Tag: Mari’s Wine Bar

  • Art on the Vine One Year Anniversary Party August 4th

    Art on the Vine One Year Anniversary Party August 4th

    Next Saturday we’ll celebrate a whole year of monthly “Art on the Vine” shows produced by the Downey Arts Coalition. Our thirteenth show will feature a group show in which we invited every artist from the year to show a couple works. It will be an eclectic gathering, with several items up to be won with the raffle.

    Congratulations to the team Don Lamkin, Pat Gil, Carolina Del Toro and now joined by Eloisa “EJ” Ball for their hard work and dedication to local artists in Downey. The event represents a practical application of the philosophy and goals of the Downey Arts Coalition: Creating opportunity for local artists to show their work to a audiences right in their hometown, and providing an opportunity for local residents to experience the arts in their own neighborhood.

    Live music by Saxophonist Sergio De La Trinidad and others.

    Saturday, August 4th, 7:00 PM to 12AM at Mari’s Wine Bar, 8222 Firestone Blvd, Downey, CA 90241.

    The artists taking part are: Rocio Alejandra Garcia, Carlos Durazo, Eduardo Aguilar, Gennie Prochazka, Hector Silva, Alina Wilson, Steve Clay, Don Lamkin, Jorge Del Toro, Carolina Del Toro, Maritza Molina, Laura Sanchez, Isabel Looper, Mike Ferguson, Roberto Munguia, Jamie Rowland, Claudia Hernandez, Michael Temple, Robert Thome, Monica Pucciarelli, Ricki Ostendi, Manuel Barillas, Asha Kamali.

  • Art on the Vine presents Manuel Barillas & Asha Kamali July 14

    Art on the Vine presents Manuel Barillas & Asha Kamali July 14

    Art on the Vine moves to Saturday July 14th this next month, and features artists Manuel Barillas and Asha Kamali.  More information about the artists coming soon.  The opening reception event begins at 7PM at Mari’s Wine Bar, 8222 Firestone Blvd in Downey.

    There will be special live music provided by students of the Los Angeles City College music program.

  • Art on the Vine presents Michael Temple, Robert Thome, blues legend James Harman

    Art on the Vine presents Michael Temple, Robert Thome, blues legend James Harman

    Art on the Vine this Saturday features two artists that dare to be different:  Michael Temple, who is as deft with a paintbrush as he is with a brushes on a drum set.  Robert Thome, who paints with a brush in his mouth, because of his disability.  Also a special performance of the James Harman band– Harman has been a fixture on the Blues scene for decades, and its a rare opportunity to have him here in Downey with us.

    7PM this Saturday, June 2nd at Mari’s Wine Bar, 8222 Firestone Blvd, Downey.  Food, music, wine, community and inspiring artwork.

    Join the RSVP list: https://www.facebook.com/events/212367185550182/

  • Wine+Words presents the Poetry of Raindog, March 15

    Wine+Words presents the Poetry of Raindog, March 15

    Our next poetry reading is Thursday March 15, at Mari’s Wine Bar.

    Raindog has spent the last twenty-five years pouring all his resources into poetry in the greater Long beach area, not only writing it but publishing, editing and promoting poets. His latest book is about some hospital experiences: ER/OR Living Among the Mangled.

    He had to sell his Bukowski book collection to keep going, and does handyman jobs for a living. He drives across the western states giving readings and selling books from his Lummox Press, and the Little Red Book series.

    By the way, if any one wants to donate an old car and get a deduction, he needs one.

    He’s going to talk a little about Bukowski, and it should be a night to remember.  Open mic sign-ups begin at 7:30PM, then begins at 8PM.  Raindog will read at 8:30.

  • Art on the Vine presents Steve Clay in March

    Art on the Vine presents Steve Clay in March

    “Art on the Vine” continues on Saturday, March 3rd with the art of Steve Clay.

    In 1995, when he was at the peak of what had become a very successful career as an artist, Steve suffered a debilitating stroke which brought him to Downey at the Rancho Los Amigos Rehabilitation Center.  After several years of rehabilitation, Steve regained his ability to draw and paint, but continued to live in Downey, becoming integral to the founding of the Art of Rancho program and starting a whole new phase in his work as an artist.  His artwork will be featured for the month of March at Mari’s Wine Bar, 8222 Firestone Blvd in Downey.  Join us for opening night on March 3rd at 7PM to meet Steve, and enter a raffle to win an original work of his.  The Downey Arts Coalition sponsors these events to bring together the community around art and culture and to encourage others to pursue their own creativity.

