A new Black-owned and operated gallery has just opened in South Los Angeles, sprouting out of a vibrant artistic revival in Compton, California, and paving the way for an urban renaissance centered around the artistic expression of Black and Brown creatives.
David Colbert Jr. had an idea. He thought of the uniqueness and history of his hometown in Compton, California, and the rich culture that pulsated throughout the city. He began to envision an event like the Los Angeles Art Walk he frequently visited but with a remixed Compton flair. The event would be a recurring festival that would use the arts to bring the people of the city together.
David is a third-generation Compton native. He graduated from Dominguez High School and studied sociology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. His family has been active in the community for decades, and ever since he was a kid, David has had a fascination with the arts. "I always dabbled in the arts during my youth, but I consider myself to be a novice. I just never had the tools or resources to nurture my creativity," David explained. In those early years, he was drawn to the cover art on albums like The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest and Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde by The Pharcyde. He was also inspired by the manipulation of the photography on records like 100 Miles and Runnin' by NWA. "Compton was a hotbed of musical creativity, so I naturally gravitated to music which led me to album cover art. Once I saw it, I immediately tried to recreate it," David said. Growing up, he and other creatives of color in the city didn't have accessible, safe spaces to express themselves. They lived in what David has referred to as an "arts desert."
Thinking through his idea, David knew he wanted to create a place of refuge and enrichment for a new generation of creatives, connecting them with the old creatives, and build a platform to elevate the hidden gems that have long been a part of the city's creative culture. His festival would also be a non-profit, and it would be called the Compton Art Walk.
"I felt that the city was in need of a creative platform that was consistent and high-quality," David said. "I wanted the Compton Art Walk to be on par with any Art Walk in any other city." From the beginning, David decided that CAW would be an authentic grassroots movement. As he refined his idea, he reached out to athlete and filmmaker Bobby Jones and mental health professional Krystyl Wright to join the new enterprise as board members. "I connected with Bobby and Krystyl because we grew up together in Compton, and I believe we all reflect positivity and creativity," David said. "As Compton natives, it is our lifelong goal to give back to the community."
Compton Art Walk. Video via Compton Art Walk on YouTube.
Soon, the trio began to discuss the elements that they would feature in the Art Walk: food vendors, live music, community organizations, visual artists, and more. The process was slow and thoughtful. They wanted to faithfully represent the city at the festival. The more progress the group made, the more David's vision began to crystalize into a tangible reality. Everything started to come into focus, and after countless months of strategizing and coordination, the group decided it was time to kick off the first event. They just needed to find a location.
"Location is always a big challenge," David explained. "When you're starting something new, you don't know how many people are going to attend or what the response is going to be." To stay true to his desire to develop a grassroots organic movement, David did not do heavy promotion. Everything was word of mouth throughout the community, only adding to the uncertainty of what the attendance might be for the initial launch.
Growing up, he and other creatives of color in the city didn't have accessible, safe spaces to express themselves. They lived in what David has referred to as an "arts desert."
Many meetings and phone calls later, David was able to secure space at the Compton Airport and, at the end of 2018, launched the first official Compton Art Walk. "It's become the best-kept secret in Los Angeles," David said. "We formed a community of entrepreneurs, vendors, artists, and performing artists of all types, and the event just ended up taking off. And people really respected the community aspect." By March 2019, CAW had moved to the Neighborhood Housing Services Center for Sustainable Communities (NHS), home to Compton's largest mural, welcoming over double the people who had attended the first gathering.
Word continued to spread. By the fourth CAW event in March 2020, just before the pandemic-induced shutdown, the NHS Center parking lot was completely full. Compton residents and people from surrounding communities were making the trip to experience David's arts festival and connect with their neighbors.
As CAW grew, David began to cultivate a new idea for a physical location that he could use to further elevate local artists and bring fine art into the community. It would be an extension of CAW and serve as a gallery space. Location again proved to be his most strident obstacle. David looked everywhere he could think of, but the possibility of a physical gallery seemed like it was dissolving. There was no available real estate in Compton.
Through mutual friends, David became acquainted with Kevin Sherrod, a designer at Gensler Los Angeles. Kevin was a supporter of CAW and was working on a project with Compton College on housing solutions when the two first connected. The Compton College project called for a complex integration of the city's culture into the design, and Kevin was still working out some of the conceptual thinking for one of the buildings. As part of his research, he reached out to David for feedback. "I made the call to David because of the Art Walk, and I knew he had a relationship with Compton College," Kevin said. "I wanted to vet my idea and make sure I was grounded in a framework that made sense for the community."
