Downtown Art Galleries

There are an abundance of art galleries popping up in Downtown's Bank District and Chinatown. All showcase a variety of modern and contemporary art from emerging to established artists. Below are two featured galleries showing art from opposite ends of the spectrum from graffiti art to contemporary art made by disabled artists.

Crewest Gallery
110 Winston St.
Los Angeles, CA 90013
http://www.crewest.com/

Crewest Gallery on Winston Street in Downtown Los Angeles represents talented local and international underground graffiti artists creating art from an urban street perspective.

World-renoun graffiti artist MAN ONE opened the gallery in 2002 and recently re-located downtown to be part of the emerging artist community and promote the cities urban movement.

MAN ONE has been creating graffiti art since 1987, tagging on buses with markers and on the streets of Los Angeles with spray cans. He developed and defined his talent at Loyola Marymount and set out to change how the world interpreted graffiti art.

MAN ONE'S intention was to complete large scale commercially commissioned colorful murals-which he has done in his career. He has also designed art for Coca-Cola, Addidas, Sony, and more.

To Learn More about MAN ONE you can visit his personal website or the Crewest Gallery site.

Hear MAN ONE talk about Crewest Gallery Art below.



Downtown Art Center Gallery
828 S. Main Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
http://www.dacgallery.com/

From the outside, the Downtown Art Center Gallery may look like a standard Los Angeles space. Even viewing the artwork inside the gallery one would think that established artists made the contemporary and abstract works. That is why the general public is amazed to discover that the work is created by artists with severe disabilities.

The DAC Gallery sponsors the Exceptional Children Foundation, a non-profit organization helping children and adults with developmental and other disabilities. Each day eighteen clients from the Downtown area come to the art center and are given all the necessary supplies to complete their artistic vision through paintings or ceramics.

Art teachers guide clients to help them complete their pieces. And the variety of works is comparable to that of any other artist and gallery collection. Ranging from landscape pieces and realist works, to macabre paintings, to narratives, to reproductions, and sculpture.

Some of the clients have been enrolled in the ECF program for twenty-five or more years. DAC Gallery Assistant Jennifer Espinoza, says there is still a stigma attached to people with disabilities. But most of the public viewing the artwork is in love with what they see.

The Gallery display's and sell's the clients work to the general public, giving the artists a 60 percent commission just as any neuro-typical artist would receive. It is a way for the disabled clients to make a sustainable living off their art.

Listen below to hear Jennifer Espinoza introduce some of the gallery's clients and their work.