By Melina Paris, Editorial Assistant
On April 27, the San Pedro Waterfront Arts District [a private 501c3] held its second First Thursday Working Group Zoom meeting, made up of artists and stakeholders to determine how to redesign the San Pedro art walk and re-launch the event in July.
The previous meeting, in January, gathered many of the same suspects and a few more, to generate suggestions. The subsequent meeting included a preliminary survey and summarized the best of the earlier suggestions and considered how to apply them in these categories: marketing, event structure, live music, community outreach and food trucks.
In both instances, Random Lengths News solicited local artists and gallerists/curators on their thoughts about the art walk. This time, Ron Linden, Laurie Steelink and once again, Michael Stearns shared their insights.
The San Pedro Art Walk/ First Thursdays was initiated in the mid 1990s and in 2008, the ACE [Arts, Culture Entertainment] District was launched with a Community Redevelopment Agency or CRA grant. As Random Lengths News’ Harbor Living reported in 2008, the plan allowed for structure, means of financial support and a five-year timeline including measures to help secure affordable live-work spaces. That changed later that year when the San Pedro Historic Waterfront Business Improvement District emerged as a self supporting means to manage and provide improvement and services that enhance the downtown area.
PBID assessed property owners within the ACE District using a per square foot formula based on property being residential, commercial or publicly owned. When this measure came up for a vote it passed based on assessed property values — or in other words — it skewed in favor of larger property owners, like the county, the City of LA, the Port of Los Angeles and hotel property owners.
The hope was that PBID and the ACE District could work together, but that wasn’t what happened. Artists were critical of the PBID budget which duplicated many same functions as the ACE District, but which were already provided for at a much lower cost.
A transition seemed to occur to a business oriented district with an arts district left to survive on its own while being taxed.
Artists’ Input
Linden, a painter, curator and associate professor of art at Los Angeles Harbor College, has put great effort into the arts district since its inception. For more than a decade he operated TransVagrant@Warschaw Gallery, which has been called as the crowning achievement of the San Pedro arts scene.
Linden, who attended the first meeting, said the summary was rather superficial and the Waterfront Arts District has been missing the point from the start. Linden and Ray Carofano of San Pedro’s Gallery 478 have been closely invested in the art walk for a couple of decades.
“The message that Ray and I tried to give was that we need to be serious about this,” Linden said.
During the first meeting, Linden recalled the years when the CRA was still around. He explained how it built the downtown into the arts district that is still reaping the benefits of the CRA funding.
“We were able to mount major exhibitions, publish catalogs, it was really good,” Linden said. “Now there’s this big void … If the district is serious and wants to do anything progressive … they should start investing in the arts district the way that the CRA did.”
Linden said he called on the arts district to “up some kind of real financial support” and for the PBID and the Chamber of Commerce to do the same thing.
“I was also straightforward enough to tell them that developers … make money from the cachet that is provided by a so-called arts district. But they never, ever incentivized the arts district, whether it’s the galleries, the artists, no matter what it is.”
Linden said, if they really had an interest in fine arts, he would tell them to go look around in different art environments and see what it looks like, who is at the desk, what kind of equipment they have. Often there is someone at a desk, with a computer and they are doing contact work. The place is clean, well lit and it’s advertised. All of this is what successful established galleries do.
Carofano and Linden fought feverishly to get rid of what they call the “peripheral BS’’ to make it about art, local restaurants and bars. No sooner did they succeed in that when the Chamber of Commerce decided to have food trucks at the art walk.
“That was a direct competition for local restaurants and bars,” Linden said. “If there’s going to be food trucks, put them out on the … perimeter. With the parklets that we have dotting downtown San Pedro, they have been very successful. They salvaged a lot of restaurants here.”
Linden said that with the new parklets, food trucks would be such a street carnival event that it would just be horrendous.
“There shouldn’t be a food truck allowed anywhere between 5th and 7th [streets] and Pacific and Centre. It should be about the galleries, and then saunter into the parklet at your local favorite restaurant or bar afterwards. That’s what it’s about,” Linden said. “There are examples all over the place. Successful art and culture districts are all around and it’s like they don’t exist to these people who assume that they are at the helm here.”
To attract art buyers to the arts district — a key item missing from the art walk summary but which was brought up in the second meeting — Linden said you have to have multiple galleries, just like you find multiple restaurants in restaurant districts. You have to have multiple venues so that it’s worth driving to San Pedro for people who live elsewhere.
“In the heyday of the CRA we had half a dozen legitimate art galleries operating,” Linden said. “Angels Gate has done a good job. Their offering has improved tremendously under [Amy Erickson’s] tutelage but the rest of it, the downtown is still underserved.”
He pointed to the Croatian Cultural Center, a big, beautiful building that would make a great gallery/art center. And Liberty Auditorium, another place Linden has tried to convince property owners to turn into an arts location, but he said nobody wants to put up any money or any effort into the arts.
