Preamble
Art Dockument #1 The Cosmic Humeroid’s Joke 1981
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“Art is my fate, don’t debate,” I wrote in my 1981 sketchbook. Strange fate, I think, driving back to the illegal loft I inhabit east of Little Tokyo and west of the Los Angeles River in the Citizens Warehouse. The life I live isn’t anything like what I imagined the L.A. artist’s life would be. The reality of the creative life in downtown Los Angeles is more like the outlaws running from the posse than the beach-attired avant-garde of Venice serving coffee to the elite come to see the latest creations.
My bed, a big heavy shield-shaped mattress and sturdy frame made of lumber, lies in the back of my pickup truck. The bed is upside down. Below the wood frame the limp pink-striped cotton slab sags into the truck’s bed, hiding all my clothes. The mattress edges drape over the truck’s bed. This playboy relic of the 1960s resurrected from the trash (urban mining, the activity was called) has been visiting Venice, while the authorities visit the lofts.
My loft! My enormous room! Gary’s Loft! Karen’s Loft, Ellen’s Loft! All the 20-some artists’ lofts in the old tallow factory (later furniture, book and soy-sauce warehouse) at the juncture of the river bridge, the very long First Street and the very short Center Street. First Street stretches miles from Mid-Wilshire, through downtown, across the Los Angeles River and disappears finally into East L.A. Center Street extends one block, the length of the warehouse. The artists think of First and Center as ground zero – the prime spot -- for the art community. Today the Los Angeles building inspectors were scheduled to make another raid on ground zero to catch the artists in the act of illegal living. Warehouses aren’t residential buildings. Kitchens shouldn’t be found. Beds are forbidden. Showers and bathtubs are suspicious. Clothes are proof of 24-hour inhabitation, which is against the law. Therefore, bed in truck, clothes under bed, I have day-tripped to the beach to avoid the inspectors.
As I depart the ocean’s edge, the late afternoon sun at my back paints the city’s immense roof-top-spotted and palm-punctuated land canvas in bright hues and black shadows. In the freeway distance, L.A.’s central city mound of tower shimmers. From the Venice beach perspective, Los Angeles is an astonishing Oz of vivid color, infinite and amazing potential. Venice, the beach slum turned into a cultural treasure and real-estate boon by artists, is proof of the tremendous cultural energy that spreads from the ocean to the mountain backdrop for the Hollywood dream, then reaches to the rising towers of great capital ventures on the plain beyond. Evidence of a cultural bloom erupts all over the place. In the empty place in front of every new office building, sculptures are plopped. In the lobbies of Bunker Hill and Figueroa Street skyscrapers, art exhibitions are embedded. Colorful murals adorn the walls along Venice alleys, the freeways surrounding downtown and the streets of East Los Angeles. Along San Vicente Boulevard a conceptual artist has turned the bus stop benches into art by striping them blue and white. On Sunset Boulevard even the billboards are art. Local artists believe Los Angeles is the successor to New York’s position as the center of the art world.
During the years of mid-century, Venice was the engine driving the cultural boom. For artists this was the ideal bohemian place to live and create the West Coast Art defining the new art capital. The sun, the surf, the sand was so California. The suntanned, nearly nude population mixed with hippies, roller-skating gangs and the health-conscious elderly was so exuberant. The remnants of the old real-estate dream -- to create a “new Venice” -- were visible in the shallow canals. The colonnaded end of Windward Avenue provided a curious cultural precedence. Artists found Venice, Los Angeles, California a bright, happy place to do their thing. The cultural elite, the rich and the Hollywood royalty embraced them and their work. The cool light-and-space art of the West Coast found its home.
The old storefronts and the relic structures of the once great, later shabby amusement park beside the Venice boardwalk created opportunity, and the artists moved in. These anonymous, dead spaces were converted into energetic live-in studios, and nobody objected. The sunny days and cool ocean breeze made a wonderful environment, and crowds of beach visitors were an interesting diversion. The gathering community of creative people added more stimulation. Venice became a hive of avant-garde galleries, coffeehouses and good restaurants. More people were drawn to the excitement. Counterculture vendors and strolling musicians found new customers. Beach bums found a beach to sleep on, and tourists to panhandle. The Venice mix of urban reality and tinsel-town fantasy hinted at an authentic cultural alternative, but the artists were soon priced out. .
Success brought developers and house buyers to the place once declared the slum by the sea. Rents soured. Stores changed to studios became stores again. Old structures were demolished and replaced by fancy architecture. Emerging artists and artists who weren’t anointed by critical acclaim looked for a new place to go. Downtown L.A. was the new place.
