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.  
 

Check out my Sharpie Scribble Style Pinterest page

I did this drawing of an old, 80's Thrasher cover featuring Chuck Treece, and I sent the original drawing to Thrasher's office.  They also publish Juxtapoz art magazine.  I figured it was time to let "the art world" know that this crazy scribbling with Sharpies exists.  That was a few months ago.  I haven't heard anything back yet.  Maybe someday I will.  Or maybe someday I'll do a show and some skater will come up and go, "Wait, you did that?  I have that drawing on my wall, I stole it from Thrasher's office."  #sharpiescribblestyle    Check out my Sharpie Scribble Style Pinterest page.

Don't mess with a woman holding a blaster.  The Princess Leia that us Gen X people remember. #sharpiescribblestyle 

David Bowie with a Bowie knife.  Cutting edge.  2019.  I left this at a bus stop, by accident, in Richmond, Virginia.  #sharpiescribblestyle

I hadn't drawn animals in a long time, and my skills had improved quite a bit, so I drew this Sumatran tiger in 2018.  #sharpiescribblestyle

 

Doodle art- Things I drew in 2020-2021 while charging my laptop and phone

"Rise above" doodle art drawing, 18" X 24", 2018?

I'm doing a workshop at a library today, to teach kids some techniques for drawing with Sharpies, and markers in general.  Most of my work I do in my #sharpiescribblestyle, but that takes years to learn.  So I'm going to guide the kids through drawing a cool doodle art picture today.  Then I'll show them how I do my scribble style, if they want to try it at home.  Once you learn to draw one thing that looks pretty cool as a kid, you realize, "Hey, I can draw!"  Then you're more likely to keep drawing, and learn the basics, and maybe even get really good, over time. 

About five years after I invented my Sharpie scribble style technique of shading with Sharpie markers, in 2005, I finally got around to looking up "Sharpie art" on the internet.  It just never occurred to me to look it up before that.  The coolest stuff at the time was the black & white work of Jessie Armand.  I really liked his style, so I began playing around with "doodle art," as it's generally called.  This one above, "Rise Above," which is both a Black Flag song, and a continuing necessity in my life, I drew in 2018, I think.    

"The wave of change is about to break."  I drew this on April 27, 2020.  Can you remember back to the beginning of Covid, when we were told, "This will all be over in six weeks?"  From my own reading and futurist/big picture thinking, I knew a big wave of change was headed our way.  I didn't realize it was going to be tsunami, though.

Being homeless when Covid-19 hit American shores, everybody went into lockdown, and we were left on the streets, without many of the resources we depended on.  It was tough, even as someone that had been in and out of homelessness for years.  One continuous battle for homeless people these days is charging cell phones (and tablets of laptops for some).  We need phones to apply for any government services, and lots of other reasons, but the only legal place to charge them was libraries and some fast food places.  When Covid hit, those were closed.  So homeless people learned where every open, outdoor outlet was, in their whole area.  I drew most of these drawings below while sitting on a walk bridge that would normally take tourists from the Universal City train/bus station to the tram up the hill to Universal.  There's a plug by each of the three elevators, for cleaning and maintenance people to use.  With no tourists, us bums were allowed to use these to charge.  It kept us pretty much out of sight, 20 feet above anyone driving below on Lankershim Boulevard. 

"Corona virus"  This one is from March 2020, I think.

To charge my laptop, which is how I do my blogging and social media work, I would sit in the hot sun for an hour and a half.  Then I would take a bus or train to a spot where I could sit in a parking lot or on a sidewalk, and pick up some public wifi signal, in the shade when possible.  That was my whole existence through two years of Covid in 2020 and 2021.  Scounge up money to eat, go sit at a charge spot, then go to a wifi spot, blog, do my social media, sell some art when possible,  And then do it all over again.  Eat, charge, blog, repeat.  For two years.  These doodle art drawings were a by product of that time.

"We are all interconnected" 2020

Since I was spending so much time just sitting and charging, I started doing these doodle art drawings a lot of the time, while I was waiting fo rthe laptop to charge.  These usually take me 4 to 6 hours each, and I only needed a sketch pad and one regular black Sharpie.  My scribble style drawings take 40-45 hours each, and I need a whole bunch of stuff.  

I first did some of these in 2011 or 2012.  Then I did a bunch while homeless in Richmond, Virginia.  There I started adding a few words to them, usually about something happening at the time.  My doodle drawings became a sort of art journal.  Since surviving the Covid-19 pandemic while living homeless was what was happening in 2020, that's what most of these refer too.  I lost the notebooks with my Richmond drawings, when all my stuff was stolen by police (including all my paperwork, sleeping bag,  and clothes I wasn't wearing).  But I still have this one beat up notebook of my doodle drawings from 2020-2021. 

No words on this one, just playing with different design ideas, 2020.

"The country is coming out of lockdown!"  I drew this one on May 23, 2020.  Yeah, a little early on that.  It's hard to even remember when we thought everything would be back to normal by June... of 2020.