An Artful Exchange

Just more than 20 years ago, many of the established art programs in public institutions and schools catering to teenagers and young adults were curtailed by the passage of Proposition 13, the measure that slashed property taxes.

While the loss of funds served as a temporary setback for the creative development of young minds, it never snuffed out the social commitment felt by some artists interested in mentoring this vibrant age group.

Over the years, a number of outstanding programs have mushroomed throughout the Los Angeles area, some affiliated with public institutions and schools, others connected to nonprofit social service organizations. And the movement has taken on a new wrinkle: Many of the professional artists view their connections with these youths, ranging from 13 to their early 20s, as more a collaboration than the traditional teacher-student relationship.

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An outgrowth of this evolution is “PROs and PROteges: Los Angeles Artists and the Youth They Mentor,” an exhibition of the works of 17 Los Angeles artists and more than 100 of their students.

The exhibition is a co-presentation, divided and mounted at two locales: the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park and Pasadena’s Armory Center for the Arts. While this ambitious show covers more than 8,000 square feet and at times overreaches, it still presents both an interesting array of styles and disciplines, and an opportunity to appreciate and examine the diversity, quality and importance of arts program.

The idea for the show came two years ago, when co-curators Noel Korten, director of exhibitions at the Municipal Art Gallery, and Jay Belloli, director of the Armory’s gallery programs, began comparing notes on what they saw as an interesting trend in the artistic community.

“We noticed a major shift among artists and the young people they worked with,” Belloli said. “Some artists learned as much from the kids, and in some cases they made the work with the kids.”

He and Korten began to identify an explosion of unaffiliated art programs designed for young people in communities as diverse as Valencia, Hollywood and South-Central Los Angeles. They also found programs benefiting imprisoned youth and innovative programs housed at local high schools.

Equally important was the active participation of professional artists who wanted to be involved out of a “sense of social activism,” Belloli said.

The two assembled a rich sampling of the works of these professionals, but they quickly realized that a true understanding of this trend would not be complete without the inclusion of the students’ works because, Belloli said, so many of the artists felt “they had learned as much from their students as they had from their own path of professional development.”

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The show includes the innovative, surrealistic photography of Joel Aaron Glassman; the photo documentation of changes in the Valencia landscape by the students of R. John Bache; a provocative AIDS video produced by Eve Luckring’s Club Prophylactive students from downtown Los Angeles; the hip-hop videos of Ben Caldwell’s KAOS Network students from South Central Los Angeles; the letterpress posters of Katherine Ng; and the mixed media collages of LaMonte Westmoreland, an art teacher at Santa Monica High School, and one of his students there, Ryan Wade.

After recognizing Wade’s talent, Westmoreland helped him establish a rudimentary studio space at the school so he could work between and after classes.

But one of the more rewarding outcomes was the impact on his own work. “I was feeding off Ryan and he was feeding off me. What it did was it gave me the energy to go back into my studio,” Westmoreland said.

Another component of the exhibition is “We Are Many,” a book of photographic portraits and poems produced by the incarcerated students of Wendy Clarke and Juan Devis, two California Arts Council artists working at Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility in Whittier.

The project, which based on a poem by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda and examines the different aspects of the students’ personalities, is slated for exhibition next year at the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency in Washington, D.C.

BE THERE

“PROs and PROteges: Los Angeles Artists and the Youth They Mentor,” Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, 4804 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. (213) 485-4581. Wednesdays through Sundays, 1:30 to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 12:30 to 8:30 p.m. Admission, $1.50; parking, free.

Armory Center for the Arts, 145 Raymond Ave., Pasadena. (626) 792-5101. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays, also from 6:30 to 9 p.m. Admission, free; metered parking available nearby. Both shows run through Dec. 31.