Entrance to the Brewery Art Lofts
This past weekend I attended the Brewery Art Walk near Chinatown. My coworker was showing his paintings and the event received a great deal of publicity on KCRW. The Brewery is a community of artist lofts and galleries inside of an old Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery just outside of downtown Los Angeles. The colony mainly contains artists but also houses dance studios, designers, architects, photographers and other professionally creative people. Tenants have to pursue their creative interests in order to live and work in the loft community. The compound also has its own restaurant and bar with a great selection of micro brewed beers. The art walk had a very decent turnout with a good energy to it.
Two Brewery buildings connected by a catwalk
Peter Dalton is an Industrial Design coworker of mine at Sunscope. He studied Illustration at the Art Center College of Design. Peter became interested in product design after noticing that his paintings in school had a product and architectural aesthetic to them. After his senior show in college, he was asked to hang one of his 8 foot paintings in the admissions office at Art Center. It still hangs there to this day next to a Jeff Koons piece.
Peter's painting influences include realists Charles Sheeler and Edward Hopper. He described the inspiration for the paintings he showed as the beauty of utility and isolation.
Peter next to his painting
Signage at the entrance to Peter's gallery space
Another artist that stands out at the Art Walk is Lana Gomez. Her mixed media pieces have incredible texture to them. I enjoy the color palettes of her paintings and the use of white space in some of them. Lana's paintings are very organic and spontaneous. I also enjoy her usage of texture to create contrast. She has been featured in In Style magazine and the LA Times.
I first met Rhett Johnson on the Venice Beach boardwalk several months ago. He had recently moved to LA from Chicago and was making street art inspired pieces on the boardwalk. It was cool to see him again at the Brewery Art Walk and catch up. He told me that he recently displayed his artwork with Shepard Fairey at an event at the Shangri La hotel in Santa Monica. Rhett is an incredibly nice guy with a magnetic positive attitude. He mentioned that he started making art growing up at his family's hardware store in Chicago with paint pens and spray paint. His style is very light hearted and fun with good use of color and imagery. He can be reached at 312-731-8477.
Rhett working with paint pens