“Are you tired of doing the same thing day after day? Going to the mall, or maybe seeing a movie. Here’s a suggestion: take a trip down to Bergamot Station. A gentle sea breeze, and art as far as the eye can see—what more could you ask for?
Bergamot is an extraordinary place where you can get a little culture and have a good time too. It used to be a trolley station, but now it’s a series of art galleries with a little cafe in the middle, and two small theaters.
There’s so much to see that you can’t possibly do it all in one day, but let’s try. First, what mood are you in? A rebellious mood might take you to the work of Llyn Foulkes in the Patricia Faure Gallery. In one painting I saw, there was a scene of a chalkboard with
a huge flag stuck on it. A hole was burned in the flag, and Mickey Mouse was popping out of the hole. It was like this American icon was burning a hole through society and economics and money and power. In another painting, he had this barren wasteland with McDonald’s arches in the middle of a pile of trash. Weird, huh?
Outside the gallery was a bronze sculpture of a bobcat, crouching in the courtyard. When I first saw it, I thought it was real.
I liked the Peter Fetterman Gallery of Photographic Works of Art. In this gallery, you might enjoy seeing fragments of time captured on a piece of paper which focuses on a series of people, places, and things; by great photographers such as Ruth Bernhard, Ansel Adams, Willy Ronis, and many more.
There was one photo I loved of mine laborers covered in mud carrying loads of dirt out of the mine, photographed by Sebastiao Salgado, who won a Pulitzer Prize. It inspired the Smashing Pumpkins video for “Bullet With Butterfly Wings.”
My other favorite gallery was the Robert Berman Gallery. This artist called Bill Barminsky did a painting of a Coke bottle with the word “crap” instead of Coke. In the background of the painting he layered other letters with plaster over it to create secret messages. The message behind the Coke bottle is “psychological addict.” He also puts little extra images on the backs of the paintings. The artist was right there and I got to talk to him. He said his paintings are about how advertisements can rip you off.
The same gallery had a painting of people emerging out of the purple shadows. It was cool.
But that’s not all. I saw computer-generated art, sculptures, paintings, posters from the Vietnam War, and all kinds of other things. One of the galleries had all kinds of wires suspended on strings with magnets. One of the galleries had a computer that makes shapes and colors in response to the sounds you make on the microphone. I learned that pretty much anything can be called art.
These galleries are not like a museum in that all the artwork is for sale. Some of the prices are extremely high—$50,000 for a painting? The photographs were the most reasonably priced, but even they were more than I can afford. The prices seem out of this world to me, but I guess it is an investment. You can buy art instead of keeping your money in the bank.
Go. It’s fun, it’s nice, and the cafe food is pretty good—I had a ham and cheese sandwich. But remember they don’t get a lot of teens there, and the art is very valuable, so you have to be respectful and careful in the galleries.
Directions: To get to Bergamot Station, all you do is take the Santa Monica Freeway (10), get off at on Cloverfield, then drive north one block to Michigan Ave. Turn east and continue to the end of the street. Proceed through the gate of the chain-link fence and grab a parking space.”
