Gallery 5043

A couple of the drawings I put up at Gallery 5043 in North Hollywood in 2020.

It all started with some daydreaming, in early 2020, I think.  One day I looked up industrial properties for sale, here in The San Fernando Valley.  The dream was that I'd be able to get a legit business going, start making som edecent money, and then buy a industrial or old retail property, when the prices dropped in the recession.  Yeah, big dream for my situation, but it led to me finding this old, legendary music studio that was for sale.  I found that The Alley music studio building was for sale.  Here's a news report about it from a couple years ago.  

It was, and still is, a very plain looking place in North Hollywood.  But it's a place where Michael Jackson had recorded four albums, Prince recorded two, and dozens of other legendary music groups had practiced, written music, and recorded albums over 43 years.  Still daydreaming, I went to check out the property.  I wound up meeting a neighbor who had rented rooms to many of the musicians, while they were practicing there, and it was a really cool day.  Obviously I didn't get a business together, the recession got put on hold by tons of stimulus money, and a cabinet making business later bought the property.

At the time,  I was selling some of my drawings on Hollywood Boulevard, and thinking about putting a few up somewhere outdoors, just for people to check out.  Call it low intensity street art.  I walked across Lankershim to a bus stop that day, and there was an abandoned building there, three or four small units in one building.  The door closest to the bus stop had the address 5043 on it.  You BMXers know that 43 is the lucky number of BMX.  The little light went on, "I should put some drawings up there."  It was an old nail salon, and the glass door was recessed, giving it a little cover from any weather.  A couple weeks later, I made some copies of my drawings, and put several up on the glass door.  "Gallery 5043" was born.  

The first time I put a few drawings up, I took an orange traffic cone that was sitting on the sidewalk, and made a carboard sign that said, "Art Show," to get people's attention.  It was just an experiment to see if anyone actually stopped to check the drawings out.  I sat at the bus stop nearby, and watched people walk by.  Most didn't even notice the drawings, but a handful stopped and checked them out.  That's all I was hoping for.  Get a few people to look away from their phones for a moment and go, "Hey, what's that?"

That was my first pop-up art show at Gallery 5043.  Total cost, Maybe $4 for copies at FedEx Office and a little shipping tape to tape them to the door. 

As time went on, as people began to emerge after the initial Covid shutdown, I put more art up at Gallery 5043, from time to time.  I even taped up original drawings 3 or 4 times, just to see how long it would take for someone to snag them and take them home.  Sometimes I would put a post on Facebook, "New art show at Gallery 5043, show runs until all art is stolen."  I did this now and then there, and at a couple other locations, so people could just randomly check out my Sharpie Scribble Style drawings, through 2020, and much of 2021.

This is a black & white test print, full size, 18" X 24", of the Notorious RBG, aka Ruth Bader Ginsberg, drawing I did  shortly after her death.  While I've drawn a few BMX and skaters, and dozens of rock star drawings, this one was, by far, the most popular drawing I've done.  The original ended up in Wisconsin, I think, and there's a full size print up in a lawyer's office in Colorado, and a handful more spread other places.  Someone scored this print after a couple of weeks.  This was the only large black & white print made.  #sharpiescribblestyle

Then came 2022, and I caught Covid myself in January, and moved farther west in The Valley.  Being homeless, as I healed up, I just stayed in the same area, where I camped out while sick.  It was just a good spot with the basic necessities I needed to get by, day to day.  There were a couple other people who crashed out at the same place at the time, who were pretty cool to get along with.  I would eat breakfast in the area, then take a bus quite a ways to a library, and write, blog, draw pictures, and do my social media stuff, during the day, then come back to sleep.  

Recently, I decided to take a break from drawing the Sharpie pictures for a while, I just need to find work that pays better.  After 10 years unable to find any job in North Carolina, I have no official work history.  I've been doing creative work the whole time, but didn't have a "real" job.  So a traditional job is out of the question at this point, for that and a few other reasons.  So I've been working on trying a couple of new ideas to begin earning day to day money soon, hopefully, and then work from there.  

I've also started to think about all these weird photos of homeless life I've been taking since 2018.  I have 200 or 300, or more, photos. Some of them are of weird stuff I've seen, some are just artsy pics of sunsets, buildings, or other things.  So I printed out a few of the photos on paper, and decided to put them up in an outdoor location or two, so random people could check them out.  It's pretty non-destructive street art, just photos on plain paper, taped to walls.  I put the first group of photos up in Hollywood, in a little, out of the way nook.  For the second group, I trekked back over to my original spot, Gallery 5043.  

Cannabis dispensary Budega, now in the site of my former Gallery 5043.

I hadn't been there in a few months, and a lot has changed.  The building was leased or purchased by a cannabis dispensary, a weed shop, and the door where I hung my art in 2020 and 2021, is now the main door of their store, Budega.  Like "bodega" but for buds.  Clever.  

So now my personal art show spot, Gallery 5043, is now just an idea in my head.  So wherever I put art up outside, it's "Gallery 5043" to me.  They even changed the number on the door, to 5041, which is the main address number of the whole building.  So if you need some weed in the NoHo Arts District area, check out Budega, at 5041 Lankershim.  And if you want to see my photos or Sharpie art in an outdoor location, check my twitter feed (@steveemig43), I put the locations up there... sometimes.  

So that's the story of my personal art gallery, Gallery 5043.  It started with a daydream of owning a cool building, led to the discovery of a legendary and little known music studio, then became my little "outdoor art gallery" for a while.  If I ever do get a building and open my own art gallery, it will probably be named Gallery 5043.