Storefront Galleries

In the spring of 1998, Jesus Sanchez decided that his neighborhood needed a permanent place for artists to exhibit their work. “How hard could it be?” he asked himself and opened the doors of Ojala Fine Arts & Crafts on Echo Park Avenue, a few blocks north of Sunset Boulevard. A few months later and a few miles to the southeast, some artists began renovating a space in Chinatown on a pedestrian-only alley called Chung King Road. Soon after, new galleries opened in both locations.

Now, 31/2 years later, the Chinatown galleries have become L.A.’s most talked-about art destination, the cluster of galleries in Echo Park is a less-publicized but burgeoning scene of its own, expanding the boundaries for contemporary art fans well beyond the Westside.

Economics is one thing that all these galleries have in common. Like artists, who are often drawn to locales with cheap rent, gallery owners pay attention to the price of real estate. Low overheads and minimal start-up costs allow adventuresome (and inexperienced) entrepreneurs to run entry-level operations on shoestring budgets.

But what really distinguishes this crop of galleries is how they’re run. Although several are set up to operate in a manner similar to their more established counterparts in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, most have been started by artists and owners who also have day jobs. Less focused on turning a profit than on creating a lifestyle in which art plays an important role, nearly all of them negotiate innovative relationships between art and commerce. An atmosphere of freewheeling experimentation is often created. Part artist’s studio, part social hangout and part retail outlet, many have the unpolished charm of ongoing projects and the laissez faire attitude of do-it-yourself ventures.

The art they exhibit includes all media, from intimate pencil drawings to complicated installations and one-night-only performances. In general, works are less expensive than those in established galleries, and this usually has less to do with their quality than with the fact that the artists are first-time exhibitors. Price is a function of previous sales.

Sometimes, however, shows are organized as favors to friends, and the quality of the work is less important than the social occasion. For viewers, much of the excitement resides in making discoveries, in seeing pieces by up-and-coming artists before they make it.

What follows is a selective survey of the most interesting venues. They can be visited in an afternoon, but be prepared: Not all of them keep regular hours.

Echo Park Avenue

Impressed by the vibe of the annual Echo Park Arts Festival and inspired by immigrant store owners, Sanchez opened Ojala Fine Arts & Crafts in May 1998. A commercial real estate reporter for the Los Angeles Times, he found a row of empty storefronts on Echo Park Avenue. As a volunteer at the festival, he met local artists and invited them to be in his first show, a crowded group exhibition. Since then, he has focused on monthly solo shows, including paintings by Richard Bruland, photographs by Karen Wolf and an installation by Donna Whitehead. All the works he shows are by artists who live or work in Echo Park, Silver Lake or Highland Park.

After 35 exhibitions, Sanchez’s enthusiasm has not diminished. “It’s exciting,” he says, “but the glamour quotient is not high. My gallery is a shoebox. Once, when I put a red dot on the price list [indicating a work had sold] people applauded. I don’t move in a stream of dealers. I want to make visitors as comfortable as possible.”

Sanchez describes Ojala as “a weekend hobby.” Its hours are Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons. He shares shifts with the exhibiting artist and a part-time assistant. “It may not make absolute financial sense,” he says, “but I have two goals: to be a stepping stone for artists and to break even.”

Next door, in September 1998, Robin Blackman and her husband, Merrick Morton, opened Fototeka, a photography gallery that features the work of emerging artists and prints from historical archives.

“We started on a whim,” Blackman says. “I have a background in design, so I know when images look good. Merrick does still photography for the movie industry, so he knows the ins and outs of the medium.” He is also a specialist reserve officer in the Los Angeles Police Department, a volunteer position that puts him behind the shutter at departmental ceremonies and in helicopters high above city streets, photographing locations where search warrants are served.

