Footsies-For Locals Only

The inconspicuous facade of this local hang speaks volumes about the unpretentious vibe within. This is the place to go if you just want to have drink, chew the fat with a friend, and be pleasantly surprised by the archival rock and roll gems the magically ensue from the juke box. West-siders need not apply , we're trying to keep it real here. You wouldn't understand anyway, its an east-side thing.

Synergy or Circumstance? Artists Occupying the Industrial Landscape

Asian Import company is a consequence of the neighboring rail shipping yard.

Hipsters crossing the river and railroad tracks.

A power substation in the shadow of downtown's financial institutions.

Theater located in the Brewery Arts Complex. This facility has the most tightly knit scene anywhere in this series of burroughs.

Century Fashion is one of four sweatshop style garment makers perched atop a building at the north end of the former Cornfield Park.




Fragments of industry and the transportation infrastructure are omnipresent. Radiating from the intersection of this concrete and steel infrastructure are a plethora of light industrial institutions such as metal fabricators and shipping yards complemented by Asian import warehouses. This kind of urban landscape seems to be a fertile ground for artisic endeavors of many forms. Many artists find inspiration in active and deteriorating industrial relics. Additionally, rough on the edges industrial areas tend to have lower than average rents, as is the case with this region, and can afford large spaces for studios, something which has always been important to the creation of art in Los Angeles.
The most specific of these sites which artists and creative professionals occupy is the Brewery Arts Complex, of which the Harry Mastrogeorge Theater is a part of.
Perhaps more fascinating than this area having a specific scene or industrial identity is how the area is a collection of industries and creative fields which have designated burroughs around Los Angeles. For instance, downtown proper includes Chinatown, The Fashion District, and The Artist District. All of these names imply an industry or populas, however, the area about this infrastructural tangle contains artists, people of asian decent and their industries, a couple of galleries and garmet makers. The tangle of culture, industry and race mimics the tangle of roads rivers and rails.

Confluence of LA's Arterial Infrastructure

We set out to describe the art scene in the northeastern Los Angeles burrough of Lincoln Hieghts. We began to roam about Lincoln Hieghts and quickly found ourselves in an adjacent burrough. This seemless transition from one burrough to the next qiuckly became the rule rather than the exception. It quickly became apparent the most significant fabric tying these burroughts together was not their names and individual identities. In most cases there was no readily apparent indivual identity, however, this is not to say that collectivly these burroughs do not have an identity distinct from other districts in Los Angeles. That said, the most apparent fabric tying these burroughs together was the onipresent system of concrete and steel arteries, specifically the confluence of the Golden State Freeway, Arroyo Seoco Parkway, The Los Angeles River, Los Angeles Metro Gold Line and main line of the Union Pacific Railroad.
All of the burroghs connected by this tangle of infrastructure were largely composed of industrial sites with housing pushed to the fringes. This pattern, however, is changing with the addition of the Lacy Street Lofts (see other post) and Fuller Lofts on San Fernando Road. Both buildings were industrial sites in the past but are now in the process of being adabted for housing. In addition to these new housing options and private industrial sites the City of Los Angeles Street Maintnace Headquarters and Shop, New LA City Pound, and Los Angeles Unified School District Distribution Warehouse call this area home.
Visiting with local artist Joe Bravo, showing at KGB Gallery North Spring Street, we learned the gallery scene tapers off signicantly at it leaves Chinatown, however, many artists call the area home because of its lower than average rent cost. With the exception of the Brewery Arts Complex which many artists and a few professional institutions call home.

Lacy Street Lofts

Within the urban context of Los Angeles, developers and real estate agents are increasing pandering the upper middle class notion that a home is not just a home but a lifestyle that reflects ones persona and values. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the opening gala for the Lacy Street Lofts in Lincoln Heights where art, architecture and real estate have been fused together to create the “next wave of culture.” The Lacy Street Lofts are a speculative venture undertaken by Creative Environments of Hollywood, “a full service real estate investment, development, and management firm based in Hollywood, California that specializes in the construction, conversion, and rehabilitation of creative commercial, live/work, and residential space for the inspired urban tenant.” In Lincoln Heights it seems the traditional paradigm of gentrification has been inverted: real estate developers and speculators hope to lure artists to a working class, largely Hispanic neighborhood without a discernible art scene hoping gentrification will follow.

