"Everyone Can Paint": 14th Street's Arts District, PAINT: LAB
Ally, the owner of PAINT:LAB, is an openhearted delight. She’s lived in Santa Monica for a dozen years, an accidental decision sparked by her inherent generosity and its attendant, kismet—principles that continue to shape her life and business. To help a shy friend move, Ally took a bicycle trip from her home state of New Mexico to Oregon. Stopping in L.A. on her way back, she met the requisite musician. “I’m always a fool for love,” Ally confessed. The relationship didn’t last but the die had been cast. She’d found her new home.
Though “always an artist,” formal training via graduate school or the like didn’t appeal to Ally. She prefers to learn by doing. In New Mexico, she’d worked in studios, painted murals, led groups as a hiking guide, and taught theatre and art classes to kids.
She did the same in Santa Monica, including at PAINT:LAB, which had opened in 2009.
PAINT:LAB hired Ally full-time to “reimagine their programming,” which gave birth to events such as Brushes and Bites (Painting paired with wine and cheese? Yes, please!) and other innovative classes for kids and adults. “It’s so much easier to take something like creating art seriously when we’re having fun.”
That was 2019. A year later, the pandemic forced the owners to close, unless Ally wanted to take over the business. Of course she did. Once a fool for love, forever a fool for love, whether the object is a guitar-slinger, a beloved landscape, or a creative space that fosters art for all.
For Ally, “all” means all ages, an inspirational array of classes, party hosting, and most amazingly, keeping the studio open to the public as a courtesy to the community. People can purchase supplies on site, but it’s not required. “I like thinking of the space as a resource center,” Ally says.
How she makes that work, personnel-wise, feels like magic. She says that the space is so inviting, people who work there enjoy hanging out, collaborating, working on their own projects, and helping whoever stops in. “We as a whole collective are flexible,” Ally says. “Every person working here has a special niche. If there’s any random thing you don’t know how to complete, ask us.”
As part of a marriage proposal, Ally planned a scavenger hunt throughout Santa Monica, ending up on the beach where the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
Ally’s business model boils down to something simple and rare. “The whole thing is word of mouth,” she says. They don’t nominate themselves and still garner Best of Santa Monica Awards. “It’s an organic thing.”
Speaking with Ally is akin to living inside a kaleidoscope or a poem. Her storytelling style is both diamond-sharp and wonderfully unexpected. Though she’s an artist-artist, she’s also an artist of being alive. The colors and patterns shift sentence to sentence, and are especially vivid when she’s elucidating the definitions and processes of creating art.
“Starting anything is tricky,” she says. “Making something out of nothing is never going to be easy.” She continues, “But especially with painting and visual arts, something physically there, our attempts at making are public. The ugly is right out in the open.”
Ally and the rest of her lovely PAINT:LAB staff aim to be approachable to support people of all ages as they create. “We want to carve out a hybrid: a comfortable space where people can receive support at every stage of a project’s progress and receive feedback.” The combination engenders an atmosphere of trust, which helps creators stay open to change and to solutions they might not have thought of if they were working in solitude.
If starting is challenging, at least it has the thrill of new beginnings, with little beholden to it save an abstract idea. “Starting seems easy once you get to the middle layers of a project, and they’re essential.” Ally calls it “the long middle” and I told her in writing it’s often referred to as the “mushy middle.” Same infuriating maze. Same mincing or plowing forward, second guessing, retreating, and hair pulling. But it’s this swath where the becoming happens, where an idea fulfills its promise. Where the rubber meets the road.
The blossoming from concept to physical object is also beset with impermanence. Our talk turned to the fires. Ally lives near Will Rogers. “All my windows face westward,” she says. “I watched the flames rolling toward me before I left.” Her home survived thanks to “luck and amazing firefighters,” as she put it. We agreed that this twinning directed and enriched much of life. Knit together in a net, it was mostly invisible and yet still caught us as we fell.
The people she works with and those who attend classes and host gatherings at PAINT:LAB, the other 14th Street women-owned businesses, and the community of Santa Monica hold her aloft as she holds them. “I can be an artist and a business owner without degrees in either,” she says, amazement in her voice. All thanks to this community.”
PAINT:LAB is open every day but Monday.
1453 14th St, Santa Monica, CA 90404