Wyatt’s ‘Central Avenue Jazz’ Honors a Community Near and Dear to Him

Los Angeles artist Richard Wyatt likes to involve the community and reflect it in his work. “California Moment,” his recently completed interior mural on canvas at the Southern California Gas Co. headquarters in downtown Los Angeles, includes his friends and family, and represents the ethnic diversity of the city.

Last year he painted “Hollywood Jazz 1945-1972” on the south side of the Capitol Records building on Vine Street in Hollywood. It features jazz music greats such as Nat King Cole, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Tito Puente, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Shelly Manne.

Wyatt’s latest project, “Central Avenue Jazz,” a mixed-media installation opening Friday at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, is a tribute to a community near and dear to his heart. His parents grew up, went to high school and married in the Central Avenue area. “They loved music, and when I was a little kid, I’d wake up in the morning to John Coltrane,” Wyatt said.

During the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, Central Avenue between Santa Barbara (now King Boulevard) and Slauson avenues was a vital area for jazz music. Clubs such as the Down Beat, Club Alabam, the Last Word, and Lovejoy’s flourished, and the greats--Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, to name only a few--came to the area to perform for enthusiastic, and sometimes integrated, audiences.

What is perhaps less well-known is that some of this country’s jazz greats came from the Central Avenue area. Sax, flute and clarinet player Buddy Collette was born here and attended Jordan High School with Charles Mingus. Dexter Gordon, also born in Los Angeles, attended Jefferson High School with drummer Chico Hamilton, trombonist Melba Liston and Vi Redd, on the alto sax. Their music teachers, Sam Brown at Jefferson and Lloyd Reese, taught, encouraged and inspired them to pursue their musical talents.

Reese formed a rehearsal band of these and other student players, and every Sunday they met in the local musicians’ union hall to play. Vi Redd’s great-aunt, Alma Hightower, organized and coached a community youth band that practiced on the playground after school and performed at dances, on street corners, in churches and the YMCA.

When Wyatt was asked to submit a proposal to the Santa Monica Museum of Art for its 1991-1992 Artist Projects series of commissioned site-specific works, he created the “Central Avenue Jazz” project because, he said, “I enjoy works that have a sense of history, and I wanted to acknowledge these guys.”

The installation consists of three 9-by-19-foot canvas paintings depicting noted jazz players--Collette, Teddy Edwards, Red Callender, Britt Woodman and Jackie Kelso--that will be suspended from the ceiling. In front of the paintings will stand 30 shrine-like painted wood assemblages on pedestals, each containing a black-and-white photograph of a participant from the Central Avenue jazz scene. Wyatt placed the pictures in broken mirror fragments, giving them a ghostlike quality.

“All this information on Central Avenue, it’s in bits and pieces, but there is a theme,” Wyatt said. “I’m trying to put the fragments of the puzzle together. Viewers will see history and recognize the people in the photographs. But the mirror is reflective; the viewers will see themselves, and then they become a part of the piece. It reinforces that this is our history.”

There are photographs of Mingus, Gordon, Liston, Frank Morgan and Art Tatum. Collette can be seen at ages 3, 10, and 17, and with Billie Holiday and Groucho Marx. Collette played in Groucho Marx’s television show orchestra from 1950 to 1960, one of the first black musicians accepted in a Hollywood studio orchestra.

On the back of each shrine, Wyatt will attach photos, found in old family albums, of family members and scenes that represent the era. They include a print of his uncle, Robert Wyatt, who played with the Floyd Ray orchestra and studied with one of Collette’s teachers.

To create the ambience of a club atmosphere, the lighting for the installation has been designed to resemble jazz-club lighting. Accompanying the visual elements will be a sound collage of music, street sounds and interviews with musicians.

