On June 4, 2017, the San Diego Union Tribune (
visit link) reported the following:
"Spanish Village Art Center: The hidden treasure of Balboa Park
Victoria Davis
The Spanish Village Art Center holds great meaning for Daphne Gaylord.
“In the ’60s and ’70s, my aunt was an artist here,” she says. “My dad was a single parent and he used to drop me off in the village before work.”
Gaylord’s aunt taught her to oil paint, and she remembers running around the village with her brothers and climbing the fig tree — “when you could still climb it,” she says.
That, Gaylord says, is where she began to fall in love with art, starting with her fascination with an oil painting that was on display many years ago.
“I was 11 years old then, and the painting was so striking I just thought I wanted to come here and be an artist someday.”
Gaylord, 63, is now president of the Spanish Village Art Center, a collection of studios and galleries hidden between the San Diego Natural History Museum and the San Diego Zoo.
“It’s a lot of work to run everything and can be a little intimidating,” Gaylord says. “There’s over 200 members here, and a lot of them have been working in the village for many, many years.”
Colorful history
Established in the late 1930s by the City Council, this artist’s utopia makes a sacred home for painters, sculptors, photographers, weavers, metalsmiths and more. Behind stucco walls and glazed, tile-painted signs, a colorful world awaits guests as they enter a village filled with creative life.
The buildings and courtyards were built back in 1935 to depict a quaint little Spanish village for the second California Pacific International Exposition. The village’s now-rainbow-colored cobblestone streets, made from ruins of fallen San Diego buildings, were not vibrantly painted until after the artists had made the studios their homes.
“It was all just a front. These weren’t complete buildings,” says Jeff Isles, the husband of a silversmith at the village and its history tour guide. “The buildings that were real only consisted of tourist shops, bars and a theater.”
“Kind of like the towns you see at Universal Studios,” Gaylord adds.
While his tours are informal, Isles can often be seen in a suit and tie, topped off with a classic 1940s fedora, escorting guests around the village, educating them on its history. Balboa Park, Isles says, never meant for the village to be permanent and would have torn it down, but a group of local artists, led by landscape painter and photographer Sherman Trease, came up with the idea of turning the Spanish village into a community for artists. The false fronts were turned into working studios and, in 1937, the Spanish Village Art Center had its grand opening.
“Some of the artists here now are descendants of the original artists who founded the village,” Isles says.
Don D. Knapp, an artist who works in Studio 3 with Gaylord, is the grandson of one of the founding artists. “She was one of the people responsible for doing all the footwork to get this place going,” Gaylord says.
“My granny was actually the treasurer,” Knapp adds.
When World War II broke out, the Spanish Village Art Center found itself thrust into the war effort as it was transformed into barracks and military offices for the U.S. Army. In 1947, it was reclaimed by the original artists after the end of the war, but all the buildings in the village are, in fact, the original structures from the ’30s.
“There was only some cosmetic construction done to the village after the war,” Isles says. “What you see now are the original buildings with a fresh coat of paint. The artists aren’t even allowed to attach anything to the outside walls because they are historic as well as fragile.”
A special place
Despite its long history and the fact that the Spanish Village is the largest community of artists in San Diego, it remains a hidden treasure.
“There’s definitely a struggle with people not knowing it’s here,” Isles says. “It’s tucked away between two main San Diego attractions, but it is its own special place.”
Gaylord says that she and other artists do their best to advertise as much as they can, including driving to San Diego State University and posting fliers around the campus.
“We’re really trying to get some younger people in here,” Gaylord says, adding that they have also embarked on a marketing push at Liberty Station. “Everyone here is older, and we would just like to get some fresh ideas from some younger artists.”
The Spanish Village is owned by the city of San Diego, so its members have criteria that they must follow in order to keep up the lease.
“We have to be open seven days a week, artists have to be here between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. every day,” Gaylord says. “And the studios need to constantly be running. You have to always be working.”
Artists who want to work in the village must first become members, Gaylord says. To become a member, the artist must fill out an application, send in pictures of their work, and include a story board of how they created their art. A jury committee reviews the applications, and outside judges decide which artwork is the best. If an artist’s work makes the cut, so do they. The artist becomes a member.
“We do this twice a year,” Gaylord says, having recently conducted the latest jury session the day before. “It’s really amazing because once you are a member, you can show on the patio whenever you want unless there’s a special event.”
While the village provides artists with a working outlet for their art, it does not actually pay artists to be there. In fact, the artists have to pay to work at the village.
“The money the artists make at the village only comes from people who buy their work,” Gaylord says. “We pay our rent to the city to work here.”
So why do artists choose to work at the village if they are risking spending more to be there than they make in return? According to Gaylord, it’s because money is not the reason to create art.
“We are here to introduce art to the community and do outreach as working studios,” Gaylord says. “We can sell our art here, but that is not our purpose. It’s just a nice side-perk. Our purpose here is to get art out into the community and to visitors.”
This, according to Isles, was the original inspiration behind the founding of the Spanish Village. Artists even provide classes and camps for children and adults who are interested in learning different mediums of art — something that’s not required by the city.
But there is a deeper level to why artists choose to work at the village.
“It is its own special place” to each individual artist, Isles says.
‘This is the fun job’
Cyndy Campbell is a photographer in Studio 7 who works at the village on the weekends. As she flips through her laminated photos of Venice, lions, a Muslim woman and more, Campbell explains with light in her eyes where she took each photo and what each picture means to her. She has a Monday-through-Friday job, but “here at the village,” she says, “this is the fun job.”
During a recent weekend, the Spanish Village buzzed with activity. Parents of children with painted faces enjoyed coffee at Daniel’s Coffee and artists greeted visitors as friends, offering to indulge customers with their art and their dogs with a bowl of fresh water.
In Studio 39, a pottery craftsman carved at a block of red clay as visitors watched, smiled and asked questions about his craft. Next to the artist hung a sign that read, “This Is Where I Belong.” Guests were also moved by the atmosphere at the village. Next to the white wooden gazebo at the center of the village, a young man with dark skin, a dark beard and a bright smile played Spanish tunes on his guitar while a guest sang along with croissant in hand. A Polish family of three entered Studio 4, filled with Chinese water color paintings by Lucy Wang. They gasped and spoke in breathy, awe-struck tones at her three-dimensional silk paintings of cranes dancing in the snow.
“I’ve seen people get tears in their eyes looking at her work,” Isles said of Wang. “At this village, you’re going to see really traditional pieces done well and incredibly unique styles that you won’t see anywhere else.”
As the Polish family walked up to Isles, who was sitting in for Wang, to purchase three paintings, they declared, “Write this in your article: very happy customers from faraway places.”
San Diego Potters’ Guild Spring Sale
When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 10 and 11
Where: Spanish Village Art Center, Balboa Park
Cost: Free
Online: sandiegopottersguild.org or spanishvillageart.com
A version of this article originally ran in The Point, the campus newspaper at Point Loma Nazarene University. It was written as part of a project in a journalism class taught by Michael James Rocha, the Union-Tribune’s arts and entertainment editor."