Evan Hartzell

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Evan Hartzell is an American artist and musician. He played drums on Spain’s The Blue Moods of Spain and Donovan’s Sutras, produced by Rick Ruben. His art has been exhibited by MOMA and is in many private collections.

Early Life

Evan Hartzell was born in Santa Monica in 1969 and raised in Venice, California. His father was Duane Hartzell. (1943-1998), an editor of television and film, whose notable productions included the film, The Aviator starring Christopher Reeve. Evan’s mother is Mary Hartzell, former director of First Presbyterian Nursery School and co-author of Parenting From the Inside Out with Daniel J. Siegel. Evan grew up in Venice in the 1970‘s skateboarding in a multicultural neighborhood, listening to Prince, Newcleus, and Van Halen, and taking art lessons on Abbott Kinney Boulevard (then West Washington) His babysitter was in the Dogtown and Z Boys, a film that documented the rise of skateboarding in Venice and the ramp his dad made for him ended up at the Venice boardwalk skated on by the likes of Christian Hosoi and Jesse Gonzalez.

He started pursuing photography when he attended Crossroads School in Santa Monica, California (graduating in 1987, cum laude) where he would watch bands such as Firehose and Treacherous Jaywalkers perform in the “alley”.

While he started drum lessons in high school, it wasn’t until he was a student at UC Santa Cruz (at that time a popular choice for Crossroads graduates) that he joined his first band, Spoke at the encouragement of it’s guitarist, Matt Bokovoy. From there, he played drums in various bands during his college years, including a cumbia band called Grupo Sabor. It was also at UC Santa Cruz that he studied electronic music with Gordon Mumma and started experimenting with Tape Music. Evan was at Porter College, one of the ten colleges at UC Santa Cruz while experimental composer, David Cope was provost, and was inspired his ideas about art and music. Cope also brought Jose Montoya as a performer and visual artist to Porter while Evan was there, and Montoya remained a constant inspiration through his music and poetry.

After an initial focus on history, Evan eventually attained his BA in fine art with an emphasis in photography studying with professors such as Mike Mandel and Norman Locks. Technically, his focus in photography was everywhere but the darkroom. He was attracted to vintage polaroid cameras and slide photography. Thematically, he was interested in auto biographical portraits as well as California history. As part of the UC Study Abroad Program, Evan attended University of Leeds, United Kingdom where he benefitted from being in a smaller art program that gave studios to all of the students in his year with studio visits with a variety of artists. Here, he experimented with photo booths and the first color copy machines. At Leeds, he also further pursued his study of electronic music, playing drums with his newfound British friends.

Music Career

1992 found Evan back in Los Angeles Evan and invited to play drums in Salamander, a band put together by his Crossroads friend, Sean Wheatley. The band was founded by Sean and his brother, Scott. Two of the Haden Triplets, Rachel and Petra -- later of That Dog -- who Evan also went to Crossroads with contributed the vocals. They recorded a demo. Eventually, Evan was asked to join Spain by Rachel and Petra’s brother, Josh Haden who was playing bass and vocals on this project.

Spain

With Evan on drums, in 1993, Spain eventually became a line up that included Ken Boudakian and Merlo Podlewski on guitars. They played many shows in Los Angeles including Spaceland, Vidiots, and Luna Park. In 1994, Evan moved to San Francisco where his wife, Laura was accepted into an MFA program at the San Francisco Art Institute. While Evan thought this meant the end of his time playing with Spain, it turned out that San Francisco was where the band would record it’s first album, The Blue Moods of Spain in 1995. After that recording, Evan decided to keep performing with the band, as they had regular shows both in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The album received positive reviews from the likes of Melody Maker and NME. The song, “Spiritualized” became a standard that was covered by Johnny Cash and Soulsavers. Eventually, they embarked on a European tour, playing in London, Belgium, France, and Denmark.

The Robot

After the European tour, back in San Francisco Evan became once again interested in “tape music”, experimenting with the four-track and drum machine. Eventually, with Laura’s studies in San Francisco completed, in Los Angeles he would invest in a home studio, creating a “robot”, as he called it -- a stack of machines with which he would record a vinyl album, calling it Waxwing Editorial Corporation after his father’s (who had recently passed away at the age of 54) company. Waxwing Editorial was a solo project, exploring the possibilities of using the MPC and Echoplex, with an ahead of its time sound that was labeled as “abstract”, “techno”, and “minimalist” on Discogs. The “robot” also made it possible to create the tracks for his wife, Laura Alvarez’ electronic rock opera in 2000, The Adventures of the Double Agent Sirvienta. One of these songs was featured in a short film8 installation at the Oceanside Museum of Art’s exhibition, “Borderless Dreams” in 2005.

