April Arts Roundup 

With warmer weather ahead it seems that festivals and events have too moved out doors. Spring is certainly a season to appreciate the nature around us, but it’s also one to appreciate great art. There are the more popular arts festivals like Coachella, but if you weren’t lucky enough to score tickets or it simply isn’t in your price range, plenty of arts events will be held on campus and in the city beyond. Here’s a quick roundup of a few of those, which will hopefully be enriching and enjoyable without maxing out your budget.

Trojan Film Festival – Apr. 9 // Ray Stark Theatre// 7 p.m.

USC’s first ever Trojan Film Festival will take place on campus at the Ray Stark Theatre tonight. Cosponsored by the School of Cinematic Arts, the festival will screen 13 films across a variety of genres, including dramas, documentaries, comedies and stop motion specials. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and refreshments will be provided.

April Art Walk  – Apr. 9 // Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk Lounge // 6 p.m.

The Downtown Art Walk takes place every second Thursday of the month, bringing together more than 10,000 artists, art collectors and art enthusiasts. This month, the event will focus on the world of small-scale, independent publishing, and hopes to bring more attention to the alternative literary scene consisting of comics and zines. Among tonight’s special guests will be Morley, an LA based artist who specializes in wheatpaste typographic posters, Gavin Hignight, the creator and writer of the graphic novel Motor City, web comic The Concrete World and Fanboy Comics, a digital geek media site that focuses on pop culture. Though this month’s theme centers around zines and comics, there will also be a slough of other exhibits on display, including a show by Ellen Cantor that will examine the role of memory in preserving the past.

FemFest – Apr. 10 // E.F. Hutton Park // 6 p.m.

Hosted by the Women’s Student Assembly, FemFest will bring music and spoken word artists to campus, while bringing issues concerning marginalization and sexism to light. In its third year, FemFest will continue to blend politics and art to celebrate girl power and community. The event will have a variety of art stations, including booths dedicated to wire art, linoleum printing and painting. Currently, FemFest has been working on collecting art submissions for a community art project, which will be displayed to the public.

Los Angeles Festival of Books – Apr. 18 -19 // USC // Saturday: 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Sunday: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

Since 1996, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books has maintained its goal of bringing together people who love books with people who create them. The festival has grown to include live music, poetry readings, chef demos, cultural entertainment and artists who produce and display their work on site. For photography and film aficionados there will also be film screenings and a photography exhibit, followed by Q&A sessions and discussion panels. In previous years, the festival has attracted approximately 150,000 people who come to view exhibits by booksellers, publishers, museums, theatres and literary/cultural organizations. Attendees can buy books and other merchandise at the festival and purchase Conversation tickets for an additional price online.

Brewery Artwalk and Open Studios – Apr. 25 -26 // Brewery Art Los Angeles // 11 a.m.

Located northeast of Downtown, this annual free event displays Los Angeles art that is on the cutting edge. Resident artists of The Brewery work across genres from photography to LED light sculpture and hail from backgrounds as diverse as the art they produce. The artwalk will place a special emphasis on exploring the intersections between science technology and the arts, and will also be offering works for sale. As L.A. arts events usually go, there will be food trucks and a beer garden as well!

College Night at the Getty Center – Apr. 27 // Getty Center // 6 p.m.

College students enjoy free food, parking, art, and entertainment on the 27^th! Students will have access to special gallery tours and meet-the-curator sessions, while enjoying live music by UCLA-based band Eva B. Ross Foundation. This year’s College Night will feature two special exhibitions. The first is Painting Set Free, a collection of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings and watercolors, which were all painted during the last fifteen years of his life. On the other hand, Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography will feature the work of seven photographers who have focused on reducing the process of picture-making to its most essential form. Another exhibition that will be on view is Zeitgeist: Art in the Germanic World 1800-1900. The show features the works of Caspar David Friedrich, Philipp Otto Runge, Gustav Klimt and others.