Past a crawling maze of neon, sun-like patterns and a swarm of people- I gently muscled my way through the Standard Downtown’s lobby and walked straight up to the man I was looking for: Dennis Hernandez, the hotel’s director of marketing. Surprised that I found him so easily on my first attempt, Dennis smiled back, kindly, and welcomed me, warmly.

Although Petula Clark is right about the noise and the hurry, forgetting your troubles isn’t really what downtown is for, or at least downtown LA. Just because Skid Row is slowly edging away from the loft spaces and bars that have sprung up like mushrooms after a heavy rain does not mean anything has been forgotten here. The downtown art scene isn’t one of escapism; its craggy roots firmly cling to the foundation of the city, every canvas a mirror of one of the 4 million Angelenos reflected there.

On June 13^th, he would have been in the minority as the Santa Monica Fine Art Studios opened its doors to the unwashed masses for a rare treat – a chance to grok art with its creators, over 30 of them to be exact, spanning a myriad of media from painting to mobiles to sculpture, and encompassing every style, from Impressionism to Superflat.

If you weren’t pounding the crowded Abbot Kinney pavement this June 5th in the gorgeous dusk of a Venice First Friday, you certainly missed a wildly growing phenomenon in the Westside’s art hub.