A Not So Mundane Monday

Throughout the native, underground art world here in Los Angeles, one of the most prominent and constantly evolving aspects of our creative arena is the poetry and spoken word scene that is ever-growing here in our LA City streets. There are countless venues, open mics, slams, lounges, and cyphers just waiting for the next dope lyricist to step out on their stage and drop some knowledge on the onlookers that surround them. Each week more and more new and returning poets are taking the stage trying their hand at the mic as they spit their newest lines into the sea of snapping that awaits them from the crowd. And each week, the seats of these venues get more and more packed with people waiting to see what sick lines are in store for them tonight. Whether artist are trying out new material, or serving the crowd with a fully prepared, home-cooked piece, these events are a great place to satisfy that creative craving.

Over the last few months, a new poetry and open mic venue has emerged, finally giving us something to do on the ever-dreadful, mundane Monday night. And get this, it's FREE! Every Monday night at the GSLounge in Westchester, three Los Angeles Native artists host Mingle Mondayz, a new performance art and open mic event that takes place every week at 9pm. Mingle Mondayz is a free, 21 and over event that features some amazing headlining performers, an open mic lineup, a live band, a house DJ and a of course a full bar and menu to carry us the whole night through. Each week, the talent varies, featuring different artists from all over, from poets and spoken word artists to rappers and singer/songwriters, there truly is something for everyone here on Monday night.

This week, Monday, July 27th at 9pm Mingle Mondayz will be hosting an extra special edition of their event as we celebrate our birthdays, here at essenceLA. Tonight, you can join us, Curnie Compton and Lana LosAngeles as we step out tonight at the GSLounge to celebrate our birthday and support the new open mic event here in LA. Join us as LA's very own Ventage and Tampico take the stage tonight as our headlining performers and come out as some incredible poets grace the stage. Did we mention it was FREE? No cover all night! You do not want to miss this show!

For info on how to cure your future cases of the Mondaze, follow the Instagram @mingle_mondayz

Theatre/ IMPROV: A Must See Show

On July 5th at the beautiful Theatre West venue nestled between the top of the Hollywood area and the bottom of Studio City, the dynamic cast of this year's production of 'Without Annette' took the stage. The work is written by Hope Juber and Jeff Doucette and follows as the cast takes audience members on a journey that is unlike anything you've seen before. Combining the commitment and consistent work of a prepared production, with the magic, spontaneity and trust of an incredible Improv class, complete with audience participation, the direction of Charlie Mount creates an entire theatrical experience that you're sure to remember!

Starring the incredible Heather Alyse Becker, Shaun Brady, Yancey Dunham, Jason Frankovitz, Jeremy Klein, Kyle Klein, Maria Kress, Charlie Mount, Claire Partin, Chloe Rosenthal, Andrew Walker, and Andrew Villarreal this is truly an all-star team that is our here in Los Angeles creating some serious "theatre magic." Each member of the cast works together flawlessly to create a streamline production that incorporates not only, an obviously intense rehearsal process but also a seamless Improv technique that keeps both the audience and the actors literally at the edge of their seats as no one in the room is quite sure what to expect next.

Now for those of you who don't know too much about improv, you are in for a real treat, and this show is the perfect balance of an introduction to Improv technique and a snapshot of what amazing things can happen on stage when these techniques are executed properly. Short for improvisational, improv theatre technique is a form of live, staged theatre in which the plot, characters and the dialogue of a theatre game, scene, story or sometimes entire show are made up in the moment, right there in front of all of us, in the audience. Often improvisers will even take suggestions from the audience, or draw on some other source of inspiration from the current situation or space they are in to get started. And the incredible cast of 'Without Annette' was able to do exactly that.

The most memorable scene of the play is when the characters are asked to improvise an advertisement for an everyday, household product. Product suggestions are taken from the audience and the players have little to no time to prepare, catchy jingle included. It is also one of the only times where all of the characters at once participate in an improvisational scene. The night that essenceLA was in attendance, the product being advertised was a plunger made of gold. You can only imagine the type of hilarity that ensued. In addition to the hilarious dialogue and tagline, the players dominated the scene with use of their physical bodies and mimicking motions. The actions of the human tampon also had me #crying, #dead from laughter.

Whirling together humor, emotions, passion, content and character development Theatre West's production of Without Annette enables us to truly witness, firsthand, all of the beautiful work and unwavering commitment of all involved. We congratulate the cast, venue and crew for this amazing production and we encourage you all to go out and see it before it ends it's run here at Theatre West in August. For tickets, details and information please visit Theatre West online here.

