Gentrification chases a once-thriving artist community out of city
MAIN STREET Before the pricey boutiques and fancy high-end restaurants moved in, this famous Ocean Park corridor once fostered a vibrant bohemian culture, inspiring some world renown artists.
Household names like William Wegman — famous for his curious photography of Weimaraner dogs — once called Main Street home, occupying the studio on the corner of Main and Bay streets that has been the headquarters for conceptual artist John Baldessari for the past 37 years.
Main Street — it was a place where artists from around Southern California gathered in the 1960s because rent was cheap, the scenery was inspiring and because there were plenty of other artists with whom to brainstorm.
An artist community was brewing, one that would remain active for decades to come... that was, until something called “gentrification” hit the seaside street.
“There’s the old saying that artists are the best realtors,” Baldessari said Thursday. “They’re here because of low rent and they have no money to buy.
“That creates a scene where you have restaurants and boutiques, and then the rent starts going up and the artists can’t afford it and move out and you have a totally gentri-fied area,” he added.
The changes started happening on the south end of Main Street around the 1980s, temporarily halting around the 1990s, Baldessari said. New development started picking up again in the past few years.
Today, a glance down Main Street shows development on several corners, including the southwest corner of Main and Bay streets.Across the way, at Horizons West Surf Shop, a new mixed-use development is slated to replace the back portion of the building where Baldessari’s studio is located.
Artists across the city seem to be feeling the pains of high rent.
“Santa Monica has always been a thriving center for artists, but that aspect of our arts community has been under pressure the last few years because of high cost of real estate,” said Jessica Cusick, the city’s cultural affairs manager. “We’ve lost a number of artist studios and continue to lose them.”
The trend would seem to bely that fact that Santa Monica has the highest concentration of creative professionals per capita in the United States.
BACK IN THE DAY A lifelong Santa Monica resident, Jacob Samuel owns an etching studio on Main Street and works with artists internationally.
It was around the time Samuel graduated from Santa Monica High School in the late 1960s that Main Street was evolving into a vibrant artist community. Samuel and his friends would often go to parties in artist studios along Main Street, hanging out with the beatniks and the hippies.
The street was quiet and run down, but had loads of charm. There were no corporate stores, no design studios and no fancy eateries. It was a street where everyone knew their neighbors.
“It was totally low key,” Samuel said Thursday.“It wasn’t fancy and it was relaxed.”
Baldessari remembers an area where rent was very cheap and was “kind of ghettoized comparatively” before the new developments moved in.
He moved to the area after receiving an offer to teach at Cal Arts.
But much like Downtown Los Angeles and SoHo in New York City, the artist community that had made the area famous had to leave once developers discovered the appeal of Main Street.
Now, Samuel feels as though Culver City, where another artist community is brewing, is about to get a makeover.
“I know people moving to places like Inglewood and Lawndale and places in the (San Fernando) Valley and North Hollywood just to find a cheap studio space,” he said. “It’s a shame because artists give so much to a community, so much to a neighborhood in terms of creative energy.”
Today, the artist community is virtually nonexistent on Main Street, except for a few locations like the corner of Main and Bay streets, where Baldessari and Annie Sabroux have established residency, and The Workshop, a large multi-studio space just a few blocks down, between Hill Street and Ocean Park Boulevard.
Some local artists also seem to be feeling the drawbacks of the lack of a cohesive artist community. A few weeks ago, one local artist posted an ad on Craigslist.org, asking if other artists were interested in forming a Santa Monica artist community.
The post has since expired. Predating the boom of artists on Main Street is The Workshop, which features several studios within a large studio.
The Workshop has the appearance of a run down stable with its entrance in the form of a large wooden sliding door. Inside, the studio offers a glimpse into the creative mind of an artist, with paintings and photos plastered on nearly every inch of the wall.
It’s a place that oil painter Joanne Licardo has called home for nearly 16 years, enjoying the location because it allows her to wander down the street for a quick tea run or down to the beach for some inspirational time.
“You get a lot of feedback,” Licardo said on the small artist community inside The Workshop. “Whenever I’m working on something, people stop in and make comments. I’ve had total strangers come in.”
AFFORDABLE HOUSING FOR ARTISTS There are two concentrated artist communities that still exist in Santa Monica — the 18th Street Arts Center and Santa Monica Airport.
Approximately 43 percent of people who live and work in Santa Monica make their living through the arts, Cusick said.
“The lack of affordable real estate for creative capital really says that one of our goals is to look at ways in which we can develop affordable artist live-work spaces,” she said.
There could be more affordable housing for these artists in the near future.
A new building that will include 10 affordable artist live-work spaces in the Civic Center area is slated for construction in the next few years, Cusick said.
The 18th Street Arts Center currently offers 25 art spaces total, 12 of which are for live-work studios. A major facelift is also expected in the next few years as the 18th Street Arts Center will be redeveloped into a state-of-the-art facility, an undertaking estimated to cost between $20 million and $30 million.
The rising real estate that’s really affecting artists all across the Westside is causing some of these creative minds to move out into the desert where rent is much cheaper.
“We do need and want more creative individuals in Santa Monica,” said Jan Williamson, executive director of the 18th Street Arts Center.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 27, 2007. Read the original PDF.