Evan Hartzell Trio

Evan started a new solo project called Evan Hartzell Trio. This choice of band title pointed to jazz as an influence, and it began with the recording of a series of bossanova standards with guitarist A.J. Barish, guitarist Merlo Podlewski, and saxophonist, Cory Wright. Some songs were recorded in a unique acoustical spot at architect, Eric Lloyd Wright’s Wright Ranch, within “a monument-like unfinished concrete dwelling with killer views”. In the early 2000's Evan Hartzell Trio released “Santa Maria EP” on vinyl featuring A.J, Cory, and Merlo. From this series of bossa nova singles, “New Music (Remastered)” was re- released with new mastering in 2016 featuring A.J. Barish and Cory Wright on Itunes.

Continuing with the jazz influence in 2007 Evan Hartzell Trio went into the studio with renowned jazz bassist and visual artist, John Heard who had played with everyone from Count Basie to Ella Fitzgerald. With Evan’s live playing, recording studio, and electronic music experience, Evan decided to come up with a different process with this recording. He played drums to Heard’s live improvisations in a room for half an hour. Listening to this recording, he later created loops from different portions of that session. He then had his wife, Laura Alvarez write lyrics for 11 songs with the assignment being that they had to be about “love and nature”. The 11 songs were a mix of Spanish, English, and Spanglish many of them inspired by her experiences in the tropical region of La Huasteca in Mexico where her mother was from. As Laura listened to each loop she flipped through her book of lyrics and chose which song she would sing. Usually, they only recorded two or three “passes” for each song. Next, Evan would go back to editing the vocals, creating the final songs. “Songs About Love and Nature”, an 11 song album which was released on Itunes in 2009. Subsequently, three music videos were released on Youtube the same year from this album for the songs, “Cien Años”, “El Juego en el Bosque”, and “Ventana del Noche”

After “Songs About Love and Nature”, Evan Hartzell Trio had three more releases -- “Venice of America” in 2010, “Superba EP” in 2012, and “Human Nature EP” in 2014 all with Laura Alvarez reprising her role with lyric writing and vocals. With these three releases Evan recorded with Samuel Dylan on guitar, following the same recording process that Evan had created with “Songs About Love and Nature”. For “Venice of America” Evan shot music videos for each of the songs on this EP on the streets of Venice where he grew up. Venice, California, it’s history and present was the theme of these five songs. “Superba EP” had as it’s theme, nature’s reclamation of the modern world. In this instance, the title of the EP took it’s name from the roots picking up the sidewalks along a block of Superba Ave., a street in Venice. Again, Evan created music videos for each of the six songs, three of them featuring Evan’s photographs, selected from a series of hundreds he shot of the aforementioned block of Superba Ave. With “Human Nature EP” the theme was the question, “What are human’s for?” featuring songs such as “Whatareweherefor?” and “Arecordplaysasonginspace”.

k-blamo

In August of 2016, Evan released a single titled “huacánX” through a new electronic muisc project called k-blamo. k-blamo is the result of Evan’s experimentation with the monome, an interface box with a grid of back-lit buttons that can be used for creating music as well as for performance. k-blamo is listed on bandcamp as an art group with core members being Evan Hartzell and Laura Alvarez. k-blamo has released four singles and three EP’s. Visual art is an integral part of k-blamo. For example, the purchase of immaculate ep on the music sharing site, bandcamp included a screensaver of ten slideshow images ⎻ photographs by Evan inspired by the music. Photographic slideshows have also accompanied k-blamo performances such as at Keystone Gallery, where they performed songs with poet, Gloria Alvarez at the opening for “Broadcast”, a group art exhibition with accompanying performances. The same presentation style followed at other performances such as when they debuted the single, “ShakerofTruth”. “ShakerofTruth” was performed as part of a book reading of The Ghost Daughter, a novel by former college roommate, Maureen O’Leary at The Last Bookstore. The Ghost Daughter was set around the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that was experienced by Evan, Laura Alvarez, and Maureen O’leary when they were in college at UC Santa Cruz. After a single and three ep’s, k-blamo’s current series of releases are singles with guest vocalists and musicians such as Nick Peters on “ebb and flow” and “3000yearsago” with Maureen O’leary with more collaborations planned for 2018.