Event: One Mic Collective

As an artist, living in Los Angeles, one of the biggest advantages is the consistency of the arts events and opportunities that are constantly happening all over LA. From art openings to gallery exhibits, from museums to live jazz, poetry lounges, comedy clubs, theatre festivals and cabarets, no matter what you're into, no matter what your craft, the Los Angeles Art Scene has something for everyone. Even for those of us on a budget and still looking for something artsy to do.

This week, you can take part in one of these amazing, Free, arts events as Wednesday, July 22nd, 2015, The One Mic Collective is hosting their first Poetry and Open Mic Night, live at the Mattlex Barber Shop in Baldwin Park, Los Angeles, CA. The One Mic Collective is fairly new on the LA arts scene and is looking to establish a regular poetry event in their area. You could be one of the first establishing audience members, poets or artists that make that happen! Come out and support! You can find more information about the One Mic Collective on their Facebook Page or in their Tumblr.

Hoping to inspire arts, education, sharing, and community building in their area, The One Mic Collective is working to create a free and welcoming space for artists all over LA to come out and share their voices. The event will feature three incredible headlining performers including the amazing Raja Michael and the ill Imrith Rode'American, two poets looking to spread their work throughout the Los Angeles area. The event will also feature an open mic list and line up, music, good vibes, and the collectives' own DJ spinning some of the hottest tunes. You do not want to miss this event!

This event takes place Wednesday. July 22nd. 2015 from 6 to 9pm at the Mattlex Barber Shop located at 5171 Azusa Canyon Road, Baldwin Park, Los Angeles, CA. Parking is available in a lot on site and entrance cost is FREE!  

We hope to see you there!

Vagornaments by Megan Reilly

Megan is a 24 year old artist who grew up in Glendale, California. She is passionate about feminism,arts & crafts, and good beer. Megan received her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz in Feminist Studies with a minor in Literature, and has since moved back to Los Angeles.

Megan is mixed media sculptor who uses clay, paint and repurposed jewelry to create what she has uniquely titled as, Vagornaments. A decorative and colorful take on feminism and gift ornaments. Originally inspired by traditional Christmas ornaments and the feminist agenda, Megan uses clay, paint and up-cycled jewelry to craft personalized Vagornaments for each of her buyers. Beginning as a parody among friends,  Megan began crafting Vagornaments behind her parents house, humorously describing herself as a "middle class white lesbian...making vagina art in her parents garage," a financially challenged college student, newly back from her time away at school.
Before long, what started as a comical gift among friends, quickly began to gain popularity in her community, and over the Internet. And before long, Megan was shipping Vagornaments to customers all over. Today, Megan not only creates Vagornaments for her friends and family members, but also for her well-stocked Etsy Shop, in which you can purchase a Vagornament for any time of the season.

However, Megan's work does not just stop at the feminist agenda, Vagornaments have recently been incorporated into some of Megan's other community work as well, in the inclusion of their creation and sales during her involvement in the AIDS LifeCycle Ride that recently took place in June of 2015. In the summer of 2014, Megan signed up as a cyclists for the 2015 AIDS LifeCycle, a 7-day bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a 545 mile ride as a fundraiser for the Aids Life Cycle foundation. Megan set her personal fundraising goal at $10,000 and as an incentive for her friends and family to donate to her cause, she offered a personalized Vagornament to wanting donors. Megan successfully met her fundraising goal, and completed the 2015 AIDS LifeCycle and plans to return to the ride, and her Vagornament included incentive for the ride next year, in 2016.  You can find more information about Megan's involvement with the AIDS LifeCycle and donate to her cause here.

Aside from her work with the ALC, Megan has big plans for herself, and her art. Getting ready to relocate to New York City to pursue her education, and her passions, Megan looks forward to continuing her work for the feminist agenda, and for her community in her new location. Megan looks forward to creating new vagina art as well, including Pillows!, she excitedly exclaimed. "Pussy Pillows," she says, as Megan loves to sew. As of now, she is gaining some inspiration for the new project, and looks to the possibility of creating something larger like a pussy couch some time in the near future.

You can check out Megan's work on Instagram @GEORGIA_O_QUEEFS or at her Etsy Shop. And, if you would like to hear more of Megan's interview with us, here at essenceLA please listen in to the full interview below.

LA Street Food Festival

Imagine there’s a place you could go and pay a one time admission fee, and enjoy some of the best food, beer, and cocktails that Los Angeles has to offer. Well here’s the good news, IT DOES EXIST!

