The Art of Possibility
Who knew that Inglewood has a burgeoning arts scene in the northeast corner of the city?
Of course I did, but I have to admit, I didn't give it much thought. Not nearly as much thought as I've given lately to police misconduct, development, homelessness, tagging wars or even the incidence of stray dogs that directly correlate to the rising number of foreclosures and otherwise empty houses popping up in my picturesque neighborhood like dandelions. Nearly every day, I check the curbside lawn outside my local 99-cent Store to see if people will forego throwing trash on it for once; if it's relatively free of plastic bags at the end of the day, I notch a victory. Silly stuff, overly NIMBY stuff, but in my ongoing psychological battle to keep Inglewood normal (for utter lack of a better word), these are the aesthetics I obsess about. My concern with visuals has been limited to clean lawns, paved streets and graffiti-free walls--concern with what isn't there versus what is. I feel I have no choice. Real art is lovely and welcome, but I didn't see it as a solution to anything. It could wait.
I'm very happy to say that I've been entirely wrong. This past weekend, I and my husband and a couple of friends took the third annual Inglewood Open Studios art tour, which exposes residents and clueless others to the vibrant art scene in the small-townish, quasi-industrial part of the city that borders tony Ladera Heights on the north and the rougher Crenshaw corridor on the east. Artists living in loft spaces or working out of their homes invite the public to check out painting, photography, woodwork, sculpture, video installations and other media that I probably missed on Saturday. Among the more memorable things my group saw were jarring but compelling conceptual pieces by Dustin Shuler, including a rack of shiny automobile "hides" and a seated skeleton with a dog carcass, head and all, draped carefully in its lap. In a house down the road from Shuler was a series of paintings by Luke Van Hook consisting entirely of tiny, hand-painted circles on raw burlap and canvas.
As impressive as the mix and breadth of art is the mix of the artists themselves: young Otis grads and more grizzled vets who've been laboring obscurely in Inglewood twenty years or more. Black and white artists who seem genuinely united in their efforts to jump-start a scene they see as they belonging to them all. At the Saturday reception at the 703 gallery on Hyde Park Boulevard, I certainly felt like I belonged, as did my non-Inglewood resident friends and everyone else in the room who stood sipping wine and happily noshing on catfish and Jamaican fritters. Normal? This felt way better than that. Empowering, even. Better than I've ever felt looking at even a spotless lawn in front of the 99-cent store. Art, indeed.
This image was taken by flickr user Roadsidepictures. It was used under the Creative Commons License.