Blackman manages the day-to-day affairs of the gallery. Morton has kept his day jobs. Both determine the exhibition schedule. Among the most popular and critically acclaimed shows were “To Protect and Serve: The LAPD Archives,” a 60-year survey of crime scene photos culled from the City Records Center and promotional images from the archives of the police historical society; photographs of Chavez Ravine made by Don Normark in 1949; and A.H. Buckman’s pictures of Shanghai from the 1930s. The photographs sell for between $200 and $1,200, with most going for about $500.

“I don’t make a living from the gallery,” Blackman says. “Sometimes I feel like pulling my hair out. But I make enough to pay the bills. I work for free. I’m not trying to be like bigger galleries, but I’d like a staff and a Xerox machine.

“Our atmosphere is homey. Our goal is not to have attitude, not to intimidate people. Ultimately, it’s a matter of doing something you believe in. I want my art to be affordable. I want my peers to be able to buy it.”

Just after Fototeka opened, Patricia Castillo and Aaron Donovan cleaned up the space next door and started Delirium Tremens. Like Morton and Blackman, the couple share the duties of running the gallery, which Castillo describes as “a funky, completely unstructured space we have fun with, showing whatever works we fall in love with.”

To provide the right setting for Mark Housley’s oil paintings and papier-mache sculptures of logs, they covered the floor with Astro-turf. Otherwise, original drawings by illustrators are a staple, with a highlight being graphic works by Winston Smith, who designed the Dead Kennedys’ logo and Green Day’s album covers. Figurative paintings inspired by comic strips, such as Gerald de Jesus’ wicked landscapes and Camille Rose Garcia’s futuristic cartoons, are also prominently featured.

“We seem to have a taste for art that is damaged--you know, brain-damaged--that seems to embody a radically different point of view. We like it when people don’t ‘get’ our exhibitions.”

A graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Donovan has exhibited his paintings at Ojala. Castillo, who works full time as a technician for Pacific Bell, says of their neighborhood, “it hasn’t exactly gentrified, but it wasn’t so long ago that no one walked around after dark. Now there are joggers and families. But we take most pride in being a springboard for artists.”

In August 2000, Nicole Dintaman opened the Pink Gallery, whose name she recently changed to Nicole Dintaman Gallery. Unlike Ojala and Delirium Tremens, she represents artists and focuses almost exclusively on photography. Recent shows by Barnaby Sweet, Romaine Orthwein and Bil Zelman celebrate urban life. As a whole, Dintaman’s program favors the diaristic, presenting slice-of-life vignettes.

Unlike the owners of the three other shops, she doesn’t have a day job. Having worked in film and television production, she says, “I love, love, love what I get to do for a living. It’s incredibly rewarding. My schedule is my own. Art is part of my everyday life.

“Echo Park is perfect for me. I have the freedom to show untested works. I’m able to keep my price point low. Most photos cost between $450 and $1,000. As the new gallery, I’m lucky. The others are really supportive. We share mailing lists and help each other out.”

Bookending the row of galleries are Show Pony, a designer clothing boutique on whose walls exhibitions are often mounted, and a corner grocery. Not far away is Jim Ovelmen’s London Street Projects, a studio that does double duty as an exhibition space. A graduate of CalArts, Ovelmen makes digitally generated works. He pays the rent by doing computer graphics for animated films. Since February, he has invited other artists to exhibit in the front room of his live-in studio.

“It’s a great way of meeting artists and getting into the meat of things. I provide a space for ideas that turn me on. I want these projects to mesh with my lifestyle. It feels like breathing to me.”

Most shows are conceptually sophisticated, including a group of raucously elegant abstract paintings by Daniel Mendel-Black and a collaborative installation that involved snapshots, stage props and a live feed from a video camera that traveled in and out of the gallery on a twisting system of electrically driven pulleys. Sales are barely an afterthought. The first has yet to take place.

Chinatown

In Chinatown, two storefront spaces on Chung King Road were leased by two groups of artists in the summer of 1998. Art Center graduates Giovanni Intra and Steve Hanson formed a partnership with Mark Heffernan and hired artist Pae White to design their gallery. After four months of renovation, China Art Objects Galleries opened in January 1999, taking the name and keeping the sign of the previous tenant.

