Artists

It is a rare thing to witness the creative process. But in the excellent new documentary "Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters," filmmaker Ben Shapiro gives us fly-on-the-wall access over a 10-year period to an acclaimed artist as he envisions, designs and executes his surreal commentary on small-town American life in the form of an epic photo installation, "Beneath the Roses. " Bit by bit Shapiro uses Crewdson's musings to piece together the way he moves from a jumble of thoughts to the moment he shoots.

Cameron Carpenter, whom Times music critic Mark Swed has called "technically the most accomplished organist I've ever witnessed," will be playing the organ at Walt Disney Concert Hall at four concerts in April as part of the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Brooklyn Festival. Carpenter, the first organist in residence at the Berlin Philharmonie, has become a rock star of the pipe organ with his combination of virtuoso technique, colorful outfits and his habit of not announcing his program before his appearances.

SICILY, Italy - Two years ago, the J. Paul Getty Museum ended a lengthy dispute with Italian cultural authorities by returning a towering limestone and marble statue of a Greek goddess to Sicily. The sculpture is now the pride of the relatively modest Museo Archeologico in Aidone - and by far its biggest attraction. The tiny hilltop town in central Sicily, near an excavation of the ancient city of Morgantina, is also the home of a Hellenistic silver collection repatriated in 2010 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In the video for their hit single "Ciervos" (Stags), members of the Chilean electro-pop band Astro wave spears and romp around in furry pelts and animal skulls as if part of some Bronze Age lost tribe. It's intended to be the last word in low-budget primitive cool, Andean style. But for viewers of a certain demographic profile, the imagery may summon surreal memories of Peter Gabriel, his face camouflaged like an African mask, making tortured connections with shrieking simians. No doubt the similarities between "Ciervos" and Gabriel's "Shock the Monkey," an early '80s cry of inter-species angst, are inadvertent.

Don and Mera Rubell are known in the art world as the New York-to-Miami transplants who helped to bring the Art Basel art fair to Florida and opened a museum-like space there for their cutting-edge collection. Not so well known: their connections to California. They lived here briefly in 1969, when Don did his internship at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center before becoming a gynecologist. In 2005 and 2006 they flew from Miami to Los Angeles so often in search of new, exciting art that they called their resulting exhibition "Red Eye. " "We could have called it GPS," Mera said, laughing, remembering crisscrossing the city to reach artists' studios.

Taking a cue from TOMS Shoes - in which the company donates a pair of shoes to needy children for every pair bought - the social entrepreneurship class at Environmental Charter School in Lawndale recently came up with ways to do something similar with such everyday items as T-shirts and socks. "What if we make the hoodie reversible to reduce the need to buy more than one," asked Mohamad El Hajj Younes, 17. "And for every one sold, another would be donated to a shelter in the county where they purchased it. " His classmates huddled in groups to develop "for-purpose" business plans, instead of the traditional for-profit and nonprofit models.

MOSCOW - Police detained and questioned three people, including a principal Bolshoi Ballet dancer, as suspects in the acid attack that almost blinded Sergei Filin, the Bolshoi's artistic director, a crime that cast a shadow on Moscow's iconic company and exposed bitter infighting among its dancers. Principal dancer Pavel Dmitrichenko, detained Tuesday, was reportedly suspected of masterminding the attack. Police also brought in Yuri Zarutski, 35, believed to be Filin's assailant, as well as Andrei Lipatov, a man suspected of driving Zarutski to and from the attack, according to a statement on the Interior Ministry website.

Almost 40 years ago, David Bowie performed two sold-out concerts in Southern California, at the Long Beach Arena and the Hollywood Palladium. The artist - who will release his breathtaking new album, "The Next Day," next week - was at that time ascending as one of the most magnetic and adventurous rock stars of the era. He was touring in advance of his "Aladdin Sane" after a triumphant run as Ziggy Stardust, and walked onstage to Beethoven's "Ode to...

The Watts Village Theater Company's signature for the past three years has been "Meet Me @Metro," a traveling show in which the small nonprofit company rode L.A.'s light rail system, with actors and audiences disembarking and reboarding for performances related to the history and issues of neighborhoods along the route. But after last summer's production along the Metro Gold Line from Union Station to the East L.A. Civic Center, artistic director Guillermo Aviles-Rodriguez's ambitions for "Meet Me @Metro" became a sore spot for the theater's board of directors.

In 1965, Barbara T. Smith wanted to make a lithograph. When she was rejected from prominent print studio Gemini G.E.L., she leased a Xerox machine instead, installing it in her dining room. Thus began an intense engagement with the printmaking technology of the 20th century. Smith photocopied nearly everything she could get her hands on: flowers, family photos, food, magazine clippings, her own body in various states of undress. She made illustrated poems, multi-panel grids, many, many books and book-like sculptures.