New Executive Director of Downtown Art Walk Qathryn Brehm

By Paul Parcellin

Painter and digital artist Qathryn Brehm, who served as Downtown Art Walk director of operations and then interim executive director, is still getting used to her new title as executive director of that group, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2014.

“I’ve been shy about saying it because it’s quite an undertaking,” says the Appleton, Wis., native, who has lived in L.A. her entire adult life, but considers herself a native of the city. Her title upgrade to executive director was announced the first week of December.

Estimates vary, but as many as 20,000 people attend Downtown Art Walk’s monthly events, when galleries and a few studios open their doors to the public, and so do downtown restaurants and bars that populate the urban landscape. Art Walk is a free, self-guided walking tour between 4th and 7th streets, and Spring and Main streets, generally between 12 and 10 p.m. – some galleries open at noon – on the second Thursday of each month.

As she contemplates her future as executive director, Brehm took time to reminisce about Downtown Art Walk’s beginnings, how far it has come since it began in 2004, and areas where she’d like to place more emphasis.

Brehm says she plans on “encouraging and expanding Art Walk’s relationship with Los Angeles artists, and continuing to develop relationships with the many existing cultural venues downtown.”

The new executive director says that an ongoing goal will be helping galleries to create more content and fostering cultural connections.

The kind of cultural synchronicity Art Walk can help generate, she says.

In December, Downtown Art Walk visitors get to experience the Art Lounge and Art Mart, the two main Art Walk venues that serve as hubs for distributing Art Walk information and viewing artwork and special presentations.

As for special events in December, the Krampus Los Angeles Troupe is coming to Art Walk. The Los Angeles troupe takes its cues from the Krampuses of legend from Germany and Austria. Both St. Nicholas and the Krampuses have their roots in the Alpine region, but the Krampuses are, you might say, the anti-St. Nicholases.

“If you’ve been a bad little boy or girl, the Krampuses will scare the heck out of you,” Brehm says. “It’s kind of tongue in cheek.”

In Germany there are Krampus parades. The Los Angeles contingent is “sort of a rock ’n’ roll version of the Krampuses.” They will perform in the Art Lounge. Then they’re going to run up and down the street and scare people.

Reflecting on the early days of Downtown Art Walk, Brehm notes that the idea for the monthly arts event took shape sometime after artists began moving downtown and a couple of galleries located there. “Most of the area was pretty desolate then,” says Brehm. “There were a lot of boarded up windows and metal gates.”

As a center for artists, downtown has had its ebbs and flows since the middle 1970s. A lot of the buildings that have been developed as lofts were vacant because the financial district left the downtown area back in the 1950s and ’60s. Artists began to occupy those “vacant, beautiful spaces.” Artists started developing the lofts, and in 1981 the city put an Artist in Residence Ordinance in place. Commercial buildings could then be developed as live-in workspaces. There were several galleries downtown in the 1980s.

As for her own artwork, Brehm is in the process of creating a self-published book called, “When Good Toys Are Bad.” It’s a book of photographs she made of dioramas she built. She has worked a lot with toys over the years.

“When you take toys out of the context of play they can become something else. They can become political, satirical or mean.” Brehm began as a painter, but has been working digitally over the last several years. “I’m trying to go back to painting, but it’s not that easy to go backwards,” she says.