The Brewery

Another great day with the Obscura society LA. As I  drive down the 5 freeway, I see  the tall smoke stack just on the northeastern edge of downtown. Years ago I visited here, it is an artist colony. So when the opportunity came to visit again, I jumped at the opportunity.

The Brewery is a fascinating place. Built in 1903 by the Edison company as their Electric Steam power plant – hence the very tall tower.  Later part of the complex was taken over by Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery – which is where the complex gets its name.  Today we are so used to micro breweries, we forget that this is still a very large scale industry. Heck, even in the valley we have the massive Anheuser Busch Brewery right along side the 405 freeway.About 30 years ago the owners of the abandoned complex turned it into artists lofts, and it has been one of the largest thriving artist complexes every since. Barbara’s Brewery is in the middle of the complex and the artists often meet there for beer and food.This emblem on the building signifies that this is a multiuse building, artists both live and work in here. Of course this symbol is on all the buildings in the brewery and throught the Arts District where it originated. The catwalk connects two parts of the actual brewery.While crossing from one studio to another, I captured this image. The tree top, the shadows.As we entered the next building, the old stencils remain. The walls of this building are very thick.The first loft we visited was the artist Dave Lefner , here he is in black in his loft. Btw, pay attention to the image behind the stair case, this is an image from the second artist we visited, Kelly Reemstsen. She asked us not to photograph her work since she is prepping for a show, so of course I didn’t. But this is an older image of hers and Dave owns it, so you can get a feel for her work.Of the four artists we saw, I loved Dave’s work the most. There is my neighbor, the clown from Circus Liquor. Dave works in a very interesting technique of linocut printing. The fact that he achieves from 7 to 10 or 11 colors from one block in amazing.  He also mentioned how most people think of neon as a night time kind of art, but he just loves how the shadows are reflected during the day.I love the artwork and the mirror on the wall that just reflected the people and the other wall back at me, as well as the old fashioned kind of selfie.Close up of machinery! You should know by now how much I love this. This is a letterpress, not very useful for Dave’s work, but he just purchased a whole case of movable type, so we’ll see how that informs his art.This is the actual press he uses, with some of the linoleum blocks on it.  I am fascinated by the techinque and his work, who knows, maybe on the spring Artwalk I’ll pay a longer visit to the studio.

We then went to Kelly’s  studio. No pictures. The space itself was really large, her living space separated out from the studio by large glass doors.  I did get these from the artists, so the Girl with the chain saw is Kelly’s art and the wonderful painting that uses the Eastern Columbia building is by the next artist we visited.

Then on our way to the next loft there was outdoor art to admire.Next to the cowboy there is an emormous tire- probably from some massive landcover. For me this image is about all the textures, even if they got somewhat washed out in the bright light.

Teale Hathaway is our next visit. I’ll be honest, I could have taken pictures but I didn’t. I love her art as well, but didn’t feel I could capture it with my camera. Most of her art relates to architecture in LA, so what is not to love!She has a little outdoor patio and has created her own chandelier tree, which needless to say, I love.

The final artist was Coop, take a look at his website. He does very strong graphics, graphic novels blown up very large.  Nothing that I would ever want to own, but I liked his work.  It’s just not my style.

From there we went on to look at graffiti, that will be another post.