Inglewood serves as blank canvas for incoming artists

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A flank of musicians march across a hollow space. The soundwaves bounce wildly against the concrete floors and pillars of the fourth floor of the Beacon Arts Building. You could describe the group as an improvisational marching band from another dimension. In fact, we're just a few blocks from the freeway in Inglewood and not too far from an IHOP where, in a way, the city's only gallery was born.

"Would you like pancakes or fruit?" one waitress said.

"You know, I'm not going to eat anything," said Scott Lane, a real estate manager.

"Some fruit or something?" the waitress said.

"No, I'm going to be talking," Lane said.

Lane is a real estate manager for a guy who owns a chain of IHOPs and an old storage building that beckoned as something totally different.

"The owner and I were looking at his properties and his son mentioned how it reminded him of this place in SOHO," Lane said. "So, we thought about art and art studios, so I Googled and up pops Renee Fox."

Lane knew nothing about art, so he called up Fox with an offer: curate a giant art space -- the first it's kind in the city. So, what did she think?

"The first thing I thought was this was some sort of real estate deal and I didn't want to be involved," Fox said. "It's just the kind of thing you don't believe it sounds too good to be true, so we had a couple of meetings and I realized, wow, this was a really great opportunity that I could make it into something amazing."

Fox is an artist herself -- colored pencils on paper is her medium. While at OTIS Art Institute on LA's Westside, she lived in nearby Culver City -- then a true artists enclave.

"Rents there used to be really inexpensive and as I was there, rents started going up and galleries started moving in," Fox said. "That whole transition happened really fast and now it's one of the more expensive places."

So, she turned her sights south to Inglewood. What she found was an underground, closely-knit community of artists. Some were new OTIS graduates like Renee. Others had been here for decades, like Steve Hurd.

"They're peace pipe paintings right, so the idea is..." [sound of sucking on pipes], Hurd said.

Hurd lives and works in a commercial space in town. He got a deal on this place two decades ago as the LA riots were crippling the city. It's a much different area now, but as Hurd watches new artists like Fox flood into the town, he wonders if their escape from high rent is ultimately self-defeating.

"The artists who are moving in are fixing up places and ironically they're going to screw themselves because the rents will go up and then they will be moved out and find another place where everything's messed up, and so it goes," Hurd said.

And then there's the ripples that travel outside the insular art community. As artists come into derelict areas and improve them, and subsequently make them more expensive, other residents are affected, too. It's a well-known phenomenon.

"It happened in Venice, it happened with Silver Lake, it happened with Abbot Kinney, absolutely."

JC Johnson and his wife own the serving spoon, a popular eatery in town. Johnson has seen the artists filtering into the abandoned warehouses in the north part of town. Many are already regulars at the restaurant. He sees incoming artists as a boon for property values.

"You know, there's a lot of homeowners here in Inglewood, and those homeowners will embrace that," Johnson said. "You want to see equity take place."

Other black Inglewood residents like Erin Aubry Kaplan have seen that welcoming attitude toward incoming white residents.

"My husband is Jewish," Kaplan said. "He's white, and we live in a part of Inglewood where there's very few white people let alone Jewish people when we moved there. People came outside and thought gentrification was happening. And they were happy. Oh, this means that more of them are coming. Well, they found out that he was with me, and they all went home. But it was this association that if white people are there, it's a good place."

And they’ve been coming. The latest census figures show the white population up 5 percent since 2000. Fox and Hurd have expanded their partnership to include another building, a former Volkswagen dealership now dedicated strictly to artist studios. It’s becoming a popular spot for OTIS grads. Fox says she is aware of the problems of gentrifying a town but maintains the intentions are for the best.

"You don’t wish any place to be poor or rundown with empty buildings -- that’s not anyone’s desire," Fox said. "I’ve never heard anyone say they wish the neighborhood would remain defunct just because it would have cheaper rent."

But the biggest combatant to any displacement could be pride in the city from the longtime black residents. Inglewood still has one of the highest black populations in Los Angeles. And many longtime residents like it that way.

"I believe it's the last one."
"Me too. This is it -- it's the Alamo."

Harold Green and Ron Starling have lived in Inglewood for decades. They came at a time when the city was mostly white. They say they’re willing to accept what shifts come into the town, but no matter what, this will always be home.

"I not going nowhere," Green said. "I love Inglewood. It's better than a lot of other parts of the city. A lot better than other parts of the city."

But for now, most of Inglewood says it's ready -- ready to embrace the sound of something new.