Glashaus Welds Workshops, Studios, and Gallery for Local Artists

Matt Devine appears every inch the Southern California artist. Only the rapidity of his speech might give him away as the Bostonian he is, if it wasn't masked by his demeanor, which is cool and expansive as the workspace he's inhabited for the last two years.

Barrio Logan, an area of San Diego strongly reminiscent of Brooklyn’s DUMBO and Red Hook, is still well behind the boutiquey curve now associated with NY's post-industrial nabes. Though they are as brightly painted as the rowhouses of Argentina's La Boca, most of the warehouses are still warehouses. It's a neighborhood whose explosion is decelerated like that of a building in an action movie, fascinating to watch in its slow-mo detail.

Matt agrees that the neighborhood was its own draw. In quest of higher ceilings than his Little Italy studio afforded, he went immediately to the Barrio and stumbled upon the 8000 square former glass factory, small by comparison to the produce distributor and the processing plant it's wedged between. Not only is the space close to the suppliers he uses, its low-browed, open-skied landscape suits the aesthetic. "You're not worried about making too much noise," he says. "It's a working class neighborhood." And not "class" in the demographic sense; he's attracted to it as a place for people who want to do some work.

Work is certainly the governing aesthetic at the Glashaus. Though the space is sometimes loaned to private parties, and its studio space in high demand, Matt and his partner Greg Brotherton are stubbornly against becoming developers. There is another 2500 square feet that they could convert into a workspace matching the one Matt uses, but they're in no hurry, even though their landlord status is in the red every month. They simply have too much to do.

The collective houses 12 artists in 10 studios, as well as Device Gallery, an operation that Greg transplanted from La Jolla after Matt invited him to share the Glashaus space. The two of them invested all their own money and time in refurbishing the place, and eyes being on the neighborhood as they were, word spread quickly enough to fill all the studios before build-out was complete. Nearly all the current tenants have been with them since the beginning.

The first thing you encounter as you walk in, besides the random pigeon who is likely to have entered the building with you, is a piece by Matt called "Pick Me Up." It's made of spindly steel rods coated with spray tar, and looks, as it's intended to, like the contents of a Pick Up Sticks canister in mid-spill. It's an unusually playful piece by comparison with the other examples of Matt's work, but shares with the others an ethereal quality improbable to art made with such bulky machines and heavy materials. My favorite is a piece that was made to occupy a 21-foot-long wall at the old Device Gallery. Titled "387 5/8-Inch Steel Rods," it is made of exactly that, welded side by side, forming the soundwave produced by pronouncing the piece's title. Much like the cumulous quality produced in heavy metal, the sculpture makes you laugh at its deft simplicity.

The other centerpiece of the Glashaus' entry is Greg's 1998 sculpture, Mercury 5000. It's a colossal construction of welded steel, straight out of a steampunk comic book, with a head that recalls the mascot of the Cleveland Air Races of 1930. Neither piece has anything objectively in common with the other, nor with the cleverly refurbished bubble trailer that fronts the studio housed by MAKE, an architectural firm that specializes in metalwork. The Glashaus artists work in widely divergent media—a photographer, a seamstress, a jewelry maker, a furniture designer, a screenprinter, and a light sculptor (as in sculpting light), along with a few painters and the metallurgist landlords. Matt says there is no stylistic standard for whom they grant studio space to, as long as each tenant's work is unique from that of the others.

But in touring the space, a certain consistency can't be denied. It's suggested in the steel plates used by the resident photographer to print her haunting tintype portraits, in the matching geometry between the light sculptor's installations and the eyeglasses worn by his seamstress girlfriend, in the design details of the ancient verdigrised bandsaw that Matt uses, in the logo etched on MAKE's studio door.

Even Matt's very first sculpture, a maquette-sized piece that he fondly says is no longer for sale, betrays the prevailing aesthetic. To me, it looks like a kind of nexus among Frank Lloyd Wright, atomic age design, and the spartan landscape of a Zen garden. But maybe that's only because I like it all so well.

Matt has definite, though unassuming, opinions about San Diego's community of artists. Before moving to the neighborhood, he had little acquaintance with it—his career is only six years old, a surprise birth from his long work history in metal fabrication. Occupying the Glashaus proved to be a quick and dirty introduction. When they threw their launch party for the transplanted Device Gallery, Greg and Matt were shocked at the enormous turnout. "It really blew up from there," he recalls, saying that their new home "instantly gave us...is street cred the right word?" Local publications dog-piled the studio for feature stories, arts organizations came begging for permission to hold parties in the space, and museum tours began stopping by.

His experience is a good portent of the city's potential for a thriving arts scene. "It always comes back to whether people are buying. If people are buying art, artists are working. If people aren't buying, artists have to move." The cheap rents and cloudy reputation of the Barrio make it an ideal breeding ground for the arts community, both in popular perception and in reality. "Artists need places to work, and they're poor," says Matt, before he laughingly predicts a day when the Barrio will turn into the more posh and monied Little Italy, with developers building condos on the cachet-rich foundation. But for the moment, the Glashaus is able to provide its myriad residents, and their considerable works of art, a place to thrive.

The Glashaus and its resident artists can be found online on their Facebook page (a website isn't really a priority, according to Matt). The studio is located at 1815 Main Street in Barrio Logan.

Image: Michael James Armstrong via Flickr