Beach City Renaissance: Manhattan Beach hopes to become the “Florence of Southern California”

 

 

Sometime circa 1909 Albert Clinton Conner stepped off a train into a fledgling little development called Manhattan Beach.

Further down the rails, Hermosa Beach and Redondo Beach were already booming beach towns, but the scraggly sandswept environs of Manhattan Beach —  dominated by a large series of dunes forming a crest through the middle of the settlement — had made it less desirable for prospective homeowners. It wouldn’t become incorporated as a city for another three years.

But “Pops,” as Conner was known, didn’t have a problem with dusty places. He was patternmaker, inventor, and artist; he was attracted to new frontiers. He’d spent most of his 61 years in Indiana. He was a self-taught Impressionist painter of some acclaim who, along with his brother, Charles, had founded the Rambler’s Sketch Club, which metamorphosed into the renowned Richmond Art Group. Richmond was a small and surprisingly art-minded little city in the flatlands of eastern Indiana. The town, pop. 12,000 at the time Conner lived on its outskirts, was the seat Wayne County and the first place a motion picture was ever shown to an audience, home to one of the first jazz record labels in history (Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust” was originally recorded there), and the smallest community in the United States to have supported a professional opera company and symphony orchestra.

Conner moved to Los Angeles in 1887. He was one of the founders of the California Painters Club and served as its first president in 1906. The club would later become the California Art Club, one of the oldest organizations of its kind still extant, and its early shows featured Conner’s work. In fact, his paintings of  Manhattan Beach would be the first sight many people ever had of the town. At one point, almost every painter from the Rambler’s Sketch Club had a reunion in Los Angeles. Manhattan Beach became one of their favorite subjects.

“‘Our friends in Richmond wouldn’t believe that we travel 27 miles to sketch, and return the same day,’” remarked Conner to his mates, according to a 1911 Los Angeles Times story.

Conner was increasingly drawn to the wild beauty of the little beach community, as were his compatriots. “They rented a bungalow at Manhattan Beach, and every day sallied forth to sketch together, as they used to do 30 years ago,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Finally, Conner and his family relocated to the beach. When the city incorporated in 1912, he was elected its first treasurer.

“He was a founder of Manhattan Beach,” said Martin Betz, the city’s cultural arts manager. “It’s interesting that art is in Manhattan Beach before the surfers, or volleyball. Beach volleyball probably wasn’t even invented yet in 1912.”

Conner was also friends with William Wendt, considered “the dean of of Southern California landscape painters” and one of the key players in establishing Laguna Beach as an artistic hub. Betz believes that Laguna’s more tame natural environment played a role in its becoming a gathering point for artists, relative to the unruliness of Manhattan Beach.  

“What happened —  this is my theory —  is Manhattan Beach was so sandy at that time, it was really hard to paint outside, because sand can really mess up paint,” Betz said. “Laguna Beach didn’t have sand in the same way —  it’s a canyon there, really not much sand, just a river entering the sea.”

A century later, Manhattan Beach intends to change that narrative. A policy enacted by City Council in 2002 which earmarks 1 percent of development fees within the city for public art is about to bear fruit. All the building that has occurred in Manhattan Beach during its recent real estate boom, coupled with some bureaucratic and political paralysis that stymied the city’s cultural arts program’s progress in the last few years, means the city has more than $600,000 to spend on art, and only a few years to do so. Funds not spent within five years must be returned to developers.

A public arts initiative is underway. Betz is spearheading the effort, and the current City Council has taken an aggressive, arts-forward stance. Among the projects underway are a sculpture garden, the installation of 15 to 20 murals throughout the city, wraparound art on utility boxes, and a grants program meant to fund small scale art projects at local schools and elsewhere in the community —   things such as dance performances at Joslyn or Heights Community Centers, theater productions at Mira Costa High School, and exhibits in restaurants and coffee houses.

The goal is nothing less than to transform Manhattan Beach into one of the focal points for art in the region.

“I am happily saying we are heading in the right direction here,” said Councilperson Steve Napolitano at a recent council meeting at which Betz gave an update on the city’s public arts initiative. “I think we’ve gotten nowhere for far too long. I’ve said it for years: we should be the Florence of Southern California. We just need to spend the time and money to do it.”

Mayor Amy Howorth shares that vision. Like Napolitano and Betz, she believes public art should be a focal point, but also only a starting point.

“We are world famous for beaches and surf culture and beach volleyball,” Howorth said. “These are are great, healthy, wonderful things to do, but we should also be known for our writers and screenwriters. We have thought leaders here, and artists, business leaders and design innovators. We are a very special place and I want us to be as proud of these other types of culture as we are about sports. This initiative that Martin is spearheading is a really big part of that. I think Steve and I both feel we don’t always have to make a grand gesture about art. It doesn’t always have to be a $100,000 public art sculpture; it can be a utility box with art wrapped around it, something relating to the area’s history, or playing with the surroundings. It can be art that you just happen upon, and it doesn’t have to be conventional forms of art.”

