expression of our community..."

"I like to diversify, so for me writing an article for a magazine is as exciting as writing a play. And I think if you open yourself up to it, lots of opportunities come forward that are not the opportunities that were going to be yours."

"Growing up in the Pico/Union barrio of downtown Los Angeles in the 1970's was to be born into abject poverty and violence. And even that fed into telling stories and finding ways of surviving. I can see now that I was always a playwright, I just didn't know or have the language for it then."

"I am often inspired by actors and I fall in love with them, so I write towards their strengths and gifts. Sometimes, it is merely about logic and making sense of the poetry in my head and how it translates that can be hard to articulate…"

"I believe—when somebody gave me a pencil and a sheet of paper—was to create a world for myself, basically. It sort of made everything fall to the wayside. The environment where I was growing up, the poverty—all of that just sort of fell to the wayside, and I was able to create these worlds and enter into it. And I think that sort of isolated me a lot from other kids in the neighborhood, even isolated me while I was going to school. And my earliest recollections of entering school was the times when it was art time, and they had easels and they had paint and they had brushes…"

"It was explaining early on, I think, the process. And I can see that those were like the early stages of what I eventually went into when I was doing the large-scale on-site installation pieces when I paint directly onto the walls. Because I’m actually painting but I’m also engaging the viewer and talking during the course of the time that I’m actually doing the work. So I think the early performance pieces actually influenced me in the direction that I would later take in the larger on-site pieces when I started doing those pieces."

"The hardest thing these days is to make something that’s beautiful; it’s easy to make ugly art. I think it takes a lot more talent to make something beautiful. Beauty to me is when you show something to someone that they’ve never seen before. That’s what a great work of art does; it shows you something that you didn’t know existed."

"People like to hold onto life in many ways, but everything is transitory. This is it, right now. Youth doesn’t last forever, beauty doesn’t last forever, so appreciate it for the moment."

"Constantly battling with sabretooth tigers and fluid drained lighters."

"Stardust coursing through our veins."

"Being a people pleaser is a fruitless task; love is love. There's no debating that concept."

"You see something faraway & it looks beautiful & very seductive; but as you go closer you realize it's actually bugs crawling over a corpse."

"The Idealization of deep flaws seeping through coiled cracks; The reality we all want to avoid is a plagued sickness we choose to live with."

"So many ways to be deemed unclean"

"I'm coming back as a cat or a tree or a molecule in my next life."

"Teetering in between worlds with a sleepy conscious, pestilence, infinite knowledge, alienation, burning cigarettes, vibes & male seahorses."

"The people who Bitch about life the most are the people who secretly love bitching"

"Self-fulfillment and Growth are some of the most courageous acts on this planet"

"I'm a different person. I don't want to be titled as Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain's daughter. I want to be thought of as Frances Cobain."

"She tells me to "live free and be free, but listen to other people's advice." I listen, but I don't always follow it."

"My favorite color is light pink. I also like baby blue because it brings out my eyes."

"New York is like my dream city. That's where I'm going to live, I'm convinced of it."

"Mom and I…we're both very flaky people."

"I get it, I really do, but at the same time, it's creepy. It's creepy to see fan sites about me."

"These people are fascinated by me, but I haven't done anything. I'm famous by default. I came out of the womb and people wanted to know who I was because of my parents. If you're a big Nirvana fan, a big Hole fan, then I understand why you would want to get to know me, but I'm not my parents. People need to wait until I've done something valid with my life."

"I have the attention span of a rabbit on cocaine."

"I can count on one hand how many people I trust."

"I want to be sublimely happy."

"I don't like to look sloppy. I'm a girlie-girl."

"While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn. I have never been approached by Dave Grohl in more than a platonic way. I'm in a monogamous relationship and very happy. Twitter should ban my mother."

"Kurt got to the point where he eventually had to sacrifice every bit of who he was to his art, because the world demanded it of him," Frances says bluntly at one point. "I think that was one of the main triggers as to why he felt he didn't want to be here and everyone would be happier without him."But "in reality, if he had lived," she goes on, "I would have had a dad. And that would have been an incredible experience."

"It paints a portrait of a man attempting to cope with being a human."

"My fiancé is so handsome. Imma have to send his parents a fruit basket thanking them for creating the perfect man."

"There is, with any great artist, a little manic-ness and insanity."

"My dad was exceptionally ambitious. But he had a lot thrown on him, exceeding his ambition. He wanted his band to be successful. But he didn't want to be the fucking voice of a generation."

"I don't really like Nirvana that much. [grins] Sorry, promotional people, Universal. I'm more into Mercury Rev, Oasis, Brian Jonestown Massacre. [laughs] The grunge scene is not what I'm interested in. But "Territorial Pissings" is a fucking great song. And "Dumb"—I cry every time I hear that song. It's a stripped-down version of Kurt's perception of himself—of himself on drugs, off drugs, feeling inadequate to be titled the voice of a generation."

"No. I would have felt more awkward if I'd been a fan. I was around 15 when I realized he was inescapable. Even if I was in a car and had the radio on, there's my dad. He's larger than life and our culture is obsessed with dead musicians. We love to put them on a pedestal. If Kurt had just been another guy who abandoned his family in the most awful way possible… But he wasn't. He inspired people to put him on a pedestal, to become St. Kurt."

"They [Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear] look at me, and you can see they're looking at a ghost. … Dave said, "She is so much like Kurt." They were all talking amongst themselves, rehashing old stories I'd heard a million times. I was sitting in a chair, chain-smoking, looking down like this. [acts bored] And they went, "You are doing exactly what your father would have done.""

"The hardest part of doing anything creatively is just getting up and doing. Once I get out of bed and get into my art room, I start painting. I'm there. And I'm doing it."

"We're each other's everything."