A Tiny Gallery Struggles to Stay in the Picture

The San Fernando Valley’s only community art gallery isn’t easy to find, but, somehow, enough people have made their way to the underfunded Century Gallery in Sylmar to keep it alive for the past 10 years.

“The number-one comment we get from visitors is, ‘We didn’t know there was a cultural art center in Veterans Memorial Park,’ ” said Ellen Bergan, the gallery’s volunteer co-curator.

At the 10th anniversary celebration held last month for the remote Sylmar gallery, Bergan and a group of loyal supporters vowed to redouble their efforts on behalf of the little-known art center.

The nonprofit, Los Angeles County-supported facility has managed to host about seven shows annually, despite drastic financial cutbacks. But the beleaguered art center, dubbed “Century Gallery” shortly after the first cutback in 1978, will be lucky to last 100 years, based on its record so far.

Once Had 5 Workers

The gallery was originally run by five full-time paid employees. In 1978, when California voters passed Proposition 13, the property tax initiative, the gallery’s staff was reduced and its floor space slashed in half. By its sixth birthday, the gallery’s last paid curator had left, forcing it to rely on volunteers and to reduce its hours of operation.

It’s been a struggle ever since for volunteers to keep offering Valley residents a look at the work of emerging and established painters, sculptors and photographers, many of whom are local, supporters said. A docent group headed by Sylmar resident Mary Dahlsten conducts tours for about 1,200 inner-city schoolchildren annually.

“It’s like one of your kids, you don’t let it die,” she said.

Dahlsten estimated the gallery needs a minimum of $2,000 per year just to pay for transporting artists’ work and advertising its shows. Artists now pay those costs themselves, Dahlsten said. That makes it difficult to attract established artists, such as Claes Oldenburg, whose work was featured at the gallery early in 1978 before the budget cuts, she said.

These days, the gallery at 13000 Sayre St. is open between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday--a far cry from 10 years ago when patrons could visit the art center six days a week and linger in the airy, one-room space until 9 p.m. two of those days.

Now, the county Department of Parks and Recreation provides staff half the time and volunteers take care of the other two days. The county also pays the gallery’s insurance and provides and maintains the building, part of which houses art studios and is leased to Mission College.

Originally a federally run Veterans Administration hospital complex, Veterans Memorial Park was given to the county after the 1971 Sylmar earthquake destroyed everything but the laundry building where the gallery is housed. At the urging of Valley art lovers, the county turned the building into a cultural arts center run under the auspices of the now-defunct Cultural Affairs Department. Initially, the gallery occupied both floors of the wood building.

“I’m very disappointed that we can’t do more for the gallery,” said Karen L. Grant, a Parks and Recreation Department supervisor in charge of Veterans Memorial Park who has pitched in and helped paint the gallery in her spare time. “We just don’t have the funds.”

Working Without Pay

Bergan and Cathy Zubia, the gallery’s other curator, have been working without pay for the past year since they graduated from Mission College with degrees in art. They began organizing the gallery’s seven annual exhibits when the former volunteer curator, Lee Musgrave, chairman of the art department at Mission College, stepped down after three years.

“It’s been a wonderful opportunity for recent graduates like Cathy and I to get experience,” Bergan said. “I probably have more freedom here than I would in a commercial gallery.”

The nonprofit status of the gallery is a boon for fledging artists as well. The 10th anniversary show, which continues through Oct. 23, contains a sculpture by emerging artist Pearl Kronowitz of West Hills. The piece, entitled “Animal Farm” after George Orwell’s book on the misuses of political power, is composed of more than 20 ceramic figurines.

But such work goes largely unappreciated in the Valley, although the gallery is highly regarded by Los Angeles art aficionados, said Carolee Toon Parker, vice president of Artcore Gallery and staff member of the Los Angeles art quarterly, Visions. Most of the those on Century’s mailing list are not Valley residents, Zubia said, and local corporations have not responded to the gallery’s appeals for donations.

Even the hoopla associated with last month’s anniversary celebration drew few monetary contributions. The only company to write a check (for $100) was the San Fernando Valley Swap Meet. “It’s so frustrating,” Zubia said. “I just can’t see going on like this forever.”