Alden Marin

Early life

Marin's family moved to Malibu in the 1920s, becoming one of the first residents of the new Malibu Movie Colony. A sensitivity to the beauty of nature, learned while hiking and surfing in this rural suburb of Los Angeles, has been a great influence on Marin's work, as have trips taken in his youth to countries like France, Switzerland, Greece and India. He has worked as a wine distributor since the 1980s. Cartoonist Rube Goldberg is his great uncle.

Poetry

Marin majored in American Studies, with a minor in Creative Writing/Poetry and French, at Stanford University (class of '78). He worked at the university's literary journal Sequoia, edited by fellow student Dana Gioia, who later served as a chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Among his professors were notable poets Timothy Steele, Alan Shapiro, and Donald Davie. Marin focused his studies on the works of Gary Snyder, Richard Brautigan, and Ezra Pound. His writing has been translated into Vietnamese and has been associated with the Vietnamese New Formalism poetry movement, a blending of Vietnamese poetry and American New Formalism.

The colloquial style of Marin's poetry is easily accessible—and, at the same time, spontaneous and visceral. His poems often connect daily minutiae to existential dilemmas.

In books like Little Nuts (Brass Tacks Press, 2008), he champions a new form of short poem that seems to forgo all poetic devices:

"Not Not Poetry"

There's a guy who works at PC Greens to whom I

give my poetry books. Today he said, "I really

like your work!" I said, "Yeah, thanks, it's not

really poetry..." to which he replied, "Yeah, but it's

not not poetry."

Painting

Using traditional canvases—as well as the fronts of postcards, hotel stationery and small pieces of paper—Marin paints with acrylic pens to produce contemporary, multi-colored abstracts, portraits, and landscapes. His work has been shown in galleries, and collected by celebrity inventor Ron Popeil among others. He cites as influences artists who "address the fragmentedness of modern existence," such Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiat and, most notably, Paul Klee.

Marin's image entitled "Riven Rock" is now a wine label for Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon wine being sold under a private label of the same name at the grocery chain Whole Foods Market.

Marin's apartment has been dubbed "The Palisades Art House" because of the thousands of paintings that crowd its walls, shelves, and floor. He hosts private tours to showcase his apartment as an art piece in itself.

Marin's art hangs in many famous restaurants in the downtown Los Angeles area like Bestia.

His art is handled by the Daniel Rolnik Gallery and the Blooming Art Gallery, and is on display at several Malibu businesses including SunLife Organics, Vitamin Barn, D’Amores Pizza, Kaishin, Malibu Farm and Pacific Coast Greens.