Art Walk

WHAT Sacramento River Water Intake Structure WHERE Around the 200 block of Jibboom Street, at the Sacramento River WHY TAKE THE DETOUR You're jogging or biking from Old Sacramento north along the river and spy something that looks like the Sydney Opera House. OK, maybe you're squinting a little, but this building with white wings that hovers over the river like a dragonfly is no mirage.

ART Check out the open studios located in one of L.A.'s largest live-work art complexes. During the biannual Brewery Art Walk more than 100 resident artists will show off the best of their work for both viewers and collectors. An on-site restaurant provides food and drink and eye candy is everywhere. The Brewery, 2100 N. Main St., L.A. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sat. and Sun. Free. http://www.breweryartwalk.com.

The city of Ventura is sponsoring an art walk today in conjunction with area coffeehouses and art galleries to promote the downtown area, which city leaders are trying to revitalize. Twenty-five galleries and seven coffeehouses in downtown are participating in the free, one-day event, scheduled from 5 to 9:30 p.m. Some coffeehouses plan to offer free samples during the "Java Jump," as the event is called. "It's a self-led tour," said Sonia Tower, the city's cultural affairs coordinator.

Art walks seem to divide the gallery world into two camps: On one side are the people who see the foot traffic and potential collectors as a plus. The other side sees a block party-like atmosphere that detracts from the art itself. Bergamot Station, the art complex in Santa Monica, is the latest area to wrestle with the conundrum. On Friday, the galleries in the former Red Line trolley stop will hold an open house to restake their claim as one of SoCal's original art walks, having opened in 1994.

There will be an air of urgency to the annual Venice Art Walk next Sunday. The art walk is the principal annual fund-raising event for the Venice Family Clinic, the large clinic on Rose Avenue that provides free health care to the poor and the homeless. Because of the recession, the clinic's needs this year are particularly acute. It is serving 25% more patients than it did a year ago, but is turning away 100 people a day, according to clinic spokeswoman Ellen Robinson.

Up a flight of stairs, down a narrow alley or behind a closed door, sandwiched between Venice's funky stores or inside cold-looking warehouses sit the studios and homes of some of Los Angeles' leading artists. Nearly hidden in deceptively nondescript settings, these workplaces in Venice and Santa Monica usually are closed to the public. But on May 22, about 60 painters, sculptors and other artists will open their doors to visitors for the ninth annual Venice Art Walk.

It's 8 o'clock on a Thursday night, and the Bert Green Fine Art gallery is quietly bustling as art aficionados soberly inspect the first L.A. showing of Valerie Jacobs' politically charged paintings. A block away, a crowd of creative types nibbles on cheese and crackers at the 626 Gallery, where the vibrant work of African American artists Synthia St. James and Charles Bibb is on view. A little farther down the street, the Iron Eyes Gallery has amped up the volume.

The three giant block letters beaming in electric yellow at the Museum of Neon Art serve not only as a flashy window display for the West 4th Street space but as a reminder of what brings together throngs to the sidewalks of downtown Los Angeles on the second Thursday of each month: ART. Downtown's Art Walk turns the streets into an artistic carnival.

When Los Angeles-based artist Daniel Pinkham moved to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the 1960s, he was already helping to re-establish the Californian plein-air, or open air, painting. Now, 32 years later, Pinkham spends at least six months a year painting in locations throughout the world that let him take full advantage of the outdoor painting style popularized in mid-19th-Century Europe.

Poof! It's Gone: Sweden, meanwhile, discovered a new meaning to the term "art walk" Monday when an art gallery visitor walked off with a painting valued at $600,000. The heist occurred while the gallery owner was busy talking on the telephone. A man unhooked the landscape painting, "Sandhamn" by Anders Zorn, and carried it out of a gallery in Uppsala, 60 miles north of Stockholm. Zorn was a prominent turn-of-the century artist in Sweden.

ART Fall is here, better keep your eyes peeled for that distinctive gray smokestack. During the Brewery Art Walk, a twice-annual event, more than 100 artist's studios will be open to the public. Stroll the grounds, meet rising artists like photographer Dave Lefner, talk to them about their work and purchase artwork from the source. The Brewery Art Colony, 2100 N. Main St., L.A. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sat.-Sun. Free. (323) 638-9382. http://www.breweryartwalk.com.

