STYLISH ART, HAIR CUTS AT GALLERY

Acknowledged by many in the “art crowd” as the most beautiful exhibition space in downtown San Diego, Anuska Galerie (2400 Kettner Blvd.) has within a year become a prime site for exhibiting contemporary art.

A small room beyond the office in the far left-hand corner off the exhibition space is a surprising clue to the gallery’s origins. It is a one-chair hair-cutting salon.

Gallery owner Anuska Smith, from 1978 to late 1985, cut hair in a shop in Hillcrest, where she achieved substantial material success and a reputation for distinctive styling.

Her secret was to have no secret.

“I let the hair go natural the way it wants to go,” she said in her heavily Slavic-accented English. “That means minimal care.

“I tell my clients, if you have curly hair, don’t straighten it. If you have straight hair, leave it alone. Let your hair do what it does best. That way, you’re more individualistic.”

Smith is a model of her own advice. She is a handsome, angular woman, European in carriage and manner, with a seemingly innate sense of chic. A great mass of long and curly steel-gray hair distinguishes her from a distance.

“Lots of times people come in to get their hair cut, not to look at art,” she said. “But they see something new every time, and they begin to like it. So I am helping them learn something that they wouldn’t know otherwise.

“It’s nice to see people enjoy things you choose and that’s satisfying, but I’m learning that it is a business, too. But even as a business, having a gallery is more enjoyable. You show people things in art that they don’t see and help enhance their lives.”

As a hairdresser, Smith enjoyed being part of the neighborhood with its professional community, including architects, designers and psychologists, among others.

“I was very successful,” she said. “But it became too easy. And anyway, since I was about 15 or 16, I’ve felt guilty about art. And I wanted to do something about it.”

Guilty about art? Why?

“Because my father destroyed a mural on the house where we lived.”

The native of Gradac on the Adriatic Coast of Yugoslavia loved the mural that a famous artist of her country had painted on the house where she grew up. It disappeared when her father added a room.

Residence with the family of well-known Yugoslav artist Ismet Mujezinovic in Sarajevo enhanced her appreciation of visual arts. The home was a gathering place for artists, writers, actors and other creative spirits.

Despite her predilection for art, she followed her parents’ practical advice and attended the School of Economics in Sarajevo, where she earned a degree in business administration.

Fifteen years ago she came to San Diego to visit her brother, who persuaded her to stay in the United States. He provided her with the capital to obtain training and a license as a cosmetologist. She also has the necessary credentials to work as a makeup artist in theater, television and film.

For seven years, she worked intermittently as she frequently visited her family, all the while trying to decide whether to stay in San Diego or return to Yugoslavia.

She decided to return to her homeland. Two weeks before her scheduled departure, she met aeronautical engineer Adrian Smith. They married and had a son, Nikolas. Anuska Smith opened her Hillcrest shop and worked there until last fall.

“Adrian has been very supportive of my having a gallery,” Anuska Smith said proudly. “We didn’t go into it with the idea of making a lot of money. I just felt I had to do it for my own satisfaction.”

She opened her gallery in November, 1985, appropriately with an exhibition of figurative paintings by Ismar Mujezinovic, son of the artist with whose family she had lived in Sarajevo.

Smith plans to continue showing the works of European artists. Last fall, she exhibited the figurative paintings of the Yugoslav Nives Kavuric Kurtovic, who is known throughout Europe.

But the major attraction for her eclectic eye is emerging San Diego artists.

“The most exciting thing is to work with new artists and help them develop their careers,” she said.

She has exhibited works as diverse as the barbed-wire sculptures of Margaret Honda, the painterly constructions of Daniel Britton and a large multi-paneled installation by Deborah Small. Titled “1492,” this last was a moralistic commentary on Westerners’ conquest of the Indians.

“Basically, I look for work that pleases my eye,” Smith said. “But it’s not the same thing all the time.

“I like art that has more than just visual beauty--art that has content. It can be personal or social.”

Smith still practices her barbering skills part-time.

“I could not have the gallery if I did not cut hair,” she said. “But I recycle everything I earn into the gallery.

“It’s very difficult to survive, and I especially admire Patty Aande for surviving so long.” (Aande, with a gallery in the 9G Arts Complex is, despite her youth, one of San Diego’s senior art dealers.)

Smith is in agreement with other observers of the local art scene.

“Things are slowly getting better, but it’s still a sad situation in San Diego. The city has lots of good artists but they have to go to Los Angeles to make careers,” she said. “San Diegans should support San Diego artists by collecting their works. Museums have a responsibility to show them. One exhibition at the La Jolla Museum (of Contemporary Art) is not enough.”

Smith, for one, is trying to do her part.