Here we are at the end of the line – again.
“Well, we’re truly at the end of the line this time,” says Richard Stephens, who’s been the ship’s captain, or maybe its figurehead, at Cannery Row Studios in Redondo Beach for two decades.
Stephens is taking down his shingle, but he’s got one more exhibition, his last hurrah, before that happens. “The Replacements,” mostly featuring his longtime art buddies, opens Saturday with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m.
“After April 21,” Stephens adds, “Cannery Row will close forever.”
A venerable institution
“For these last 20 years or so,” says Wilfred Sarr, “Big Richard and his gallery have been a great boon and comfort to me and many other artists. We owe him much! Hopefully he can now get into his own work in earnest.”
“He needs to lose the pressure, free up and paint,” says John Teague. “I’m happy for my friend. Good for him, and luck (be) with you, Richard.”
Sarr and Teague, along with Robi Hutas and John Cantu, are Stephen’s primary artists in this final show. Over the years they’ve been in group shows and have had solo shows at the gallery.
“Even though I’ve been in Santa Cruz since 2001,” Sarr continues, “it has been well worth the drive down both to show in an atmosphere where I have at least a little history, and to see dear old friends who’ve forgiven me for much. As you well know, you can soooo easily get forgotten in this racket.”
Independent galleries don’t seem to be sustainable in the SouthBay, unless they’re connected to another business like framing or printing.
Stephens and the late Paul Orvalla created Cannery Row in 1995. “I’ve run it myself for the last 12 or 13 years,” Stephens says, “so it’s time for me to go into a new adventure.”
He’s made attempts to find partners with a similar vision for the gallery, hoping he could transition it rather than see it shuttered.
“I completed the circle a couple of years ago,” Stephens continues. “And being that it’s my baby I couldn’t really release it to anybody else, couldn’t get anything arranged, so I ended up just coming to this day and then saying, ‘Okay, that’s it.’ I don’t know what’s going to happen with the space, but I’m sure the owners will pick a good business to come along next” – although he doubts if it will be another gallery.
He also won’t speculate on whether the owners might just sell it to the city. That land’s prime real estate.
“It’s bittersweet, leaving the gallery and simplifying my life so I can start traveling and start being on the road.”
“Cannery Row was where I [had] my first show ever,” Teague says; “Cannery Row was my first outside studio. I will miss it when it closes – I guess there is a detachment lesson here.”
“Cannery Row has been my chief showplace for a long time now,” Sarr says, “and now what? Yeah, now what? It seems the whole damned world is groaning in travail as well.
“I arrived in Hermosa in 1962 and felt right at home, immediately. Hermosa was the heart and lungs of the whole area for me for almost 40 years. The ‘Cannery’ was like a second home for not a few of us unhinged and unsung – a place you could kick off your shoes and breathe easy for a spell. You could allow yourself to be laughed out loud. What a blessing!”
When it comes to documenting the beach culture up and down the coast – the people, the places, the events – has anyone been doing it longer than Robi Hutas?
“I came here from Phoenix, Arizona, in 1957,” he says, “and I got a place in Redondo Beach, one block from the beach. And from then on I stayed on the beach for 47 years. And now I can’t afford it, and had to move away.
“In a nutshell, I enjoyed it – beach life, volleyball, the water, all the people you meet.” He pauses. “Kind of a heartbreaker, but what are you gonna do?”
Hutas, who has been showing his photography at Cannery Row for 20 years, will have more of his work on view from May 4 at 608 North, a gallery which is right next door to Cannery Row. He’ll be featured there with John Post, another highly prominent local photographer.
The clock was ticking
Richard Stephens had health issues last year and, as these scares often do, they helped him to put his life in perspective. Being a gallery operator and being a working artist is sort of like living with a cat and a dog inside of your head. They get in each other’s way, barking or hissing at one another.
“Being responsible for the space I could never leave it,” he says, referring to lost opportunities to embark on painting expeditions. “It almost became a prison for me sometimes. Relieving the pressure of it is really to free my heart up; I just want to do bigger and better [things]. It’s kind of a retirement from the whole art scene.”
The scene of planning and arranging shows, that is – printing announcements, spreading the word, putting up the art, taking down the art, and having to babysit the gallery during the interminable downtime, because so very few people show up after the opening night shindig.
Again, Stephens tried to find reliable and compatible partners. There were some, but when their visions didn’t mesh with his he reeled everything back in.
“That was always a conflict with me. I could never take [a breath]; I had to stay in the trough. So that’s the reason why I have to close it, ‘cause I just can’t let it linger, ‘cause it keeps me still in it.” Then, rising up to his grizzly bear proportions, he sums it all up in once big swipe: “Either I’m totally in it or I’m totally out of it.”
Torchbearer
It was, as they say, a good ride.
“When I first moved to Cannery Row,” Stephens says, “the generation of artists that were just above me were all here. So I walked into that. That’s where I met Wilfred Sarr and Robi Hutas, Frank Minuto, and many others of that generation.”
He took to them, they took to him, and in time he found himself with the one bohemian-like art galley in the entire SouthBay that continued to show the work of the old guard. As Sarr said a little earlier, now what? In 15 or 20 years will these locally acclaimed artists be remembered and appreciated?
Photographer Hutas feels that art has been devalued. “People have other things to do than buy something to hang on their wall,” He says. But it’s more than that: When Hutas began taking pictures he developed them in his own darkroom. “Photography was kind of like a science.” And today? “It’s like everybody has a camera.” And, somewhere in all this, the art of photography, which Hutas mastered, has become blurred for many because of the ease with which anyone can take out their phone and snap a picture – and, with digital technology, often a very good picture.
Richard Stephens isn’t intending to go Houdini on us. We’ll see him at art walks, art fairs, and probably in one of the art spaces in San Pedro. But with the closing of Cannery Row an important era in the local arts scene comes to a close. It’s unique; just look around. There probably was nothing quite like it before; there certainly won’t be anything quite like it again.
The Replacements: John Teague, Robi Hutas, John Cantu, Wilfred Sarr & Special Guests opens on Saturday with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at Cannery Row Studios, 604 N. Francisca Ave., Redondo Beach. Hours, Thursday to Sunday, 12 noon to 7 p.m. Closing reception, Sunday, April 21, from 6 to 9 p.m. Call (310) 379-6313 or go to canneryrowstudios.com. ER
