Q Pop Help Japan Fundraiser

Less than a week after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake hit Japan, Q Pop held it's fundraiser/art auction in conjunction with our friends at Tune In Tokyo.

It was a great evening of amazing artwork donated from over 100 artists(including but not limited to: Chris Reccardi, Elizabeth Ito, Junko Mizuno, Irene Yuen, Nagi Koyama, Yoskay Yamamoto, Mari Inukai, Patrick Awa, Lynne Naylor, Michelle Romo, Jeni Yang, Bob Logan, Casey Alexander, Kali Fontecchio, Lou Romano, Lauren Faust, Craig Mccracken, Justin Thompson, Dan Krall, Phil Rynda, Brianne Drouhard, Becky Dreistadt, Paul and L. Rudish, Alex Kirwan, Jeff Ranjo, and many others!!) and great music spun by dj's Greg Hignight, Del Martin , Tora, Ally and Leet!! There was also some really moving live music performances from Dig Jelly and Stephanie Yanez. And good food donated by It's Thai and NAGI!!. Artwork and other donated products will continue to be sold in the store to raise money for the victims of the tsunamis and earthquakes in Japan after the auction so please come by and buy something and help out!!

Opening Art

Sorry again for the delay in posts. I'm going to try to get good about posting regularly. In the last post I mentioned the Grand Opening Party and how much fun it was....but I didn't really get to show much of the art that was in the show. We were so lucky to have the participation of some of the most amazing artists from the gallery world and the animation world. Some of the pieces are still available online in our webstore..please check them out here:

http://qpopshop.com/main/?page_id=15

Here's a little sampling ..

One of the most influential japanese artists in the past decade, Junko Mizuno, created this piece and infused it with symbolism from our shop.... Sweet Gouache painting from New Zealand illustrator Becky Dreistadt ...love the tiny deer...cute!!

Very cool diorama illustration from Bob Logan....Dreamworks animation artist who has worked on the Simpsons and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs!!...

Excellent pen and ink art from Casey Alexander, emmy nominated story artist on Spongebob Squarepants....

Incredible painting by internationally known Hiroyuki Matsuura, creator of the Windy Bunny doll....

The amazing Kevin Dart(he did the mural in our shop!!)...creator of Yuki 7 did this wonderful digital piece..

A fantastically cute piece from Victoria Ying(she worked on Tangled)The uber talented Elizabeth Ito( she painted the mural on our outside wall)
Shibuya Girls Pop artist Eimi..absolutely one of my favorites..never afraid to use the pink!!
Japanese artists Naoshi...another favorite..it's made out of sand!! seriously....and we have more of her cards and goods in stock ......

and we had many more in the show..over 50 in fact!!!

including Shibuya Girls Pop artists: Shinjuko, Hiroshi Mori, Nana Aoyama , Kaiyo Tamaishi, Ra'yka, Nico, Keiko Ogawa, Anne Imai, Sayaka Iwashimizu, Yuki Takahashi, Marrontic

as well as featured artists Mari Inukai, Phil Rynda, Hideyuki Tanaka ( creator of Super Milk Chan), Minifanfan, Chris Ure, Andrew Erekson, Valerie Nunez, Paul Rudish, L. Rudish, Warren Leonhardt, Anna Chambers, Mayumi Tanaka, Anders Arhoj, Aurore Damant, Cody Cameron, Yoko Nomura, Jeff Ranjo, Robert Ryan Cory, Nagi Koyama, Shin Imanaka, Luca Tieri, Chris Sasaki, Michael Yamada, Doug Gautier, Pete Oswald, Irene Yuen, Riki Takaoka, Dave Bleich,

and Justin Thompson!!! whew!!

Thanks to all of them for creating food for imagination!! and helping us celebrate our opening..

Grand Opening Party

Thanks to all that came and made Q POP's Grand Opening such an amazing success!!

We were so happy that so many of you came out to show your support.

It was a really fun experience and crazy too!! Since it was our first event and exhibition, we were definitely learning as we went. Often times totally winging it...haha..

Festivities started at 7 and the people started to pile in almost immediately.

The Flying Pig Truck was outside , small finger foods were set up from It's Thai, and plenty of beer from Kirin was on hand..

Sounds smooth..but as of 6:45..we didn't even have all the artwork up!!!

AAAAA...craziness..

Thank the maker, our good friends Paul and Leana Rudish came to the rescue and helped hang the show. We managed to get the last pieces up just as people started to trickle in. whew...

But...wait, we forgot tags...or we forgot .....lol..

Irene Yuen to the rescue next...talk about serious multi tasking skills...and what a great photographer too!!! Without us asking, she just jumped in feet first and manned the register...while Nagi helmed the bar...throwing out Calpico, Kirin, and nigori sake to thirsty customers..

By about 8 PM, the place was packed and the line to the register started to wrap around the Q table. People picked up cool new Sex Pot, Algonquins, Super Lovers, and Swimmer items...

It was really just an overwhelmingly positive response and we were so happy to see everyone.

All the walls were adorned with amazing art from over 40 artists from around the world.

Justin Thompson, production designer on the film Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, and also the designer of Q Pop's interior..as well as one of the contributing artists in the show...stopped by to show his support.