Near the other end of the alley, artists Roger Herman and Hubert Schmalix joined with fashion photographer Eika Aoshima and film producer Chris Sievernich to found Black Dragon Society, a gallery-cum-social club. Although they signed their lease after China Art Objects, they opened immediately, in August 1998. Herman recalls, “We just opened and hung random stuff, stuff we owned, works by Sigmar Polke, Joseph Beuys, Jennifer Bartlett and Otto Mhl, alongside pieces by students. Then we cooked a big dinner, poured lots of wine and had a party.

“We just had this vague idea of having a place where people could get together. We didn’t even have a phone until this month. I mean, none of us wants to sit there all day. We are not dealers. We are artists.”

At first, word-of-mouth was the only way to know when events would take place. Then fliers were printed and more ambitious exhibitions presented, including abstract paintings by L.A. veteran Bob Zoell and an installation of faux furniture by Peter Klare.

“Now,” Herman confesses, “we feel responsible to the kids.” A promising show by three UCLA art students, Nick Lowe, Rob Thom and Ry Rocklen, is on view. The gallery is scheduled to be open Thursday, Friday and Saturday afternoons.

China Art Objects also began with the desire to have fun. “With the debt students incur, you have to be pragmatic and financially oriented,” Intra says. “We try to make survival exciting and pleasurable. We try to make the gallery run as a machine that makes everyone’s life more interesting.

“When we began, we didn’t have a strategic plan. Everything just happened organically, through friendships. After a year and a half, we shifted from just doing shows to representing artists. Now the gallery pays for itself. In a sense it’s a conventional gallery.”

In three short years, it has presented an impressive series of exhibitions, which often fuse wit and intelligence. In July 2000, Jennifer Moon transformed the gallery into a participatory superhero training facility. Other standouts include Jonathan Pylypchuk’s forlorn collages, Andy Alexander’s sleek narrative sculptures and Kim Fisher’s fashion-conscious abstractions in oil on canvas.

After working for a corporate dealer in South Korea and Vietnam, Inmo Yuon opened Inmo Gallery in February 1999. “Having moved here from Korea, I needed to find my agenda,” he says. “I wanted to find out what makes L.A. art important.” His program mixes solo shows by emerging L.A. artists and international architects with group exhibitions organized by such guest curators as critics Doug Harvey, Christopher Miles and Peter Frank.

Inmo was fascinated by the challenge of opening a gallery in a new place. “Now,” he says, ‘there are nine galleries here. Things have changed. I don’t know if it’s for the better. Chinatown is kind of established. I like to be a pioneer. I’m thinking of moving [downtown] to Traction Avenue. That’s what my heart is saying.”

Others couldn’t be happier with their situations. Chris Acuna-Hansen ran the gallery at Rio Hondo College in Whittier for seven years before opening his storefront space, the Acuna-Hansen Gallery, right around the corner from Chung King Road. “I just love this area,” he says. “You can get around on foot. When I started I knew I’d be sitting alone a lot of the time. I was happy to have the company of the other galleries.”

A graduate of CalArts, he still makes his own work but admits, “I’m a much better curator. I’m much better with other artists’ work. That’s what I loved about school--the yapping, the discussion. That’s what I still enjoy.

“My paycheck for teaching full time at Rio Hondo gives me the freedom to show works that don’t sell immediately. But my artists don’t have that luxury. They have to sell to keep going. My main responsibility is to them.”

More often than not, his exhibitions showcase elaborately fabricated objects that explore the intersection between art and product design. Examples include Bart Exposito’s hard-edge paintings, Carlee Fernandez’s suitcases made from taxidermied animals and Stephen Shackelford’s hyperactive whirligigs.

Mary Goldman and John Tevis, who opened Goldman-Tevis Gallery in February 2000, have been amazed by how quickly L.A. has accepted them. Both moved from New York. Both like the urban location. Tevis says, “What was happening in Chinatown was happening because of artists. We like it when artists start things.”

