Fledging Galleries Bloom for Downtown S.D. Artwalk

Art in downtown San Diego. Not too many years ago anyone uttering those words would have been accused of heresy or called a liar. Art and La Jolla, now that was a coupling of renown. It still is.

But art and downtown is no mirage. A growing art and artists community has found itself a foothold and is holding on tenaciously.

Some aren’t making it--rents are too high, no one buys and street people scare away those people who do. But--and this is the basis for the area’s budding strength--for everyone who drops away, several others step up and take their place.

This fledging community was in full bloom Saturday as it showed off for a few thousand pedestrians who perambulated through 80 or so galleries and artist work studios as part of the second annual Artwalk, which continues through today.

And an Artwalk it is. There is a follow-the-dots map that directs people in and around city streets to the various galleries and studios. However, for some of the more far away places, such as exhibits in Balboa Park and Chicano Park, there’s a trolley on wheels.

The intent is simple. “The idea is to invite people down here and give them a taste of what’s available and let them explore on their own leisurely pace,” said Carolyn Bush of Installation Gallery on 5th Avenue and one of the people who helped organize the collaborative event.

“I think it’s very important that people know there is something worthwhile down here, the beginnings of a cultural renaissance of sorts,” Bush said. “There’s more here in San Diego than the beaches and the ocean.”

The art scene downtown--there is even a new coffee house called Java at 9th Avenue and G Street that stays open to 1 a.m.--in many ways reflects what is occurring immediately around it. The center city is in transition, economically, architecturally, artistically. As it transforms, it is doing so in spasms of fits and jerks.

“I don’t think you can have maturity overnight or at all costs. That’s actually, it seems to me, a step backward. What seems to be happening here is a fostering of a climate that is giving some vibrancy to the center city,” said Robert Plimpton, who along with a friend was touring Artwalk.

With map in hand, Plimpton was standing on the second-floor balcony of MBS Studios at 744 G St., a building housing several artists who produce creations that run the gamut from photography and mixed media to hand-knit sweaters and watercolor paintings. “What’s most invigorating and tremendously encouraging,” noted Plimpton, a musician, “is that all these artists--who are basically very individualistic--have gotten together and put this on. That speaks of a good community spirit.”

While the atmosphere for artists has changed for the better--many cite the City Council’s approval of the live-and-work ordinance that encourages turning warehouse lofts into art studios--too much of what they produce must be peddled in larger cities with more established art centers such as Los Angeles and New York, say several artists.

Painter Pat Cashin came from Denver about a year and a half ago, and while she says she loves the downtown arts environment, the buyers of large and expensive art pieces apparently don’t. “Some people say there aren’t any big art collectors or investors around here (San Diego),” she said. “I don’t believe that . . . I just think they needed to be educated to what’s here.

“San Diego to a certain extent has suffered from being sort of a little sister city (of Los Angeles),” Cashin said. “That’s changing. I think you’ll see some important artists come out of here (downtown) in the next five years.”

However long it takes, it will be too late for Drew Johnson and Renee Linson, co-owners of Santa Fe West Galleries, which opened about nine months ago at 622 5th Ave. and specialized in southwestern art and custom-made Spanish colonial furniture. It will close after today, the victim, its owners say, of street people and transients that hang out in the Gaslamp Quarter, where the gallery is located.

“People don’t feel comfortable coming down here. They get verbally assaulted; in fact, I had some people in the Artwalk say it happened to them today. So people don’t want to come down--it makes sense,” said Johnson. “It’s going to take more than the Artwalk to (turn) move it around . . . so people will come down here.”

Johnson and Linson said they knew what they were getting into, but say they didn’t think the problem of street people would turn out to be the obstacle it did. They also were hoping to hang on until the new convention center opened and put more people on the streets. “Now no one knows when that’s even going to be built,” Johnson said.

While discouraged about their gallery’s demise, the two co-owners still believe that a vibrant art community is not only possible downtown but will occur. The only question is when. “I give it another four years,” said Johnson.

For every Santa Fe West that goes under there is someone like Teresa Mill who emerges. Two years ago, the artist who specializes in symbolist painting was in El Cajon. “When I came down here two years ago, not a lot was happening,” Mill said inside her second-floor studio at 431 Market St., which is an incubator for a dozen other artists.

“What I notice is that it has changed and transformed. Before I thought of San Diego as a nowhere kind of place . . . it had a lot of military people and it seemed very non-cultural,” she said. “There’s starting to be a lot more awareness about San Diego . . . it’s really exciting.”

More information about today’s Artwalk, which begins at noon, can be obtained at either San Diego Arts Resource Center, 2400 Kettner Blvd., MBS Studios, 744 G St., or Installation Gallery, 447 5th Ave. Artwalk maps are free.