URBAN ART : Art-A-Porter

Deborah Smith would give the shirt off her back to support the L.A. art community. Actually, she’ll sell it to you. And you won’t just be supporting the works of a struggling artist, you’ll be wearing one.

For 10 years, Smith, a painter and sculptor, has been frustrated with what she sees as local art galleries’ lack of courage: They turn away new and edgy artists in favor of those they know will sell.

“L.A. is definitely a couch-art town,” Smith insists. “And the galleries cater to this mind-set. They don’t want to offend their clientele, and they certainly don’t want to bypass a sale. Have they forgotten what art is all about?”

So Smith, whose most recent shows were 1993’s “Politically Correct? Politically Incorrect?” put on by Galerie Galerie and “Downtown Lives!” by DADA, decided to take the mountain-to-Mohammed approach. Early this year, she started Fine Art Tease, a Running Springs-based company that silk-screens images of her work and that of two other local artists--painter Barbara Mendez and photographer-collagist Anne Norda--onto T-shirts.

Each shirt comes with a brief biography of the artist and a discussion of the work. “This not only helps finance the artist, it also promotes them,” she says. Artists get 85 cents for each $20 shirt.

With any luck, Smith says, the three artists will get exposure they wouldn’t get at a gallery and maybe even a few sales so they can “concentrate on making art, rather than always worrying about making a living.”

Fine Art Tease is off to a good start. When Smith flashed one of her designs in Fred Segal on Melrose, the rep bought a dozen shirts on the spot. Several more outlets have since placed orders, as have the Laguna Beach and Newport Harbor art museums.

She’s sold about 600 shirts so far, but Smith has no intentions of turning into a rag-trade mogul. “Once the ball gets rolling and enough artists become interested, my brother, who is a businessman, will take over,” she says.

“As for me, I’ll be back in my studio. That’s where I really belong.”