Pippa Garner is an artist of many in-betweens. Since studying automotive design at ArtCenter in the 1960s and serving in the U.S. Army as a combat illustrator during the Vietnam War, Garner has built a decades-long career that bridges the chasms dividing art from design, publishing, media, and lived experience. Always with an edge of sardonic wit, her absurdist yet accessible drawings, sculptures, and characters cast a satirist’s trenchant eye toward the systems of authority and myth that shaped the Boomer Generation’s American experience. Embarking, in the late ‘80s, on her self-described project of “gender hacking” caused an estrangement from L.A.’s art world at the time, as well as a recent resurgence of interest in her status as a pioneering trans artist.

DIY culture, artist-run initiatives, pop-up galleries, and ‘zines have long been essential but often unhistoricized aspects of the art world. What happens when that independent fringe drifts steadily into the mainstream and informal networked culture influences the establishment?

At the turn of the 21st century, video artist Michele O'Marah started making cover versions of Hollywood film and television. Working with borrowed equipment and willing friends, O'Marah's homemade reenactments pay loving homage but also possess a bite sharp enough to pop the hot air out of their sources and subjects.