The following is part of a work-in-progress called The Art Colony.
Some time in late 2009 or early 2010 some of the other small businesses near us decided to join our monthly art openings and host their own art exhibits concurrently with ours.
There was a sneaker shop called BTNC that started showing street artists, and an alternative clothing store called Buffalo Exchange that wanted to show work by local artists.
Around this time I befriended a guy named Brian Prince who, along with his wife Kristy, had opened a small art gallery on Harbor Blvd. called PAS Gallery.
Brian was a graphic designer by trade and shared our passion for making Downtown Fullerton a destination for more than just an over-concentration of bars–for building a legitimate art scene.
Around this time, I met another gem of history and art named Mike Atta.
Mike and his wife Pam owned a vintage furniture/music/clothing/art store called Out of Vogue.
The name of the store was also the name of a hit song by Mike’s band Middle Class, who were one of the first punk and then post-punk bands in Orange County.
Through Mike, I learned about the rich history of Fullerton’s punk scene of the late 1970s/early 80s. Out of this seemingly sleepy suburban town emerged some of the most aggressive and creative bands of California’s first wave of punk.
Bands like Social Distortion, The Adolescents, Agent Orange, and Eddie and the Subtitles broke onto the scene and often played shows in LA with bands like Black Flag, The Germs, The Descenents, and The Vandals.
Mike shared with me flyers from punk shows he’s played at now-defunct venues like Ichabods (now a Burger King) and The Galaxy (a former roller rink).
Mike’s store Out of Vogue was already a unique place of culture and history, and he joined forces with our small but growing group of venue owners who eventually started what became the Downtown Fullerton Art Walk.
What I learned from befriending people like Mike Atta was that what we were doing wasn’t 100% new. We were participating in a tradition of creative alternative communities and people who’d been doing cool shit in Fullerton long before we arrived. And hopefully, someday, people would discover the things we were doing and find inspiration–like I was inspired by the early Fullerton punks.
Through the Art Walk, I met people like Dorian Hunter and Marjorie Kerr, who were instrumental in starting an annual cultural event called "A Night in Fullerton" way back in the 1960s, partly to convince Norton Simon (whose Hunt Foods was located in Fullerton) that our town would be a good place for him to build his art museum (but that’s another story).
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Fullerton has these hidden histories of art and culture that we were, unknowingly, building upon or continuing in some way.
We got a core group of venues on board with the Art Walk idea: Brian and Kristy of PAS Gallery, Mike and Pam of Out of Vogue, Florencio of Blaquel Popular Art, Julie of Roadkill, Gary of Graves Gallery, and increasingly more.
Often, I think, small businesses are pushed to compete with one another. The Art Walk sort of flipped this model on its head. We were encouraging local businesses to, at least once a month collaborate with one another.
I remember walking around downtown Fullerton with a clipboard and a pen, meeting local business owners and asking if they’d like to put art on their walls once a month and participate in this new thing called the Art Walk.
And then there was Mike and Candace Magoski.
I’d met these two unique individuals back in 2006, when I attended a birthday party for my friend Colleen. The party was in a warehouse on the edge of downtown, across the street from the long-defunct Donald Duck Juice Factory.
I’ll never forget walking into Mike and Candace’s studio, called Violet Hour. I felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole into something utterly unique and amazing. How to describe it? Large artworks, strangely-dressed mannequins, a pink golf cart with a giant rabbit head, a stripper pole, a disco ball, the music of Brian Eno.
The whole night, as I danced with friends, I kept telling myself, “I can’t believe this exists in downtown Fullerton.”
At that time, Violet Hour was an underground gem that you had to know people to know about.
Once we’d accumulated enough interested venues, we began meeting to figure out how to organize and actually launch this thing.
We created a web site, a Facebook page, a map of participating venues, posters to put on store front windows, and finally launched the thing in 2010.
With the strength of several venues, each helping to spread the word about their individual art shows and the Art Walk, people showed up in large numbers.
On a Friday night in Downtown Fullerton, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of people walking around to enjoy art. It was families, people of all ages and walks of life.
That first night, I walked around with my camera taking pictures and thinking, “For me, this his heaven.”
Together, we had done this.
The Downtown Fullerton Art Walk had an ambitious goal–to host a multi-venue art experience on the first Friday of every month.
We had no funding from the City, except for the fact that the Fullerton Museum Center was a part of it.
We all pooled our money to pay for flyers and maps of the venues.
The longer we existed, the more venues got involved. At our peak, I believe we had over 30 venues. That meant over 30 little free art shows every month in Downtown Fullerton.
That, to me, was a miracle.
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| Brian Prince. |
