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.  
 

The L.A. Project- happening in October

 I don't usually share or promote things that come up on Facebook ads, but this one looks pretty cool.  The L.A. Project is an event on the evening of October 23, 2022.  They're going to project a bunch of photos of downtown Los Angeles, shot by 34 different photographers, on to the side of a building.  The tickets are free, and there will be "food trucks, fun, and theater style seating."  Sounds like a cool night in my book.  Click the link to check it out.  

I picked a few names at random, and looked up their stuff.  Seriously, they take some great pics.  Now I want to go.  Maybe I'll see you there.  

Wednesday Aja

Julia Dean

Mike Lynch

Donna Stelini

#SEstreetlife photos- Hollywood, California- 7/15/2022

Bruce Lee's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  2019.  #SEstreelife, #steveemigphotos

The Damn Team, a street performing dance team.  Ending their show at Hollywood and Highland area, with a flip over five crowd members.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

Mel's Drive-in on Highland, just south of Hollywood Boulevard, in Hollywood.  2020.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

Graffiti in Hollywood, 2020.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

Those Turtles, TMNT, graffiti in Hollywood, 2020.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

Hollywood Boulevard is a weird scene.  Full service panhandler trying to make a dollar, 2019.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

Affordable housing...  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos, #steveemigmemes

 

#SEstreetlife photos- On the bus- 7/14/2022

Above: Homeless woman and dog on a night bus, The Valley, 2022.  Below: Guy with custom headress and staff, The Valley, 2022.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

Social distancing?  Not on the morning bus heading west.  This is probably how I caught Covid in January of 2022.  Masked selfie on crowded bus, 2021 The Valley, 2021. 

43 in the Old School BMX world is kind of like 420 in the weed/marijuana/cannabis culture.  It's kind of our lucky number, and there's a weird story that almost no one knows behind it.  Bus #1743.  The Valley, 2022.  

Waiting for a bus where another homeless guy is passed out cold.  Selfie in The Valley, 2021.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

 

#SEstreetlife photos- Beauty on the streets

 

As we all know, there's a lot of ugliness on the streets of any city.  But that's not all there is.  There's beauty out there as well.  We see what we look at.  As humans we get into habits of avoidance, we look past the things that don't seem to matter to us, or the unfamiliar, and focus on the same things, over and over.  Part of my job as a writer, artist, and photographer, like every creative person, is to take time see the things most other people miss, and point those things out.  These are a few of the beautiful photos I've taken while homeless, over the last four years.  Above, spring buds of a tree, backlit by the sun, and juxtaposed against a shaded hillside.  On the side of a shopping center, Studio City, CA, 2021.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos

Stop and smell the cow pies.  Seriously, stop and smell the piles of cow shit, horse shit, and dog shit you wander by in daily life.  Why?  Because then you'll appreciate the roses.  No one will have to remind you to stop and smell them.  Or take a photo.  Backlit white rose at the Universal City bus station in Studio City, CA, Spring 2021.  

In the Spring of 2019, while homeless in Richmond, Virginia, I was walking to a bus stop in the Shockhoe Bottom district, an area downtown, on the banks of the mighty James River.  This area has huge concrete walls to keep out major floods, and the highways and railroads there are built high off the ground.  This gives the area below a really industrial, old fashioned, almost steampunk feel to it.  As I walked to the Pulse bus stop there, with the roads and train tracks above, I saw this small tree budding.  The pink buds, backlit by the sun at dawn, with this crazy urban landscape around it, stopped me in my tracks.  I decided to take a photo, and pulled my little iPhone 5 out.  After snapping 3 or 4 pics, I looked around, and just began wandering around, shooting photos of anything that looked cool in that area.  I wound up doing that for over an hour, as the sun rose up form the eastern horizon.  I got 20 or 30 cool photos out of that morning's wandering.  This beautiful image led to many others, which I'll publish on this blog, in time.   

This photo was also shot in the Spring of 2019 in Richmond.  While living under a huge bridge, on the edge of the James River, I walked up by the Manchester Bridge every morning, and caught a bus to a McDonald's most every morning.  There's a Mickey D's in that area, but it's swamped with other bums, which meant getting to use the bathroom was always a dice roll.  So I took a bus to the sketchy Midlothian District, a few miles away.  After breakfast there, and some morning blogging or drawing, I'd go back across the street, and up a bit, to a bus stop by a big empty lot.  Across the street from the lot, was a strip club, nearby were two or three of the sketchiest motels around, all with hot and cold running crackheads.  It's not a part of town most people want to spend much time in.  Standing at the bus stop, in one of shadiest parts of the city, I saw another small tree budding.  I snapped four photos of these buds, at different focus points, from wide to tight.  Beauty in one of the ugliest parts of the city.  It's there, somewhere.  Sometimes you have to go looking for it, sometimes you just turn your head, and there it is.  

This one is a shot of dusk on Ventura Boulevard, in Studio City, looking west from the Laurel Canyon road area.  The palm trees stretch to the sky, moments after the sun dropped behind the Santa Monica mountains.  #SEstreetlife, #steveemigphotos.