David and Kevin hit it off and began discussing the importance of creative expression and the need for safe spaces for young people of color to express themselves in the community. Both personally identified with the lack of access to creative space and were committed to finding a way CAW could fill that void. In those conversations, the pair started to consider different spatial possibilities. "We talked about it being an installation or a node that was part of a larger artistic boulevard, creating a thoroughfare of enlightenment and education. I suggested it might be hallmarked by some type of attractor—it could be Compton College at one end or some kind of museum," Kevin explained.
Eventually, David told Kevin about the gallery. With no location, no prospects, and only the seeds of an idea, Kevin offered to create a conceptual 3D model that David could display at a future Art Walk. The hope was that the model would serve as a tool to show patrons of the Art Walk how a physical gallery could look. That was in the beginning months of 2020. "I was highly appreciative of Kevin doing that for me. I had no idea that that would become a physical reality in one calendar year," David said, remembering how, shortly after those talks with Kevin, his fortune took an unexpected turn.
With so many in attendance, David couldn't connect with everyone at his events. He didn't know that hidden in the crowd, engaging with the new movement he had launched, was the crucial missing piece to his gallery conundrum.
Jason Riffe saw something special in the booming festival. At the time, he was a Corporate & Community Partnerships Manager for SoLa Impact, a South LA-based family of social impact real estate funds focused on serving low-income communities by providing affordable housing, economic development opportunities, and education.
In a March 2020 interview at a CAW event, Riffe outlined a new initiative he believed might be of interest to David. "SoLa Impact has built the country's first opportunity zone business incubator in South LA... We're looking for companies and businesses like Compton Art Walk to come in, have [sic] space, expose them to the community in that area, and provide investment for them to then grow their business," Riffe explained in the interview. Located in South LA's historic Goodyear district, SoLa's OZ business campus, the one Riffe was referring to, dubbed The Beehive, consists of six large red-brick warehouses with 92,000 square feet of commercial space. The goal of the campus is to transform the local neighborhood and economy by supporting local entrepreneurs and business owners while providing jobs to the community, building on the spirit of the Opportunity Zone legislation that passed under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
Three months later, in June 2020, David arrived at the campus for the first time. Riffe and SoLa Co-Founder Gray Lusk showed David the grounds and the empty warehouses, sharing what they hoped to achieve with the new development. "I really felt like David's vision to create a space to highlight Black and Brown artists in LA fit with Martin's vision to highlight Black and Brown entrepreneurs," Riffe said, speaking to the vision of SoLa's CEO, Martin Muoto, for The Beehive.
I really felt like David's vision to create a space to highlight Black and Brown artists in LA fit with Martin's vision to highlight Black and Brown entrepreneurs.
"At first, I was hesitant because I really wanted to have a space in Compton," David said about the first visit. "But we talked about the possibility of having an office space for me there." And then, during the tour, one of the buildings came alive, pushing David to reconsider his initial hesitation.
Reaching the northwest end of the grounds, David and his SoLa tour guides came upon a small dilapidated structure. David stepped inside and looked up at the long steel beams, down at the soil-covered floor, across the brick perimeter and its plethora of windows, and knew that this was where he would launch his gallery. He recorded a video of the abandoned interior and texted it to Kevin.
"It was the worst quality I had ever seen in my life," Kevin joked about the video. "But when I saw the space, my mouth dropped because we had been talking about this grand idea about how we might capture a community's hopes and vision and then he shows me this gutted warehouse." Like David, Kevin initially worried about the location being outside of Compton. But, he began to revisit the idea of an artistic boulevard that contained a network of touchpoints—Compton College, now the gallery, and future points—throughout LA with the Art Walk as a throughline that connected everything. Once Kevin embraced what David saw in the space, he was on board. His conceptual 3D model now was on its way to becoming something far more real. They had finally found a location.
When Kevin received the video text, he brought the project to Gensler. After hearing about the Art Walk, David's vision, and this new opportunity to support the development of a gallery space, Gensler gave the green light. The firm would deliver the project pro-bono. "Everyone was glowing with excitement and wanted to be as supportive as possible," Kevin said of those initial interactions. Soon, two of Kevin's colleagues, Chris Doer and Wayne Thomas, joined the project, making up the design team that would work on the gallery for the next year.
