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Welcome to another edition of Essential Arts, bringing you L.A.‘s finest culture, must-watch film openings, stunning art and a dash of Kenny Chesney.

This week’s offerings arrive at the peak of summer with all manner of live, outdoor fun to guide you through the city. Let’s take a look at what’s going on this week. Best bets: What’s on our radar this week 1.



“Sangre de Nopal/Blood of the Nopal” Artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez weave a compelling web of works reflecting their heritage as part of the indigenous Oaxacan diaspora and their contemporary Southern Californian approach to fiber arts. Aguiñiga, who is showing a self-portrait made of woven cotton rope with terra cotta casts of her hands, says such works allow her to “fully delve into larger issues of identity, place and politics, always at the forefront of life at the borderlands.” At the heart of the show is cochineal, the ancient, blazingly bloody-red Zapotec dye made from crushed insects that live on nopales (prickly pear cactuses).

Aguiñiga uses the dye for ombres on braided cotton ropes; Gutiérrez weaves it into richly colored, geometric-patterned updates of traditional Oaxacan tapestries. “The depth of these materials,” he says, “is not just the colors but the complexity of transforming nature into color.” Through Jan.

12 at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, 308 Charles E. Young Drive North, Los Angeles. fowler.

ucla.edu — David A. Keeps 2.

“Newsies” As a newspaper r.

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