Brush with fame

Every Tuesday of every month of every year, a baker’s dozen of high-powered architects, artists and design professionals gathers in Santa Monica to escape their ringing phones, blaring deadlines and demanding clients.

And they paint. They paint with watercolors, just as they did when they were children.

“As an architect I felt it would be useful and enjoyable to do something that was completely out of control, something spontaneous that I was no good at,” says architect Fred Fisher. “Being able to do something that is the opposite of what I do is a personal pleasure. This class is something I guard selfishly within my obligations.”

This is a special evening for the group, which has been meeting in various incarnations for seven years. It started as the tonily titled Santa Monica Watercolor Society, which would pack up its paints and tote them to Venice, Catalina and Santa Fe, N.M. -- almost anywhere there was compelling light.

These days, field trips are more likely to be limited to the beach or the Getty Museum because all roads usually lead to the Santa Monica studio of landscape designer Nancy Goslee Power. There they’ve been looking at vegetables and models and cheeseburgers, surrendering to a medium that has a mind of its own.

“There’s something very Zen about it,” says Miriam Wosk, one of only two professional painters in the group who is playing host this evening at her rambling Santa Monica home. “When we empty ourselves out of all our preconceived notions of what we’ve been trained to do, it’s very fresh. We’re all children again. Here there’s no one to satisfy but ourselves.”

Perhaps, but on this particular Tuesday the watercolorists are preparing for a show. Under the gentle prodding of their instructor, Kim McCarty, the group is about to discover whether their work satisfies other people as well when they mount a show at Michael’s, the Santa Monica restaurant McCarty owns with her husband. After dinner, they will move into Wosk’s airy studio -- designed by another member of the group, architect Steven Ehrlich -- tack their work on the walls and begin the painful process of editing it.

“You really get a different perspective on your work when it’s up on the wall and framed,” says McCarty, whose work is included in the “International Paper” show currently at the UCLA Hammer Museum of Art. “Everyone seemed pretty nervous about it even though they’re established at their craft. They were jittery about being exposed because it’s so personal.”

But first, there’s garlic bread to break and issues of art and the day to chew over, because, above all, the group offers a rare opportunity in Los Angeles, an intellectual community among kindred spirits in different professions. Tuesday evenings are, in essence, a salon for visually oriented people.

“We dialogue about painting and the arts,” says muralist Scott Flax, the other professional painter in the group. “We allow each other to disagree. The act of watercolor just opens the dialogue up.”

After dinner, they move into Wosk’s studio. Ehrlich has put up several paintings of watery crabs, and McCarty is suggesting he stick to crabs for the group show.

Ehrlich pauses and frowns slightly. “If I do only crabs, it’s a very architectural statement -- and I’m trying to get away from that.”

“Why?” asks Deenie Yudell, the Getty’s head of publication design. “Is each one a client?”

A couple of weeks later, the artists have launched their maiden voyage. The second floor of Michael’s is lined with the watercolors of glinting knives and knife-shaped fish by architect Gayle Lewis, Fisher’s series of wine glasses and architect David Martin’s filmy cheeseburgers. The rooms are teeming with people -- friends and family of the 13 well-known members of the group and others. Indeed, the show is such a success that Yudell has gone outside for a breathing break. “I’m not used to this and it feels fabulously odd because most of us are at the service end of the visual arts,” she says. “I feel like a cross between Cinderella and Walter Mitty.”

Upstairs, Power is savoring the moment. As a landscape designer, she was comfortable working with plants and land, but paper frankly terrified her. But this evening is something else. She’s holding a slip of paper with the names of potential buyers. “I’ve sold out all my vegetables,” she says.

And her patrons aren’t just any garden-variety vegetable consumer. She sold a piece to “The Silver Palate Cookbook” author Sheila Lukins, who also scooped up Martin’s cheeseburgers.

“I do love the food,” Lukins says as she grasps the banister on the way downstairs with her friend Blythe Danner. “Oh, yes.”

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On view

What: Paintings by members of the Santa Monica Watercolor Society

Where: Michael’s, 1147 3rd St., Santa Monica.

Info: (310) 451-0843.