A site for the eyes

Perched on a panoramic bluff overlooking the bustling port of San Pedro is a sleepy, nondescript cluster of one- and two-story buildings, 11 of them, on land formerly used by the military.

Nathan Birnbaum, a tall, lean 47-year-old, surveys the facility.

“This is a sleeping princess about to wake up,” he says. “This is part of the whole L.A. arts scene.”

The object of his affection is the Angels Gate Cultural Center, which is elevating its stature with the opening of a renovated 1,800-square-foot art gallery in the facility’s main building and the launch of the center’s annual group show, “On Site at the Gate.”

The 22-year-old center, which already boasts 52 resident artists and an outreach program active in South Bay schools, soon will offer a cross-cultural exchange program, as well as a shop with crafts from local artisans and a print studio.

There’s also a vision, eventually, of a performance space, says Birnbaum, who took over as the center’s director in October.

For now, Angels Gate’s coming-out party begins with “On Site,” an all-California show that opened last weekend featuring 15 artists working in painting, drawing, ceramics, assemblage and even live flowers.

The latter work comes courtesy of installation artist Arzu Arda Kosar, who has created a map of the United States reflecting each state’s average expenditure for a child’s education. These are indicated by means of potted alyssum, a plant that sports bundles of small white flowers, using “more developed and less developed” ones for each state, she says. When necessary, some pots were further thinned out by plucking.

In this unusual way, “I’m trying to show the discrepancy in education spending in different states,” Kosar says.

“It was really varied,” says this year’s “On Site” juror Meg Linton, director of the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art & Design. The show drew more than 50 submissions from all over the state, including one happy discovery, Peggy Nichols.

The artist is represented in the show by her painting “The Korai Series: Pirate,” which shows a lingerie shop window featuring two scantily clad female mannequins in pirate-themed garb.

“There was a sense of humor about it; it was campy,” Linton says. “It really stood out.”

In addition, there are Kerri Sabine’s oversized charcoal drawings, done in fiercely bold strokes. One depicts a wooden toy sheep, the other a toy cowboy tumbled onto his head.

Since having her first child four years ago, Sabine has taken the “opportunity to revisit our environment through my children,” she says in her artist statement.

Displayed with the work by Nichols and Kosar in the gallery’s large main room is a set of small drawings of the sea by Denice Bartels and a striking wall sculpture by Kris Orvosh. A second room houses Sabine’s drawings, four ceramic pieces by Ken Takahashi and sculpture by Suzi Trubitz.

Birnbaum is a man percolating with ideas. From the beginning he believed it key to modernize the main building -- with offices, the shop, the print studio and more usable gallery space.

He enthusiastically discusses his plans to mount “smaller, more high-quality shows that generate more excitement” at the center, part of a larger vision to create a public space that will be a cultural magnet for the area.

Important to that effort will be the cross-cultural exchange programs he plans to bring to Angels Gate.

From May 8 to 13, in the first of his Network of Culture and Media programs, the center will mount a series of performances and public discussions at three locations around Los Angeles with Pakistani playwright and journalist Shahid Nadeem and Indonesian poet Goenawan Mohamad.

The Artists in Classrooms program has been “hugely successful,” says Birnbaum, but he is interested in bringing more student programs to the center itself.

Moreover, Birnbaum wants to renovate a large studio suitable for dance and theater rehearsals and construct a building that would include a small performance space.

Maybe, he says with a smile, it will even include “a veranda where people could enjoy the view and have an espresso.”

Scarlet Cheng can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

*

Angels Gate Cultural Center

On Site at the Gate

What: Gallery show featuring the work of 15 California artists

Where: 3601 S. Gaffey St., San Pedro

When: Through June 6. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Price: Suggested donation $5

Info: (310) 519-0936 or www.angelsgateart.org