Arts Groups Working Well in Concert

With a quick turn of her head, Shirley Martin cues a trio of dancers. They take their positions and begin a series of strong movements, each accented by the sharp flicker of a colored scarf.

The music--a blues groove provided by a live trio--vibrates the floor of the nearby mezzanine, where printmaker Gail Jacobs is working on a grant application. The bass drifts even farther upward, to the theater on the second floor, where a new play is in rehearsal.

The front doors are locked, but inside it’s another busy night at the Lankershim Arts Center in North Hollywood.

It’s been a year since the Martin Dancers, the Road Theatre Company, the children’s theater group Synthaxis and the Los Angeles Printmaking Society became roommates as part of an ambitious public-private partnership arrangement. The city turned over the operation of five arts centers--three of them in the San Fernando Valley--to private groups.

The plan came from equal parts innovation and desperation. The city’s cash-strapped Cultural Affairs Department couldn’t afford to keep the centers open and staffed. At the same time, there were dozens of arts organizations hungry for low-cost space. The complicated process of creating coalitions of arts groups, and then picking which one would occupy each center took about a year--in some cases longer.

Making the cut didn’t put anyone on easy street. But the coalitions that run the Lankershim Arts Center and McGroarty Arts Center in Sunland-Tujunga seem to be making it work. The much smaller Encino Photography Center--soon to be the Encino Media Center--lags behind, but could be occupied by May 1.

Lankershim Arts Center

A refurbished 1939 DWP office, this Streamline Moderne building in the NoHo Arts District was the one most of the applicants wanted. A coalition headed by the Road Theatre Company got that honor.

The spacious ground floor is used for rehearsals, performances and gallery space. Upstairs is a 49-seat theater. A mezzanine contains desks for each resident company; two large dry-erase calendars hang on the wall.

Trying to match the city’s vision of a bustling center, each of the organizations laid out ambitious goals for their first year. At the same time, each group was used to being independent and having its own space, Martin said. Estelle Busch, executive director of the children’s theater group Synthaxis, agreed. “Like a new marriage, we had to learn to know each other,” she said.

The groups had to figure out how not to step on one another’s toes. “Scheduling is always a challenge,” said Gail Jacobs, president of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society. “We have to schedule openings when the dancers aren’t having a recital, or when the theater doesn’t have a production going. We have to be very aware of each other’s schedules.”

Sometimes the closeness has been beneficial. Theater audiences, for example, often spend intermission looking at the prints downstairs. Other times it’s not so ideal; Synthaxis, which does minimalist black-box-style productions, routinely has to work around traditional sets used by the Road.

Now that everyone is getting settled, there are plans for more collaboration.

Last summer, at the urging of Road co-director Brad Hills, all four groups contributed to a project called “Merlyn.” The Road put on a two-part epic play, featuring the Martin Dancers. At the same time, Synthaxis adapted the story for children’s matinees, and the printmaking society mounted a thematic show called “Magical Visions.” Next, the groups would like to take on a project called “The Californians,” looking at the region’s history though art, music, theater and dance.

There is talk of a membership drive and fund-raising campaign, and a brochure with a calendar of all the groups’ events and classes. They also hope to raise their visibility in their neighborhood.

“I feel--and we all feel--that they don’t seem to know that we’re there,” said Busch. “It’s not that we have four different identities. I think that we’ll coalesce into one identity.”

McGroarty Arts Center

Little has changed and everything has changed at this center, a stone house built in 1923 in a rustic area of Tujunga. When the city said to privatize, the employees at McGroarty created their own nonprofit--Friends of the McGroarty Arts Center--and hooked up with the local library, historical society and art association to retain control of their facility.

While the faces are the same, gone are workers’ status as full-time city employees (including health benefits) and most of their city-supplied budget. But that doesn’t mean that anything at McGroarty has been scaled back. Quite the contrary: They’re now offering 60 classes a week, compared to 42 when the city ran the place.

