Artists’ Latest Struggle: Keeping Gallery Alive

You might not find the next Picasso here.

This is a place for the Starving Poets, the neighborhood Juggling School, monthly meetings of the Frank Zappa Fan Club. It’s a place where wannabe artists--some admittedly bad--show their work.

Those artists say it’s the only forum they have in Orange County. But even this co-op art museum and gallery, AAA Electra 99, soon might disappear. After a three-year stay in Newport Beach, the gallery was forced to move to make room for a parking lot.

Gallery founders have rented an inexpensive, small warehouse in Anaheim for the past several months, but city officials say the gallery doesn’t fit plans to redevelop the industrial area as a high-tech business center.

Even as most Planning Commission members pledged their support for the arts, the panel voted unanimously last week to reject the gallery’s request for a permit. They said the “land use” just wasn’t right and that it’s not compatible with the city’s redevelopment plan.

“It doesn’t fit the zone you’re in,” commission member Phyllis Boydstun said. “This isn’t the place.”

The artists are now appealing to the City Council, but they wonder: If not here, where?

The gallery was founded in 1997 by artist and former cab driver Richard Johnson in memory of his friend Sunny Adrienne Sudweeks, an Orange County photographer who was murdered in her Costa Mesa home.

The gallery’s name is drawn from Sudweeks’ e-mail address--Electra 99. Its motto is “Any Art Accepted.” It doesn’t hurt to use an old cabbie trick to name the company AAA so it’s first in the listings.

AAA Electra 99 is a gallery/museum/co-op/meeting hall/performance center unlike any other, a distinction Johnson touts like a badge of honor. There are no review committees to give art a stamp of approval before it can be displayed. There are no steep commission fees.

Few Rules, Wide Variety

There are rules, four of them, but even those are on the wacky side: The art can’t be on fire; can’t have an overpowering odor; can’t contain live animals; and can’t make a mess.

The art is eclectic, from floral watercolors to photography to the “Incredible Chicken Baby” rendered from a plucked and lacquered chicken and a doll’s head. And there’s plenty of “trash art,” including pieces from one artist made entirely of things tossed out at Kinko’s.

But some of it makes a political statement too.

Johnson has devoted a good chunk of wall space to Electra 99’s political fight. He calls the exhibit, “Why there’s not more art in Anaheim.” The wall is plastered with letters of support written to the Planning Commission, a petition signed by the gallery’s neighbors urging the city to let them stay, and the staff report enumerating the reasons why the gallery’s permit should be rejected.

Although the planning commissioners voiced concern about occasional alcohol consumption at the gallery, their major problem is that the warehouse is in an industrial area. The city planning staff says it is a zone targeted for redevelopment. The business complex where the gallery is housed has even been given a future name: “The Canyon--Center for Advanced Technology.”

Artists urged the commission to approve their permit anyway, citing a Mexican restaurant and other nearby businesses that have nothing to do with technology.

“It is one of the only places in Orange County where I truly feel welcome,” said Jeff Streed of Laguna Hills.

Commission chairman John Koos suggested the gallery look for other space. Then he voted no. “It pains me, but we have to make our decisions based on the larger picture,” he said.

Johnson pays 90 cents a square foot for the 1,200-square-foot location. A commercial building would cost far more than the gallery can afford. Now, they’ll scrape together $350 for the appeal and hope the City Council is more receptive to their plight.

If not, the art might end up in the closet.

“Some of it would go somewhere else,” Johnson said. “A lot of it wouldn’t. A lot of it would just die.”