The trio began with a series of meetings with David. Celebrating the characteristics of memory and legacy became one of the primary driving forces for the ensuing design approach. David wanted the gallery to unite the past, present, and future of the community. Through the design process and a series of iterations, the Gensler team sought to achieve this by subtly highlighting existing features of the building in the final design. The steel beams would be left exposed, and the gypsum that would wrap the interior would gently caress the sides of the steel columns that supported the beams, leaving them uncovered as well. Throughout, these and similar details would commemorate the architectural origins of the structure, bringing together the past narrative of the residents who worked as part of the Goodyear tract decades before, the present narrative of David, the Art Walk, and everyone involved with the gallery's conception, and the future narrative of the gallery becoming part of a larger network of accessible, safe spaces for historically disenfranchised creatives.
As an extension of the Compton Art Walk, the gallery, which would be called Gallery 90220, inspired by the Compton zip code where David grew up, would be a place designed to tell traditionally overlooked stories.
As an extension of the Compton Art Walk, the gallery, which would be called Gallery 90220, inspired by the Compton zip code where David grew up, would be a place designed to tell traditionally overlooked stories. "Diversity is always key in order to provide space at the table for everyone," David said. "The reality is that it is hard to achieve something that you have never seen before. I think that this project creates a blueprint and that through sharing our story, we offer the unique opportunity for people to create the way that we have created and to dream the way that we have dreamt. That's why I think it is important for us to celebrate the young creatives that helped realize this vision—to show the next generation what's achievable by anyone when they take a chance to foster change."
A year later, I stood on the northern edge of The Beehive campus. Greeted by a red brick wall covered in opaque glass, I tapped the call button at the steel entry door of Gallery 90220. I had driven an hour to meet with David and Kevin and the rest of the design team to learn what they had accomplished over the past year. After an hour trapped on the freeway, I desperately needed to use the restroom. David answered the door. We shook hands. He was soft-spoken and welcoming. "I never do this," I said, "but can I use your restroom?" He laughed. "No problem at all, it's just over here." I followed him around a long wall to a door in the corner of the space. Inside, a colorful hand-painted mural speckled with twinkling stars deep in a cosmic world of dark moons floating amid orange, green, and purple drifting nebulas surrounded me. I wondered about the meaning of the scene and allowed it to transport me into its interstellar depths.
"Kevin and the Gensler guys are running a bit late," David told me when I emerged from the restroom. "You want to check out the campus?" I did. Behind the gallery, he pointed to one of the empty warehouses. A pile of rubble sat in front of it, and I could see bright yellow construction vehicles parked inside its deserted steel shell. "This is going to be the first Black-owned craft brewery in California," David said. He was referring to South LA Beverage Company, an incubator, production, and packaging facility, founded by Craig Bowers and Samuel Chawinga. The company plans to work with several organizations to employ 75 percent of its staff locally and partner with local food vendors to support domestic economic growth.
We continued down a long promenade to the campus's courtyard. The empty grounds and warehouses that David toured a year earlier now had long stretches of meticulously finished pathways, manicured landscaping, and freshly finished brick facades. When we reached the courtyard, I saw a collection of tables and chairs at one end and an expansive geometric grass center surrounded by hexagonal concrete planters topped with wooden benches and a stage for live performances attached to one of the long warehouses. I couldn't stop thinking how expensive everything looked.
David took me inside a large warehouse that was still undergoing renovation on the east side of the courtyard. As we explored the interior, I learned more about his volunteer service in the community and how he regularly speaks to students at Compton High School and Dominguez High School with CAW board member Bobby Jones. The pair talk with the youth about life and the importance of education and good decision-making. David also volunteers at the NHS Center farmers market. And at last year's Compton Peace Walk, an event that drew thousands who marched for racial justice, CAW provided masks and water bottles to over 300 participants.
This isn't a pristine museum feel. You're leaning against the wall, and so was I. You would not do that at some of these other galleries. And that's perfectly fine. It's how you want to experience the space.
