The Brushoff : City Ousts Homeless Artists From Their ‘Castle’ in Old Power Station

Homeless artists and Los Angeles bureaucrats wrestled verbally Wednesday for possession of a ramshackle old barn of a building that, unknown to officialdom, had served as a kind of secret studio, gallery and shelter for sculptors, painters and poets for at least the last seven years.

Predictably, with the law and the power on their side, the bureaucrats won. But they did so with a certain degree of grace.

Los Angeles City Property Manager Guy Seegall--who arrived with work crew to board up the place--at first told the artists they had to get out immediately or be arrested for trespassing. The artists, reluctantly, chose to get out.

But not before a quiet, polite argument between the bureaucrat and the artists in which the artists gained a single concession--Seegall promised that no harm would come to the three huge sculptures they had to leave behind. Seegall gave the artists and their friends a week to move them to a downtown warehouse.

The deal was negotiated by Linda Sibio and Linda Tyrol of Spaghetto Artists Corps, a new group which wants to show that many of the city’s homeless are talented, artistically creative people and potentially productive citizens.

Spaghetto, Sibio explained, already had removed many artworks from the old building, storing them in a downtown warehouse. Spaghetto hopes to exhibit the art in a professional gallery, with the proceeds supporting unknown and unheralded artists like Phillip (Junior) Rivera. Rivera was one of the nine homeless artists squatting in the building when city officials arrived Wednesday morning to oust them.

Rivera, 43, makes no pretense about being a fine artist, although Sibio, a painter and artist, compares his creations favorably to the internationally known artist Robert Rauschenberg.

The evicted artists called the run-down building “the Castle.” In fact, the two-story stucco-covered brick building at 9015 Venice Blvd. is the 80-year-old former Ivy Power Station of the long-defunct Pacific Electric Railway Co., affectionately known as the Red Car line.

In 1951, when the Red Cars stopped running, the building was taken over by Southern Pacific Co. It was abandoned a short time later. Los Angeles acquired it in 1977, and a year later it was designated a historical and cultural monument.

Now, Los Angeles has agreed to lease the building and the adjoining Media Park to neighboring Culver City, which will refurbish the building and make it into a $1-million community center.

Rivera didn’t know the history or the planned future of the Castle, but he did know it had been a derelict, ghost structure for years when he moved in back in 1980.

Soon thereafter, Rivera said, he started picking up old bedsprings, empty oil drums, lost hubcaps, and turning them into sculptures.

“I’m good with my hands,” he said. “I just do it. (The sculptures) are just something I felt I should express.”

Word of his works got around and he sold two or three--one of them for $300, he said. Other artists with no place to live or work began moving in, and he welcomed them.

He estimated that a couple of hundred other homeless artists had worked and lived in the Castle in the years he had been there.

Rivera and the others had accumulated a collection of castoff furniture and rugs and turned the old building into what they considered a comfortable studio and dwelling. Never mind that nearly half the roof had collapsed, leaving a goodly part of the building open to wind and rain. Never mind that there had been a couple of damaging fires of mysterious origin.

Now he was being forced to leave and felt it was unjust. “Well,” he muttered glumly, “they say they own the building. I guess we’ll have to go along with it.”

But it just didn’t seem right.

“The United States is spending so much money on all these foreign countries,” he said, “I can’t see why they can’t spend some money on this building and turn it over to the homeless to live in. It’s just ridiculous.”

He had no idea where he would spend the night. “I’ll find a place,” he said. “I’ll get through the night. I’ll get through anything, anytime.”