Conner, who had almost been forgotten locally, will be the subject of a semi-permanent exhibit featuring nine of his paintings at City Hall. Meanwhile, Bo Bridges, one of the brightest stars of the local art scene, has submitted a stunning set of renderings that apply his iconic photographs throughout the drab confines of City Hall and the adjacent public parking garage —  an immersive pier sunset in an elevator, a lifeguard tower and beachscape adorning the long, tilted wall entering and exiting garage, the entire Strand as seen from the beach in one big strip running underneath all the pay stations where people go to pay tickets and fees, palm trees and the pier covering a two-story wall by the stairs linking council chambers to upstairs administrative offices in the very heart of building.

Bridges, who was asked to do the renderings by City Councilperson Richard Montgomery but whose project will likely need to go through a Request for Proposal process, said he saw it as an opportunity for Manhattan Beach to reclaim its own art.

“The art scene, there’s not much of it in Manhattan Beach —  but a lot of people are using Manhattan Beach images of the pier, the beach, the water, the surf, and the lifestyle to represent their brands all day long, and they are utilizing this beautiful place we live in,” Bridges said. “Yet the City has nothing. You go to City Hall to pay a parking ticket and it doesn’t showcase anything of what the city has to offer.”

The movement is also about more than paintings and photographs and commissioning art. It’s about lighting a fire under the creativity that already exists in the community, and in so doing bringing that community together. Betz, who came from the DIY movement that was part of the punk rock scene in the ‘70s and has worked within the art world in a variety of capacities (including stints as director of exhibits, education, and collections for the Festival of Arts Laguna Beach and as a senior curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art), envisions a dynamic flowering of the arts in Manhattan Beach.

 

“My vision revolves around the idea of activating the city culturally. I think we have done a pretty good job with our static arts programs —  that is, the visual arts center [the Manhattan Beach Arts Center] and now murals and sculptures. I would like to focus efforts on cultural events, the performing arts, music, neighborhood mini festivals,” he said in an interview, noting these are idea yet to be officially vetted. “I had this idea of creating a mini-arts and music festival which would travel to different parts of the community.”

Napolitano believes the city should tap into the many art collectors living locally, creating exhibits featurings works of art that currently are never publicly shared. But he also emphasizes that making art part of the fabric of the community is about more than public art and exhibits.

“We have the resources to put on plays and music,” Napolitano said. “I would love to see more support, by having public performances by the incredible choruses and string quartets and orchestras we have at our local schools. Our kids are playing Carnegie Hall but not Manhattan Beach.”

 

The gate

Sculptor Cinthia Joyce, one of the most renowned artists living in Manhattan Beach, recalls a visit to the magazine shop downtown 10 or 15 years ago during which something was said that stuck with her all these years later.

“Do you have any magazines in French?” she asked the salesgirl, who was a teenager.

“No, we don’t have any of that,” the girl replied.

“Do you have any magazines on art?” Joyce then asked.

“No, we don’t have any of that, either,” the girl said. “People around here are just into sports, beauty, and finances.”

“I thought, ‘Wow, that is classic… That is very insightful,” Joyce remembered. “Then  I start looking around and see stores reflecting the same things. I think we have the greatest city, and we are fortunate to live in this place where all this great stuff happens, all these amazing sports. But I think we have a need for the dynamic force of art. It’s a spiritual element our city is lacking, really. Because we have to have that balance.”

Two things happened three years ago that represented a shift in that direction. The first was the unveiling of the new, $19 million public library, a strikingly sleek glass structure that is part of the LA County library system and gave downtown Manhattan Beach both a new vibrancy and a place to gather. The second was the installation of a sculpture, on Highland Avenue, in front of the library, called “Light Gate.” The sculpture, by Mags Harries and Lajos Héder, was the first public art made possible by the influx of development funds derived from the city’s building boom. The library and the sculpture seemed harbingers of things to come.

“I think the building itself is a piece of art,” said James Gill, a cultural arts commissioner for the city. “It was magical how the Light Gate was going to go next to the library… They sort of came together, perfectly together.”

Light Gate was selected after a long process of winnowing down 150 submissions, first by the commission and with the final approval by council. It cost $130,000, which was the most the city had ever allocated to a single piece of art. As is the case with most public art, not everyone was pleased; some people objected to the arrival of so much modernity in a downtown many residents pride for its quaint, sleepy beach town charm.

Something Howorth said at the meeting at which the sculpture was officially approved hit home with Gill. People were struggling to explain why the sculpture fit Manhattan Beach. Light Gate is the shape of a keyhole and made from glass laminated with prismatic film; two days a year, November 14 and January 27, the sunset perfectly aligns within the keyhole. People at the meeting talked mainly about how the city is filled with bright oceanic light, in keeping with what the sculptors had written: “Light Gate focuses the view through an opening down 14th Street to the Pacific Ocean. It is a place of constantly shifting light and view, more than a solid object. It puts the visitor in the center of this important nexus.”

But Howorth, as is her way, had a simpler explanation.  