“The purpose of our ‘Artists Projects’ series is to provide an opportunity to worthy artists who may not have been shown in a museum context to realize a project important to them, and to introduce their work to a new audience,” said Thomas Rhoads, director of the Santa Monica Museum of Art. “Richard’s proposal was so genuine, on a subject he really knows. Most of his work has been confined to a flat surface. The three-dimensional space here allows him to evoke an era and environment, to reclaim Los Angeles’ lost history.”

Wyatt began painting murals in 1976 when he was a junior at UCLA, majoring in fine arts.

“I was bothered by the fact that people in low-income areas didn’t have art to interact with in their communities,” he said. He chose to paint his first mural at Willowbrook Junior High in Compton, depicting people of the neighborhood: John Outterbridge, director of the Watts Towers Art Center, and an elderly Latina, “Bisabuela.”

He was one of 10 artists chosen to do two murals for the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. “James” and “The Spectators” can be seen on the northbound Harbor Freeway at the Flower Street and Adams Boulevard bridges respectively. Last year Wyatt was commissioned to create two murals for the Wilshire/Western Metro Red line Station. “People Coming, People Going” will be ceramic-tile murals, each 12 feet high and 51 feet long.

Wyatt was one of those kids who drew on everything.

“I used to get notes pinned to my shirt that said, ‘Richard draws too much in class,’ ” Wyatt said. “But my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Evelyn Freeman, told my parents I had talent and that they should encourage it.”

In elementary school, he spent time in the library looking at the work of such artists as Picasso.

“I didn’t see any black artists, but one day the librarian showed me Charles White’s work,” he said. “I knew then this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.”

Wyatt took classes at Chouinard Art Institute, the Watts Towers Art Center and the Studio Watts Workshop. In 1968, at the “Watts Chalk-In,” he won the Best of the Show award for his drawing of Martin Luther King Jr. When he entered Fairfax High School, he also took classes at Otis Art Institute on Saturdays.

“I truly learned how to create artwork and got into that process because of jazz,” Wyatt said. “There is something in the music that speaks to what I want to do and what I want to get out of it. I have approached the ‘Central Avenue Jazz’ project like a jazz piece, leaving room for improvisation. It’s alive and takes on a life of its own.”

The Buddy Collette Quintet, including Red Callender, Al Viola, Lanny Hartley and Harold Mason, will perform at a $125-per-ticket preview of “Central Avenue Jazz” to benefit the museum, beginning at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Richard Wyatt’s “Central Avenue Jazz” open Friday to Dec. 29 at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica. Open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, till 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday. Call (310) 399-0433.

NORTHWEST EXPOSURE: Tatistcheff gallery director Terrence Rogers said that when people come in to see Seattle area artist Kurt Solmssen’s landscape paintings, they often remark, “I’d like to be there,” or “I want to live there.” No wonder. Solmssen’s 11 oil-on-canvas paintings of the area around his Puget Sound home depict clear blue skies and water, inviting green lawns and sunny porches. In these scenes, his wife and neighbors peacefully read books and contemplate the horizon without a hint of disturbance.

Painting about 70% of the time outdoors, Solmssen captures the bright Pacific Northwest light of summer and fall that casts definitive shadows and gently reflects upon the water the area’s tall trees and comfortable-looking houses. Although his work is reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s engrossing, realistic paintings of people in their local surroundings, Solmssen’s paintings are without the melancholy or disconcerting feelings that lurk in many of Hoppers’ images.

In “Harry’s Golden Hour, 1991” Harry appears thoughtful but not troubled as he looks out over the calm waters of Puget Sound. In fact, no one seems to suffer from Angst here, not Mate in “October, Mate’s Test, 1990,” who is studying for a test, nor Solmssen, who holds his 1-week-old daughter in “Marsha’s First Week, 1991.” Quiet yet compelling, his paintings pull viewers into the landscape, beckoning them to come and see if it really is as nice as it seems.

“Kurt Solmssen: Paintings,” at Tatistcheff gallery, 1547 10th St., Santa Monica, through Nov. 30. Open 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Call (310) 395-8807.