We started to head back to the gallery when two reps in SoLa-branded polos with lanyards dangling from their necks approached to greet David before inviting us into a long building anchored at the west end of the courtyard. "We just started our Tech and Entrepreneur Summer Camp. This is the second-week camp," one of the reps said as we entered the building. "Right now, they're designing a video game," he continued, gesturing to a large group of young campers sitting at a grid of desks, each in a white task chair with their own iMac desktop. They were all watching an enormous wall-mounted screen that an instructor seemed to be using to explain a project to the group, his voice echoing throughout the open warehouse. "Over here, we've got a bunch of old-school arcade games," the rep told me as we walked past a long wall lined with VR stations and more screens.
The Summer Tech Camp is part of the SoLa I Can Foundation. It offers five one-week camps for South LA students ages ten to fourteen, each covering a distinct area of focus. The first week was animation; the second, video game design; third would be filmmaking; the fourth, advertising; and the fifth would explore graphic design and digital photography.
"We should probably head back," David said after we finished looking around. When we finally made it back to the gallery, Kevin was waiting at the front door with Chris and Wayne. I introduced myself to everyone and then we entered the gallery.
The art of Gianni Lee covered the walls of Gallery 90220. A self-taught painter, Lee is also a music producer, fashion designer, and DJ who has worked with companies like Nike and Kenneth Cole. The exhibition, titled I Regret All My Books, is the gallery's very first. "Gianni is perfect for what I hope to reflect with the gallery," David shared as we all stood inside the space. "A lot of artists, especially from our communities—they want to do it all. They want to be in the fine arts space; they want to dominate streetwear. Gianni can literally do it all. He has his own sneaker about to drop. He does cool collabs. He inspires a lot of artists."
Wayne leaned on one of the steel window sills, and Chris and Kevin stood close by while David reclined on a bench across from us. The atmosphere wasn't much different than what one might experience at a barbershop. "This isn't a pristine museum feel," David explained. "You're leaning against the wall, and so was I. You would not do that at some of these other galleries. And that's perfectly fine. It's how you want to experience the space. You're not going to be judged. This space is for the art lover."
Part of what absolves the gallery of the "pristineness" present in similar places is the inherent narrativeness of the project. We had already talked about Gianni Lee's work and how his story embodies what David hopes to impart to the community. But, there was also the construction of the gallery itself, much of which—the metalwork, in particular—was done by local residents who faced employment challenges during the pandemic. "Because of COVID, there were a lot of jobs lost, but SoLa had created a program that brought in community members to teach them welding and how to use metalworking tools. We had already done a lot of details and had an idea of how certain parts of the project would look, but once SoLa told us about this program, we had to engage with the community members," Kevin explained.
We've always inherited spaces that were never made for us. And we've always found a way to create these fantastic measures that are in favor of our programming. We've always had to reposition spaces so that they are uniquely our own.
By the end of the project, the metalworkers had fabricated and installed the main entry door, the window trim at the interior and exterior, a swiveling polycarbonate door leading to the gallery's office and podcast room, and several other custom metal features. The imperfections and nuances in the metalwork give the space an intimate authenticity that deepens its narrative significance in the community, nudging authorship of the design from the architects to also include the community members.
"Metalworking is a form of creative expression, and we wanted to celebrate the workers' contribution," Kevin said. "We wanted to leave room for collaboration. We saw ourselves as moderating a conversation with the community and didn't want to be so 'precious' about the design of many of these details." The approach builds on the ethos of David's mission to bring creatives with different backgrounds together, regardless of the medium. Almost all of us in the room were part of the Black community. Kevin began to outline a thought from this perspective: "We've always inherited spaces that were never made for us. And we've always found a way to create these fantastic measures that are in favor of our programming. We've always had to reposition spaces so that they are uniquely our own."
Beyond the call to capture memory and legacy, the team also had to confront several technical and programmatic obstacles. At only 720 square feet, the most obvious was the limited floor area, and there was no existing slab. Additionally, all of the perimeter walls—which, having been erected in the 1920s, were made entirely of unreinforced brick—had large windows punched into them, reducing available wall area to display art and adding to the issue of light control.
"How do you create a gallery with a restroom and an office and several different functions within a very limited amount of space?" Wayne said, still leaning on the window sill, as he outlined the many challenges the team worked to overcome. He motioned to a freestanding wall at the west end of the space that held one of Gianni's paintings. At the narrow edge of the wall, Wayne unveiled a hidden feature that I hadn't noticed. "This wall not only functions as display space, but it doubles as storage," he said while Kevin opened a tall camouflaged door, revealing a set of six cages hanging from a pair of metal tracks that ran across the top of the cavity inside the wall. I peered inside the opening to study the different parts of the assembly. "This entire setup was built on-site by the metalworkers," Kevin said, pulling out one of the cages so that I could have a closer look. "You can take this out and put it anywhere in the gallery."