Art teacher Jeremy Davidson skipped the annual back-to-school-night at Manual Arts High this week. He'd walked off the job the day before — after 10 years at the mid-city campus — done in by a group of unruly ninth-graders who'd hijacked his sixth-period drawing class. While Davidson was "trying to give a lesson on shading," the troublemakers were "whacking each other with rulers, throwing paper across the room, getting up and walking around. " They blocked the door when he tried to close it, talked over him when he tried to teach.

The Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk will likely never return to the days when perhaps 100 people strolled among a dozen galleries on Spring and Main streets one evening each month. Seven years after gallery owners and business leaders had the idea that Angelenos would promenade a block from Skid Row, the event now draws up to 30,000 visitors, beckoned by four dozen galleries and numerous bars, restaurants and food trucks. It has both spurred the revitalization of downtown and grown with it. But some patrons seem more interested in carousing than browsing — let alone buying — art. Bitter squabbling among business owners and Art Walk organizers has, at times, threatened to dissolve the event altogether.

After the death of a 2-month-old boy last month, a new City Council-approved task force is looking at safety issues surrounding the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk, and changes to the popular monthly event could be made as early as next week. The possibilities include limiting live music and food trucks, or closing streets to traffic during the event, which draws up to 30,000 people on the second Thursday of each month. The task force, approved Wednesday by the City Council, will consist of officials from transportation, public works and law enforcement, and will look for both short- and long-term solutions to growing safety concerns over the event.

The balmy summer evening and a chance to patronize art galleries, shops and restaurants had drawn hundreds to the Downtown Art Walk on Thursday. Much of the crowd was shoulder to shoulder along Spring near 4th Street where dozens of food trucks had congregated. Among the masses were Jimmy and Natasha Vasquez of Montebello. In a stroller was their son, Marcello, barely 2 months old. His aunt, uncle and four cousins were nearby. About 9:15 p.m., a silver Cadillac DeVille crept down Spring and driver tried to park in front of the El Dorado Lofts on the left-hand side of the one-way street.

POP MUSIC Kylie Minogue Though she's a huge star throughout Europe and in her native Australia, the singer's following always has stayed cult-size in the United States, where she's still best known for her 1987 cover of "The Loco-Motion. " ("Can't Get You Out of My Head," from 2001, threatened to change that but stopped just short.) Either way, Minogue gives her carefully calibrated arena-pop moves an uncommon degree of human warmth, whether stomping around the stage in thigh-high leather boots or cavorting with several slices of gym-rat beefcake in a simulated shower scene.

Up a flight of stairs, down a narrow alley or behind a closed door, sandwiched between Venice's funky stores or inside cold-looking warehouses sit the studios and homes of some of Los Angeles' leading artists. Nearly hidden in deceptively nondescript settings, these workplaces in Venice and Santa Monica usually are closed to the public. But on May 22, about 60 painters, sculptors and other artists will open their doors to visitors for the ninth annual Venice Art Walk.

MUSIC The program "Music of the Jewish Composers--From Klezmer to the Classics" is at the Jewish Community Center of O.C., 7 tonight. Free. (714) 671-0707. LECTURE Richard Moe discusses interactive software projects. UC Irvine's McDonnell Douglas Auditorium. 5 p.m. today. Free. (949) 824-2787. ART WALK Laguna Beach hosts an art walk of 30 galleries and the Laguna Art Museum, which is featuring Patssi Valdez's work. 6-9 p.m. Thursday. (949) 497-0722.

Leimert Park Village, the historical enclave of black culture and arts, has been showing signs of new life lately, and not a moment too soon. The nonprofit Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center, named for the veteran jazz and blues singer, opened last month. In December, the Eileen Harris Norton Foundation premiered the Leimert Project, a space for arts education that has so far mounted two solo shows for local artists. On Leimert Boulevard, native son and internationally renowned artist Mark Bradford works out of a studio that has piqued new interest in the neighborhood in fine art circles.