  • Wine+Words Poetry with Bruce Williams Feb 17

    Wine+Words Poetry with Bruce Williams Feb 17

    Our third-Thursdays poetry series continues at Mari’s Wine Bar with Bruce Williams as the featured poet.  The open mic sign-ups begin at 7:30 PM for the first 10 poets, which begins at 8PM.  Mr. Williams will read at 8:30PM.  Mari’s is at 8222 Firestone Blvd, Downey, CA across from Porto’s.  Wheelchair accessible, but 21 and over only.  The Downey Arts Coalition sponsors these events, which are curated by Lorine Parks.

    Bruce Williams grew up in Denver and received his PhD from Claremont Graduate University. For years he taught writing at Mount San Antonio College. He has two grown children, Drew, also a poet, and Casey Lynnette, a lawyer, like her mother, William’s late wife, Ellen. The poet still lives on a hill high above San Dimas, California with memories, a mountain-climbing roomer and two Jeeps. But he is spending much of his retirement in a cabin in Yucca Valley, near Joshua Tree Bruce has published several chapbooks: Clothes Poems (Pudding House), Stratification (Inevitable Press) and Everyone In My Support Group Feels Grateful After I Share. His first book length work, The Mohave Road and Other Journeys, has been published by Tebot Bach.

    Bruce Williams’ “The Mojave Road and Other Journeys” is simply one of the most breathtaking and heartbreaking collections of poetry I’ve read in many years. These poems constitute a sequence of elegies and a folio of meditations upon illness, death and transcendence, and also upon the nature of late, redeeming love—David St. John

    VARIATIONS

    June 30

    1
    Dawn heats the sky,
    bird song, dog barks a warning.
    The hive in the wash
    starts its buzz.

    2
    Her face
    wrinkles into summer.
    Her sex and eyes
    stay young.

    3
    She asks,
    “Who is this poem about?”
    He looks at her
    and lies

     

  • Rick Smith featured poet at Wine+Words

    Friday night at 9PM is Poetry at Mari’s Wine Bar, this month featuring poet Rick Smith, who long worked in Downey at Rancho Los Amigos Hospital.

    20111117-165133.jpg

    The first kiss,

    two wrens on fire,

    blind with smoke and heat

    storming out of the underbrush

    of self-restraint

    into a trembling

    orgasmic future

    well above the starving dogs

    fast food chains,

    the quick fixes below.

    This flame will lick the wound

    This flame will light up like this.

    This flame will consume. from Hard Landings

    Lorine Parks is curating the evening, which will begin with an open mic for the first 10 sign-ups. She describes how she came to know Rick.

    “I first met Rick Smith thirty years ago when he was playing harmonica and piano in a band and composing such songs as “If it wasn’t for low class, we wouldn’t have no class at all.” Paris and Pennsylvania bred, he told me my Stonewood Travel business’s Music in Hold was crummy music, and proceeded to record a new tape for me. We have been friends and exchanging poems and critiques ever since.

    “Smith’s first chapbook was The Wren Notebook, one of Raindog’s Little Red Book Series. In it, his protagonist Wren decides to win the title of Highest Flying Bird by hitching a ride tucked under Eagle. When Wren pops up, at twelve thousand feet and then flies a few feet higher, he almost freezes to death on re-entry. Further, Eagle and the rest of the birds chase him to have their revenge.. . “I held the note/long and rich as I could./ So what if it’s the only note I know?/ It’s my note.”

    “All of Smith’s poems have a wry humor but they also have an intensely personal voice. He has an intimate quality to his work and a dead-flat realistic approach to what’s happening. Murder and revenge and a Buick LeSabre from Phoenix have equal place with delicate birds nesting in ruined upholstery in an abandoned mansion on an estate near Philadelphia.”

    Smith has a PhD in psychology and worked in Downey at Rancho Los Amigo as a psychologist therapist for head-injured patients. He later established a rehab center in Apple Valley called Back in the Saddle for brain injuries. Read him at your peril. An old wren with one good eye, six feet four inches tall, “measuring out time by that splendid chaos, commotion.”

    Live music by members of Downey’s folk band Willow Bend will perform at 8pm.  Learn more about their unique brand of music at http://www.willowbendmusic.com