Arts

LOS ANGELES - Entering Saturday afternoon with a string of losses and likely to face an uncertain future in the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the event of another, Manny Gamburyan walked into the Staples Center with plenty riding on his shoulders in his featherweight bout against Michihiro Omigawa. At the end of three hard-fought rounds, the Glendale-trained Gamburyan emerged victorious with a unanimous decision, propelled to victory thanks to his old bread-and-butter grappling skills and his ever-developing striking game.

A painting transforming the limestone karst towers that jut out of Vietnam's Halong Bay into a red and yellow fever dream hangs on the wall of an Eagle Rock restaurant named for the bay. A fountain in the center of the dining room tries to evoke the sound of water slapping on the massive spires, but mainly serves to lure toddlers who really, really want to splash their hands through the falling streams. Bathing toddler notwithstanding, Halong Bay is a quiet eatery with clean lines and a beckoning menu of French and Vietnamese cuisines.

For roughly five years, beginning with a memorable stint on "The Ultimate Fighter," Manny Gamburyan has found a home under the Ultimate Fighting Championship umbrella. It's included an ultra-successful campaign in the UFC's one-time sibling company, World Extreme Cagefighting, in which the Glendale-trained fighter earned a featherweight title shot. Alas, Gamburyan's title rendezvous with champion Jose Aldo ended in defeat and was the genesis for a current three-fight losing streak.

SANTA YNEZ - Art Hovhannisyan arrived upon the doorstep of becoming a title contender with devastation, looking to knock the door down. But former World Boxing Assn. lightweight champion Miguel Acosta knocked right back, making for a pulse-pounding lightweight main event at Showtime's Shobox card at the Chumash Casino in Santa Ynez on Friday night. But it was Hovhannisyan's early brilliance and late fortitude that brought the fighter known as the Lionheart the biggest victory of his career, as he defeated Acosta via split decision to remain undefeated.

SOUTHEAST GLENDALE - Glendale-based lightweight boxer Art "Lionheart" Hovhannisyan is quick to acknowledge that tonight is the most important night of his career so far and he has trained accordingly. "It's the biggest fight in my career, so it's the [longest] camp I've had in my life," said Hovhannisyan, who has trained for tonight's 10-round clash with Miguel Acosta under the guidance of Glendale Fighting Club proprietor Edmond Tarverdyan. "I'm ready for a fight and I'm hungry for a fight because my last fight was last August.

The second annual Russian and Ukrainian Painting Exhibition at the Silvana Gallery in Glendale consists of more than 100 paintings that retain techniques of the first generation of rebellious Russian Impressionists. The same turgid brushwork, out-of-tube pigment and other elements that once disguised the meanings in propagandistic art are used here by a new generation for narratives of life, architecture and landscape. Subject matter for this second generation of Russian and Ukrainian impressionists celebrates the life and land of the common people, no longer because Soviet sensors have secrets, but because after Perestroika in the 1990s, they have the freedom to choose the content in their work.

A few weeks ago, I spotted something I had never seen before in Glendale: public street art. A neat, black, spray-painted phrase stared back at me from the cement, encompassed in two delicate motifs that surrounded it: “Keep Your Head Up.” I couldn't look away, engulfed in the unfounded fear that the ground would have surely absorbed this rare creative expression if I did. So I quickly took a photo and shared it with the world, uploading it...

Stripped of resources once afforded by local redevelopment, Glendale must weigh what's more important: temporary art exhibits that brighten vacant storefronts, or permanent projects that become staples in the community. “I think you need a balance,” said Councilwoman Laura Friedman at a City Hall meeting Tuesday. “Having changing, dynamic projects bring a kind of excitement to downtown.” Since December 2010, Glendale has spent $63,000 on 16 exhibits in vacant storefronts that have riddled the downtown streetscape amid a protracted recession.

An upright piano installed near the administration building at Glendale Community College last month as part of a three-week performing arts project is slated to become a permanent fixture on campus. The piano was one of 30 placed at public sites around Los Angeles County by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra to celebrate 15 years under the leadership of music director and pianist Jeffrey Kahane. “One of the best parts of having the piano outside on campus is to see students with no other access to musical instruments just playing with it and having fun,” said Peter Green, chairman of the visual and performing arts division at Glendale Community College.

The flurry of traditional Japanese arts and crafts in Southern California this month is not in Los Angeles proper. L.A. County Art Museum's majestic Pavilion for Japanese Art remains the West Coast's greatest showcase, but three unrelated Pasadena events form a fascinating cultural convergence. They signify a quietly strong century of Japanese-American history in the area. After a $6.8-million upgrade, the Huntington Library in San Marino has just reopened its historic Japanese Garden.