In a High-Priced Art World, CSUN Finds Success on a Budget

“We have a very wide idea of what qualifies as art,” Louise Lewis said as she looked over a list of exhibitions coming this school year to the Art Gallery at Cal State Northridge.

It is an eclectic lineup indeed. There is traditional gallery fare, such as a retrospective of modernist Southern California painter Karl Benjamin. The avant-garde is represented by an installation of neon and other materials by Jan Sanchez. And there is art with a strong political edge: Afro-American works influenced by the civil rights movement of 1960s.

This season’s diversity is nothing new. In the last academic year, the gallery shows included an exhibit of hand-tied fishing flies, working models of machines drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, examples of Southwestern pottery and a collection of objects by Australian aborigines.

The trick, said Lewis, is putting it all together with limited funds.

“We’ve been able to have a champagne program on very much a beer budget,” she said.

In 1988-89 Lewis had about $30,000 to spend, pieced together from various sources. The money paid for operations of the 3,200-square-foot Art Galley, known informally as the main gallery; the small adjoining South Gallery, and the 500-square-foot North Gallery, which is reserved for student shows. It did not include salaries, which come out of School of Art funds.

As an example of a gallery with a champagne budget, Lewis points to Cal State Long Beach, which receives about $500,000 annually in school and state funds. Matching grants and other donations bring that gallery’s funding total to about $1 million.

But Cal State Long Beach has made an unusually strong commitment to its gallery, Lewis said, and CSUN probably ranks second in the state university system in gallery expenditures.

Lewis’ budget will be larger this year than last, she said, but exact figures will emerge only as the year unfolds. This is because some money comes from state lottery funds, which must be requested as they come available, and from a gallery store, where sales are hard to project. Last year the gallery received $6,000 from the store and $3,000 in lottery money.

The store is one of the gallery’s success stories. Begun in 1983 by the CSUN Arts Council, a non-campus support group, it has grown steadily. Phil Morrison, assistant gallery director, works closely with the council in the store’s operation. He put the retail worth of current stock at $16,000.

“We have books, cards, jewelry and all of it looks handmade,” he said. “We get things that are difficult to get, things from Russia, China, Sri Lanka and so forth.”

When an exhibit of Cuna Indian art opens Monday in the gallery, the store will have five or six hand-crafted panels from molas, or Cuna Indian blouses, on sale. Prices will range from $85 to $100.

Morrison and Lewis work for the gallery half time and teach half time. His field is design, hers art history. They started at CSUN a year apart, Morrison in 1971 and Lewis in 1972. Morrison’s interest in design has led to some unusual gallery exhibitions. He has curated recent shows of toasters and of chairs.

“I see chairs and toasters as small architecture,” he explained.

Morrison said he may put together a show of plastic purses from the 1950s. Lewis said she longs to do a show of low-rider cars and decorations.

Bay Area art writer and curator Judith Dunham has put together three shows for CSUN, including the fly-tying show.

“It’s called an art gallery, but their definition of art is very broad,” Dunham said. “The art world’s definition is often very narrow.”

Philip Handler, dean of the School of Art, said that he is “rather proud and pleased with the eclecticism and the imagination of the shows,” and that he has received no complaints that they stray too far from conventional concepts of art. Lewis, however, said there are dissenters.

“Some people don’t feel political statements are in the realm of art,” she said.

Lewis added that some CSUN students criticized an exhibit of sound recordings made by artists known primarily for visual works.

“We had audio materials set up, and there were those who said it didn’t belong in an art gallery.”

But Lewis said controversy is healthy because it leads to discussions of the nature of art. She said more than half the gallery’s visitors are students, simply because they already are on campus.

“Our biggest hindrance is physical visibility,” Lewis said. “People think it’s difficult to come to the gallery because it’s hard to park and hard to find.”

In fact, the Fine Arts Building is fairly close to Nordhoff Street and to campus parking on Etiwanda Avenue, which costs $1.50. Admission to the gallery is free.

The best-attended shows at CSUN draw between 6,000 and 8,000 people over a five- to six-week run. A poorly attended show will draw 2,500. The gallery space sometimes is divided to accommodate two exhibits at once. There were nine shows last year; seven are planned this year.

Curators and artists who have shown at CSUN praised the gallery’s production of exhibits.

“They had wonderful cases for the fly-tying show,” Dunham said. “They weren’t like the cases you stand over in a jewelry store. They were like windows into the walls. The gallery built out false walls, giving it an unusual floor plan.”

Unusual Displays

Lewis said students in art production classes help set up exhibits. The gallery also has a preparator, Jim Sweeters, and an exhibition coordinator, Ann Burroughs, both part-time workers.

Jeffrey Herr, who curated last year’s pottery exhibit, said cases designed by Sweeters offered an excellent presentation of the works.

“There was top lighting, but very diffuse,” he said. “The cases were built right into the wall so you didn’t have to walk past pieces that jut out. The title wall was beautifully done to match the cover of the catalogue, which was a double-embossed design on a piece of pottery.”

Roughly half the gallery’s money comes from the school’s instructionally related activities fund, which is a combination of state money and fees charged to students. The rest comes from lottery funds, the store and Arts Council fund-raisers. The galley also benefits from in-kind contributions, such as shipping and insurance contributed by some collectors.

Some shows have co-sponsors to keep costs down. An exhibit of Greek vases planned for late February and March is financed in part by Cal State San Bernardino, where it was shown earlier.

The gallery office cuts expenses by using its desktop publishing operation to print announcements and press releases.

Began in 1972

Lewis has been gallery director since 1980. She began as assistant director in 1972, the year the present gallery opened. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UC Berkeley, she has two master’s degrees and studied at the Sorbonne for a year.

She speaks rapid-fire, as if her ideas are coming too quickly to express. Running a gallery is rewarding, she said, but not all the time. Lewis was disappointed when the school’s lottery funds committee declined to finance a proposed show of feminist views on global issues. But she has other plans in the works.

“We want to do shows that emphasize the multicultural diversity of contemporary society, with special emphasis on the Pacific Rim countries,” she said. “We want to do Western and non-Western contemporary material, and historical formal shows, and issue-oriented art and design.”

In other words, gallery visitors can expect anything.