Tiger Balm Garden
By Patrick Melroy TSA LA  

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As you of course know, a garden does not grow and expand from neglect, it rises into the sun by the careful maintenance of the impassioned gardener. So too does an art practice respond amazingly to constant touch, constant weeding, healthy portions of water, sunlight, and ripe stinking fertilizer. Tiger Strikes Asteroid Los Angeles (TSA LA) is a small group of committed and patient creators, working to nurture their ideas and the vehicles those ideas use to ultimately travel into the world. We put forth for your attention the ideas of confusion, ideas of pride, and nostalgia, fears of success and our complete discomfort at having too much hair in places we would rather not. We have reconciled arriving into adulthood surrounded by this lumpy layered human body, racked with untold surprises almost daily. Show of hands if you agree that we were all better off in our rubbery youth. Seriously how come our knees weren’t better designed, or how come there isn’t a dentist like doctor telling you how to protect them on a par with the rabid and justified call toward pediatric flossing.  

TSA LA sits in the sun, it watches over the south-side of Broadway in the storied downtown LA, just down the block from the next big renovation, the next great shift of economy. This new momentum is surely destine to move out a group of committed business people who stuck to the streets with no budget, made business among brick and mortar as the sprawl abandoned them for the false comfort of the online. Or will it? Any trip to TSA LA will and should include a trip through our neighbors shops, amazing one-of-kind, first-time business owners making their dreams on Broadway come true in brilliant innovative type shops. They are each determined business moguls working their projects, with patience and maintenance and a fierce commitment to find success.  

We have gathered around the gray floors of our gallery to be a part of something. Each of us yearns, yes you read that right, yearns for the salve of being in conversation with minds that excite us. We enjoy the chance to put our hands to work supporting each other. We thrive at the thought of making something from nothing just like our neighbors.  

This gallery has brought us together and it has caused us to seek out conversations everywhere else, you are standing in everywhere else, you always were. We are excited to show you our art, and we are excited to hear your thoughts on what we made. So here are the options as we see them. One, come to California and see us, or two, if you are someone who fears that the sight of the magical left coast will cause you to give up your Law Practice for the sweet waves and perfect tacos, then just send us an email and let us know what we did to you. losangeles@tigerstrikesasteroid.com or postcards to 440 S. Broadway LA CA 90013