LA Art Walk: Good Idea Gone Bad

The most interesting studio for me at the Art Walk in LA included this work by Vince Calandoc. It involved "spray painting" with light onto a porous sensitized screen.

There was a street fair as well as open studios at the walk.

I thought this component of the walk, seeing artists in action was great. Not surprisingly, it attracted a significant audience, but sadly the work being done was not at all interesting to me.

The atmosphere was rich; the artwork was bland.

I was excited about seeing the Art Walk in LA because I have come to respect the city's visual sophistication—no surprise here when the dominant industry is based on images. But the walk was a bust for me. The art seemed to me to be largely poorly executed. It was not market ready work for the most part. But the festival atmosphere is there, the street food vendors and the hip/crap stuff like the skulls above it there, just not interesting art. The consistent sense of technical absence at the Art Walk was more than compensated for by the technical expertise of every artist exhibiting at Bergamot Station (more on that to come).

Both Bergamot and the Art Walk are demonstrations of the value of cluster marketing. That is to say, each gallery or studio in the two communities benefit from the marketing of all their partners. A massive audience is easy to achieve with social networking supporting these sites. The Art Walk is sporadic; Bergamot is permanent.