I was tired of staring at that blank space on my hallway wall. For years, I'd been searching for just the right artistic statement for the spot at the bottom of my stairs -- something to brighten my mood when I stumbled down bleary-eyed in the morning, and calm me as I headed upstairs to bed at night.
The Inglewood Open Studios art walk last weekend sounded like the perfect marketplace. With 16 local artists showing paintings, photos and tapestries, surely I could find something colorful, culturally resonant and -- forgive me -- cheap.
I expected African masks, watercolor images of children at play and paintings of rural women balancing baskets on their heads -- images that might speak to me.
What I found were creations that went beyond my pedestrian sensibilities -- sculptures fashioned from junkyard finds; canvases dotted with chunks of paint, molded into giant geometric designs.
And artists whose passions just might spark a beleaguered city's cultural renaissance.
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I thought I'd landed in the wrong spot when I pulled up to the East Hyde Park Boulevard address for the start of the art walk. It was a brick storefront with bars on the door. Across the street, the sidewalk was piled with clothes and toys, tended by two women straight out of a Frida Kahlo painting.
The art gallery was airy and bright, the guest book only had names on a few lines and the hors d'oeuvres looked untouched. I grabbed a map and began the tour. The next hours would take me through studios hidden behind auto repair shops, tucked between dry cleaners and beauty salons; into giant, light-filled salons and cluttered alcoves that looked like college dorms.
The art walk was a coming-out party for the eclectic, loose-knit confederation of artists -- aging hippies and college professors, a professional architect, a self-styled urban griot, muralists and photographers -- turning Inglewood into an unlikely haven for avant-garde art.
Consider Gale McCall a pioneer. Two decades ago, she moved into a former storefront church with "a stage, some confessionals and a big old space" where she could store equipment for her sculptures. It was on a rough stretch of gang-plagued West Boulevard. But it was cheap: 1,000 square feet for $450 a month.
She set up a studio, carved out a little living space and figured she'd move on after she got the art gig up and running. "Twenty years later, I'm still here," she told me, wedged into a tiny gap next to her bed, hovering over visitors viewing images of murals she's done. "Can you believe it? I can't."