Tevis works mornings in an investment firm, and Goldman focuses on the gallery. “This distinguishes us,” she says, “because we’re rather reliable. We’re open when we say we’re going to be. If [the other galleries] are closed, that doesn’t reflect badly on them; they’re artists. We have a level of professionalism.”

Exhibitions feature a level of conceptual refinement that sometimes wears thin but often packs a solid punch. Among the best shows were Andrea Bowers’ multimedia celebration of karaoke bars and Jessica Bronson’s mesmerizing videos of L.A.’s landscape.

Seven months after Goldman-Tevis, Diannepruess Gallery opened, with Joel Mesler running the space and Dianne Pruess providing the financial backing. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, Mesler describes the gallery as “a laboratory or factory for ideas.”

Along with exhibitions of paintings and sculptures, a bake sale is scheduled to raise money for the art school he says he is starting. Two Swiss students have enrolled for the first term, which starts in February. “At this point,” Mesler says, “Europeans are probably the only ones willing to pay the $5,000 yearly tuition. Compared to CalArts or Art Center, that’s a bargain. In essence, the school is a collaborative work of conceptual art.”

For another project, Mesler plans to let artist Jonathan Durham build a functioning helicopter in the gallery in the midst of other exhibitions. “We run a commercial gallery, but it’s also a think tank, a living, breathing temple of provocative dialogue. We want to emphasize that walking down the street and getting a beer is just as interesting as presenting an exhibition.”

The two newest galleries on Chung King Road are Lord Mori Gallery, which opened in May, and the Annex, which opened in September.

Originally from Australia, Reg and Sally Lord were drawn to the friendly, cooperative attitude of the galleries and the “weathered charm” of the architecture.

Currently on view at Lord Mori Gallery are a sculptural installation by Hany Armanious, a young Australian artist, and a series of letters documenting gifts artist and Gulf War veteran Ehren Tool sent to government officials. Shows by mid-career L.A. artists Chris Wilder, Thaddeus Strode and Skip Arnold are scheduled.

After running Alleged Galleries on Manhattan’s lower Eastside for 10 years, the Annex’s Aaron Rose was ready for a change. “New York became prohibitive to expansion. I was working with lots of L.A. artists who were not represented here, and the energy in L.A.--its freshness and openness to experimentation--was something I wanted to be part of.

“Part of our mission at the Annex is to go back to our roots, to tap into the freedom we started with. We want to add something to the scene, something feasible yet inspiring.”

For their inaugural exhibition, they built temporary shelves and lined them with 200 cast ceramic figures designed and hand-painted by Mark Gonzales, an artist who is also a professional skateboarder, poet and actor. At $150 each, they were priced to sell.

For the next exhibition, Rose plans to turn the gallery into a bookstore. If it’s successful, a smaller version of it will stay on as a permanent feature. “We’re also expanding our hours to include Sundays. Our bottom line is to make ideas happen.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

How to Reach the Galleries

Echo Park

Delirium Tremens, 1553 Echo Park Ave., (213) 861-6802.Fototeka, 1549 Echo Park Ave., (213) 250-4686.London Street Projects, 2924 Bellevue Ave., (213) 413-1210.

Nicole Dintaman Gallery, 1555 Echo Park Ave., (213) 977-8839.Ojala Fine Arts & Crafts, 1547 Echo Park Ave., (213) 250-4155.Show Pony, 1543 Echo Park Ave., (213) 482-7676.

Chinatown

Acuna-Hansen Gallery, 427 Bernard St., (323) 441-1624.The Annex, 977 Chung King Road, (213) 687-6600.

Black Dragon Society, 961 Chung King Road, (213) 620-0030.China Art Objects Galleries, 933 Chung King Road, (213) 613-0384.Diannepruess Gallery, 945 Chung King Road, (213) 687-8226.Goldman-Tevis Gallery, 932 Chung King Road, (213) 617-8217.Inmo Gallery, 971 Chung King Road, (213) 626-4225.Lord Mori Gallery, 963 Chung King Road, (213) 625-1360.