Flat Out of Skid Row

Arguably her boldest venture was the July 4, 2001, “America the Beautiful: A Drive-by,” a group public-art exhibit mounted on Los Angeles Street between Third and Fourth — inspired by a man she met who designed complex cardboard-box “condos” for his homeless neighbors. McCann received a lot of grumbling e-mails — such as “This show is an attempt for the art community to use the homeless as a way to look at their art” — most of them from the artists she solicited. The homeless, for their part, were enthusiastic, says McCann, and she helped to sell some of their art to the slumming Westsiders. A few even made off with the displayed cardboard-box art, an act that McCann took as a compliment.

 

McCann sees herself more as a “producer” than a “gallery owner.” She’ll be mounting two shows this August: “[sub]Urban [sub]Version” at the new Little Tokyo Lofts and “One Step Closer to Plastic” at West Hollywood’s Gallery 825 — both shows are part of a series she’s dubbed “The Underground Gets Above Ground.” Yet it’s clear that McCann’s heart really is in her flat files, the stable cornerstone of her admittedly fly-by-night art “happenings.” And, typical of the current downtown climate of obsessive de-velopment and its encroachment on the artists’ district, McCann’s fledgling gallery space — located in the old Crocker Bank building on Spring Street, its interior based on Alfred Stieglitz’s famed 291 Gallery — has already found itself in a fight to keep its four walls. (Similarly, three top downtown galleries in the L.A. Timesbuilding on ”Chicken Row,” including Fototeka and Delerium Tremens, have bugged out because of landlord problems and poor returns.) McCann’s tiny gallery and the building’s other artist tenants were told to vacate because the influx of new residents couldn’t keep up with the safety codes. Or the building is being sold, depending on whom you ask.

“By now most of the artists are gone, although there are a few holdouts,” she laments. “The building has an empty feel to it right now. The life that was there due to the artists really has been extinguished.” Undaunted, McCann sneaked back into the Spring Street space for last month’s Tara McPherson show and this month’s Justin Wood installation. “I’m letting the landlord make the first move,” she says. “I think it’s a positive thing. It’s like: Don’t screw with the artists, because we’re not so passive or powerless. I think that’s what people count on.”

Chances are, McCann will merely move her flat files one block over to Main, but — lest there be any doubt about her ability to morph Zone 9 onto any wall, surface or space required — she’s already talking of taking the flat files on the road. “I grew up in the suburbs,” she says, erupting in laughter. “We had bookmobiles!”

JUSTIN WOOD: Broken Materials | ZONE 9: ART, 453 S. Spring St., Third Floor, downtown, (213) 622-2410 July 5–30 | Reception on Saturday, July 26, 8–11 p.m.