***
As my pickup enters downtown, my neighborhood bears little resemblance to Venice, except for the homeless. There are no hip coffeehouses, no garden restaurants, no wacky street vendors and no roller-skating musicians. My destination isn’t vibrant. It has no allure of leisure or fun. Where I live is hard and gritty. The neighborhood east of Alameda Street is mostly empty, except for a few surviving businesses, the wandering bums and the illegal artists.
The downtown L.A. artists colonize a land of railroad tracks, trucks and dumpsters. Their studios are hidden in two- or three-story structures dotted among the old industrial edifices beyond the new office towers and Skid Row. In buildings unrentable for commerce artists find the cheap space no longer available in Venice. Three feet above the sidewalk on the first floor of a warehouse built before 1900, I lease a 2,000-square-foot unfinished space for very little money. I think of my studio as more low than lofty. To build my studio dream, I contend with leaks, raids and rats. Today is a raid.
The first raid came last week. A building inspector arrived at an appointed hour after lunch. From our entryway stoop Gary, Karen and I watched him pull up in a big white car marked with the City of Los Angeles seal. He parked at the curb in front of the main entrance to the warehouse: glass doors flanked by brown pilasters and inscribed above in faded black paint “Citizens Warehouse, 1001 East First Street.” The tall African-American man, wearing a white shirt with striped red tie and pressed navy blue trousers, emerged from the automobile. In his left hand he cradled a clipboard. Joel and Marc, the artist-owner representatives, greeted him dressed in sneakers, jeans and tee shirts. We couldn’t hear the discussion, but from our prior strategy session with Marc and Joel we knew they intended to show the inspector only a few studios. Our four in the center of the building would be one group. Joel told the inspector he could only show the studios to which he had keys.
Keys wouldn’t be available to the door of the space on the second floor with the big hole in the roof connecting it to a newly built studio, nor to the door of “The Pit,” the space on first floor with the big hole in the floor connecting it to the basement. No guardrails surrounded the hole. No handrails protected the steep stair that descended into the dark cellar. None of these alterations were done with permits or adherence to code.
Keys to the basement wouldn’t be available. The basement divided into several sections. A middle section held the remnants of the old tallow pits. North of the pits was a section with the ceiling three feet above the sidewalk and a floor three feet below the sidewalk. In this low and broad space of more than 6,000 square feet, populated by a forest of short stubby columns, lived a couple with a three-year-old child. They had no natural light or ventilation. Their spaces were defined and subdivided by thin black plastic tarps hung from the joists of the floor above and spanning from column to column in a network of planes -- a lot like a maze. They had no kitchen or bathroom. They were having fun in this radical life style, but allowing the inspectors to see it would mean instant eviction. South of the pits was a space with an airplane under construction. A 20-foot wing lay on edge between columns filling the gap from floor to ceiling. Other pieces of fuselage and tail were scattered over the space. Around the pieces were many cans of paints and solvents, all flammable liquids. Should a fire inspector see this, some artists might go to jail.
The body language of the inspector revealed his annoyance. Marc, shrugging his shoulders, expressed his apologies. The inspector tapped a pen against the white paper on his clipboard and looked angrily at Joel. Joel looked at the paper with a bewildered expression. I imagined that this man was not happy with his given chore of playing a game of cat and mouse with these unconventional characters who were violating page after page of the building and zoning ordinances and getting away with it. Marc invited the inspector to enter through the glass doors. We left the stoop to await the inspector visit. Our preparations were complete.
My bed and my clothes were in my truck parked a block away. The rickety stairway in my studio that led to the basement and family space was barred with wood slats nailed over the door. Ellen’s mattress lay outside her locked and keyless loading-dock door, propped against the building. Karen and Gary’s clothes were buried at the bottom of a pile of painting tarps. When the inspector entered with Joel and Marc he found Gary and me playing ping-pong over a table specially built to conceal the couple’s bed.
Without a word the inspector marched past us and stopped in front of the open and empty alcove that was the studio bedroom. This space was usually enclosed by a gigantic pivoting partition. The 12-by12-foot wall was hinged to a wood column and could pivot 90 degrees on casters. The partition was pivoted out for the inspection, shielding a kitchen and a hole in the studio wall that led to Karen’s space. The bedroom was empty except for a television monitor positioned on milk crate. The monitor played one of Gary’s performance art video tapes. The inspector stared at Gary’s monologue then turned and stepped behind the pivoted partition. Joel and Marc trailed after him into the kitchen area. Between paddle-whacks of our game, I heard the inspector declare, “See what I mean?” Marc responded, “He spends a lot of time here. A kitchen is necessary.” The long silence meant they had moved into Karen’s studio.
13 Comments
Nice stories
great stories
Interesting
Full story with ark and decoment, nice sharing
Thank you vivian
Great information
Thank you lisa
Interesting art story
Thank you vanisa
My appreciation to all of you again, thank you very much
Thank you