Not All S.D. Artists in Step With Ballyhoo of ArtWalk

San Diego artists are sharply divided over the benefits of ArtWalk, this weekend’s much-ballyhooed event designed to promote the visual arts downtown.

Organizers of this fifth annual tour of downtown galleries and artists’ studios expect to attract up to 30,000 people today and Sunday with a variety of events including 10 commissioned artworks, a children’s parade and dance, theater and music performances.

But many of the county’s top contemporary artists are not even participating in this event, designed specifically to educate the public about the kind of art that they make.

“It’s a hassle to open up for a bunch of studio crashers,” said artist Gary Ghirardi. “The daytime crowds are blithering. It’s like a human zoo.”

Ghirardi opened his downtown studio for the first ArtWalk, but he has not done so since.

“I think maybe 40 people came through the space one day,” Ghirardi said. “One person, who was a docent at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, stayed to talk. If it wasn’t for him, it wouldn’t have been worth it. I guess I expected a more enlightened crowd who knows about art.”

However, artist Lynn Schuette praised ArtWalk.

“I’m not in it this year,” Schuette acknowledged. “But last year was great because I sold a painting out of my studio out of ArtWalk. It was really important exposure.”

Sushi, the alternative gallery that Schuette directs, will have a table set up on 8th Avenue to promote its upcoming annual Neofest series of performances.

Although Ghirardi and artist Jay Johnson helped establish San Diego’s downtown art scene in the early 1980s, they have both been alienated by ArtWalk.

“I’d hoped it would be more like the thing they have in Venice, a straightforward studio tour,” Johnson said. “It was too many people. I decided right away it was not for me.”

Ironically, ArtWalk’s success as a popular attraction appears to turn off artists, who have been confronted by huge crowds traipsing through their studio lofts. Last year ArtWalk attracted an estimated 15,000 viewers.

Organized by the respected Installation art gallery, ArtWalk is “still about bringing the General Public, capital GP, into contact with the art community,” said Dan Wasil, Installation director.

“The idea is that the public will say, ‘Gee whiz, we didn’t know this was happening,’ ” Wasil said. “And the arts community will see more people.”

Wasil and the Installation staff worked 10 months to plan ArtWalk. A street trolley will cycle ArtWalkers from through downtown to the 2400 Kettner complex of art studios and to Seaport Village. More than 400 artists and organizations will participate, although many artists like Johnson and Ghirardi, who show through galleries, will not open their studios.

Other area artists, such as Robert Ginder of Solana Beach, do not work downtown.

“Geographically, I’m out of the way,” Ginder said. “I know it’s really demanding to do. Personally, sometime it’s hard to explain yourself to strangers. A lot of artists aren’t as verbal as they should be, maybe.

“I just had an opening in New York two weeks ago. It went from 11 o’clock to 6 or 7 o’clock in the evening. I was exhilarating, but it’s also exhausting.”

This year ArtWalk will have the added attraction of dance, music, poetry, theater and comedy performances presented on two stages set up on 9th Avenue between E and F streets. Entertainment ranges from jazz guitarist Peter Sprague and Afro Rumba, a Latin jazz band, to the Piparoos comedy troupe and the San Diego Junior Theatre, performing “How to Eat Like a Child.”

Another new wrinkle is a 4.5-mile fun run and fitness walk scheduled to start at 9 a.m. Saturday at City College (12th Avenue and B Street).

Hundreds of children will kick off the art events at 11:15 a.m. Saturday with a “Soapbox and Paintbrush Parade” along E Street between 8th and 10th avenues, which is set up as an “Avenue of the Arts” with booths for artists, galleries and cultural institutions.

Some artists, however, see this as the kind of commercialism they wish to steer clear of. “It should be for people who live downtown,” Johnson said. “It shouldn’t be for people from Del Mar that hang their macrames for a weekend. The whole scene (downtown) has gotten crafty.”

Installation’s Wasil responds to Johnson’s criticisms:

“I understand that some . . . fine artists don’t want to be seen to have anything in common with someone who makes pottery. I think that’s wrong.”

ArtWalk offers the public a mixture of the visual arts including a variety of crafts from jewelry to pottery, said Wasil. “This is a day to all-out assault people with the breadth of the arts.”

“They can be looking at handmade jewelry in a booth and minutes later see a socially relevant billboard made by four artists in collaboration which challenges the concept of artists working in solitary confinement.