Repast and a Present

Denise and Noni are holding down the fort at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in downtown Santa Ana.

“She’s hot,” Denise says, looking over at Noni, napping on the concrete floor. Denise, who plays nervously with the ends of her braided pigtail, is a fine arts photographer. Noni is her dog. “Even though it’s hot, she’d rather be here with me than home alone,” Denise says of the snoozing retriever-chow she picked up at the animal shelter a year or so ago. “Besides,” she says, “she likes the people who come to the gallery, doncha girl?”

Noni lifts her heavy head, scratches a spot just behind her ear and goes back to sleep.

The Contemporary Art gallery shares space with an auto transmission shop in a building on the edge of the Artists Village. I am here looking for a birthday present for my wife’s mother, Barbara. I started at the gallery in the block-long Grand Central Art Center, which displays the work of Cal State Fullerton students. There was this black-and-white ceramic piece by Magdalene Mills called “Funky Vase” that I thought would be perfect. It looked like a teapot with two spouts. Soft and wavy, completely whimsical. Like something from a Salvador Dali painting.

And then I found these wonderful iridescent perfume bottles by Charles Keeling and thought those were even better. Confused, I kept looking around, finding some colorful Cuban paintings at KK Robinson in the Santora Building, and now I just don’t know what to get.

Denise takes out a doggie biscuit from a plastic bag and hands it to Noni, who delicately chews while staring at me the whole time. I think she is trying to tell me something. Perhaps she’s saying that the thing to do is get lunch and then make a decision. I pat her head. “Thank you, Noni,” I say. She snorts.

Next door to the Grand Central Art Center is the Gypsy Den Cafe, the bohemian twin sister to the Gypsy at The Lab in Costa Mesa. It’s very homey here. The tables and chairs are mismatched and at first I sit in a comfortable padded lounge seat that makes me feel like a midget, and then I trade that in for a wooden side chair so tall that my knees smack the table, but, like Goldilocks, my third choice is just right.

The curtains screening off the traffic on Broadway are made from saris, and over the coffee bar are four-sided Japanese lanterns, all in different colors, that look homemade--perhaps coming from the Den’s other neighbor, the Watermark Printmaking Workshop? One lantern is of yin and yang symbols. Another is of Buddha and a third looks like a wood-cut etching of a half-naked man carrying a club and riding a jaguar or some other wild cat the size of an elephant.

I sit near the stage where a young woman in tights and T-shirt is futzing with an easel that reads: “This Saturday it’s Train Wreck Theatre at 8 p.m. But first! Join us from 7-8 to hear Big Joe’s New CD.”

When I ask my waitress, dressed as casually as all the customers, what, exactly, Train Wreck Theatre is, she says, “Oh, that’s something Joe does. I can’t describe it. You have to see it.”

Joe is Joe Ongie, musician, artist and husband of the Gypsy Den’s proprietor, Catherine Graziano. I assume that Joe is also Big Joe and that it’s his new CD that diners will be listening to before the Train Wreck. I know that some of the paintings in the Gypsy Den are Joe’s, but I don’t know which ones.

Actually, one entire wall of art is kind of a family affair. There are still-life paintings of cherries and oranges, a vase of gerberas and a dark, moody night scene, all in grays and black, of a pensive fisherman smoking a pipe. According to an article posted on the wall by the restrooms, some were done by Joe and some by Catherine’s parents and by Joe’s dad. I study them while sipping on an Italian soda, trying to guess who did what. I’ll bet Catherine’s mom painted the colorful vase of flowers and her dad set upon the moody fisherman. But which ones are Big Joe’s?

If I owned the Gypsy Den, I would do something really stupid and name everything on the menu after artists. Like they have this really great salad with hunks of feta cheese, cucumbers, olives and stuff that I would call El Greco. And don’t you think Picasso’s Huevos sounds better than Eggs Ole for a breakfast tortilla stuffed with black beans, cheese, scrambled eggs and salsa? The Garden Quiche would become Monet’s Garden and the pasta dish served on mixed greens the Basquiat.

While waiting for my lunch, I go through the menu and rename everything, marking each item in green ink. What to do with the Eggchilada, a baked tortilla sandwich with chiles, eggs and cheese in the middle? Hmmmm. Frida’s Folly? I think the heat is getting to me.

I get a roast turkey sandwich (which I would rename the Byzantine Special or perhaps the Sinan Sandwich, after the famed Turkish architect who built many of the country’s most famous mosques), and think some more about the perfume bottles, the ceramic teapot and the canvases of spray paint cans that Frank Miller has turned into art at the Contemporary gallery. I liked Miller’s work, but I’m not sure Barbara would be interested in displaying crushed, rusty spray paint cans on her walls.

It’s hard to think when it’s so hot. Like Noni, I want nothing more than to find a cool corner and curl up for a nap. I order another Italian soda and continue marking up the menu with my new names.

I still can’t decide on what to buy Barbara for her birthday. After lunch, I go back to the Contemporary gallery and ask Noni what she thinks I should do. She lifts her head, rolls her eyes and snorts, spewing a little doggie foam on my shirt. It’s settled. I get the teapot.

Monday-Thursday, 7:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m.-11 p.m.; Saturday, 8 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sunday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m.

David Lansing’s column is published on Saturdays in Orange County Calendar. His e-mail address is occalendar@latimes.com.