“Glass is made from sand,” she said. “And Manhattan Beach is filled with sand.”

The entire discussion, and Howorth’s observation, itself showed the value of public art. Art is about playing with perception, and at its best allows us to see the familiar anew. The idea of infusing a community with art thus is a way of celebrating the elements of the life lived within that community.

Howorth also believes in the power of public art to bring people together, and she’s had that experience with Light Gate. Her birthday, it so happens, is on November 14, one of the days the sun fits perfectly within the sculpture’s keyhole. Each year she has gone to Light Gate at sunset on her birthday, playfully pretending the people who gather are part of her own celebration.

“What’s great about that piece is people really do come down —  there was probably 100 people down there last year,” Howorth said. “It’s about drawing people out, and together.”

This kind of experience, Howorth said, is exactly what underlies the city’s evolving vision for public art.

“I think as a city councilperson I look for ways to improve the community, and one way to improve the community is to provide places to gather, places for shared experience,” Howorth said. “Providing public art fits right into that. People don’t have to have the same reaction to the art to share the experience.”

Something happens in places that become artistically infused. The right people for the job tend to show up, and a momentum builds. In Paris in the ‘30s, this meant not only painters, singers, and writers but gallery and cafe owners, and even newspapermen. In Manhattan Beach, perhaps the right cultural arts manager is part of the alchemy that will spark a renaissance. Gill believes Betz is the perfect person to galvanize the movement towards a more artistic Manhattan Beach.

“He’s had experience doing this kind of thing in other cities, and I don’t think we’ve had that kind of experience leading the cultural arts commission for quite some time,” Gill said. “During my time on the commission, it was really led by staff who didn’t really have a background and a passion for this. Martin has the background and experience and slowly has been making it all happen.”

As timing and good fortune would have it, Melissa McCollum, the county library manager who ran the new Manhattan Beach Public Library when it opened in 2015, was also somebody with a passion for public art. She had worked in libraries in West Hollywood and Lawndale where she’d seen the power of public art. In WeHo, the library hosted rotating art exhibits, and had artists and authors come and speak, as well as a calendar of music performances. In Lawndale, McCollum helped organize an exhibit of photography by local teenagers that resonated so much with one of the teens that he grew up to work for the library. McCollom has borrowed such ideas and brought them to Manhattan Beach. She said the key is to tailor such programming specifically to the community, and she has done so —  frequently partnering with Pages bookstore for readings, and partnering with the Manhattan Beach Art Center for art exhibits and “Late Night at the Library” events featuring music performances and art talks. For Women’s History month in February of this year, McCollum asked local historian Jan Dennis to read from her book, “Skirts in the Sand,” and later in the month booked an all female mariachi band to play on the library patio while an art show inside featured local women artists and cupcakes were served by a woman-owned bakery.

“I think public art is important,” said McCollum, who just last week left her post to become the director of the El Segundo Library. “It provides opportunities for community members to encounter new ideas and experiences.”

Betz sees the library as an integral partner to his mission.

“We consider the library as the arts destination on the west side,” he said. “It’s a great combination, with their amazing literary programs.”

Manhattan Beach will never be Paris, but it is not a stretch that it can at least aspire to be as vibrant as the little Indiana town that A.C. Conner came from, as well as come full circle to return to the city’s artistic origins and catch up to places like Laguna Beach. Joyce believes the city could use a bigger, more comprehensive facility like the Palos Verdes Art Center, which not only hosts exhibits but offers an array of art classes. It’s a place artists are also able to encounter other artists, she said.

“In Manhattan Beach, I don’t know the artists, and I’ve lived here 42 years,” Joyce said. “We don’t have a place like the PV Arts Center where everyone gathers.”

Joyce envisions a day when the city hosts its own biennial, like the famous Venice Biennial, a citywide artistic celebration every two years. It’s an idea in keeping with Napolitano’s vision.

Napolitano was mayor in 2002, during his first stint in city government, when the city’s Public Art Master Plan and the ordinance to provide funding for it was adopted. He’s frustrated the pace has been so slow.

“We should be the Florence of, at least, the South Bay,” he said. “We’ve got the resources. We’ve got the funds. We just need to commit ourselves to making it happen.”

Gill believes Napolitano, Howorth, and the current council may be the missing pieces to Manhattan Beach’s renaissance. He said the lag that occurred after Light Gate’s arrival —  after which the public art fund was depleted — is finally coming to an end.

“Not much changed after Light Gate and the community trust fund was broke for a few years, then we had a tough council for a little while,” Gill said. “Now it’s changed.”

Napolitano, who is himself an amateur painter, has visited Florence several times. He can’t shake the feeling that Manhattan Beach has all the ingredients to become a hub for art —  the money, talent, vision, and both homegrown artists and proximity to the less affluent communities where artists tend to live and work.

There’s one ingredient he says needs to be added in order to make the rest come alive.

“I think it’s pride of place,” he said. “There’s a lot of pride in great cities. And every great city has art.”

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