Wednesday, July 1, 7pm

Jacob Ciocci (Paper Rad) and Fortress of Amplitude - Video Screening and Performance!




Jacob Ciocci will present a new 20-minute mix of original videos and animations, and performing 'I Let My Nightmares Go' featuring video and dance moves that grapple with mental demons, web 2.0, G.O.D., 21st-century breakdown, real lies and fake truths, cartoon violence, and awareness bracelets.

David Wightman will perform as Fortress of Amplitude, a guitar wielding minstrel from another time and place.  Accompanied by a blast beat playing drum machine, He will execute a musical composition focusing on fantasy, repetition and ecstacy.

Bios:

Jacob Ciocci is a founding member of the east coast art collective Paper Rad. His work is concerned with the relationships between popular culture, technology and notions of transcendence. In his paintings, comics, performances, net art and videos, contemporary and recently forgotten cultural symbols confront one another inside a frenzied cartoon universe that is simultaneously celebratory and critical.

David Wightman lives in San Diego, California where he is a PhD candidate in music composition at UCSD.  There he teaches a course on the music, history and culture of Heavy Metal.

paperrad.org/
myspace.com/fortressofamplitude

Thursday, June 4, 7:30

Your Golden Opportunity is Comeing Very Soon



Our dear friend RJ Shaughnessy has a very handsome new book we'll be launching at Family June 4, at 7:30pm. In a magical pairing, RJ's favorite band Abe Vigoda will be playing against a backdrop of his projected images.

Your Golden Opportunity is a collection of black and white photos documenting street damage caused by wayward vehicles around LA. RJ manages a subtly diverse range out of a rigid concept - it's intense, funny, affecting, and resonant.

Sunday, May 24, 7pm

Family Bookstore is proud to present the first release from Family Bookstore Records.

Asdsska 'Hold On'

Asdsska is a duo consisting of Aska Matsumiya (The Sads, Moonrats) and David Scott Stone (The Sads, Get Hustle, Unwound, Melvins). Matsumiya is a classical trained pianist and the single, '25', features a slow debussy-like piano refrain accompanied by her delicate voice and Stone's ethereal modular synthesizer drones. The B-side is 'We Feel it More Than They Do', an ambient instrumental variation on 25's melody.

Family will host a record release party with a live in-store Asdsska set backed by The Ladies Choir, made up of 14 singers.
There will also be a screening of the video directed by Spike Jonze and Crystal Moselle.

Sunday, May 10, 7:30pm

Book Launch for Michael Schmelling's The Plan.

Between 2003 and 2005, Michael Schmelling photographed 12 private residences in the company of Disaster Masters, a New York-based company specializing in cleaning up homes and counseling compulsive hoarders. Featuring 490 photographs printed in black-and-white on 576 newsprint pages, this volume devotes one chapter to each home--producing an arresting art object and a fantastic document of urban archaeology and psychology.

Schmelling will discuss his work accompanied by a slide show, answer questions, and sign books.

michaelschmelling.com

Sunday, April 26, 7:00pm

Double Book Launch with Gabrielle Bell and Ariel Schrag

The artists will conduct a slideshow, discussing elements of their work and taking questions.

Gabrielle Bell splits her cartooning time between creating wry sketchbook autobiographical comics, such as those included in her 2006 graphic novel, Lucky, and working on more detailed fictional short stories. This collection represents her short comics work that has been published in various anthologies over the past five years, including Kramer's Ergot and The D+Q Showcase. The surrealist title story, Cecil and Jordan in New York, in which a young woman turns herself into a chair so as not to be too much of a bother to those around her, was adapted into the short film, Interior Design, by director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep) as part of the Tôkyô! trilogy.





Ariel Schrag is the author of the autobiographical graphic novels Awkward, Definition, Potential, and Likewise, which chronicle her four years at Berkeley High School. By turns funny, raw and self-indulgent, Schrag perfectly captures the growing pains of a precocious high school senior. Schrag's figures are simple but expressive, which allows her to dig into some of the more complicated emotions her cartoon counterpart experiences. This memoir will assure the talented kid who didn't quite fit in at high school that she's not alone. - Publisher's Weekly

Thursday, April 23, 7:30pm

Slide show with Mike Mills

Join us for an intimate slide show and discussion with designer/filmmaker/artist Mike Mills to launch his new retrospective book, 'Graphics Films'.

Graphics Films is the first retrospective monograph on one of the hardest-working men in contemporary creative culture. For more than 15 years, Mike Mills' works in the fields of design and film have determined the visual landscape of our times. Graphics Films is a painstakingly produced document of Mills' career to date, including many never-before-seen examples of his works in graphic design, installation, publications and film projects. Past projects by Mills include music videos for Air ("Sexy Boy"), Blonde Redhead ("Top Ranking"), Yoko Ono ("Walking on Thin Ice") and Bran Van 3000 ("Afrodiziak") and album cover designs for the Beastie Boys (the Root Down EP), Sonic Youth (Washing Machine), Air (Moon Safari and Kelly Watch the Stars) and others. He has designed graphics and textiles for Marc Jacobs and created the identity for X-Girl Clothing, and has exhibited his unique graphic installations worldwide, with solo shows at Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York and Colette in Paris, among others. In 1996 Mills cofounded The Directors Bureau, a multidisciplinary production company, with Roman Coppola. Since then, he has directed an impressive slew of music videos and films including The Architecture of Reassurance (2000) and Paperboys (2001), both of which were official selections at the Sundance Film Festival. In 2004 he completed his first feature film, Thumbsucker (starring Keanu Reeves and Tilda Swinton), and he is currently at work on his second.

Sunday, April 19, 7pm

Daniel Higgs Live
with Bill Nace

Higgs is a visual artist and legendary singer of the band Lungfish.




Higgs made his first appearance in the band Reptile House, disbanding in '86. Lungfish emerged in 1987 releasing the Necklace of Heads 12" on Simple Machines. Almost immediately thereafter they found their permanent home at Dischord, where for the next twenty years Higgs and company would create music that was challenging and thought-provoking. The most prolific of any Dischord band, Lungfish recorded ten full length LPs for the label before going on hiatus in 2006.

In the time since the pause in the Lungfish journey Higgs has been pursuing a solo career, often taking to just a banjo and a jaw harp, and setting about to make his newest masterpiece, as well as a continued partnership with longtime musical/artistic compatriot Asa Osbourne in The Pupils. Most recently he has been gathering notoriety for his artwork.