'It was a good run': Here's how to spend one last Friday at this Grand Avenue art gallery
A $400 rental fee for a studio seemed impossible for artist Bill Dambrova to pass up.
So he didn’t. In 2000, the Lodge became his new space. What started out as his studio — a run down empty space on the corner of Grand Avenue and McKinley Street — soon became one of Grand Avenue’s beloved art collectives: The Lodge Art Studio.
But after 21 years of gallery showings in downtown Phoenix, the Studio will close at the end of December due to the building owner’s decision to repurpose the building, local artist Joe Brklacich said.
The studio’s last show will be Friday, Dec. 17, from 6-10 p.m. Brklacich, Abbey Messmer, Rafael Navarro, Lisa Jacobs, Fausto Fernandez, Bill Dambrova, Toni Gentilli, Tom Cooper, Tato Caraveo and Rebecca Green will display their work in the space for the last time.
The Farewell show is the end of an era, Brklacich said — the end of a good one.
“I hope that it’s a sad and happy love fest,” Brklacich said. “There’s going to be a lot of people who show up on Friday because its meant so much to people over the last 14 years. I want to see everybody enjoy the space the way we have for one last time. I can truly say this building has changed my life. It’s been a good run.”
The building owners aren't renewing the lease
The artists at the Lodge have always operated on a month-to-month lease. But when Brklacich — who has held the lease with Messmer —announced his move from Phoenix, the landlords chose to terminate the lease after December. The four artists working out of the space — Navarro, Jacobs, Messmer and Brklacich at the time — had 30 days to move out.
"When I let them know that I would be leaving that she (Messmer) wanted to keep the lease, they took the opportunity to terminate the lease," Brklacich said. "We lost the lease."
In addition, the four artists had not used the space since its last First Friday show in June, due to a monsoon ripping an electrical box off the building. That and other damage left the place unusable for the last five months. The owners struggled to fix the studio as subcontractors were hard to find due to the pandemic, Brklacich said.
"They'd been dragging their feet on fixing the place up," Brklacich said. "You know, things have changed and I can see where they feel like they can do something else with the space, but it's sad because we really created a community space here and they don't know that. To them, it's just a building."
The building once held a Shriner's lodge
Dambrova had always lived in the Phoenix suburbs, and the downtown art scene wasn't in the picture for him. But while working as an exhibition designer at the Heard Museum, he discovered the Grand Avenue scene. And in 2000, he found the Lodge.
The building that had once been a Shriner’s lodge, and also a home for artists. The price to rent the trash filled space with worn-out linoleum tile and broken windows was only $400. Dambrova agreed to that price and soon after, he replaced the faded cardboard lodge sign with a wooden, white sign which boldly printed the name of their home, "Lodge."
Then came Fausto Fernandez, a multimedia artist who specializes in public pieces. He had worked alongside Dambrova at the Heard Museum and joined in on the $400 rental situation.
“We started creating our own scene,” Dambrova said. “We weren't LA cool, we weren't New York edge. We were in this weird neutral place where anything was possible."
The two soon became not only studio mates but roommates — Fernando upstairs, Dambrova on the main floor. The days were for creating, the evenings for late night conversations on the tiled floor.
After two years of living together, Dambrova moved to Los Angeles. He didn't return until 2014 when he opened up his own space on Grand Avenue right next to the Lodge, Goat Heart Studios.
“I gave the homeless guy outside a box of alcohol on my way out, and said, ‘take care of Fausto,” Dambrova said, laughing.
Once again, the studio had room for another. After seeing Fernandez's Craigslist ad looking for an artist to share the space, Brklacich joined him in 2007. A pencil sketch artist, his only place for his artwork had been the walls of his house. No one had seen his work before. And after a relationship fell apart, the studio became his fresh start for a new life.
“When Fausto took me in as a studio partner, I said, 'one of the things I want to do is show on First Fridays.’ and he said, ‘that’s cool, I don’t know if I’m going to do it'but you go ahead.' So I did,” Brklacich said.
‘We found our freedom to play’
The day Brklacich showed on First Friday transformed the studio space into a gallery for the first time. After Brklacich displayed his work in 2007 for December's First Friday, Fernandez began adding his work for the next First Friday.
Slowly, the art studio space changed. No longer was the Lodge just a private work space. More people came inside. The two invited guest artists to show in the space on some Fridays, though the studio never took commission. It remained a space for the artists to show their work and keep their profits, Fernandez said.
"It was real," Brklacich added. "There’s no safety of paying two grand a month for some fancy space. The hot water doesn’t work. The cold water kind of works but you’re okay because you’ve got cheap rent. And it was the beginning of the social gallery atmosphere that had been created over years."
As the years went on, some artists came and left, like Green and Gentilli. Others came and stayed, like Lisa Jacobs in 2015.
Messmer — programming director of Scottsdale Center of Performing Arts and a local artist who specializes in water imagery — was another. She came to the Lodge in 2010. Sculptor and mixed media artist Rafael Navarro arrived in 2013.
Messmer, Jacobs, Navarro, Dambrova, Fernandez and Brklacich stayed close as the years went by. Though Dambrova moved studios, he rented a new one right across the street. And though Fernando moved to another gallery in SunnySlope, he’d still hang an occasional piece at the Lodge, the place that gave him the opportunity to become a full time artist with his own studio.
“There was a free and happy spirit,” Brklacich said. “We were just enjoying doing what we were doing. It didn’t matter if you sold a piece of art. You got to show it to people, you got to hang out. You got to do your own thing in kind of a funky place. We found our freedom to play.”
The Lodge was a safe, open space
The five artists sat in the space for one of the last times on Wednesday, Dec. 15. It was time to hang up their work in the gallery. But with beers in hand and art scattered around the room, the long night also meant reminiscing.
They remembered walking out of the studio to pet the neighborhood goat or greet the kids who walked through the neighborhood. They remembered jumping in front of sunsets for blurry, joyful photos.
“This place has changed us all,” Fernandez said.
It was in the Lodge — this safe, open space — that they learned what it meant to invite guests and artists to savor art in community, Brklacich explained. Often guests go to galleries for wine and cheese. At the Lodge, it was different.
“People would show up with wine and beer and crackers,” Brklacich said. “Our regular public would show up with stuff to add to the party. They knew the fridge is in the back so they’d stick the beers back there or pop open a bag of chips, or open some wine. They weren’t here just to take. They showed up ready to be a part of it.”
It was also in this space where Dambrova and Fernandez mourned broken relationships and became brothers. It was the space where they celebrated too. On Brklacich’s 50th birthday, they danced and roller skated the night away under a homemade soccer ball turned disco ball. The party lasted four days.
It was here that Navarro and Messmer decided they’d move down the street to a new space to carry on the Lodge energy they grew to love. And it was at this corner of Grand Avenue that Brklacich decided to take what he's learned to Tulsa. That's where he's moving to create next.
Their time at Lodge is up but not their time with each other, they said. They will do art together one day again together, just in a different place.
"We've transcended the Lodge," Fernandez said, smiling.
The Lodge Farewell exhibition
Where: The Lodge Art Studio, 1231 NW Grand Ave, Phoenix.
When: 6-10 p.m., Friday, Dec. 17.
Details: facebook.com/Thelodgeartstudio, instagram.com/the_lodge_art_studio/.
Reach the reporter at sofia.krusmark@gannett.com. Follow her on Instagram @sofia.krusmark
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Downtown Phoenix's Lodge Art Studio on Grand Avenue is closing
