It’s the biggest show of the summer, literally. And maybe figuratively, too; although we won’t know about that until this Saturday, when “South Bay Contemporary” opens – with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. – at PS Zask Gallery in Rolling Hills Estates.
The show was juried by Peggy Zask and her husband, Ben. They’ve both been players in the local arts scene for 20 years or so and we’ll get to that in a few minutes with exciting, page-turning details about life-after-retirement and their push for a loose confederation of artists and galleries in this gifted enclave of Greater Los Angeles.
At the moment, the three of us are high above the cliff tops of Portuguese Bend.
They came in droves
“South Bay Contemporary” features over 90 artists, and we may at first wonder if anybody was even turned away.
Peggy Zask replies that the average entry included three works, and that maybe 30 percent of the artists submitted between four and nine pieces. The open call went out to people on the mailing list, and in turn these artists notified their friends and colleagues. There were responses from Arizona and Santa Fe, New Mexico, but largely from L.A. and of course the South Bay. Peggy went through the submissions, Ben went through the submissions, and then the two of them went through the work together. And, yes, some people didn’t make the cut.
Initially, Ben was more critical, but Peggy opted for leniency.
“I want this to be an inclusive show,” she told her husband. “This is a summer show; it’s about celebrating, it’s about including – and so this was my attitude about it. Because we say no so many times, this was the time to say yes.” She pauses. “Maybe it wouldn’t be somebody’s work that we really want to show again, but it was good enough. We could say, if we put it in a big grouping it’s gonna look strong.”
Therefore, a large number of artists are represented by one piece that Peggy and Ben at times wrangled over. Even so, the selection process wasn’t acrimonious.
“Ben is kind of the silent partner in this,” Peggy says, “but Ben has a huge influence on a lot of my decision-making.” When she married him – and perhaps in large part this is why she married him – Ben had a frame shop and a gallery “and I loved his taste in art. So I always go to him when I need help (in evaluating work) rather than getting lost in all these different aesthetics and emotions and concepts. It’s just like, is it good art? And Ben’s pretty good at just nailing it. So I can rely on that.”
If you have in excess of 90 artists, and some are exhibiting two or three pieces, how many works are there total?
“I didn’t count them,” Peggy says. “But we got them hung and it doesn’t look crazy. We’ve got a lot of abstracts; they didn’t match with anything so we got them all together and it really makes a great room. You go in there, it’s like wow! At first we thought, what are we going to do with all this? Nothing hangs together. But when you put it all together it’s good. It’s a good show.”
“I think a lot of the artists are going to look forward to this show,” Ben says, “and I’d like them to have a good experience where they could critique their work in relationship to the other works, and make it like a fun learning experience.”
Punching the clock no more
Ben Zask retired from his job not so long ago as a science teacher at Dana Middle School in San Pedro, and after some 20 years of teaching – notably ceramics at Mira Costa High School – Peggy did the same when classes wrapped up a few weeks back. So what are they going to do to fill in the time?
“I feel that I like to do my art every single day,” says Ben; “sometimes for an hour, sometimes for six hours, fix up the yard or the house, help Peggy with the gallery. I keep busy.”
“Now I have time for my art,” Peggy says. “I also have time to focus on the gallery, trying to make it earn its keep and help our living. We’re getting half of our income that we were getting so we kind of have to hustle now.”
Peggy confirms that the yard – and the many outdoor studios that dot their property – needs attending to. Of course it’s possible, with too much free or unstructured time, that one can be less focused than one was when having had to adhere to a tight schedule.
As Ben sees this, not having other commitments (like a 9 to 5 job) means that one can devote one’s best and most productive hours to one’s creative endeavors.
“Now I have the luxury of doing what I like doing when I want to do it,” he says, “rather than, oh, I’ve got some free time, let me do this. So it’s quality time. Maybe the time could be as much or even less (as it was before), but the quality is there because you don’t have to wait until you have the chance. You go into your studio when you feel like it and that’s a big difference.”
