Glendale 6th Annual
Open Studio Tour
A Group Exhibition | Chess Park, Glendale | July 24, 2010
Fifteen artists. Fifty works. One afternoon. La Mancha Gallery joins a city-wide tradition of art, access, and community at the Glendale Open Studio Tour.
Part of Something Larger
The Glendale Open Studio Tour is not an exhibition that begins with a gallery decision. It begins with a city — with the accumulated commitment of artists, arts organizations, municipal departments, and community members who have decided, year after year, that art belongs in public life. By its sixth iteration in July 2010, it had become exactly what its name suggests: a tradition worth joining.
La Mancha Gallery joined that tradition with genuine conviction. Curated by Omar Holguin, Director and Owner of La Mancha Fine Arts, the exhibition at Chess Park brought together fifteen artists whose practices span the breadth of what contemporary art in the Los Angeles region looks like at its most committed. Fifty works under consignment. A free, open-access afternoon. A community audience that came not as gallery-goers but as neighbors — exactly the kind of audience that La Mancha Gallery has always wanted to reach.
An open studio tour is not simply an exhibition in an alternative venue. It is an invitation — a statement by the artists and organizations that participate that their work belongs to the community that surrounds them. La Mancha Gallery has always understood the gallery wall as permeable. Chess Park, on a July Saturday in 2010, was the demonstration of that understanding in its most direct and most public form.
"An open studio tour is an invitation — a statement that the work belongs to the community that surrounds it. That is exactly the kind of exhibition La Mancha Gallery exists to make."
— Omar Holguin, Curator & Director, La Mancha Fine ArtsThe Exhibition at a Glance
| Exhibition | Glendale 6th Annual Open Studio Tour A Group Exhibition — La Mancha Gallery |
| Date | Saturday, July 24, 2010 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM |
| Venue | Chess Park 227 N. Brand Boulevard, Glendale, CA 91202 |
| Format | Free, self-guided public tour Accessible by foot or free Beeline Bus along the tour route |
| Presented By | La Mancha Gallery Curator — Omar Holguin, Director & Owner |
| Artists | Andrea Vargas, Baron Norris, Benjamin Murguia, David Taveras, D. Ashe, Eddie Jelinet, Ivan Holguin, Marcus Collins, María Teresa Chávez Montes, Marina K. Rehrmann, Minas Halaj, Natalie Franco, Samvel Hallaj, Silvio Sangiorgi, Xavier Yarto |
| Works | 50 works under consignment — various media |
| Brand Exhibit | July 17 – August 13, 2010 Brand Library Art Galleries · 1601 West Mountain Street, Glendale One work per artist — free to the public during library hours |
| Sponsors | City of Glendale Community Services & Parks Department Arts & Culture Commission · Brand Library · Associates of Brand Library & Art Center |
| Admission | Free — everyone is welcome |
What the Tour Offered
A City-Wide Tradition
The sixth annual iteration of the Glendale Open Studio Tour — a free, self-guided public event that opens the studios and creative minds of Glendale's artists to the community, year after year, as a living expression of civic cultural commitment.
Fifteen Artists, Fifty Works
La Mancha Gallery presented fifteen artists and fifty works under consignment at Chess Park — a roster drawn from the gallery's core practice and assembled to reflect the breadth and depth of contemporary art in the Los Angeles region.
Free & Open to All
No admission. No reservation. The tour was entirely free to the public — accessible by foot or free Beeline Bus along the tour route, ensuring that every resident of Glendale had the opportunity to engage with the artists and works on view.
Chess Park, Brand Boulevard
La Mancha Gallery's exhibition was presented at Chess Park, 227 North Brand Boulevard — a public space on Glendale's central commercial corridor, placing the work directly in the path of the city's daily life.
Brand Library Extension
From July 17 through August 13, all participating artists showcased one work at the Brand Library Art Galleries — extending the tour's reach into the library's daily programming and ensuring the conversation continued for weeks after the afternoon ended.
City & Community Partners
Sponsored by the City of Glendale's Community Services & Parks Department, the Arts & Culture Commission, Brand Library, and the Associates of Brand Library & Art Center — institutions whose sustained support made the sixth annual tour possible.
The Roster
Fifteen artists from La Mancha Gallery's core roster — presented at Chess Park in Glendale as part of the city-wide Open Studio Tour, with fifty works under consignment across various media.
Andrea Vargas
Baron Norris
Benjamin Murguia
David Taveras
D. Ashe
Eddie Jelinet
Ivan Holguin
Marcus Collins
María Teresa Chávez Montes
Marina K. Rehrmann
Minas Halaj
Natalie Franco
Samvel Hallaj
Silvio Sangiorgi
Xavier Yarto
How the Exhibition Was Built
La Mancha Gallery applied its iterative, artist-centered curatorial methodology to the Glendale Open Studio Tour — building the exhibition around the community character of the event and the deliberate assembly of fifteen artists whose work was in genuine dialogue with the public audience the tour invited.
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Phase 01
Community Commitment & Venue Selection
La Mancha Gallery joined the sixth annual Glendale Open Studio Tour as a participant — a deliberate choice to embed the gallery's practice within a city-wide tradition of public art access. Chess Park, 227 North Brand Boulevard, selected as the exhibition venue for its visibility on Glendale's central corridor and its openness as a genuinely public space.
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Phase 02
Artist Selection & Roster Assembly
Fifteen artists selected from La Mancha Gallery's core roster — assembled to represent the breadth of contemporary practice the gallery has cultivated since 2006. Criteria: commitment to craft, engagement with community, and work that could hold its own in an outdoor public space alongside a city full of neighbors encountering it without prior context.
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Phase 03
Installation & Public Presentation
Fifty works installed at Chess Park for a six-hour public exhibition — July 24, 2010, 12 PM to 6 PM. Open access with no admission, no reservation, no institutional mediation. Visitors arrived on foot or by free Beeline Bus, moving through the work at their own pace, on their own terms.
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Phase 04
Brand Library Extension
Each of the fifteen artists contributed one work to the Brand Library Art Galleries exhibition running July 17 through August 13 — extending the gallery's presence in the tour beyond the single afternoon and placing the work in dialogue with the library's ongoing community programming for nearly a month.
Art in Public Life
The Glendale Open Studio Tour stands in the La Mancha Gallery archive as one of the gallery's most direct demonstrations of its alternative venue model — not simply a departure from the traditional gallery context, but a genuine embrace of the principle that significant art belongs in the spaces where community lives. Chess Park, on a July Saturday in 2010, was not a gallery. It was a city. And fifty works, seen by neighbors moving at their own pace on a free afternoon, is an exhibition that no amount of institutional programming can replicate.
La Mancha Gallery's participation in the sixth annual tour was a commitment to the tradition the city of Glendale had built — and a statement about the kind of gallery La Mancha intends to be. Not a space apart from the community, but a space within it. The artists who showed their work at Chess Park that day were not exhibiting to an art world audience. They were exhibiting to the city they live in. That is the exhibition that matters most.
Exhibited
Consignment
Exhibition
Glendale
Not a gallery apart from the community — a gallery within it. Chess Park, July 24, 2010.
La Mancha Gallery
Curator & Founder — Omar Holguin
Glendale 6th Annual Open Studio Tour | A Group Exhibition
July 24, 2010 | Chess Park, 227 N. Brand Boulevard, Glendale, CA 91202
Sponsored by the City of Glendale · Arts & Culture Commission · Brand Library & Art Center