Other artists including Kevin Dart, Elizabeth Ito, Chris Turnham, Jeff Ranjo, Denise Koyama, Paul Rudish, Leana Rudish, Riki Takaoka, Cody Cameron, Robertryan Cory, Kali Fontecchio, Victoria Ying, Miles Thompson, Mari Inukai, Phil Rynda, Dave Bleich, Casey Alexander, Valerie Nunez, Doug Gauthier, Mayumi Tanaka, Glenn Harmon, Sean D'Anconia and Bob Logan, were on hand to talk to people about their work.

Some celebrities also showed up, like regular customer Josie Stevens and her husband Steve...

It was quite a fun and diverse mix of people ...from sexy rockstars to dirty scientists, cute lolitas to the wrinkly elderly...

Q Pop welcomed them all!!

We are already planning our next event, which will take place sometime in May, so please mark your calenders!! Let's try to make the turnout even bigger for the next one!!! Hope to see you all there!!

GRAND OPENING EVENT!!!!

It's finally happening...the Grand Opening event. Please come and help us celebrate..look at some great artwork..and shop for fun stuff!!

Opening reception is on Jan 29 7pm-11Pm

There will be refreshments and artists in attendance!!

YAY!!!!

AWW..

We got some shout out from our friends over at Sweet Streets...They really are sweet after all!! HA

http://sweetstreetsla.blogspot.com/2010/12/inside-q-pop.html

Super cool time lapse....

My friends Kevin Dart, Elizabeth Ito, and Chris Turnham painted some very amazing murals at the shop. Elizabeth painted the one outside..and Kevin and Chris painted the interior one. The finished pieces are so excellent, please come to the shop just to check them out if nothing else.( Of course, it's nice if you support the shop as well).

Here's a very cool video that Kevin made showing the creation of the murals:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/11/23/time-lapse-of-mural.html

Also, please note that we carry many products from these incredible artists...and they make great holiday gifts..hint hint..haha

Q Pop is OPEN!!!

Ok...I haven't been updating this blog like I thought I should...but I've been opening a shop..and it's a little crazy!! Q Pop officially opened it's doors on the afternoon of November 12!!Those of you who have stopped by already..Thanks so much for your support. Everyone else, I hope that you will be able to come and see us soon!

The ride getting to this point has been a very exciting one. Insane actually..haha. I thought I might explain a bit about the process. First of all,

it's not like Miki and I had been planning this for years. We had sort of casually mentioned how cool it would be to have a shop/gallery but that's about as far as the talk would go. But a few months ago, Miki and I returned from a vacation trip to Thailand and Japan. Whenever we go, we are always so inspired by all the creative energy over there..this trip was no exception and we returned with a yearning do do something. That something would be Q Pop.

The idea was simple..create a venue for artists to showcase their handmade stuff...to create our own stuff..and to have other cool shit that even if it's not handmade..at least is artfully made.

Ideas are great..but execution is the hard part. The first thing we needed to do was find a space. Where to open? This ended up being more difficult than we thought.

Mostly because of price. Rents arestill ridiculously high in Los Angeles, which would explain why half of Melrose is empty. We thought about Sawtelle, because of other cool shops like Giant Robot but it was also just as expensive. We finally decided on Little Tokyo. Seeing so many japanese people leaving the area..we thought we could return some of the "japaneseness" to this historic part of town. Plus, they have good ramen here. We were lucky enough to find a cool japanese landlord.. Mr. Fujimoto, who has been running a business for more than 30

years.

The space we got was a former bike shop called Routes.

It was...let's just say..the space needed some work. It was pretty ugly. For the task at hand

I decided to ask my incredibly talented friend Justin Thompson to design the interior space. You can read about his process and see his preliminary sketches here:

www.squeakypen.blogspot.com

Having the designs finished..we needed someone to realize the entire thing..That person would be Tommy Wattanakran.

This guy was like superman...seriously..

I can't even stress to you how much this guy did for us.

He built ALL our custom furniture by himself(with assistant Miki).

With his crew, they finished construction in about 2 months.

Originally, we had the retarded idea that we could finish in 2 weeks...yeah right. What were we thinking? Making some of the custom furniture on a budget was sooo time consuming.

It's one thing if you have a laser cutter and a $20 million budget..umm...but we didnt..So it was all Tommy with his saw.

The results are awesome!! I was sooo unbeliveably amazed by how it all came together.

I have to also mention the HUGE amount of help we got from our friends.. Nagi was at the shop until 6 am helping set up the inventory

...My mom was here every day helping out..The Ito family bringing snacks and drinks and helping to boost the moral.

And last but not least, since this place is supposed to be a place where artists convene..we needed some art in it . And we wanted BIG art. For this we got our uber talented friends Elizabeth Ito

and Kevin Dart to paint murals. Elizabeth painted the outside wall

and Kevin tackled the inside wall(with the aid of another superhero Chris Turnham).

The finished pieces are so impressive.

Our first week of business has been very fun and stressed and good. Better than expected but still not where it needs to be for us to actually survive. So we're counting on all our friends and fans to spread the good word and help us get more people at the shop. We really want to keep it going for a long time so that we can celebrate cool artwork and fun stuff!! Come on down and check it out!!