10, 15, and 20 years ago there were annual art fairs in neighborhoods across Southern California. Fine artists and accomplished craftspeople–potters, glass artists, painters, sculptors–would bring out their wares for a public that was eager to see and to buy.
Gradually, over the last five or six years, the art fair has vanished. Other street fairs have sprung up, but the focus now is on food and music. A few of the old ones, like the Riviera Village Fair in Redondo Beach, continue, but most of the things for sale these days at that fair are made in China. Even the famous monthly Rose Bowl Flea Market is now overrun with Chinese manufactured stuff.
I think the combination of two factors lead to the downfall of the art fair here in L.A. One: many young people are not buying homes and if you don’t have a new home, you don’t need new paintings on the walls. Two: the influx of Chinese manufactured “art” turns off many potential buyers so they no longer attend the fairs. So if attendance is low and very few buy, the artists do not participate and the fair declines.
One company that produces these fairs is still hanging on and I attended the fair it produces in Toluca Lake on Saturday. Toluca Lake, by the way, is a neighborhood in the City of Los Angeles, orginally developed by comedian/actor Bob Hope. Here are a few things I saw.
