Works of Art Fill Ad Space Around L.A. : Advertising: Some creative minds have struck deals to adorn unused billboards and bus benches with non-commercial displays.

Whenever Sheila Lynch walks out of her downtown art studio, she eyes that same bus bench.

Unlike most bus benches in the Los Angeles area, this one doesn’t have an advertisement on it for some funeral home or dating service. Instead, it simply has a message that tells advertisers the space is available.

Lynch doesn’t create ads. She creates art. But she figured that if there was room for ads on bus benches, there must also be some room for art. “Every time I looked at that bench,” recalled Lynch, “I thought to myself, this company must have space available.”

The company, Coast Unlimited Advertising, swung a deal with Lynch that will soon place her artwork on 60 Los Angeles-area benches where there would normally be advertisements.

If the notion of art replacing bus-bench ads fits your artistic fancy, well, get ready to paint the town red. Or at least fuchsia. This is but one small piece of the veritable outdoor art museum that is suddenly taking shape in spots where Los Angeles residents have grown most accustomed to seeing advertisements.

We’re not talking about graffiti disguised as art, either. We’re talking about professional artists who will cover conventional ad spaces with original art. Some artists will be subsidized in part by city grants. Several have received cash prizes from local firms.

Besides bus benches, a number of bus shelter ads will be filled with local artwork. A giant billboard company has made reduced-price space available so that local artists can surprise commuters with their own creations. And when the light rail line between Long Beach and Los Angeles begins running this summer, don’t look for ad space to be sold in the stations--or in the train cars. Instead, artists are being called upon to come up with special designs for them, too.

Similar programs have long been under way in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. But in Los Angeles, where some commuters spend more time driving than eating, many have learned to swallow the daily parade of outdoor advertisements.

“People in Los Angeles are inundated with ads every minute of the day,” said Daniel Martinez, a local artist involved with several programs that replace ads with art. “How do you get their attention long enough for them to subconsciously ask, ‘What is that? Was that an advertisement--or art?’ ”

Can Southern Californians get accustomed to seeing art in places where ads have proliferated for years?

“Research would tell us that people will search the art for an advertising message,” said Gerald Davison, chairman of the department of psychology at USC. “But after the initial confusion, and once they discover that nothing is being sold there, I suspect they will be pleased.”

Certainly, the artists are pleased.

“I think it will be a relief for the commuter not to be sold something,” Lynch said. “Suddenly, the commuter becomes a person who is being talked to by an individual--and as an individual.”

Lynch’s idea didn’t fly on its initial takeoff. “My first reaction was, ‘What on Earth are you talking about?’ ” said Alan Renfro, president of Coast United Advertising, a City of Commerce company. “But once she fully explained it, I felt it would be a fun little project.”

Lynch has a simple project in mind. She has already begun to interview people who commute by bus in the Los Angeles area, and she is asking them about their thoughts on life. Then she is photographing the mouths of those who make the most interesting comments. She plans to create bench art that combines their brief comments along with enlarged pictures of their mouths.

Like most of the artists involved in these art projects, Lynch is working with a relatively small grant from the Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Her grant is for $4,000. And for that, Renfro says, his company will supply Lynch with up to $40,000 in labor and space rental.

The benches on which her artwork will appear this spring are some of 10,000 in Los Angeles County that the company hasn’t sold to advertisers.

And if bus benches can have professional artwork on them, then why not bus shelters?

At least, that’s what Daniel Martinez asked. Last year some of his artwork appeared on local billboards, including one that said, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” The painting was of two angry dogs growling over a piece of meat loaf. That same billboard is now making a tour of art galleries in Europe. And later this year, his art will show up in a number of bus shelters in Los Angeles.

Most local residents are familiar with those bus shelter ads for clothing companies such as Bugle Boy and popular films such as “Batman.”

The company that owns those bus shelters--and sells that advertising space--is Gannett Outdoor. And it recently struck a deal with Martinez to display his artwork, at a steeply discounted price, at bus shelters throughout the county.

“We’ve never done anything like this before,” said John Hall, national account supervisor at Gannett Outdoor of Southern California, which owns more than 1,000 bus shelters citywide. “But until now, no one has approached us about it.”

With a $7,000 city grant, Martinez will combine contemporary photos and text in his art that will appear in about 10 bus shelters this summer. Advertisers pay nearly $1,000 a month for a single bus shelter ad.

For those who don’t ride the bus to work--but who may ride the light rail line--it also appears that art has won a clear victory over advertisements there.

In fact, there are no plans to sell advertising space on the trains or at the stations, said Erica Goebel, manager of marketing communications for the Los Angeles Transportation Commission. “All the graffiti that advertising attracts is expensive to keep clean,” she said. “So we decided, let’s just not have it.”

In place of advertisements, the commission says it will spend millions of dollars for artists to make the stations and cars appear attractive--if not artistic. Even the electronic station signs that display messages about the trains may also flash poetry submitted by local writers, said Jessica Cusick, the commission’s public art administrator.

And “at certain locations where you might expect to see billboards, there could be artwork instead,” she added.

Behind several current billboard projects are two unexpected partners: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Patrick Media Group. Patrick Media is one of the largest sellers of outdoor ad space in the country--with more than 50,000 billboards nationwide. In an effort to bolster its own image--and that of the billboard industry--the company is donating nearly $60,000 in billboard space to Los Angeles artists.