At the entrance of the complex attractive young professionals with strategically placed tattoos staffed a table littered with glossy marketing pamphlets that proclaimed, “live, work, thrive”. I perused the marketing material and wasn’t surprised to find out that prices were well out of my price range or for that matter, out of range for anyone I know. Nevertheless, after moving beyond the profiteering nature of the affair I was pleasantly surprised to discover some worthy art and well executed “urban industrial” architecture.

Upon entering the first loft I was greeted by Bert Green, the proprietor of “Bert Green Fine Art” in downtown LA. He introduced Shane Guffogg, a painter whose work was on display in the loft and co-founder of Pharmaka, one of the pioneer galleries in the burgeoning Gallery Row. Guffogg’s use of vertically oriented lines bathed in layered streaks of aqua-marines, lush purples and burnt sienna in his paintings suggests upended chevrons or south Asian batiks. Taken individually, these aesthetically pleasing paintings seemed to offer the promise of an exotic departure. But as a series, the repetitive linear themes become monotonous and thus fall short of delivering a transcendent experience.

Undoubtedly, the pairing of Guffogg’s paintings with David Hollen’s steel and hemp sculptures was no accident. Hollen’s sculptures looks as though they had been found amongst the ruins of a futuristic Angkor Wat. In “Husk”, Hollen uses #4 rebar stacked perpendicularly to create a dense cube whose rigorous geometry is broken at its apex by short twisted pieces of rebar. The cube at once appears static by virtue of its density and in a state of flux due to the rhythm established by the interlocking pieces of rebar. The works were a perfect complement to the exposed steel and concrete interior of the loft.

After making my way through several lofts full of Ruscha-esque color wash paintings that were nice to look at but that lacked any conceptual depth, I found the work of Vinh Bui, Vietnamese-American whose paintings on acrylic have an atmospheric quality to them beyond mere aesthetics despite their geometric rigor. These so-called technological abstractions shared the same ephemeral quality as the early works by “light artists” such as Robert Irwin and James Turrell possessed. A particularly alluring piece consisted of a grid pattern of black rectangles with cobalt blue accents that gave the clear acrylic substrate a luminous quality. While the works did not look they had been produced by a master with complete control over his medium, they did suggest the artist has found a method and material that with further refinement will yield intriguing results.

In the courtyard, Emmeric James Konrad’s “fuckers” featured a busty blonde mannequin labeled “the talent”. The mannequin was naked but for a pair of dark sunglasses and had flowers at her feet. Plastic mannequin torsos stuffed with money flanked “the talent” sporting signs identifying them as “managers” and “fuckers”. This condemnation of hangers-on reminded me of the reason we had all been invited here. I wondered if the irony was lost on the developers and the people in attendance.

Being invested in the neighborhood as a local, I recognize the fact that most of the people who live in the neighborhood are on the lower end of the economic scale and need affordable housing, not high end “artistic living.” Furthermore, the Lacy street lofts are located in an area that is historically low- rent, and is flanked by the 110 freeway and the local dog pound on one side and the gold line tracks on the other. Not exactly an auspicious location for high-end real estate. So to use art to lend authenticity to architecture which lacks the requisite history or desirability to justify high rent prices is fatuous in a neighborhood like Lincoln Heights. There is no guarantee that an art scene will develop in the complex and that the attendant gentrification will materialize.

On my way out, as I passed the spread of meats, cheeses and various baked confections being picked over by young hipsters, I spotted Sarah, an attractive thirty-something designer who works for “Creative Environments.” Earlier she had given me her sales pitch and suggested that because I was a student at SCIARC that I would appreciate the kind of creative lifestyle offered at the Lacy Street Lofts. I could tell she was in her element and was having a good time talking to the people around her. She waved and smiled. Maybe she was right, if only the art stayed on the walls and they threw in an easel as a signing bonus.