Megan Friend

Wertz Brothers Antique Mart on Lincoln Blvd

Imagine a microcosm of western civilization's material culture jumbled together and beautifully stockpiled into a 20,000 square-foot warehouse. Imagine all the stuff you grew up with: all the randomness, all the things you never thought you'd see again, all the memories, all the emotions, all the traditions, all the bizarre trends of your youth, all of the fleeting fixations of your past and all the collectable fascinations of your present. Trinkets, tea sets, toasters, paintings, porcelains, books, nets, vintage textiles and so much more.

This is the experience of visiting the Wertz Brothers Antique Mart in Santa Monica, which will sadly close its doors tomorrow, Feb. 1, to make room for other business developments at the location.

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Among the craftspeople at Crafted are a few painters, such as Lindsay Sochar, seen here.

Collapsible Christmas trees, Barbie dolls and iPads -- a tidal wave of goods mass-produced overseas hits the Port of Los Angeles every day. Moving this bounty from ship to shore is the lifeblood of San Pedro.

It may seem odd, then, that the latest attraction at the port is a humongous marketplace of objects handcrafted in Southern California. Strange but true. Crafted at the Port of Los Angeles, an $8 million partnership between the port and Crafted co-founders Wayne Blank, Howard Robinson and Alison Marik Zeno, opened Friday in a converted World War II warehouse.

How big is Crafted? When the second warehouse conversion is completed in the next 18 to 24 months, it will be the largest indoor crafts market in the country, with 135,000 square feet of display space, enough for 500 micro-businesses.

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Kevin Scanlon

Two of the fascinating Angelenos featured in L.A. Weekly's People 2012 issue. Check out our entire People 2012 issue here.

The first conversation Uglydoll creators David Horvath and Sun-Min Kim ever had was about the meaning of the word "ugly." Ugly means unique, interesting, different. Ugly, they decided, is good.

They were in design school at Parsons at the time. He thought she was cute and made a point to sit next to her in illustration class. They shared the same vision, it turns out: to tell a narrative through products -- toys in particular.

Inklings of the "uglyverse" became apparent when Kim's student visa expired. She moved to Korea, leaving Horvath behind in the United States. By then a couple, they wrote each other letters. He signed one with a cartoon drawing of a googly-eyed little guy with big paws, a big head, a serving apron and a mouth set in a grim, determined line. Deciding he was a hardworking guy, they named him Wage.

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Bettina Hubby

The eagle side of the Rock and Eagle Shop

Last Saturday, less than a week after she opened the Rock and Eagle Shop on Eagle Rock Boulevard, artist and curator Bettina Hubby heard a man outside the door. "I'm just going to make sure it's not just an adult rock and eagle shop," he said to his children.

The exterior is painted a bright, pot-dispensary green, and the store's name is written in a graffiti-like font, so it's hard to know what to expect. But when the man walked in and saw shelves of rock and eagle paraphernalia -- eagle magnets, eagle do-rags and other eagle-related stuff to the left, and pet rocks, sling shots and rock-related stuff to the right -- he dashed out to get the kids.

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Courtesy of the artist

Jeffrey Wisniewski's Battling Buddhas

If you have family in town for the holiday this weekend, try dashing over to Patrick Painter gallery in Santa Monica to a film of battling Buddhas or to Chinatown's The Company for an overly enthusiastic paintings show. You don't have to know art to enjoy, either.

5. A New Album Release, 40 Years Late
Bob Dylan doesn't follow art that closely, but he likes Terry Allen. It makes sense. While Allen's assemblage and collage borrow as much from folk as pop and surrealism, they manage to stay defiantly individualistic. I don't know what Dylan thinks of Allen's music, but Allen will be releasing an LP at LACMA on Nov. 29. It's a restored recording of a nearly forgotten performance he did in 1971 at the grand opening of his friend Allen Ruppersberg's temporary hotel/hangout on Sunset Boulevard. Ruppersberg will be at LACMA, too, and, since neither artist romanticizes the past, hearing them talk about it should be offhand and amusing. 5905 Wilshire Blvd.; Tues., Nov. 29, 5 p.m.; free. (323) 857-6000, lacma.org.

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Josh White, courtesy Honor Fraser Gallery

Totally doesn't doesn't do its awesomeness justice. But cool...

Shipsearching, Mie Olise's awesome treehouse of an artwork at Honor Fraser gallery, stole the opening-night-in-Culver-City scene for me. You may be wondering, what's a treehouse of an artwork? Is that some newfangled whipper-snapper term for awesome? No, that would make me redundant.

A treehouse of an artwork is one you climb up and sit inside, as if hiding from the world below, with your trusty sleeping bag for comfort, while spying on the gallery-goers below through the spaces between wood slats.

Maybe "treehouse" isn't exactly the vibe it's going for, as the didactic says that Shipsearching speaks to the "intimate and poetic experience of being onboard a ship during a journey." That it does, too. There's a picture of a sailboat projected inside the constructed space.

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Brendan A. Murray

Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School

Santa's workshop came early this year DesignerCon. On Saturday, Exhibit Hall A at the Pasadena Convention Center temporarily turned into a pop-up, pop-art fair and toy market filled with commercial designers and design fans alike.

A group of artists and toy-makers first created the Vinyl Toy Network in 2006. Since re-dubbed DesignerCon, the yearly fair now not only opens its doors to toy artists and retailers, but the public, too -- just in time for the pre-holiday season, mad-buying rush.

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Simone Paz

Tony Dominguez, maker of giant Dia de los Muertos puppets

Tony Dominguez is a 3-D kind of guy. Most people look at a photo and see it only in two dimensions. Dominguez looks at a flat image and sees its geometry in three. He can spin it around in his head. He senses its depth.

As a maker of giant Dia de los Muertos puppets, he is well served by this talent. Lately, though, it seems as if three dimensions aren't nearly enough.

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Well, it's here. A book about cat fur. Crafting With Cat Hair: Cute Handicrafts to Make With Your Cat is out this month from Quirk Books. The idea comes from Japan (of course).

The translator, Amy Hirschman, lives in Los Angeles. She hasn't made the cat hair crafts yet, but plans to get together with her friends to do so with the hair they collect. It will, no doubt, be a fun and highly allergenic time. "I think American audiences are a little more squeamish when it comes to the idea of crafting with cat hair," Hirschman says. "I've found that the reaction is either 'Gross! Weird!' or 'What an interesting idea! This is so cute, I really want to try this! Lord knows I have enough cat hair.'"

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Graham Kolbeins

Chris Weisbart welcomes visitors into his habitat from a sci-fi podium.

Here's a classic Sunday scenario: going to see an animal at the zoo. Except this time, the zoo is actually inside the Melrose Trading Post, a Sunday flea market held at Fairfax High School, and the animal is an eccentric artist. That's the idea behind experimental gallery Mastodon Mesa's new collaboration with the Trading Post, called Zōo.

Every Sunday, an artist will create a habitat for themselves in the morning and work in it throughout the day, attracting curious Trading Post-goers. Zōo began on September 4 with a one-month residency by graphic artist Tara Milch; it will continue over the next twelve months, and feature just as many artists and other undefinable makers-of-stuff.

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