It’s called the LA Street Food Fest, where 60 bucks gets you all you can eat ($90 if you want V.I.P. treatment). Okay, I know, $60 seems like a lot, but let’s be real. This general admission fee gave me access to free food from nearly 150 food and beverage vendors. You can go out to a bar and spend $60 easily on drinks and apps (appetizers, not life sucking smartphone applications) and still be ready to drop more on after hour tacos at the end of the night. At the LA Street Food Fest, you pay once, and then eat and drink until your heart’s content… and then eat and drink some more.

The festivities went down this past weekend on Saturday, June 11th at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. If you purchased the V.I.P. tickets, you were able to enter at 3pm otherwise, general admission was at 5pm. In anticipation of a long line to enter, I arrived at the event around 4:15pm and was able to secure a spot towards the front of the general admission line which was awesome because 5 minutes later, I turned around and the line was spilling over well into the parking lot. While waiting in the line, the crowd was greeted by a British guy who I’m guessing was some sort of event coordinator. He seemed like a charming guy who managed to squeeze out a few funny jokes about the differences among Americans and British people while briefing the crow on entrance protocol.

The gates open promptly at 5pm and we were greeted with dessert vendors first. My favorite dessert was some Vanilla Ice Cream I had from this vendor call Three Twins Ice Cream. They pride themselves on being an organic ice cream vendor and that made me a bit skeptical at first, but clearly won me over after the first bite. In my opinion, it’s not the same tasty experience when I eat things like organic, gluten free, sugar free, “what’s the point” desserts. If I’m choosing to indulge in sweets, I’m gonna go hard. If I wanted the so called “better” option, I’d eat a salad instead.

Getting back on track, after dessert came the Asian cuisine section where you could find dumplings, ramen, and rice dishes galore! Also, intermittently placed throughout the entire festival were the beer stands. After a long day of fasting in preparation, and standing in the sun waiting to enter, I wanted nothing more than an ice cold beer. The first vendor my eyes landed on was the Singha beer tent and it was every bit of refreshing. Following the Asian cusine section was American then Latin cuisine. Some of my favorite vendors in those section were the L.A. Wing Co. and Pinches Tacos and Goose Island Beer. I’m sure I have more favorites but there was so much good food! For a more complete list of vendors, you can checkout the LA Street Food Fest website.

I can’t forget my favorite part of the festival: Once I had a full tray of food (yes they gave out trays) I was able to set foot on the field of the renowned Rose Bowl Stadium and enjoy my food while sitting down in the shade. At the end of the day, I had the ultimate case of the itis and could barely make it back to the car, but it was all worth it! I don’t know of any other event that you can experience LA food like that and I encourage you all to check it out next year.

Until then,

Eat Well, Live Well Yall,

- Curnie Compton

For Your Consideration

Music plays an essential role in our Los Angeles communities, whether it's your alarm clock radio playing the latest jams as you wake up for work or school in the morning or the music you bump from your car radio as you take your daily drive, whether it's general tunes during your daily grind or after hours hits spun from your favorite DJ, music is everywhere in Los Angeles. It surrounds us, keeps us going, pumps us up and brings us together. We hear it along the street and in our stores, clubs, bars, restaurants and more and luckily for us, a ton of the music filling our speakers comes from right here, in our own backyard. As we launch this project, it is our goal to provide you, our readers, with a resource to reach all of tunes put out by our very own, to highlight these artists during their work and journey for recognition but also to provide us all with the abilities to listen to the true sounds of Los Angeles during our own day to day. In conjunction with this blog, we have created/produced and EssenceLA Soundcloud linking you to all the hottest LA music, follow us there, enjoy the melodies the make up our communities and delve into the rhythms that are ethnically LA.

In this post, we have included a few artists for your consideration. Visit our SoundCloud here and check out our newest players and our featured artists, see what we listen to and which sounds we have found throughout this beautiful city.

The first song we would like to introduce you to is called Ground Logic from a band that goes by the name of Franco Funktion. This gem is off of their Family Funk mixtape. According to their Soundcloud profile, Franco Funktion describes the genre of this song as a fusion of soul, reggae, & hip hop. We here at essenceLA believe this a the perfect song to vibe to during those busy summer days and calm summer nights. If you feeling their vibe, head on over to their Soundcloud profile and give them a follow.

This next artist goes by the name of Ventage. She is a homegrown Los Angeles singer, designer, and spoken word artist.  The name of the song is Hypocrite and you can catch it on her forthcoming album that is scheduled for release in September. If you like her soulful sound, go follow her on Soundcloud.




This last song can be considered a banger. It's from up and coming artist Lil Bro who is part of the Pushaz Ink record label. It's called Young Nigga and it is the perfect song to turn up to during a night out with the squad 400%! If you want more by Lil Bro, you can check him out on Soundcloud.  

