The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go
Downtown, things’ll be great when you’re
Downtown, no finer place for sure,
Downtown, everything’s waiting for you
(Downtown) -Petula Clark

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.

The sidewalks are too grimy, and the incomprehensible babble of the old toothless man smoking something acrid in the doorway of a locked up taco joint is too loud to ignore. There are drunk college guys in Ed Hardy T-shirts here as well, but it is a testament to how much downtown has changed in the last decade that during their intoxicated stumble to the Range Rover at 2 am they will not get robbed.

Downtown is morphing and growing, the adaptive reuse ordinance passed earlier this year allowing for 14,561 new residential units. For artists, downtown is a place they can afford to live and have studio space. The area is still socioeconomically patchy, which keeps the rents reasonable, but it is bright with pockets of new businesses to cater to the influx of 10,000 new residents that have made downtown their home between 2006 and 2008.

Few places are as emblematic of the blossoming downtown art scene as the Hive Gallery, where FORTH set up shop for the duration of last Second Thursday. The Hive is aptly named, each one of its honeycomb partitions filled with teeming buzzing people and loads of art. If bees sweated, then I imagine the Hive would smell authentic too. Every tiny partitioned space contains a different world, put together and controlled by the artist, and stepping through each doorway is a tiny thrill each time. Our Promotions Coordinatior, Nancy and I squeeze past a clown with a red and black face who’s holding a doll’s body with a crazy bald head to find myself almost face-deep in Alex Schaefer’s work-in-progress. I catch myself before I crash into his pastels, and I fall in love with his line right there. Unhurried and rough, his strokes manage to capture more detail than they ought to, and he’s not even done –the way the man gropes the blond woman and she leans into him in the center of his piece is so real it feels like I’m watching a movie.

We push through to the bar, where we meet Tony and Laura. Laura is tending bar and is a resident artist at the Hive. I pester her about her art, which is upstairs in her space and not on view. Tony, an actor and an artist himself, kindly escorts us up. Nancy and I try to capture Laura’s work, especially her poi dancers, in the dim light, but the only captured impressions we get are mental until Nancy gets her shot. Despite the light conditions, the photo shows what is mesmerizing about the piece in person — the sensuous bend of the neck, the muscular lithe grace of the dancer, the unison between the girl and the fire, electric and palpably sexual.

Laura’s work contrasts sharply with what we find when we get downstairs. Walt Hall uses discarded wood panels to create his strangely touching “fenceposts for a better tomorrow,” urban fairy tale-like creations that are equal parts fun and gloomy. They are filled with sad-faced people in quirky animal costumes, stark trees, and stern birds, but the true subject seems to be the city. Its presence looms behind every bird and every tree, layers of newspaper looming oppressively like skyscrapers.

It becomes obvious very soon that despite the varied techniques, styles, and themes present, most artists here are thinking about Los Angeles. I step into the collage-covered world of Patrick Haemmerlein, and I’m staring at one man’s brain trying to process the entirety of LA. There are oil-rigs, trees, surfers, skyscrapers, cranes, musicians, and roots. Roots snake through his work like connecting threads, a whole city bound organically by Patrick’s thoughts.

Where Patrick uses color sparingly, to highlight something special in the two-tone city, Nick Wildermuth brings downtown to life in Technicolor. His panels contain whole buildings, a neighbor visible in each window. Their lives are open to dissection like so many TV shows, each window a different channel, each one a possible Rear Window situation. The dark LA sky glimmers with skyscrapers in the background, blanketing the building in a strange comfort, that city feeling – it’s better to be lonely here than anywhere else. Nick’s work, bright, evocative, and fun, is made even better by the world he’s created for it. Fake brick and cement walls, with brightly painted bottles and discarded cigarette packs littered under them, showcase Nick’s little islands of people perfectly – it is as close to downtown LA as you can get outside the real deal.

Outside is where we find Max Neutra, painting in the middle of the sidewalk while gathering a crowd. With a stellar reputation as a wild live painter, it is no wonder. His images, clearly influenced by comics but not static in the least, are graphic and cheeky and appear as the city itself – bright, flashy, brash, but always more than meets the eye.

If there was a vote for mascot of LA, the most cynical among us would choose the automobile, so seeing the Art on Wheels truck parked on Spring St is a vision realized. To elevate the value of an object that most Angelenos cannot live without from its most basic function to a moving art exhibit is a work of art in itself, and a credit to Carlos Ulloa and Eder Cetina. Climbing up the crude wooden steps, the excitement of seeing art outside the conventional set-up of a gallery or a studio is palpable among the viewers. It feels like a secret art party with an open guest list. The art itself also did not disappoint – Eder’s eye-catching pieces play with iconic images of ninjas and guns, while Carlos’s wicked sense of humor is evident in his masks, one descriptively titled “Black Sperms & Green Amoebas.” The truck is no gimmick; it is art for the people, four wheels for the world. It is the perfect last stop for our art walk, leaving us feeling excited, smiling, and free.

For more on the downtown art walk, visit http://downtownartwalk.com/.

Slideshow and photos by Nancy Accomando