Last week's First Thursday Artwalk was blessed or cursed with a bevy of competing activities -- beyond looking at art, which was originally somewhat related to the idea of First Thursday. Up at SAM, the local art establishment turned out to see smart L.A. artist Kim Dingle explicate her paintings of little malevolent girls; film buffs lined up to see David Lean's Brief Encounter; and the regular Thursday After Hours crowd absorbed the wailings of singer j. r. Meanwhile, down in Pioneer Square, the occupants of the 45 or so studios and galleries of the low-rent Washington Shoe Building on Jackson Street held a rally to bemoan their fate -- their month-to-month leases will expire at the end of April so the Samis Foundation can convert the brick warehouse into market-rate offices or apartments -- and talk about their futures.
Fearless Stranger stringer Emily Hall braved the cold to stand outside the Shoe and listen to a string of tenants and two city council members rail against the injustice of the rental market and the unregulated marketplace in general. Eddie Maurer, who held the master lease on the Shoe and rented out its spaces, upped his estimate of dispossessed artists to 90-120, as compared to the 80 I'd been quoted in earlier conversations with Shoe media-relations guy Cliff Ingham. Maurer's highest figure would have the artists packed four-to-a-room, making one wonder how any work was getting done in the building.
The rally reached its nadir when Council Member Judy Nicastro attempted to lead the crowd in a chant based on the Queen favorite "Another One Bites the Dust." But on the good side, several possible solutions to the Pioneer Square artist-space drain were interspersed with the loopier material. Nicastro plugged her upcoming May renters' summit. Council Member Nick Licata plugged his backing of the conversion of the city-owned downtown Alaskan Building to 80 studio spaces by 2004, as well as the possible studio-space conversion of the Wonder Bread building in the C.D., and the reformation of regulations that make it hard for artists to legally live in their not-up-to-residential-code workspaces. And Eddie Maurer promoted his plan to develop the Griffith Envelope Building on the Duwamish as a studio building and art center.
What will clearly be lost in the Pioneer Square redevelopment is the kind of open-studio event culture represented by the Shoe, which involved dozens of unknown artists, booze, art performances, bands, DJs, and so on. But if the problem really is finding space in which to create art, rather than space to promote it or throw parties around it, the problem looks much more solvable.
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A small industrial Australian town may be next in line for their own branch of the Guggenheim Museum, according to a link posted on artsjournal.com last week. The Age of Melbourne reported on the town of Geelong, pop. 190,000, which has declared its intent to bid on the next branch of Thomas Krens' globe-spanning museum empire. If the terms on which the local and regional governments of Bilbao got their celebrated branch hold, Geelong would have to pony up quite a bit of cash for the honor, including design and construction costs and a fee for use of the Guggenheim's collection and curators.
Since the Guggenheim's financing schemes and exploitation of willing and desperate minor cities are closely following the techniques of pro sports team owners, should we look for a future in which the Guggenheim threatens to move various branches if local governments fail to open their budgets to the rapacious museum? And in which Guggenheim-loving corporate sponsors like Hugo Boss start asking for naming rights? The Hugo Boss Guggenheim Geelong, anybody? It's got quite a ring....
Send gossip and complaints to eric@thestranger.com..
