The Mystery Gallery
In the months before Van Freeman was evicted from his Silver Lake bungalow, he made a number of people nervous.
His landlord recalls that Freeman, a shoe repairman, repeatedly missed rent payments. His neighbors remember loud gospel music in the wee hours. And then there were the bouts of furious effort amid the splintered wood, broken glass and shattered tiles in his backyard workshop.
Now Reservoir Street is quieter, and Freeman hasn’t been seen since September. But he’s left everyone plenty to think about. The nature of art, for instance, and law and God. In those bouts of activity, it’s now clear, Freeman was converting his bungalow into a shrine filled with his own rustic, religious folk designs and images.
A kitchen wall is tiled with pennies, “In God We Trust” scrawled across them in red. Snatches of scripture are inked on the bathroom ceiling. Walls, floors, doors and window panes are encrusted with mosaics of glass, tile, stones and nails. Splintered sticks are fashioned into crosses. More mosaic lettering on the porch urges all who depart to “Take Jesus With You.” About two dozen more-portable works, mostly mosaic tiles on window frames and decorated doors, are scattered around the house along with at least 21 pairs of other people’s shoes. In one corner sits an eviction notice dated Aug. 28.
When neighbors beheld this scene--and the landlord’s “For Rent” sign--a few stepped up to preserve the household, and the work in it, until they can chase down some of the many questions it raises. Among them: Is this art, and is it important enough to be preserved? Who rightfully owns it? And where is Freeman?
“Right away, everybody just went, ‘Wow,’” said Lourdes Gonzalez, who lives on a neighboring street. “I’m so glad I got to see it in that space. I think he’s got talent. I loved it. It’s kind of obvious that he was a very driven guy. I hope we can find him.”
If Watts Towers had a low-rise bungalow cousin, or the House of Blues art buyer had a storage shed, it might look like this.
“I am black but comely, o ye daughters of Jerusalem,” says one passage from the Song of Solomon on the bathroom ceiling. On a closet wall, next to Freeman’s left-behind clothes, another quotation urges the beholder to “Take no thought ... for the body what ye shall put on.” A pair of unhinged doors, lettered front and back, deliver a metaphor from St. John’s parable of the sheepfold: “I am the door/enter in he shall be saved/and shall go in/and out and find life,” they say.
“My husband just fell in love with the way [Freeman] took all this energy and apparent nervousness at life and just channeled it into the house,” said neighbor Alison Carey, a playwright who met Freeman shortly before he disappeared. “I found the house a little scary, in addition to very beautiful. It’s not beautiful in a that-looks-comfortable sort of way. The first thing I asked is, ‘Where do you sleep?’ He said he didn’t sleep much. Then he said he had a lot of pillows.”
The decorations and Bible quotations attached to the house look like the work of a man who craves hourly encouragement. The portable pieces seem no less earnest. In coffee-table volumes on “outsider art,” you can find page after page of works and installations in this tradition, from the religious themes to the cast-off materials to the uncertain finances of the artist. Then again, you might cast a glance over the splinters, shards and Bible quotations and pronounce it all a bunch of junk, as landlord Dick Padron was first inclined to do.
“I don’t understand that kind of art. I could not appreciate his work. But these other people do,” said Padron, who owns and manages several properties in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Padron said he first rented the property to Freeman about three years ago. At the time, Freeman made his living repairing shoes, which generated enough to cover his $550 monthly rent, Padron said. The landlord doesn’t remember any art projects then, although Freeman did fill the frontyard with cactuses.
“‘I’m going to make your home look like the best one on the block, and then you’re going to have to sell it to me,’” Padron remembers Freeman saying.
Left-behind snapshots of Freeman show an African American man in his 30s, bald, with an intense gaze. “My name is Van Freeman and I’m the artist behind Free’man Art,” reads a flier, also left behind. “I must say that I ask God step by step about each piece. He allows me to do [it], so I can’t take any of the credit for the work that you see. Each piece is done with the hope that you will keep your focus on God no matter what the circumstances may bring. And as you and I both know, this life can bring some pretty tough situations to deal with. It can get pretty rough sometimes.”
