VISUAL ARTS : Doctor’s Bookstore With a Twist Breathes Life Into San Diego Art Scene

When the cream was skimmed from the crop of contemporary art galleries here last year, members of the art community let out a long, sorrowful sigh. Dissent had already begun to brew over the Port District’s two public art proposals (both of which were recently rejected), and the closing of such local stalwarts as the Patty Aande and Mark Quint galleries seriously dampened the spirits of contemporary art enthusiasts. The events seemed to chip away at the promise of a broad and vital art scene in San Diego.

Doug Simay, however, refused to be discouraged.

“A couple of our comrades have fallen,” he said last year, “but the torch will get picked up and carried along. Progress goes beyond individuals.”

Simay, a physician, is convinced of a gradual, inevitable course of evolution, and is confident “that San Diego will end up with an arts district.” But he isn’t content to sit back and wait for it to happen. Two years ago he opened Java, a downtown coffeehouse/gallery where people can encounter a changing assortment of art (mostly from Simay’s own collection) in an informal--or as he puts it, “passive/aggressive”--fashion.

Now, he’s working on the space next door, 835 G St., creating further opportunities for the community to see, hear and learn about art. Formerly housing Perspectives Gallery, the space has been divided into thirds, with the front section to be named ABC--Art+Architecture/Books/Catalogues. The only independent bookstore in San Diego to specialize exclusively in art publications, ABC will focus on modern and contemporary art but will carry books and catalogues about art of all periods.

“People are going to get more art-educated,” Simay said. “It’s an easier step to take to buy a picture-book than a painting, then they get more interested. They start looking more, they see that everyone is looking, and then they become participants.”

When they do, he said, they can step behind the bookstore into the middle section of the building, which will be “finished-off, gallery-style, with no purported function at all but to be used as a private show space. Space will be available for the inevitable project that will come up--installations, readings across several disciplines, maybe small-scale performances.”

Simay expects the bookstore to open in early September, and the middle space to have its public debut in October, being host to a contemporary furniture show sponsored by San Diego Home & Garden magazine with the Ilan-Lael Foundation. The back third of the building will continue to be a pottery studio.

Simay’s efforts to nurture the downtown art scene are strengthening the cultural foundation of this city. Without fanfare or grand public gesture, they assert the fact that contemporary art is an important component of contemporary life. And, just as important, they offer the resources to understand that relationship.

Another new venue for art opens this August, when Installation inaugurates its video- and film-screening room. With partial funds for equipment donated by Las Patronas, carpeting from the San Diego Community Foundation and labor and materials supplied by the Weyer Corp., the room is well under way. As for programming, “We’ll be relying on people in the community for recommendations, and actively soliciting ideas,” Installation director Dan Wasil said.

“We’re interested in work that you can’t get elsewhere, artist-produced work, work that is controversial or unusual due to its subject matter.”

Inspiration for the new screening room stemmed from Installation’s “ongoing self-evaluation and critique,” Wasil said. “We’re looking around to see what San Diego lacks. We’re trying to find a niche.”

Ten years ago, when galleries and museums tended to limit themselves to more conventional forms of art, such as painting and sculpture, it was easy to be an alternative space. Now, he said, that definition is more difficult to justify when institutions like the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art include installations and videos as part of their regular programming.

The closing of four major commercial art galleries in the last year has also prompted Wasil to reassess Installation’s program.

“It’s a matter of determining what the community needs and what we can provide,” he said. “We want to be responsible locally while maintaining regional, national and international programming.”

The small sign on the reception desk of a Hillcrest medical building reads: “Part of health is exploring avenues of creative expression.” The patients who visit Dr. Donna Brooks seem to agree. When Brooks moved her 20-year-old gynecological practice to a large Sixth Avenue medical building, she filled her office with art. It wasn’t just a gratuitous stab at decorating, but an effort to convey the affirmative, nourishing aspects of art.

“I think that individuals all have various parts of them that need expression,” Brooks said. “I don’t think we should look at people so narrowly in terms of their health, in terms of problems and diseases, which is what specialized medicine is all about. I think it’s important to see people as whole, and to support them in the areas of creativity that make them the individuals that they are.”

Brooks commissioned local paper artist Martha Chatelain to make a work for the office’s waiting area, and she invited several of her patients who are amateur artists to show their watercolors, ceramics and batiks. For the inquisitive viewer, the office has compiled a booklet of information about the artists.

“I’m not pushing sales,” Brooks said, “but people have been impressed by the work and wanted to take pieces home.” When a sale is made, the office gives the artist the full price of the work, unlike a conventional gallery that would take up to 50% commission.

“I don’t think most people go to doctors’ offices expecting to see art, but it turns out to be a very positive experience,” Brooks said. It not only humanizes the medical care but also the experience of art.