“And if you feel like trimming plants,” adds Peggy, “you do it, when you feel like it. Then you have this feeling of accomplishment and you can go to your art with a clear mind.”
But don’t picture her lying back in the hammock now that she’s through teaching. There’s a gallery to run (although she does have help), studio visits to schedule, and more ambitious artwork of her own to undertake:
“I’ve been working miniature,” she says, “doing all of my experimentation on a small scale, and now that I have more time I’m going to start going bigger.”
Going down in history
There’s been some misunderstanding that Zask Gallery is on the verge of changing its name to South Bay Contemporary, but that isn’t true. However, this could happen farther along if Peggy’s plans for a tighter-knit art community take off. That plan includes becoming and providing “a relevant and active resource for community arts education.” It would also reach beyond the confines of the South Bay and create bridges between art and other fields, from the humanities to the sciences.
For Peggy, the concept isn’t new. It’s just that now she can return to it, better equipped.
“The South Bay Contemporary existed as a non-profit organization back in the ‘90s,” she says, “and it was a socio-politically-based museum.”
At that time, Peggy ran a gallery called Minus Zero, and it was over in the shopping center at the corner of Calle Mayor and Pacific Coast Hwy in Torrance. After about a year she met and teamed up with Joanne Gaines.
“I told her I wanted to go non-profit, so we went non-profit and she helped with that. I was always the curator [while] she did a lot of the business part of it.” When motherhood intervened, Peggy signed over the gallery to Gaines and with Christine Leigh the gallery ran for another three years. However, at about the same time the gallery changed its name to the South Bay Museum of Art and moved to Hillside Village in the Walteria neighborhood of Torrance. That was probably in 1994.
After a hiatus of many years, Peggy was lured back into the gallery scene when Paris Zarrabian, owner of the Golden Cove shopping center at the foot of Hawthorne and Palos Verdes Drive West, offered her a space under the Admiral Risty restaurant. A couple years later she moved up and over a few hundred feet to a larger unit, both galleries being largely subsidized through Zarrabian’s good graces, a person with whom she’d been friends for a very long time.
Deserve your dream
Zask Gallery is going into its third year at its present location, which is fairly spacious, but the overhead cost is more of a factor now and so Peggy has to be business savvy and art savvy at the same time. However, going back to reviving her concept of the South Bay Contemporary, Peggy says she’s learned a lot over the past couple of decades.
“And she’s doing it on her own,” Ben says. “There’s only one chef in the kitchen now.”
“I’m doing it on my own but I’ve met (between) running the first gallery and this gallery a lot of highly-educated artists that I respect,” Peggy says. “Whereas, when I went into it the first time, I didn’t know anybody. I was just discovering it all for the first time. So I have a lot of people I can call on to give me advice, plus I’m older. All of my friends that are working with me, they’re very experienced also. We’re not just like kids anymore. We’re all coming into it with the knowledge of what we’re doing and how to do it right.”
Peggy would like to see more of a connection or interrelationship between local artists and the venues that display their work because, she says, “If there can be a link, that makes everyone stronger.
“I named the title of the open-call, juried show ‘South Bay Contemporary’ because I was just so excited about it I just wanted to put it out there, and I figured it’s going to pull anybody in that’s interested in being involved.”
And it has. “It’s a really interesting collection of artwork and people that have come forward,” Peggy says, and it’s a palpable enthusiasm, a foundation for a future Foundation. With a little momentum, even greater things are possible.
South Bay Contemporary, “an exhibition of art by contemporary artists without boundary or theme,” was juried by Ben and Peggy Zask, and it opens Saturday with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. at Zask Gallery, 550 Deep Valley Drive, #151, in the Promenade on the Peninsula, Rolling Hills Estates. Through August 25. Call (310) 429-0973 or go to pszaskgallery.com.