Part of the reason is that the two co-directors, Susan Cheyno and Isabella Barone, are on site more than a city-employed director ever could be. Former director Richard Ellis, who remains McGroarty’s liaison with the Cultural Affairs Department, had three centers to run. He could spend only one day a week in Tujunga. Ellis is now one of two directors of public-private partnerships for the department.

Barone and Cheyno are also Sunland-Tujunga locals, which still means something in that isolated pocket of the northeast Valley. Residents felt comfortable asking the two women for new classes or more classes--and the center complied.

Cheyno and Barone talk like battle-scarred veterans about the transition to nonprofit status. Unlike the groups at Lankershim, they had never run an organization before. They had to learn everything--from the computer system to invoices and tax forms.

Unlike at Lankershim, the McGroarty coalition members aren’t all housed at the center. Representatives of the Little Landers Historical Society, the Sunland-Tujunga Art Assn. and the Sunland-Tujunga Library have a say in running McGroarty and co-sponsor projects, such as a tour of historic stone houses.

By and large, Cheyno said, it’s worked out. “Two years ago, we didn’t say that,” she added. “We didn’t know where we’d be. We thought we’d be 10 feet under by now.”

The city still pays for the utilities, gives the center about $15,000 a year, and provides support in the form of staff like Ellis. But there are still bills for insurance, art supplies, taxes and phones, and administrative salaries to be covered. The Ahmanson Foundation awarded McGroarty $50,000 last year, but the rest of its $100,000-a-year budget has to be scraped together, with a $2,500 grant here, a $5,500 grant there.

The center might be on better financial footing if it could charge more for its classes. It is restricted by a City Council mandate to charge no more than $1.50 an hour for children’s classes and $2.50 an hour for adult classes. The limit is meant to keep art classes affordable, Ellis said. After all the teachers took a $10-per-hour pay cut last year, the center breaks even on classes, Cheyno said.

As is, McGroarty looks to run out of money about six months before the end of its three-year contract with the city, according to Ellis. He goes over the finances frequently with Cheyno and Barone. He said, “We’ve become very adept at pushing the day of judgment further ahead.”

Encino Photo, Media and Animation Center

The sign has changed, but the doors have yet to reopen at the 1,300-square-foot center along Ventura Boulevard. The project has been slowed by major repairs and renovations that needed to be done, said Joan DeBruin, who, like Ellis, oversees coalitions’ dealings with Cultural Affairs.

The Encino center has also been stalled by a nonexistent coalition. The San Fernando Valley Arts Council, an umbrella group for arts organizations, had paired up with Everywoman’s Village, a community center based in Van Nuys. But the same issue of fixed prices for classes that vexes McGroarty made the plan financially impossible for Everywoman’s Village, said executive director Laura Selwyn.

It’s been hard to find another partner with an interest in media--particularly animation--said Roslyn Wolin, president of the Valley Arts Council. The council is trying to work out an arrangement with the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. The college already offers arts classes at other city-owned centers through its Community Arts Partnership program and is considering adding Encino to its roster.

The center already has received about $10,000 worth of audiovisual equipment from Sony and American Express, Wolin said, but none of it has been put to use. The center also will keep its darkroom space and four enlargers available to amateur photographers.

Lankershim Arts Center

* WHERE: 5108 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: At 7:45 p.m. Sunday, the Martin Dancers perform at the unveiling of a memorial sculpture for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing.

* HOW MUCH: $10 donation requested.

* CALL: (818) 752-2616.

McGroarty Arts Center

* WHERE: 7570 McGroarty Terrace, Tujunga.

* WHEN: Classes run year-round.

* HOW MUCH: $12-$80, plus fees for materials.

* CALL: (818) 352-5285.

Encino Photo, Media and Animation Center

* WHERE: 16953 Ventura Blvd., Encino.

* WHEN: Renovations should be complete by May 1. No move-in date set.

* HOW MUCH: Classes $7-$10 per hour. Darkroom use is $35 for annual membership, plus $4 per hour.

* CALL: (818) 784-7266, or San Fernando Valley Arts Council, (818) 884-2787.