"Surf’s Up"
Palos Verdes Art Center, Palos Verdes, California
by Diane Calder

Continuing through September 25, 2011
Like a surfer adept at scrutinizing the effect every incoming wave has on the next, curator Jacqueline Dreager aspired to install this eclectic collection of two and three-dimensional work by 18 California artists in a manner that empowers each work as it relates to its neighbors. The show was born out of an inspiration to encourage artists who surf to personalize old, worn out surfboards. That concept expanded into “Surf’s Up,” an exhibition that positions half a dozen re-imaged boards amidst a variety of paintings, photographs and mixed media works...CLICK TO READ MORE

Editor's Note
Bill Lasarow

This month’s Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk will have taken place by the time you read this, but in the days leading up to it, the popular if unwieldy street party has been the subject of considerable civic debate. While most of the art world conversation has revolved for a few years now around the question of whether it really does the galleries that spawned it any good, it was an innocent tragedy that has made it the center of much recent attention. Last month a driver accidentally jumped a curb, killing a 2 month old baby on the Spring St. sidewalk.

Make no mistake, however, this is not comparable to the crowds that once jammed into Westwood Village in the days that campus community was dense with movie theaters. There is a different dynamic, vibrant to hectic, but lacking the underlying spark of hostility that filtered into the Westside district through kids who already felt unwelcome rubbing up against college students and upscale locals who felt threatened by their presence. One shooting incident laid bare that fragility: the kids were driven away, and most everyone else was scared off.

The art that informs this scene is one product of a district inhabited by perhaps more diverse groups of people than anywhere else in Los Angeles. I cannot suggest you check out the action on these once-a-month second Thursdays based on the elevated quality of the art production in the area, or because the mix of legitimate, marginal, pop-up and artist-operated galleries have come to comprise the top gallery district in the city (they do not). There are some fine individual programs and knockout talents to be sure, but that is not what this thing is about. And if it ever is about that, frankly, the city will have lost something precious and unusual.

You see, the crowds that have made these Thursdays into a monthly happening, they own this day. Oh, there is a Board of Directors, some local business owners who provide funding, and the city and related crowd control and safety agencies work to make sure the rough and inebriated edges are sanded off. The response to the accident was swift and very public:  the City Council put together a task force which has already begun implementing new safety control measures (including new restrictions that limit pop-up galleries and food trucks without eliminating them).

This is a carefully calibrated situation, but precious precisely because the artists, along with street performers, food trucks and all the rest are mixed right in with their audience. No one is putting a gate around the area and selling tickets, and the good time spirit takes the rubbing shoulders among young and old, black, white, brown and yellow for granted. Art may be the single central element to bring this kimchi, burrito, soul food concoction together, but it isn’t really the star, it’s more chopped up and scattered into the dish. If the ingredients are pretty much low brow, damned if the result isn’t haut cuisine.