“They want to reap the benefit of having it designated as a cultural location, but they don’t want to invest in it,” he said. “That’s the problem.”
“When the art walk started it was inspired by Robin Hinchcliff and it was totally an artists- run event. [The arts district] doesn’t realize that if it supports it, art can be exciting, provocative, innovating and it can be a draw. But you have to bet on the artists and not on the bureaucracy or strictly business concerns. You have to be willing to take a chance and that’s always been the truth about art and artists.”
Linden posited that it should be First Saturday, but First Thursday has been mostly about the community. “I understand what they perceive is the value of a homegrown operation, but they didn’t serve the arts well,” Linden said. “They serve the food trucks that drive in from everywhere in the greater LA area, they make their money and they drive home. None of it stays here. It’s a self-defeating situation. Saturday openings would be much better.
“I’m going to keep going and maybe try to rattle the cage more than ever when things open up,” he concluded.
Linking Galleries Beyond the Art District
Laurie Steelink is the director of Cornelius Projects, a project space in her live-work artist studio. Part of her activities under Cornelius Projects is to curate exhibitions that speak to the community in San Pedro, the greater Harbor Area, and extend out to greater LA, working with themes that relate to this particular area. Part of her practice is to bring together diverse groups of people into her space to experience these projects.
Steelink noted, Cornelius Projects, near 14th and Pacific Avenue, is off the path of First Thursday.
“People will not walk from downtown to my studios,” Steelink said. “When the trolly was running, I did ask if it could come by my studio but was told that it would not come down that far. That’s my relationship to the art walk as far as Cornelius Projects is concerned, but as an artist, if I’m available I will attend the art walk.”
The artist said she is somewhat opinionated about what she’s seen over her years attending it, even before she lived here. Looking at the document Steelink noted the order in which the points are listed.
“Community and outreach should be at the very top and marketing should be last,” she said. [The document is the opposite]. “The idea of marketing, it’s really all about substance.”
In her experience with the artwalk, Steelink said, storefronts were made available to organizations like Angels Gate which would have temporary exhibitions, and have representation on First Thursdays. It adds weight and credibility to the event to have that presence. Community and outreach would be a way to get some substance to the event, she said.
“My biggest issue with San Pedro is, for a small town, the community is so divided in ways where there isn’t outreach amongst these different groups and there really needs to be,” Steelink said.
She noted this idea of marketing being at the forefront of the document is akin to tearing down the waterfront and changing the name of the development, because that’s what is going to bring people down. She argued the magnet which brings people down is actually what’s there, not the name.
“There [needs to be] identification within the various communities that exist within San Pedro,” she said. “… Including high schools — education at all levels to be involved and participate in activities and also people who have store fronts that are empty, of which there are many in downtown San Pedro, to lend their spaces to activities to bring the community out.”
Steelink said as a curator/director of a space, this is very much in line with having a group show as opposed to a solo exhibition. The more artists who are in the group show, the more people who will come to the opening.
“Community and outreach is the number one thing,” Steelink said.
Steelink suggested if landlords donate empty spaces they have, there could be more activities; like with local schools for opportunities to expose the creative output of educational institutions here.
“It could be an interesting inclusive community building event in this town,” Steelink said. “There are so many ways San Pedro could be the first to do this, or that, in many ways but there doesn’t seem to be the push for that. I’m a cheerleader for San Pedro and I want to see it recognized for what it is. There’s something very rich and dense that’s going on here. It has a lot of history — some of it sordid – but [we need to] to work through that and involve others and educate others.”
Artist Michael Stearns of Michael Stearns Studio@The Loft in San Pedro, said we must come to a conclusion of what the goal is. He saw the first meeting go in two directions.
“Some people want to have a community fair — or [will] it be an artwalk?” he asked. “Are we looking to help drive business to the restaurants?”
Stearns noted, between Councilman Joe Buscaino’s efforts with Little Italy and restaurateurs coming to town, you have to make a decision on having a local community event or an artwalk.
“It may be even better to do both separately,” Stearns said. “If we want to do a legitimate art walk, put energy into making it real. It has to be more than local. Solicit people from the surrounding areas of Palos Verdes, South Bay and Long Beach. People have to know the art is good and it’s pretty tough to get people to drive here from LA on a Thursday night. But the restaurants can help in this.”
He also said the arts district needs to build a database and then cross-market and to get the individual artists to buy into this. Continue to plug the art walk in newsletters and do a real advertisement in publications like Artillery Magazine, maybe with a special section on an artist.
Stearns, like Linden, said art openings are usually on Saturdays. It’s easier to get people out and you know they’re coming for the art. He also suggested creating a standard press release which the artists can modify and personalize and send it out monthly to all local publications.
After the meeting, director of Angels Gate Cultural Center Amy Erickson said, “It has been encouraging to see many artists and community members invested in the growth of the First Thursday Art Walk. The opportunity to make this event even better is a responsibility for the whole community and the work we have done over the last four months is a start to hearing the arts community wants and how to build from here.