The Lardner Report

Unleash your creative superpowers!

When Art F*cks With Your Head

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I couldn’t stop watching. A simple video presented at The annual Los Angeles Art Show 2025. It’s a sensuous moving image of a woman slipping vertically through narrow passages of what appears to be metallic parentheses in a swimming pool. It’s totally disorienting because she appears to be sliding around and pushing off for quite some time underwater.

But she’s not. Once you get your bearings, the viewer realizes that the camera shot the swimmer from the top — so she’s not bobbing up and down, but rather playfully gliding back and forth — normally— across the top of the pool. Once you see it, there’s no doubt. It’s just art that makes you WORK FOR for the answer. That happens to be my favorite thing — and I’ve always believed the most successful art does just that. (Really, what’s the thrill about a piece that simply sets the table for you?) There is so much more to a piece that challenges the brain, and lifts our spirits in the process.

Video artist: Marck. /. Video installation: “Gegenstrom” (Gold) / LCD a screen LED light / media player / Licht Feld Gallery

The Perfect One-Liner

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Sketch by artist @shouxin13141

A minimalist drawing that inspires my lazy ass.

My excitement over this sketch is this: It’s packed with energy, loose in style, and created basically with one stroke. it’s probably a 10-second work. It’s also proof that simplicity can be a beautiful artistic statement. In one jittery marking, the artist here has captured “the essence of cat.”

If you’re considering a dive into some basic drawing, try this. Look at the image above, and see if you can create your own one-liner. It’s super satisfying, and just might tackle your fear. There is no perfect way to draw a cat, and you could consider it a sort of warm-up for other sketches. It’s easy, pressure-free and requires no art-making experience. Try this approach with a cool wide-tip marker or piece of charcoal, and find time to draw every day.

For more from this artist, check out images and videos on Instagram: @shouxin13141

Portland: A Tale Of One City – Through Two Lenses

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One of the qualities I appreciate in husband Josh is his ability to see things I don’t see. He’s never without a camera, so I get to view what has caught his eye every day. But oddly, when we travel — and shoot together — the differences between what he’s drawn to and what attracts me are striking.

On a recent trip to Portland, while Josh was documenting the dramatic waterfalls and unfathomable beauty of the forests and Japanese gardens, I dashed toward downtown, seeking the most raw, staggeringly decrepit walls and gritty textures I could find. It’s my favorite kind of adventure, and in fact, it’s a legit high.

Here, you’ll see Josh’s beautiful impressions of Portland’s unmatched patches of green and stark contrasts of burned out trees from recent fires. His eye is exquisite.

I guess my photos celebrate something different: the natural abstract art emerging from urban decay. I love finding it buried within the decomposing layers of brick and cement, and in tiny spaces between graffitied messages. Sometimes I think it’s asking to be discovered, shared, and framed.