Art Head: Dispatches from the San Diego Art Scene

Renting Art is Cool
By Kitty Martini

If you were in the dentist’s chair and had to stare at the ceiling for an hour, luckily it isn’t plastered with advertisements. But imagine if you could look at a rad piece of art on the ceiling. Eclectic works from San Diego’s art scene are showing up in places you’d never imagine. This year, $450,000 in grants to promote public art work and programs from organizations like the San Diego Fine Art Society just might be cause for a creative renaissance. Lobbies in busy, chic hotels look more like gallery openings with crowds transfixed and digging the exhibits. Some are hypnotic, multi media installations like the one composed of light at the W hotel, where spaces in the lobby look as if fonts of all sizes are dripping from the air like a gentle rain of letters and numbers that you could catch in your hands. The W is one of the new breed of hotels that’s decking the walls with original artworks from a mix of famous, midcareer and promising artists. Some art is bought outright, and other exhibits are rented. The look is always changing. Displays of rented artwork rotate about every six months. Though some of the most grandiose displays are in hotels that invested billions in renovating interiors to raise their hipness quotient, an increasing variety of businesses are renting art displays to seduce and satisfy their clients. Establishments that range from to beauty salons and medical offices are thinking outside the box.
With advocates helping to move artwork from the underground to the public, San Diego’s new cult of visual mix masters will soon be tomorrow’s Andy Warhols and Pablo Picassos. Did you ever wonder where the cool people are? They’re in studios painting, sculpting and spinning out crazy magic that can’t be mass produced in China. They’re at loft parties you won’t know about unless you find our way into circles where creative people, collectors and fans converge. The last party I went to was at a designer space on Seventh Avenue where a crowd of writers, record producers, wealthy philanthropists and bikini clad models with airbrush- painted bodies grooved to the latest house beats and free flowing bottles of lychee infused designer vodka. There was so much art you could dance next to it. A lot of people fell in love that night, with something they saw on the wall.
Art transforms environments. It secretly delivers pleasure through your eye balls. At Say Lula, a downtown hair salon where I got a cut and blow and dry, the walls were covered with fine art paintings instead of the usual hair product ads. Creative expressions from the minds and souls of artists mingled seamlessly with the smell of hairspray and styling gel. I haven’t been to the art galleries lately, but galleries are coming to me. I get my art fix at hotel bars like J-Bar at the Solamar, coffee shops, restaurants, and sometimes just walking down the street.
If I’m lucky, I’ll see a Phantom Gallery—an art display on an empty storefront window. The San Diego Fine Art Society will soon be transforming empty storefronts all over the county into Phantom Galleries. The Phantom Art Gallery concept was the brainchild of C.Matthew Foley, an artist from Wichita, Kansas, who launched the first Phantom Gallery in 1990 at an abandoned furniture store. The concept is based on artists coming together to make street level downtown windows come alive with exhibits and installations. And now, here in San Diego we’ll be seeing some sad, empty spaces turned into 24/7 public art galleries viewable from the side walk.
Phantom Galleries were designed to bring more art to the public and let everyone know that local artists are an important key to cultural and economic development of our city. New artists who no one has heard of get a chance to be noticed. Artists of types can answer the call to bring more art and culture to the streets of San Diego. Best of all, if you love art, your eye candy is no longer limited to museums and galleries. Anyone walking by a Phantom Gallery can get an eyeful of cool stuff to look at.
Before Foley’s Phantom Gallery idea caught on in the 1990’s, graffiti was the only way for an artist to get exposure beyond conventional exhibits. Graffiti artists of the 70’s and 80’s like Keith Haring and Kenny Scharf brought their art to the people by painting on abandoned buildings and walls in New York City subways. They had to work fast in the night, using aerosol spray cans. Graffiti still had a certain outlaw allure. It was (and still is) illegal and the artists took real risks — of being arrested and of physical injury — in doing the things they did. Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf and Jean-Michel Basquiat, who were involved in graffiti—now coined Urban Art; became major stars. Eventually works on canvas and paper by the ex-underground artists were showing and selling in fancy galleries in New York, Europe and Japan. This is the impact of art being put out in the public, in such a direct way.
Now at least artists can depart from risky, illegal tagging. They artists who get involved with Phantom Galleries can hang their work right on the street behind a glass window. Everyone involved in the concept wins. Property owners who lend their vacant spaces to create temporary gallery spaces benefit by attracting more people to look at their space for rent or sale and the arts community benefits from an increased amount of free space for the arts.
Mad kudos to tourists from Generation X (people from age 27 to 43) who come to San Diego looking for uniqueness instead of cookie-cutter predictability. With their consumer dollars they’re driving an expanding art economy and making business want to deliver the goods.
The San Diego Fine Art Society is on a mission to cultivate more fine art in San Diego while increasing appreciation and demand for art from businesses and individuals. They provide resources and programs for businesses owners who want to rent art displays, a collectors club that gives you the inside track on the art scene, and a mentoring program for artists to exhibit and sell their work. Artists who want to increase their exposure will do well by contacting the SDFAS. They’re looking for talented and hungry artists to mentor and introduce to their members. Anyone can help promote art and get involved on a deeper more exciting level by becoming a member of the San Diego Fine Art Society. If you don’t know where to find art receptions, previews or leads on how to get involved in the art scene, joining the SDFAS will get you invited into art circles and events around town. What’s great about this organization is that they are all about making the art scene happen, and seeing San Diego as a place with its own sense of cultural identity. I’d hate to think that people from culture hubs like Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York looking down at us because we’re lame—culturally that is. San Diego is in the top five most affluent cities, but we rank at 35 in the arts---which means we’re kind of lame in the eyes of government surveys. But the art scene is here, people. The artists are cool, and if you support them they’ll bring all kinds of good vibes to the neighborhood. When I lived in New York City’s lower east side, I’ve seen areas that looked like war zones transformed into hip eclectic places to hang out because the local economy was powered by art, and fueled by artists and people who supported them. San Diego is a beautiful city, but it can also have more cultural magic if we hook up with the people who make it happen.
To find out more about The San Diego Fine Art Society, visit their website: www.SDFAS.org or call (858) 205-4354