A South LA art gallery encourages Black creatives to “shoot for the stars”
UCLA architecture alums design a gathering space for the Black community
On a recent Sunday afternoon, I met Kevin Sherrod at Gallery 90220, a new art gallery housed in an industrial stretch of Historic South-Central Los Angeles. Sherrod and a team of designers hope the space will become a hub of community and inspiration, to be led by and primarily serve an audience of color.
“What I'm really interested in is changing the way we understand the memory of Black and Brown people and displaying that architecturally. That's really what this gallery is about," said Kevin Sherrod, who works at the global architecture, design, and planning firm Gensler and has lectured for UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design’s Summer Programs in past years.
Sherrod received his master's in architecture degree from UCLA in 2017. Gensler hosted the project as a community impact project, and two of Sherrod’s colleagues and fellow UCLA architecture alums, Chris Doerr and Wayne Thomas, worked on the design of the gallery. Sherrod and Thomas are both Black, something Sherrod says is key to this space.
"We were really intentional about making sure that the Black and Brown body was present in every facet of this overall project," Sherrod said.
Gallery designer Kevin Sherrod and Compton Art Walks founder and executive director David Colbert, Jr. inside Gallery 90220.
The design team also wanted the gallery to evoke the memory of the workers who once worked in this former tile manufacturing facility. Exposed wood beams and black-painted steel girders recall the building’s industrial past. White wall panels reach about three-quarters of the way to the ceiling, providing expansive surfaces for mounting art while exposing the original brick walls behind them. Large translucent windows on three walls filter plenty of sunlight into the space.
"We didn't take away the monumentalized things that hold the memory, like the beams and columns,” Sherrod said. “We really wanted to celebrate the memory and really have the art juxtaposed, as if it was standing on the shoulders of the family members that came before... It's really about the projection of a chronology of intergenerational thought.”
The "Flavor” of Compton
Gallery 90220 takes its name from the zip code that includes much of Compton, a historic hub of Black life in Los Angeles. The gallery's founder, David Colbert, Jr., is the executive director and founder of Compton Art Walk, Inc. Colbert was born and raised in Compton, graduated from Compton Dominguez High School, and studied sociology at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
“I see the gallery as a beacon for Compton creatives, but it's a space for everyone,” Colbert said. “It's actually going to be very unique, because Compton provides its own flavor.”
While the gallery is modestly sized, at 725 square feet, the design team created more space to display art by adding a floating wall that also doubles as a storage unit with sliding wire racks for mounting upright paintings. An interior room, created through sliding pocket doors, serves as an office, podcast recording studio, VIP room, and a storage space for merchandise that bears the Gallery 90220 logo, a stylized red dot.
Visitors to the restroom of Gallery 90220 will find this cosmic vision.
A restroom tucked away in the back of the gallery has walls painted to look like an outer-space scene, with vibrantly-colored planets and galaxies. The cosmic mural is meant to inspire creativity, Sherrod said.
"If you shoot for the stars, you can potentially land on the moon, but 100 percent of shots that aren't taken, don't get made. So that's really what this is about,” he said.
Kevin Sherrod’s Unique Path
Sherrod is a Philadelphia native, and attended the Charter High School for Architecture + Design, which was formed by the American Institute of Architects’ Philadelphia chapter. Once arriving in Los Angeles, he took classes at community colleges to save money and raise his GPA. He transferred to the Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc.
At one point, Sherrod considered dropping out of SCI-Arc due to a lack of funds. Architect Thom Mayne stepped in, offering Sherrod an internship and job at his studio Morphosis Architects. Sherrod went on to graduate from SCI-Arc and accept a fellowship to continue his studies with Mayne at UCLA.
Gianni Lee's paintings line the walls of Gallery 90220.
Sherrod credits UCLA with giving him the tools to have reached this point in his career.
"I think what UCLA did was, it validated that we belonged,” Sherrod said. “UCLA offers a specific level of liberation. It allows you to know and be more than what you think you are when you walk through the door... it really offers a platform for you to transcend the box or the framework that you typically work in.”
Black Art on View
Gallery 90220 opened to the public in late March and can be visited by appointment. Its inaugural show is of paintings by Gianni Lee, a Black visual artist, music producer, DJ, and fashion designer based in Philadelphia but with ties to Los Angeles. Lee founded streetwear label Babylon Cartel and has worked with leading brands such as Hennessy VSOP, Nike, and Kenneth Cole.
Lee’s paintings on stretched canvas and on large pieces of plywood include Black or fantastically-colored figures set amidst abstract backdrops, and often evoke political and social themes such as structural racism, police misconduct, and violence against Black bodies.
Gianni Lee's paintings incorporate the theme of violence against Black bodies.
Lee also invokes themes of science fiction and techno-dystopia. One painting shows Black people’s bodies connected to machines through tubes and wires, perhaps a commentary on Black cultural appropriation and extraction.
"We really thought that Gianni would be great as an inaugural display of what this space can and will be, telling our stories through the lens of a Black or Brown person,” Sherrod said.
"We're moving into a new age of access and appreciation for Black art,” Colbert said. “I'm just excited that the platform is growing for artists that really deserve it nationally, as well as out here in LA."
A Beehive Grows in South LA
Gallery 90220 is part of a burgeoning campus of Black-owned and operated businesses in this area just south of Downtown LA. It's located within the historic 200-acre Goodyear Tire Tract, the largest industrial site in the city and the former manufacturing base of Goodyear tires. The area is attracting reinvestment after decades of illegal dumping, business vacancies, and crime.
The campus just east of the gallery is being reincarnated as The Beehive, the nation’s first-ever business campus for opportunity-zone operating businesses.
The inner courtyard of The Beehive, including fountains, native plantings, grassy areas and benches.
SoLa Impact, a family of real-estate funds that is best known for revamping multi-family affordable housing, will operate The Beehive. The organization aims to “pollinate” the economic sector through a mix of coworking spaces for entrepreneurs, outdoor dining options, and a brewery. The campus’s six red-brick warehouses and adjoining courtyards are being repurposed into creative office spaces, a gym, daycare service, a dog park and a food truck court. Gallery 90220 will feed into that energy with its own exhibitions and live events.
Sherrod says he hopes that Gallery 90220, like the area surrounding it, will become a creative hub for artists and dreamers.
"We wanted to create an architecture that got out of the way. We wanted to create a blank canvas, so when artists come in here, they dream the way we dream," he said.
Story by Avishay Artsy
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