A monster-laden banner, designed by Village School students and prominent artist Stefan Bucher, has been sent to a school in Mali, West Africa, as part of the Global Art Project for Peace. In exchange, art created by 300 Mali students in the school, run by Peace Corps volunteer Dina Carlin, will be exhibited at Village School this fall. ‘Peace is a big scary monster,’ says Village School art teacher Margot Mandel, explaining how monsters fit into the global theme of peace. ‘If we could view monsters as peaceful, cuddly creatures, rather than as the boogey man, it would be the start of sending our view that peace is possible, that we can tame the monster that people never thought could be tamed.’ Mandel, who received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Carnegie Mellon and her master’s in education from UCLA, said the idea for the banner came about in jigsaw fashion. Third grader Harris Culhane visited the Hammer Museum with his parents and saw an exhibition by Bucher, an illustrator, graphic designer and writer who is famous for his online illustrations and storytelling experiments with monsters. The family obtained the artist’s information and gave it to Mandel, who contacted Bucher. She told him about the Pacific Palisades K-6 school and its theme ‘Going Global’ and asked if he would consider being part of a project submitted to the Global Art Project, based in Tucson, Arizona. ‘He was totally on board from the beginning,’ Mandel says. Bucher designed his monster during a school assembly on March 15. He dropped blobs of India ink on a canvas and then gave the ink a spritz of canned air, which blew the ink in different directions. He rotated the paper around, looking at different angles, until he began to see a monster emerge. Using Sharpies, he extended the ink, then drew a monster. As he drew, his art was projected on an overhead screen and students were encouraged to ask questions. Bucher, a native of Germany, moved to California in 1994 at the age of 20 to attend Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Explaining that he stayed because he felt he had more opportunities in the United States, Bucher worked briefly at a Portland advertising firm before opening 344 Design in Los Angeles. After passing a citizenship and language test, he is now officially a resident. Nationally recognized, he is the author and designer of ‘The Graphic Eye: Photographs by Graphic Designers from around the Globe,’ ‘All Access: The Making of Thirty Extraordinary Graphic Designers’ and ‘100 Days of Monsters.’ One Village School student asked Bucher why he started drawing monsters. ‘It came to me when I was driving,’ he said. ‘There was a shadow on my arm and it looked like an unbelievable creature, like a friendly monster.’ After Bucher completed his monster, Mandel had the image blown up and placed on a four-foot by eight-foot banner. The next step involved 293 students making their own monsters, using Bucher’s process. Mandel, who has taught at Village School for the past 16 years, knew that having students create their own monsters would be the easiest part of the project for her. When students enter her art classroom, the first sign they see is ‘There are no mistakes, only happy accidents.’ After the students finished, the most difficult part of completing the artwork was to cut out each monster and find the best place to glue it on the banner that contained Bucher’s monster. ‘We had a puzzle party,’ says Mandel, who with the help of parents Kate Mcgowan Pearce and Ora Nadrich spent hours cutting and gluing. ‘It became a puzzle, working to fit each monster in.’ Once completed, Mandel took the banner to a store to have the piece photographed. The large banner with all of the individually glued pieces (which kept falling off) made the piece seem fragile, which seemed to Mandel like another way of speaking about the global peace issue. At the store, the banner was photographed, then the shadows and lines were Photoshopped out. Mandel sent a photo of the final project to Bucher, who responded: ‘Wow, this is crazy cool. I love the texture of the little monsters on the face. It’s like porcelain. I’m putting it on the blog right away.’ On his Web site www.dailymonster.com, Bucher wrote: ‘Hey, remember when I told you about drawing monsters at the Village School in Pacific Palisades a few weeks ago? Well, teacher Margot Mandel and her students took one of those monsters, made it into a big honking banner’which they’re submitting to Katherine Josten’s Global Art Project at the Tucson Art Center where they know me’and added monsters of their own to it. How many monsters? Conservative estimates put it in the bazillion range.’And what an amazing job they did of it, too!’ On April 15 at Village School, the banner was presented to Josten, who started her project in 1994 to create a culture of peace through art. Participants are asked to make a work of art that expresses a vision of global peace and goodwill. An international exchange is organized by matching participants, group-to-group and individual-to-individual. The exchange occurs the last week of April biennially. Village fourth grader Kate Reilly asked Josten, an award-winning artist whose paintings are included in museum collections and who taught art for 14 years at the college level, ‘When you started this organization, did you have any second thoughts?’ ‘I never lost sight of the dream,’ Josten said. ‘But every day I have second thoughts.’ Mandel said that in addition to sharing the students’ art, ‘we’re hoping to continue relations with the Mali school,’ which is sending its art from Africa via its Peace Corp leader. According to parent Mcgowan Pearce ‘She is coming to New York in June, and will send us their piece from there.’

