An art walk’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder

The Brewery Artwalk was going full-tilt last weekend, drawing art lovers of all stripes — young professionals, couples pushing strollers, fedora-topped hipsters — to its downtown L.A. industrial complex, an old Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery converted to one of the world’s largest artists’ live-work compounds. They streamed through 160 or so private studios and galleries, ogling the “art candy”-packed walls, commingling in the capacious loft hallways and gathering under tented food courts.

Still, Iva Hladis, a board member of the Brewery Artwalk Assn., wasn’t happy with the turnout. Perhaps because there were two other art walks in greater Los Angeles that weekend, attendance at the twice-yearly event was at an all-time low, as were sales.

“It was definitely, if not the lowest, then one of the least attended ever, and I’ve been showing for 17 years,” says Hladis. “Of my neighbors and friends — very little sales.”

Many artists were conspicuously absent as well, their heavy studio doors shut to passersby. “A lot of people participate, but some [resident artists] do go away because it’s so crowded, it’s hard to manage your day and park and do your normal activities,” says Hladis.

But printmaker Dave Lefner, beneath a pronounced mohawk, felt differently. Using a mailing list compiled from past art walks, Lefner had sold three works in advance of the event, during which he made enough money to pay his rent for the year. “The art walk makes business happen,” he says. “It’s great.”

So goes the Great Art Walk Debate. Do they boost the Southern California art community or dilute it? Do they build the foundation for sales and create collectors or draw looky-loos opting for a cheap night out? There are almost as many opinions as there are participants in the more than 20 art walks in greater Los Angeles.

Last month, the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, a monthly event that draws an estimated 20,000 people to Spring Street’s gallery row area, made headlines when its board announced it might have to end the event because it had become so popular more funds were needed to pay for security and cleanup. The board got the money and the art walk will return Thursday, but a splinter group of gallery owners said it would sponsor an alternative, more low-key event aimed at serious collectors, tentatively scheduled for January.

“[The galleries] aren’t interested in doing an event where there are 20,000 drunk kids,” says Bert Green of Bert Green Fine Art, one of the organizers of the newer, decidedly daytime art walk. “The galleries have to do what’s in their own interest, which is to focus the event back to art,” he says.

Decentralized, grass-roots, hyper-local efforts, L.A.’s art walks are as sprawling as the city itself, and as diverse and varied as the individual neighborhoods that organize and fund them. They’re wildly divergent in form and frequency, be they annual, quarterly or monthly, and they operate with different funding models to different degrees of success, in terms of participant traction and gallery sales — though there’s no consensus about effectiveness within the arts community.

“There’s an art explosion [in L.A.] in general right now — it’s been happening the past five or six years, and the art walks have followed that,” says Tulsa Kinney, editor of local art magazine Artillery. “But now there’s a backlash. Real collectors wouldn’t go on the art walks. They make appointments with the galleries, they’re being wined and dined. The art walk is usually for the hoi polloi.”

But George Billis, of George Billis Gallery in Culver City, says that even though the annual art walk there draws a broader crowd of “curiosity seekers” than more serious art-goers, it still helps him move art. “We don’t have high expectations that someone is going to walk in and buy a $10,000 painting. We cater to $50-$3,000 [pieces] during the Culver City art walk, and repeatedly, year and after, year it’s been successful for us — both in terms of sales and building a collector base. Certainly it’s a liability because you have thousands of people come through the door, but that’s part of the fun of it.”

Cliff Benjamin at Western Project, also in Culver City, says that the event is in no way a moneymaker for his gallery. “It has more to do with entertainment and education, it works very well on those levels,” he says. “But it has nothing to do with business.”

Culver City is one of the more established, higher profile art walks in L.A., as are the art walks in the Miracle Mile district, downtown, The Brewery, Pasadena (which hosts five other art events during art walk weekend) and Venice, which has both an annual art walk and a new, separately organized monthly event. But cast the net wider geographically, and looser in definition, and there are many, many more.

For some neighborhoods, art walk history runs deep. “You go back to the ‘60s, you had one art walk on La Cienega — a three to four block stretch,” says Bill Lasarow, art writer and publisher of ArtScene. “People would get dressed up in suits and heels — it was very formal.”

Louis Stern, of Louis Stern Fine Arts in West Hollywood, attended those early 1960s art walks as a youngster with his father. “The reason art walks have traditionally been on Thursday nights,” he says, “is because of maid’s night out.” For “people, especially in Beverly Hills, it was tradition in SoCal to give their maids the night off, and they’d go out to eat. A lot of the restaurants were on La Cienega. You’d make a night of it and it would encompass a stop on gallery row.”

Other art walks have directly and powerfully transformed their neighborhoods, like downtown L.A.’s or the one in sleepy, working-class port district of San Pedro, which has had an art walk for 13 years now. Artists moved into the area in the late 1980s because “rent was very inexpensive for a whole, top floor of a building,” says Judith Blahnik of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce. One of the first things they did was organize a regular art tour. “That had a lot to do with the revitalization. They got people to come in when it was still the badlands. Many of the galleries have left; but many are still here.”

The Miracle Mile Art Walk works in concert with LACMA and other major museums along Wilshire Boulevard, but the privately run Northeast L.A. gallery night in Highland Park and surrounding areas relies heavily on social networking and word of mouth only.

“There’s no big nonprofit running it, no board of directors,” says sole organizer Brian Mallman. “It’s different every month. You’ll go into a traditional gallery and the next place is a one-night-only exhibit in someone’s backyard,” he says.

Bergamot Station, a popular gallery complex in Santa Monica, not only doesn’t host art walks, but also doesn’t coordinate gallery openings at all. “The galleries are individually owned, so they have their own schedules,” says property manager Tiffney Rachal. “Usually, when one gallery hears 15 other galleries are having an opening, they’ll opt out. It’s not a situation where we don’t collaborate, but we’re limited on parking.”

Meanwhile, downtown, the controversy continues. Green calls the existing art walk “disastrous,” echoing complaints by other gallery owners, some of whom close during the event. They complain the art walk mainly benefits bars and restaurants and even can be a liability for gallery owners, as crowds feeding off of free wine and cheese can damage works on display.

That’s hardly a unanimous view, however.

The art walk is “in no way a hindrance,” says Brian Lee of the Little Tokyo gallery Hold Up Art. “It gets 30,000-some people looking at art who never would be, and the impact that has on younger generations moving downtown is phenomenal. There’s nothing better for downtown.”

In a way, the debate is one of the few uniting factors in the city’s burgeoning art walk scene. Everyone has an opinion.

deborah.vankin@latimes.com