Art and brackish

Although Evan received his degree in art with an emphasis in photography in 1992, taking photos took a backseat to music until his father gave him a Polaroid camera in 1997. Taking Polaroids of different areas of his home, Evan created an installation in his dwelling with photos framed behind pieces of acrylic sheets. Each image was placed in the area that it documented. He held an art opening and called the installation, “Domestic” When he was given a Sony Mavica digital camera in 1999 a new chapter began with Evan’s art. In August 1981, Sony unveiled the world’s first electronic still camera. This camera developed into a digital camera by the late 1990’s that used a 3.5” floppy disk to store it’s photos. As Evan preferred alternatives to traditional cameras, this tool along with the birth of his first child motivated him to start experimenting with photography again.

Excited by the quality of the camera on the first iPhone in 2007, Evan then started printing and exhibiting photos he created with his first generation iPhone. He exhibited several large photographs as part of a group show at Palma de Oro in Mar Vista in 2007. The photos were actually many iPhone photos stitched together digitally creating a film strip look. Similar photos graced Track 16 Gallery in a group show in 2008.

He found his favorite way to take iPhone photos with the Hipstamatic app – a plastic camera emulator with many filters and film options – in late 2009. Since then, this has been his favorite photographic process. With this new way of working, photos of flowers taken skateboarding through the Venice streets he grew up on became his first solo exhibition in 2011. It took place at Paradiso Arts in Santa Monica and was entitled, “Visual Indulgences: Prints by Evan Hartzell”.

Taking a different route, Evan created the art video, “Abstract England”, where he filmed a English soccer team game off a CRT television creating an animated, colorful abstract painting for “Abstract Currents: An Interactive Video Event” at MOMA, New York in 2013.

Inspired by Semina and Wally Berman’s art production, Evan created a poetry and art journal, brackish, releasing its first issue, volume one in 2014. The dissemination of the journal was inspired by the mail art genre, a movement that began in the 1950’s and continues today on a global scale. He was, like other artists that practiced mail art, drawn to the democracy of the medium and it’s unexpected journey. While the first issues of brackish were only available as a link that was mailed electronically and forwarded to others; eventually, Evan placed all volumes (1-5: volume 5 released in 2017) on his website for access. A wide range of poets and artists were solicited for each issue, with a theme being shared only with the contributors. Also, each issue often featured art or poetry from more than one person from the same family, such as a husband and wife or mother and son.

In 2015, Evan began a new series of photo projects and exhibitions based on his new interest in mail art. While by this point he had much experience printing his photos, framing, and exhibiting them, he was attracted to the light box-like glow he found when viewing his work on a digital device. He also was interested in connecting with an international audience – ultimately collaborating internationally. Electronic mail art – seemed like the perfect “space” in which to share his work. Building on the spirit of collaboration he had learned from playing in bands, Evan invited people from many different backgrounds to curate these shows. He was intrigued by the changing position of the curator in gallery and museum shows, where the curator seemed to seen more and more as a collaborating artist. He also was moved to choose a variety of people to curate (curators include an actor, the head of a buddhist monastery, and an Alzheimer’s patient) because of his fascination with how the background of the curator chosen could influence their decisions. Between 2015 and 2018 he sent out a total of 18 art shows28 to a growing mailing list with the instructions, “plz email it to your clique...” Sometimes, he would get responses from people detailing who they had shared it with. Family in friends in places as far-flung as New Zealand would pass the mail art on. The subject matter of these mail art shows range from the traditional (nature, portraits, interiors) to the non-traditional (car interiors, music machines).

From 2010 to 2017 Evan’s photography was featured on the covers of two non- fiction books, one novel, and one vinyl album. The two non-fiction books were both philosophy books on Spinoza by Michael LeBuffe, From Bondage to Freedom: Spinoza on Human Excellence and Spinoza on Reason. The novel was The Ghost Daughter by Maureen O’Leary who Evan had collaborated with on the Last Bookstore k-blamo performance. The vinyl album art was for the debut album of Sandy Gold, a dreamy surf music collection by high school friends, Daryle Goldfarb and Steven Tounsand.

This article "Evan Hartzell" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Evan Hartzell. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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