By ELIZABETH MARCELLINO Palisadian-Post Contributor The theme of the ‘H2O’ show at gallery 169 in Santa Monica Canyon was clear from its title. But the scope of work by photographer Douglas Busch left some guests of the intimate, modernist gallery at the May 8 opening imagining a second artist. Combining vintage black-and-white contact prints downstairs with vibrant digital color images upstairs, the exhibit offers up water in a wide range of incarnations and shows distinctly different versions of the artist’s vision. The large-format black-and-whites focus on structural elements’ some man-made, some natural, like rocks’on or near water. A meditative, faraway shot gives Malibu Pier the long, narrow look of a bridge to nowhere, floating above a near invisible ocean. Another peers in close-up between sand and shadows of the weathered wood underbelly of the Santa Monica Pier. The perspective of each vintage platinum or silver chloride print seems quite deliberate. ‘I only take one image,’ says Busch, a resident of Malibu. ‘If you don’t commit to the image, it comes across.’ An anecdote illustrates that commitment. In the 1980s, Busch was working with 12′ x 20′ cameras (originally designed to capture large groups at banquets) but wanted to photograph Spider Rock, which stands 800 feet high in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. He completely rebuilt a camera to get the vertical format he needed and drove more than 1,500 miles from Chicago to the national park. There, he shot only two exposures before packing up to drive home. ‘I’m a purist,’ he says, adding, ‘I never crop,’ but only use precisely what is ‘in the glass.’ The digital color photos reveal another sensibility. These, says Busch, ‘are about mood and emotion, [transitioning] from subject to metaphor.’ Most show the ocean uninterrupted to the horizon. Quite abstract, they have a painterly quality, even in near miniature”some works printed on alumibond measure only 6′ x 6.’ Three larger photographs displayed together serve as a study in vivid primary colors. The first, a close-up of undulating ocean unbounded by sky or shore, is pure indigo. The next two show an expanse of the Pacific at sunrise or sunset. Both sky and water are caught in a hot dandelion yellow in one and a vibrantly surreal red in the other. It seems the colors must have been altered in the printing. But Busch says no: ‘Go to the beach and sit there to see the drama that unfolds in changing light.’ Busch worked with large-format cameras for more than 35 years, designing some of his own, including a 40′ x 60′ model that he says is the world’s largest portable camera. He began working with smaller digital cameras as a way to reanimate his vision. A gallery table, filled with both coffee-table and 6′ x 6′ images, includes landscapes, street scenes, the ruins of European castles and Native American pueblos, nudes, gardens, self-portraits, heavily tattooed subjects and snapshot-like images from Miami shot as commentary. That’s all before considering the 58-year-old artist’s extensive work as a residential design-builder (‘it’s three-dimensional art for me’) and his ardent environmentalism. At one point, he mentions the need to avoid ‘getting stale.’ But it’s quickly forgotten as he moves on to his recent work in China, an exhibit to showcase street scenes from Moscow, and development of a center to educate consumers about green building materials. With so many ideas in his head, it’s no wonder some thought his photographs were the work of multiple artists. But no, just one artist with multiple personalities, in a good way. ‘H2O’ shows at gallery 169, 169 W. Channel Rd., through June, by appointment only. Thirty percent of the proceeds from works sold will go to Heal the Bay. Contact: Frank Langen at 310-963-3891.

  For the third year in a row, the Pacific Palisades Junior Women’s Club (PPWJC) is joining forces with the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation (DSLRF) for the annual Love Walk on June 6 to raise money for innovative and groundbreaking breast cancer research at DSLRF.   Registration for the walk begins at 8 a.m. and the walk will begin at 9 a.m. in front of the Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real.   DSLRF, a nonprofit 501(c)3 breast cancer research foundation in Santa Monica, is working to eradicate the disease in a unique way.’DSLRF is recruiting women to partner with them by taking part in the recently launched breast cancer initiative, Love/Avon Army of Women.’So far, almost 333,000 women have joined.   DSLRF is dedicated to preventing and eradicating breast cancer and improving the quality of women’s health through innovative research, education and advocacy. Dr. Susan Love, a Pacific Palisades resident and DSLRF president, is focusing the research on the intraductal approach because she believes that breast cancer begins in the breast ducts.   ’Our foundation is excited to partner again with the PPWJC to go beyond a cure and raise money to eradicate breast cancer,’ Dr. Love says. ‘Many women in the Palisades have taken part in our research studies and continue to donate and support the foundation because they know every penny raised is going to a local nonprofit that is doing breast cancer research right here in the community.’   The Love Walk has thus far raised more than $100,000 for the DSLRF. The 5K walk through the Huntington Palisades is open to people of all ages, and local schools and businesses are encouraged to participate and help raise awareness. To register, visit www.dslrf.org.   Yogaworks Pacific Palisades is hosting a pre-race reception for the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation ‘Love Walk’ on Saturday, June 5 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the studio, 15327 Sunset. Yogaworks is partnering with the Palisades Art Association to have the evening themed as an art gallery with works of art by 10 or more artists in the Palisades.

