Venice of the 1960s was a raw and sometimes violent place, home to drunks, a couple of greasy spoons and plentiful cheap lodging. It appealed to the down and out, elderly Jews who were longtime residents and a cluster of artists who appreciated an enclave they could afford to call home.
"It was no man's land ... with no place to go and nothin' to do," said Billy Al Bengston, 72, a Venice-based artist who found himself part of the '60s California Pop Art movement.
Today, Venice is an eclectic play land, especially for those willing and able to absorb the cost of a meal at Joe's or a bamboo-and-cotton Japanese T-shirt at Salt or a lithograph at Hamilton Press Gallery.
Over the years, rising real estate prices have resulted in an exodus of struggling artists, who are opting for decidedly un-Venice-like venues such as Torrance, Inglewood, El Segundo and San Pedro, where affordable space is still available.
But a handful of pioneering artists from that raw past -- including painter Ed Ruscha and painter-sculptor Laddie John Dill -- are hoping to help create, somewhere on the Westside, a "Venice art colony" where emerging artists and older mentors could work and display their wares. Dill envisions "a self-sustaining center for the arts for the next 100 years."
The long-simmering idea is far from fruition, but it is gaining support -- moral if not yet financial -- from the old guard.
"It's taking on an urgency," said painter Peter Alexander, 68. "Younger people have nowhere to go."
Indeed, as Venice Art Walk planners prepare to welcome visitors to their 28th annual event this weekend, they are recognizing a harsh reality: It's difficult to find fresh new artists to feature. To assemble the 60 studio locations for the tour, organizers stretched their usual boundaries and, for the first time, included artists south of Venice Boulevard.
"It's certainly not the bohemian bastion that it was 40 years ago," said Alison Dockray, co-chair of the event and associate development director of its beneficiary, the Venice Family Clinic.
The seeds of the Venice art colony sprouted in Dill's Venice studio, a former warehouse on Electric Avenue that he has leased since 1983.
Dill, whose rent has risen sixfold since that year, has long mused about the changes in the Venice arts community and what they might mean for future generations of artists, including Kristin Jai Klosterman, his 30-year-old assistant.
