Gallery Coins a New Phase

Artists can spend years on their work and never make a dime.

In protest, Stuart Breidenstein has rallied a band of cash-strapped artists behind a project he hopes will bring them not dimes, but quarters -- lots of quarters.

“The Coin-Op Gallery: An Exhibition of Self-Funding Art” opens with a reception at 6 tonight at the 7 Muses Community Art Organization in Fullerton. Breidenstein and his creative partner, Sarah Grear, are counting on art lovers breaking open their piggy banks to indulge in their capitalist experiment.

“This is artists poking back,” Grear said. “You want to see my art? Give me a quarter.”

A menagerie of artwork will be on display, including a hollow TV with a sculpture hiding within, a ballerina with a feminist message, and a multimedia political jab.

To see each work, patrons must pay a quarter per piece, and the artists keep the change.

The 7 Muses show is a prelude to two larger exhibitions, one scheduled for July at the Lab in Costa Mesa and the other in August at an undetermined location.

The vision for that final show, Breidenstein said, is a modern art carnival: science fair meets arcade bundled into an art installation -- coin girls with pillbox hats on roller skates, improvisational actors, music, dancing and theater. All ready to go at a quarter’s notice.

Artists have long bristled at the capricious relationship between money and art, said Mike McGee, Cal State Fullerton’s gallery director. One winter day in 1983, sculptor David Hammons threw down a blanket on a New York sidewalk and sold snowballs to ridicule the tension between art and commerce. He made $20.

Breidenstein, 40, sporting a “critic” button on his black tank top, conceptualized the exhibit in October while showing his latest work, a presidential speech generator, at a Costa Mesa gallery.

With the push of a button, a 1940s projector clicked on, shining a cartoon of a simian President George W. Bush onto a screen a few feet away -- Breidenstein used a pin to etch the drawings onto the 16mm film.

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee,” Bush’s voice drawled, “fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me ...” he tapered off. “You can’t get fooled again.”

The more people pushed Breidenstein’s button, the more irritated he became. “Why can people just walk up to that button and push it for free?” he said. “There must be a way to get money out of them.”

For this show, Breidenstein has rigged a motion sensor to activate the projector when someone drops in a quarter. Each coin gets them a different minutelong Bush quote.

It’s art for people who can’t afford to buy it but want to experience it, said Grear, a recent Cal State Fullerton graduate.

Grear said she resents that some artists tailor their work to turn a profit, rather than hew to their creative visions. “I’m more of a ‘If people get it, good; if not, whatever,’ kind of girl.”

That’s the beauty of the Coin-Op Gallery, she said.

“It’s a gauge. Was my piece enticing enough to seduce someone into parting with their quarter?”

Project producer Catherine Blanksby said such opportunities will abound at 7 Muses. Her own piece is a gumball machine wrapped in heart-studded plastic vines. It’s filled with “Flirt Kits,” plastic bubbles that contain a mint for you, a flower for your love and pickup lines in five languages.

The kits play into her philosophy of fusing theater and art. “It’s thart,” she said. “I’m a thartist.”

A few feet away, the Minute Theater players will race through 10 works, including a drama told in three acts, each 20 seconds long.

Grear said the exhibit will be a fluid, chaotic, art installation -- something that visitors step inside of rather than admire from afar.

Although some works will be for sale, art at shows such as these never sells, she said.

“People wouldn’t know what to do with them,” she said. “They don’t match the couch, you know?”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Coin-Op Gallery

An exhibition of Self Funding Art, sponsored by 7 Muses Community Art Organization

* When: Opening reception, 6 to

9 tonight.

Show runs through June 30.

Exhibit at the Lab July 8 and 9.

* Where: 445 E. Wilshire Ave., Fullerton

* Web: https://coinopgallery.com