Purple: Well, now that we’ve got the answer to this year’s burning question out of the way (What color was Friends of Film founder Bob Sharka’s blazer on opening night?), it’s a delight to report that even as a scaled-down event, the seventh annual Pacific Palisades Film Festival still attracted some 200 guests to the gala screening and Friends of Film (FOF) benefit on each of its two nights last week. Cozy and intimate, the festival paid fine tribute to actress Frances Fisher on Thursday at the home of Nora and Harvey Lerer on Corona del Mar, from which attendees had an unobstructed ocean view from the Santa Monica Pier to Malibu. Miranda Bailey’s humorous 50-minute documentary ‘Greenlit,’ about a film crew straining to keep an environmentally friendly set, screened. As guests drank tequila sunrises against the Palisades sunset, the cocktail party on the Lerers’ expansive tiki torch-lined pool patio got under way. Fisher, this year’s FOF?Lifetime Achievement Award honoree, greeted fans and friends, including Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren, and ‘Risky Business’ actress Janet Caroll. Fisher told the Palisadian-Post that she was happy to be back in the Huntington Palisades, where she once lived. ‘I miss the neighborhood, the air, the view,’ she said. Pointing up the street, Fisher added, ‘I used to walk my dog in that dog park all the time!’ Warren”whose hits include Cher’s ‘If I Could Turn Back Time’ and Toni Braxton’s ‘Unbreak My Heart”’ has created tunes that have received six Academy Award nominations and seven Grammy Award nominations, including a win for Celine Dion’s hit ‘Because You Loved Me.’ She told the Post, ‘We’ve gotten to be good friends. She’s really cool. A real warm, good person.’ Warren loved Fisher best as Ruth Dewitt Bukater, Kate Winslet’s overbearing mother, in ”Titanic.’ ‘She was a big part of that movie,’ she said. Producer Barbara Ligeti (‘Hugo Pool’) was ’22 when I met Frances at the Actors Studio. I saw this young girl act and I said, ‘I think I’ll become a producer!” Concord recording artist Jimmy Demers spoke highly of Fisher, with whom he traveled to Paris and was one of the few people at Versailles to witness Barbra Streisand receive her Legion of Honors from President Nicolas Sarkozy and the French government. Demers is also a friend of Francesca, Fisher’s 15-year-old daughter with her former paramour Clint Eastwood. Actress Carroll, in town from New York for the memorial service of actress Zelda Rubenstein (‘Poltergeist’), who shared anecdotes from the set of ‘Risky Business,’ Tom Cruise’s 1983 career-launching hit. Wait a minute! What was the mayor pro tem of El Segundo doing there? Had the Post accidentally gotten onto the 405 South and overshot the party? Not exactly. Bill Fisher is Frances’ younger brother and an El Segundo council member. He arrived with his wife, Laurie Fisher, and recalled the peripatetic upbringing he and his sister had experienced, as their father built oil refineries around the world. ‘I was born in France and she was born in England,’ Bill Fisher said. At an early age, he saw the seeds of Frances’ craft. ‘We play acted a lot when we were kids. At 18, she got a job as a secretary at an oil firm, but that didn’t last long,’ as she soon fled the job to pursue acting at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. By her early 20s, she was playing on the ABC soap opera ‘The Edge of Night’ (1976’81). ‘Looking back on it now, 30 years ago, that was amazing!’ Bill Fisher remarked, before talking up the merits of his beloved El Segundo. ‘We’re the most business-friendly community in California! We’ve got the most Fortune 500 companies.’ (Not to mention the Purple Orchid, a tiki bar where Sharka’s blazer would fit right in!) The gregarious Cathy Chazan could not say enough about Fisher. From 1995, when Fisher did the Fox program ‘Strange Luck,’ and through the years in the wake of the mammoth success of 1998’s ‘Titanic’ (which, until James Cameron’s other behemoth,’ 2009’s ‘Avatar,’ was the highest-grossing film of all time), Chazan worked as Fisher’s publicist. ‘It was one of the most exciting times,’ she said, adding that despite Kenneth Turan’s negative review in the Los Angeles Times of the big-budget film, the epic love story went on to gross $1.8 billion worldwide. The afterglow of the film’s release ‘went on for two years,’ she said. ‘Frances and I met people who had seen it 27 times! It touched a chord!’ ‘She is one of the greatest pleasures,’ Chazan continued, ‘as genuine off-camera as on. The whole time I worked with her, she lived in the Palisades. We did many interviews here!’ Apparently going through his Prince phase (in previous years, he wore carnation-pink and powder-blue blazers), Sharka proved a colorful character as the evening’s master of ceremonies, repeating his comic mantra” ‘Are you kiddin’ me?”’in his Boston accent. Reflecting on the previous FOF Lifetime Achievement Award winners”Robert Guillaume, Seymour Cassel and Stacy Keach”Sharka paid special tribute to comic actor Dom DeLuise, who passed away last year. ‘We miss him terribly,’ he said of the late Palisadian. A montage reminded the packed audience at the outdoor screening area of the diversity of Fisher’s work”from one of Henry Jaglom’s earliest efforts, 1983’s ‘Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?,’ to the Christopher Guest comedy ‘Waiting for Guffman’ (1996), her work opposite Oscar winners Ben Kingsley and Jamie Foxx in ‘House of Sand and Fog’ (2003) and ‘The Kingdom’ (2007), respectively, as Patty Hearst, Lucille Ball and Audrey Hepburn’s mother in various biographical movies; and in ‘True Crime’ (1999) and the Academy Award-winning Best Picture, ‘Unforgiven (1992), both starring and directed by her ex, Eastwood. Two of Fisher’s acting mentors spoke fondly about the actress, as did Taylor, who attended with her son, horror film director Gabriel Bologna (‘The Black Waters of Echoes Pond’). Taylor spoke of Fisher’s commitment to the Screen Actors Guild, where she’s very involved. ‘She brings to SAG the spontaneity and enthusiasm and power of her acting. I would follow her wherever she goes,’ she said. Then Fisher took the podium to accept her award. ‘I raised my daughter here,’ Fisher said. ‘The Palisades is my hometown.’ As accomplished an actress as she is, Fisher admitted, ‘I feel like I’m still waiting for my big break.’ Following a chorus of ‘We love you, Frances!,’ Sharka jumped in: ‘One more time”Frances Fisher! Are you kiddin’ me?’ Truly a ‘titanic’ evening. Mint green: That was Sharka’s coat color on Saturday, a more intimate affair held at the beautiful Toyopa home of Paul and Irene Gigg, who had met Sharka through a Corpus Christi Church fundraiser. ‘We were about to cancel the festival this year, but we went out to the community and found ourselves some angels,’ Sharka told about 50 attendees before the backyard screening. ‘Don’t be fooled by this house! We’re a struggling nonprofit!’ The evening’s film, the music documentary ‘The Chris Montez Story’ by local filmmakers Burt Kearns and Brett Hudson (last year’s Pali Film Fest opener ‘The Seventh Python’) centered on whatever happened to the young Latino singer/songwriter best-known for the international hit ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Call Me’ (crafted under the aegis of A & M Records’ Herb Alpert, who was inspired by the shuffling jazz of the Ramsey Trio’s ‘The In Crowd’). Kearns got the idea to track down Montez on film after the song popped up on K-Earth while he was driving past Chautauqua and Sunset. Musician Hudson had performed with Montez decades before. Co-producer Joachim Blunck said, ‘There’s a lot happening on the fly. Chris’s life was changing as we were filming it.’ (After a long-dormant career, Montez had begun performing live shows again over the past two years). ‘Chris Montez Story’ was prefaced by Joshua Bell’s ‘A .45 at 50th,’ based on an incident involving a college-age James Cromwell (‘Babe’) in which the actor had let his Manhattan home become the site of a Black Panther meeting while his parents were visiting Europe. The short film”which included Cromwell sharing the anecdote intertwined with a re-enactment starring his son, John Cromwell”put the crowd in a good mood for ‘Chris Montez Story.’ ‘Chris Montez Story,’ which chronicled how its subject went from a teen musician from Hawthorne performing with his buddies (who became the Beach Boys) to touring Europe at age 19 in 1963 with his opening act, a band called The Beatles who, by tour’s end, had exploded in popularity. The film credits Montez for inspiring the Beatles’ collar-less-suit look. Post-screening, Montez, with buddy Sid Jacobs, performed his biggest hits in the Giggs’ living room. ‘I’ve never done a house party before,’ Montez told the Post afterwards. ‘It was kind of cool.’ He added that Kearns and Hudson’s film did him justice. ‘It’s expressing what I’ve been through in life. It has a good message, especially for Latino musicians.’ Jacobs, who soloed on a medley of tunes from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ is a teacher at the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. He’s known Montez for 12 years. ‘It’s an engaging documentary,’ he said. ‘What you see in the film is him.’ Returning to Pali Film Fest this year: Chris Lombardi catered, tantalizing guests with cups of couscous and chicken curry, pizza squares, and steak-and-potato skewers with blue cheese sauce; and the ever-affable Whitney Bain proved himself a popular bartender on both evenings. Oh, and next year, Bob”how about canary yellow?