"Dave was just telling us he used these as an alternative way to hang merchandise," Chris added. "This was all about creating duplicity within the space. We wanted Dave and his team to be able to activate the space and use it in creative ways." Making the gallery into a dynamic tool, "like Dave's iPhone," as Kevin later put it, was a crucial component to the conceptual thinking behind the duplicity Chris had outlined. The team wanted to enable David to operate the space in ways that transcended that of a traditional gallery.
We gradually moved over to the east corner of the gallery where the restroom sits. Kevin and I stood inside the restroom while the others looked in from the outside. I asked Kevin about the meaning behind the mural. I later learned that local artist Patrick Henry Johnson had painted it. "This is really a microcosm of how we feel about the whole space," Kevin began to explain. "We recognize that there are functional activities that need to happen. But we also don't want to be beholden in a way that starts to handcuff the creative expression that exists in this time and this moment. You know the whole adage: 'Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.' This is a literal embodiment of that. It is a culmination of our sentiment for this project."
Our final stop was the centralized office space that David uses to meet with the CAW team. The office is also where the Gallery's podcast, The Red Dot Series, is recorded. The large polycarbonate wall that was fabricated and installed by the metal workers can open up the office to the gallery's front corridor, allowing natural light to wash through the room and add floor area to the overall experience.
I want to bring creatives in my community, and from all over, together. I want to put Compton in a positive light. As a Compton native, this means everything to me.
The Red Dot Series is hosted by Kayla Ashay and has welcomed guests including former NASA engineer and Creative Director Autumn Breon, Grammy Award Winner and Producer Jairus Mozee, tattoo artist and cast member of VH1's Black Ink Crew: Compton Tim Simmons, and more. "We want local creatives and visiting creatives to feel like this is a place where they can feel at home and share their stories. I want them to feel like they can come here and connect with other artists—a kind of networking hub. It's one of the other core functions of this space outside of a traditional art gallery," David said.
I reconnected with David a week after my initial visit. I wanted to learn more about his vision and where he saw himself in the future. "I want to do this long-term. I cannot understate that," he said. And he's just getting started. David is currently preparing for a much-anticipated photography exhibition about Compton's historical Communicative Arts Academy (CAA) that will open at Gallery 90220 later this year. "The CAA undoubtedly helped shape Black culture in Compton, a city that was, for a brief moment, at the forefront of Black empowerment in America. And this legacy has continued to inspire hope that the city will be again," Melissa Smith recently wrote for The New York Times Style Magazine. Between 1969 and 1975, the CAA was a beacon of artistic expression in Compton, drawing visits from Muhammad Ali and Ossie Davis and many other prominent figures in the Black community, elevating Compton to one of the West's foremost Black cities. Notable artists who were associated with the institution include Elliott Pinkney, John Outterbridge, Judson Powell, Charles Dickson, and Willie Ford, among many others.
David's work through the Compton Art Walk, which has already expanded to Gallery 90220, is a clear continuation of CAA's legacy and historical role in situating Compton as an artistic center. He has made it his life's task to uplift the city through the arts, and his curatorial role doesn't just stop at the gallery. Just a few weeks ago, representatives from the Harvard Graduate School of Design made the trip to Compton to learn more about its history. David served as their personal tour guide. Shortly after Harvard's visit, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti visited the gallery to see what David has been up to. The list could go on, and the gallery hasn't even had its official opening.
That desire that emerged deep inside David years earlier to unite the people of his city today has grown into something that has inaugurated a new era of empowerment for Black and Brown artists in Compton and beyond. "I want to bring creatives in my community, and from all over, together. I want to put Compton in a positive light," David said. "As a Compton native, this means everything to me."
To support Gallery 90220, check out the gallery’s website at www.gallery90220.com and be sure to follow on Instagram @gallery90220.
Sean Joyner is a writer and essayist based in Los Angeles. His work explores themes spanning architecture, culture, and everyday life. Sean's essays and articles have been featured in The Architect's Newspaper, ARCHITECT Magazine, Dwell Magazine, and Archinect. He also works as an ...
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Fantastic. I wish Archinect did more long form narrative pieces like this.
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