Early this year, Freeman’s troubles, and his creativity, seemed to escalate. Neighbors complained about his erratic behavior, odd hours and the loud noises at the house, Padron said, and the rent checks stopped coming. By August, Padron said, Freeman owed him nearly $4,000, and the wheels of eviction had begun to turn. In an apparent last-ditch bid to raise money, Freeman put up a sign above his front steps and started selling artworks. Neighbors said prices varied from $35 to $3,500, with most in the $200-to-$300 range. But he didn’t sell enough to cover all of the debt.
“He blew it,” Padron said. “I would not have bothered him if he had just paid his rent monthly.”
Padron said Freeman returned to the property once in September, then later called, saying he was with family in Philadelphia and that a friend would come by to pick up the items in the house. But the friend never came.
“I’d never been inside his place until he put up the sign,” said neighbor Ben Cobb, an actor. “So I went in with my 6-year-old daughter, Emma, and my 2-year-old son, Elijah. It was just one of those artistic experiences you don’t get very often. It was an extremely moving experience. I was overwhelmed, and I was going to call all my friends. And then I see the eviction notice.”
A handful of neighbors has been sweeping up around the place and organizing the works, and one couple has bought some time by paying November’s rent, with an option to continue. Neighbor Marilyn Downey, hoping to promote appreciation for the work, will open the house to visitors by appointment. She says the situation is too unclear to put the works up for sale. “I really feel the need to find Van. I would like to know what he wants to do with his artworks.”
For the landlord, there’s no great mystery here. Noting that he’s still out nearly $4,000, Padron said he believes the law gives him ownership of everything that Freeman left behind for more than 15 days after his eviction. He’d like to see the portable works sold, then he’ll make a few repairs to the cottage (the bathroom doesn’t work, among other things) and rent the place out again, he said. Already, Padron added, he has several potential tenants who are not only interested in living amid the remaining roughhewn decorations but also willing to pay $900 monthly if the neighbors give up their spot at the head of the line.
Given that, “I’m not going to touch it until whoever moves in says so,” said Padron. “Did you see the kitchen wall? I think there’s about $100 worth of pennies up there.”
But Freeman may still have a claim to at least some of the works--or the government might. Under state law, said Kevin Postema, a spokesman for the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, an evicted tenant’s rights depend on how much paperwork his landlord does. If the eviction doesn’t include the posting of a notice of right to reclaim abandoned personal property, Postema said, the tenant typically retains legal ownership of items left behind and could fight in Small Claims Court.
If the landlord does post the required notice and the items go unclaimed for 18 days--and the items together are worth less than $300--the landlord is free to claim them, Postema said. If the value is more than $300, Postema said, the landlord is obliged to advertise and stage a public auction, then hand over the proceeds (after expenses) to the county recorder’s office.
In other words, the county of Los Angeles may be legally first in line to collect the revenue.
But there are at least two more levels of complication. Because the items left behind might be considered artwork, said Lester J. Savit, an attorney specializing in intellectual property with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Irvine, state and federal laws designed to protect artists’ rights may apply. In particular, Savit said, the California Art Preservation Act could apply to works attached to the house. That act restricts the destruction of artwork by persons other than the artist, regardless of ownership, and in some cases gives artists the right to sue property owners over damaged or destroyed works of “recognized quality.”
If Freeman doesn’t resurface, or chooses not to ask for anything, these legal subtleties may be moot. Whether auctioned or otherwise sold, the works may scatter in the hands of individual buyers. And though some neighbors muse about the possibility of opening a studio or a gallery in the space, others note the short residential street’s limited parking.
But for the moment the rent is paid, and Freeman’s works remain in one place.
One morning last week, assemblage artist John Outterbridge, who directed the Watts Towers Art Center from 1975 to 1992, stood at the threshold of the house of Reservoir Street, having accepted a reporter’s invitation to give his reaction.
The maker of these things, Outterbridge said slowly, seems to be “one of those personalities wounded with a blessing of some sort. He can’t help doing what he does. He’s one of those people who gives credit to the invisible.”
And the value of the art?
Guessing at that, Outterbridge said, is half as important as paying some attention to the artist.
“Here is an opportunity to meet a personality,” said Outterbridge. “And to follow through. And to possibly salvage someone’s essence. Because you can tell that this is an unusual sensibility. We don’t know what it is, or what it could be.”
The house at 2911 Reservoir St. is open 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays through Dec. 3 by appointment, (323) 428-7348.