EssenceLA is the creative endeavor of two Los Angeles based artists and entrepreneurs, Curnie Compton and Lana LosAngeles, who set out to connect and reclaim the LA arts scene.

Curnie Compton grew up in Compton, California where at a young age, she became infatuated with film and television production. She attended the University of California Santa Cruz and obtained a BA in Film and Digital Media. As an aspiring television producer, she became involved in many productions inside and outside of school. As a young scholar, she began to pay more attention to the dividing and oppressive aspects that society imposes on many communities including her own. She grew to appreciate art forms such as music and filmmaking etc. as a vehicle of expression and social commentary and its ability to unite people from all walks of life. Currently, she splits her time between being a Production Assistant and searching for ways to promote and unite artists from underrepresented communities.

Some of Curnie Compton's favorite films are, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Springbreakers, and Forrest Gump. Besides watching films, one of her favorite past times is searching for music that transcends multiple genres and playing to a diverse crowd of people. Curnie Compton, draws her inspiration from the actions and reactions of her surrounding audience and community. She likes to introduce music to her community that they would not normally listen too. Some of her favorite music artist to date are Rome Fortune, TroyBoi, and Asher Roth. As for the Los Angeles, her favorite part is knowing that every neighborhood has its own identity and unique story of how it came to be in its current state. 

You can follow Curnie Compton on Soundcloud here and on Instagram @Curnie_Compton.

Lana LosAngeles is a mixed media artist native to Mid-city Los Angeles who grew up learning the love of the arts. An actor, dancer, director and performance poet by trade, Lana attended the University of California, Santa Cruz where she completed her undergraduate career with a BA in Theatre Arts and Dance, and while working in Santa Cruz, began to take a serious interest in the arts for social justice and education. Now back in LA Lana works as a performance artist, an advocate artist for positive social change and as a liaison between the members of the art community strengthening their ties and support of fellow artists and their crafts.

As an artist, Lana draws her inspiration from her community and the world around her, from all of the people, places and things she sees everyday, drawing her art from her own, personal experiences and from the stories of the people in her life. Some of her favorite artists include Tupac, Lauryn Hill and Amy Winehouse lyrically, while her visual stimulations often come from the likes of Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky and René Magritte to name a few. According to Lana, the best part of Los Angeles is the unlimited possibilities being here provides, the way you can go right outside your front door and go after what you're looking for. To her, "Los Angeles really is the city of dreams."

You can follow Lana LosAngeles on Instagram @lanalosangles.

The photos in this article were taken by GCaptivity, a Los Angeles based photographer. To see more of her work, you can follow her on Instagram @GCaptivity.

intro to essenceLA

welcome to essenceLA

Los Angeles: A city filled with many cultures and opportunities. Where a vast freeway system connects communities filled with people with origins from all over the world. People venture to LA to tap into its immense network of art, media, and other resources. Many people come to the city of sun and fun with hopes of fame, fortune, and recognition. It is a process that brings more and more people to Los Angeles every day, causing drastic changes to many neighborhoods.  

Very often, it is a fictionalized version of a community that is portrayed in mainstream media. Even more often, most communities are not represented at all. But what about those people who were born in Los Angeles? Where can one find those local artists and entertainers that developed their skills in the land of skills? Those insiders that are very quickly becoming outsiders in their shifting communities? Where do LA natives go to have their voices heard? Where are the voices of the people who grew up next to instead of underneath the spot light? What is the reality beyond reality tv?

Great People of the land of social media, we present to you essenceLA.

essenceLA is a community of native Los Angeles artists and creators who have come together to create a space that represents the beauty, diversity, and spirit of Los Angeles, bringing together the essence of LA. This is a space where the art, music, food, and culture of Los Angeles is explored, showcased and represented, a place where the true artistic energies of Los Angeles get to create and shed their own spotlight on the works and crafts that are important to and indicative of the city we live in.

Join us as we meet, follow, interview and exhibit native Los Angeles artists and their work. Join us as we lead you through the complex world of the LA arts and the creative matter that falls just beyond the glitz and glam of Hollywood. Join us as we highlight the works of our communities and the lives that make these amazing projects possible. Join us for essenceLA.

The following photos were taken as we explored Highland Park, a neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles. All photos featured in this article were taken by Curnie Compton.

Content will be posted to our blog periodically. Be sure to check back frequently as well as follow our other social media accounts to stay updated. Also, be sure to check out our Soundcloud playlist below. All artists included are work and reside in Los Angeles.