Ian O’Phelan – “Hothouse Flowers”

Fiora Boes opened the Ghettogloss art space eight years ago in Silver Lake, renting street art to films and television commercials. The enterprising businesswoman has diversified to run an adjacent boutique, host monthly art shows, and organize performance art at La Cita. Her latest venture: the Silver Lake Art, Craft & Vintage, a Sunday flea market in the nearby Citibank parking lot. Today, the gallery debuts “Hot House Flowers,” a three-week painting show from former Ghettogloss intern Ian O’Phelan. I sat down with Boes to discuss Ghettogloss, “Hothouse Flowers” and her increasingly ambitious side projects.

EM: How would you describe your concept?
We’re known for street art, graffiti, cutting edge, urban sort of art. That’s sort of the vibe and that’s what we’re known for in the business. When people are coming to set decorate a really hip room, they come to us.

EM: How’d you come up with the name?
I was looking for a domain name nine, ten years ago…I just started putting words together and seeing if it was available. I always liked ghetto and liked gloss and I mixed them with a million different words and put them together and it was available. It kind of makes sense for the art we represent as well. It’s street but glossy on the outside.

EM: What’s your goal with the boutique?
Another source of income…If you just have an art gallery and rely on art sales, you’re in a really tough business. When you just have a boutique, you’re in another tough business. When you’re just doing art rentals, it’s another tough business…To have as many things as you can to generate income, especially right now is key.

EM: You’re doing Arts, Crafts & Vintage every weekend now?
We thought it would be a great resource to find new artists and new talent and also offer people a chance to make money outside of the gallery, where they could represent themselves, come weekly and set up their own little shop in a prime location.

EM: Who’s allowed to participate?
Anyone’s allowed to participate. You’ve got to fall under art, craft or vintage…The idea behind it is when you go to the Rose Bowl, there’s so much crap, but all the fun stuff to us is always the vintage area, the art stuff. The idea was to put something together for the Silver Lake neighborhood, art related or vintage related, and make our own favorite flea market.

EM: Have you found any artists there?
I’ve found a lot of people who have turned into people who have made merchandise for the store. We’re always scouting over there.

EM: What are the hours?
We’re doing Sundays 9 to 5 and making small donations to the Silver Lake Library.

EM: You started a Griffith Park concert series as well?
We’re tapering back on that right now. We’re working on getting our own music and cocktail venue…We’ve been doing stuff downtown at La Cita. We had a really fun event there called the Bronx Zoo, where every Saturday, 11 to 5 was a figure-drawing class outside in a bar where we had girls in bikinis and gorilla masks who would do poses for a live drawing class. It turned into a big show at Ghettogloss.

EM: Are you still doing it?
We’re going to start back up with something called Fight Club at La Cita, probably in the late spring, which will be boxers, kickboxers, taekwondo, all kinds of different fighters to spar in the middle of the bar, outside. The gorilla girls will be back holding round cards. It will be like a live figure-drawing class. The fighters aren’t going to get too down and dirty or hardcore.

EM: How’d you become so interested in art?
I went to art school completely by default, later in life, after going to college…I found people for the first time in life I ever identified with, really found out that I was a true artist and that’s where I belonged. I had a good run for several years, showed in a lot of really big galleries, did really well. I did a lot of stuff for the Hard Rock Café, the Hard Rock Hotel. I got way into commercial photography and big digital art. I felt like I wanted a studio and I could maybe rent some art out. That’s how I started this place. I stopped doing my art and instantly started representing artists.

EM: Tell me about “Hothouse Flowers.” How did Ian O’Phelan end up on your walls?
Ian was one of our interns for a long time, then turned into our web tech and turned into our art hanger…He kicked ass and came up with a really amazing show.

EM: What is it that you like about his art?
I love the colors, the subject, the softness with the graphic intensity. I like the lightness. It’s not too serious. It’s not too heavy. Right now’s a really good time to lighten up a bit, and it’s a colorful breath of fresh air.

EM: How often do you change your shows?
Our shows this year are not going to last more than two or three weeks unless we really feel that we have to. It’s fun to turn and burn the shows so that people can be coming more often.

Post-wrap with Ghettogloss working partner Jessica Garrison:

EM: How did you get involved with Ghettogloss?
I came in five years ago as an intern. Fiora and I became fast friends and worked really well together. We share some crazy vision. Now I’m here as a working partner.

EM: What do you think separates Ghettogloss from other galleries around town?
Me and Fiora, first of all. We’re a very bright, playful, pop, kitschy gallery. We’re not serious at all. We’ve never been a wine and cheese gallery. We just like to push things to the max and take artists who we love to work with and show them and feature them. It’s not just four walls. It’s a gallery that has a life and breath of its own.

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Ghettogloss, 2380 Glendale Blvd., Silver Lake, 323.912.0008

Joshua Lurie is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. He dedicates as much time as possible to updating his in-depth online restaurant guide, Food GPS.