Creative Exploration

As if you didn’t already know it from the ubiquitous news reports--or just the sight of it growing alongside the San Diego Freeway--a leviathan complex has opened just over the hill from the Valley. The Getty Center has cast its oddly shaped shadow over the art scene in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, on this side of the hill, the art scene has continued at its humble pace. Contrary to what you might think, the San Fernando Valley is no cultural backwater, to which anyone tracking the scene here can attest.

Among our art venues exhibiting reliably good work are the academic galleries at Cal State Northridge and Woodbury University in Burbank; the Century Gallery, affiliated with the Sylmar-based Mission College; and the Platt Gallery of the University of Judaism.

In its own special category is Glendale’s Brand Library, which presents formidable shows in both the Atrium and Skylight galleries--the latter ranking as the finest large gallery in the area. Among the Brand’s memorable art this year was work by John Drooyan, Kevin Axt, Nobuyo Okuda and Jeanine Breaker, artists who created the “Assemblage Transformations” show.

Another pillar of the Valley art scene is the Orlando Gallery in Sherman Oaks, a few blocks from the world-famous Galleria (thank you, Frank Zappa). Founded in 1958, the Orlando remains a stalwart art space in the Valley and its monthly parade of new work in 1997 included art by David Hidalgo, Kathleen Reinoehl, Stephanie and Clarinel Stamos, Robert Bassler and the assemblage group show “Glue, Screw and Wire.”

The Lankershim Art Center, situated in a historic Art Deco building on Lankershim Boulevard, hosts shows of mostly printmaking, but also of other things, including this fall’s group show, “Men Do Art: Icons for the Millennium (Observations, Discovery, Transformations, Release, Spirituality),” curated by artist Preston Craig.

Art pops up on the fringes of the Valley as well. Up in the small, quasi-rural town of Montrose, the Village Square Gallery presents good work. Head out to Valencia, past CalArts to the College of the Canyons, and you find an art gallery that hosted the fine show, “Calculated Risks: Chairs Designed in the 20th Century.”

Other new galleries have opened in the Valley, including Tara’s Gallery in Woodland Hills and, also in that neighborhood, the unlikely art space of Bigoudi International, a beauty salon by day and a sometimes-art-gallery with an attitude.

Special kudos go to Seven Sainctuaries, an inspiring space tucked off Ventura Boulevard, which hosted several of the Valley’s most admirable shows in 1997, including the group effort “Alchemy’s Umbrella.”

The Finegood Gallery, at the West Valley Jewish Community Center Milken Campus, presented a full roster of exhibitions including “Roots, Rituals and Spirituality, a Multicultural Exhibition.” The Platt Gallery specializes in Jewish-related shows, including the provocative “Contemporary Expressions, Hebrew Letters.”

Across the San Diego Freeway from the Platt (and up from the Getty, for reference), the Skirball Center presented the biblical tableaux of George Segal as well as “Temporary Quarters: Artists Build for Shelter and Celebration.”

Other notable shows in the Valley this year: Susan Manders’ “Record-Breaking Art” at Art Experience; the neon art-group show, “Up in Lights,” at Creative Arts Center in Burbank; “Objects Observed: Fidelity and Irreverence in Recent Still Life” at Century Gallery; Jason Rogenes’ investigative installation at Woodbury; the witty and aptly titled “Rear View” group photography show at CSUN.

The high point of the year in Valley art wasn’t at a regular public gallery space though, but at the George Schlosberg Gallery. In this discreet home gallery in a Sherman Oaks neighborhood, the elegant kinetic sculptures of veteran George Rickey filled the interior galleries and the backyard. Rickey’s gleaming metal work, somehow combining qualities of the surreal, the sumptuous and the restrained, danced dreamily in the Valley breeze.

From that backyard, it would be just a short hop over the hill to the Getty Center. But at least here, the parking is infinitely more accommodating.