A New Perspective

Every month or so, someone buys a “Natagram.” But Natalie Sehn, who creates the intensely colored photographic prints, is not represented by an art gallery or dealer. Rather, for the last year, her work has been on display in the Eclectic Cafe in North Hollywood.

“Eclectic is probably the best venue I’ve had,” she said. “I just showed in a gallery in Philadelphia and thought I was going to make a sale there and didn’t make any. It’s an unpredictable thing.”

Driven by diminishing gallery space, aspiring artists have found a way to mix art and commerce in a way beneficial to both. Artists fill the walls of restaurants, business lobbies and coffeehouses with their work. In turn, business owners--for little or no commission--put prospective buyers in touch with the artists.

Eclectic Cafe owner Brian Sheehan rotates the work of three artists every three to six months. But Sehn’s hypernatural prints--which range in price from $98 to $500--have been so popular, he said, that he’s kept them up for more than a year.

Displaying the works is a boon for artists, he said, because up to 300 people can come through the restaurant on a busy day. “And regular customers like it because it’s a change of environment without remodeling.”

At the Eclectic, an empty space on one wall was evidence of a spur-of-the-moment sale. “She sat right here at dinner,” Sheehan said, fingering the chair where the customer sat, “and she had to take it home.”

Of course it’s not usually that easy. Especially on the lower-rung coffeehouse circuit.

“Almost nothing sells,” said Ryan Williams, the assistant manager of Emerson’s coffeehouse in Sherman Oaks, which has monthly art exhibits. “A lot of the reason is that the clientele [here] is primarily kids, and they don’t have any money.”

But any exposure, artists say, is better than waiting for a gallery show.

Times are particularly tough for artists because so many galleries folded during the recession, while others leased smaller shops. And all that survived have been forced to push their blue-chip art, primarily paintings done by artists with recognizable names.

Valley galleries took an additional hit from the earthquake in 1994, which not only destroyed inventory, but scared some collectors away from buying irreplaceable objects. There is little wiggle room in most gallery budgets these days for the unknown or experimental.

A business using only its extra space, however, has little to lose. Except maybe customers. Bigoudi International, a hair salon in Woodland Hills, was designed with the idea of exhibiting art on its expansive walls. Co-owner Carlos de la Vega got his friend Javier Granados--who runs Granados 2 Gallery in Atwater Village--to curate. The idea was to give the salon a creative vibe, like an artist’s studio.

For almost two years things ran smoothly. But a show last summer by Granados and another artist named Bernardo caused hair to fly. There was a lot of nudity and “challenging images,” explained co-owner Barbara Butkovich.

“We got a huge response,” she said. “Some people said that if we were going to have that kind of art, they were never going to come back. And we had other people who loved it so much that they bought it.”

It was, in some ways, a defining moment for the salon, de la Vega said. Not only customers, but some employees eventually left the company after the exhibit.

At other companies, the employees are among the artists with work on display. The inaugural exhibit at Available Light, a movie visual effects company in Burbank, included oil paintings by co-founder Katherine Kean.

The company moved into a larger space about 18 months ago and found itself with a huge, rarely used room, which Kean decided to open as a gallery. “Innerworks,” that first 50-piece show, included pastels, Polaroid transfers and sculptures crafted from shaped elk hide--decidedly not blue-chip gallery fare.

“So many of the people who work here in special effects have an art background, and there didn’t seem to be a lot going on in Burbank,” Kean said. The new gallery doesn’t have a lot of foot-traffic: pedestrians are rare in this industrial stretch. But about 10 of the artworks sold, most in the days immediately after the opening reception.

As a curator, Kean hopes to feature the work of artists employed in the film industry, including art that is created during the movie-making process. Available Light is sprucing up its converted warehouse before the next show in June.

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Kean was partly inspired by Film Roman, the North Hollywood-based animation studio that produces “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.” Color design supervisor Phyllis Craig has been transforming their hallways into a gallery with monthly shows for the last decade.

Craig, who ran her own gallery in Burbank for a while, previously ran similar programs at Hanna-Barbera and Marvel Comics. “I knew so many artists in the industry, but they weren’t doing fine art because they didn’t have a place to show,” she said. “So if I tell them, ‘How about a show six months from now?’ it gives them the incentive to paint.”

The shows are meant to promote the work of Film Roman employees, but over the years they have expanded to take in the work of other animators and friends.

Craig’s big problem? “I’m booked for the whole year.”

BE THERE

Available Light, 1125 S. Flower St., Burbank. Open Mon.-Fri., noon-5 p.m. Next show scheduled for June. (818) 842-2109.

Bigoudi International, 21720 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills. Open Tue.-Sat., 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Show of paintings by Paulina Granados. (818) 887-3627.

Eclectic Cafe, 5156 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. Open Mon.-Thur., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m -11 p.m.; Sun., 10 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Has rotating exhibits by three artists. (818) 760-2233.

Emerson’s Coffeehouse, 13203 Ventura Blvd., Studio City. Open Mon.-Thur., 8 a.m.-midnight; Fri.-Sat., 8 a.m.-2 a.m.; Sun., noon-midnight. Showing work by Dan Casserole through April 30. (818) 986-2233.

Film Roman, 12020 Chandler Blvd., North Hollywood. Open Mon.-Fri, 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Showing paper-cast sculptures by Ellen Cline through April 30. (818) 761-2544.