The credo becomes more distinct with the completion of each center-city condo development: Form follows function “” which is to say that an object’s appearance is ideally linked to its intended purpose. Sleek modernist homes dot San Diego’s skyline in agreement, their clienteles mired in the boxy sameness that’s included in the price of a prestigious address.
Local painter Eliza Tolley says that’s translating to an increase in the purchase and display of visual art downtown. Cookie-cutter exteriors, she explained, cry for sophisticated touches unique to the person inside.
“Buying art and collecting art,” Tolley said, “is becoming more popular in San Diego “” slowly, but I think it’s starting to catch on. People can definitely express their individuality that way. They don’t want to go to a chain store, where everybody can buy the same thing. You see it in shows like ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ and all of the home channels that tell you how to paint your house and decorate. You can’t get away from that stuff. People are becoming more aware of creating a style for themselves.
“When the outside of your house looks like every other house on the block, you want to do something to make it yours.”
Tolley, an oil painter of 20 years’ standing, sees a slice of that new downtown reality at least once every month and a half. She’s a participating exhibitor at Kettner Nights, sponsored by Little Italy’s The Art and Design District. The district includes 21 businesses in the neighborhood’s 48 blocks and was formed in December of 2004 to help develop local commerce through art and design. Home furnishings, jewelry and visual art are featured in Kettner Nights’ displays; the event itself is held every sixth Friday, after which the items remain on exhibit. The latest installment was July 28, and Tolley cited brisk business at Adorn, the design store at which she’s exhibited for about a year.
“We get a little bit of everybody,” Tolley said of the prospective clientele, adding that a significant number live and work in the city’s core, just south of Little Italy. And the items they buy aren’t necessarily destined for a condo wall. Even downtown coffee shop and restaurants owners, Tolley said, are suddenly taking care to hang paintings and other visuals.
“The higher-end downtown night clubs are now doing art shows too,” Tolley continued. “They have paintings and wine tastings and that kind of thing. I think the [proprietors] are looking at art as a business investment. They don’t want to be selling their department store prints at a garage sale in five years.”
Confidential Restaurant and Lounge, at 901 Fourth Ave., is one such club “” and it so happens that Tolley will open an exhibit of her own abstract oils there on Thursday, Aug. 3. The oils medium, she said, is a natural for the club’s modernist environment. “There’s a lush quality to the paint,” she said, “that projects the colors. It’s right for [prospective buyers] who want their artwork to stand out.”
In fact, that’s how Tolley’s work evolved into the abstract. Two acquaintances, she explained, were looking to decorate their house about 10 years ago, “but they wanted it to be really different. I’d never done any abstracts before, so I tried a little. I’ve stuck with it ever since.”
Tolley’s work shows a flair for geometry. Lines and partitions intersect at wildly different spatial intervals, the artistic version of a draftsman’s schematic. Somewhere in there lurks the latest blueprint for the latest building design by the latest downtown contractor “” and that means Tolley’s right at home.
“Downtown is probably the epitome of places to sell your work,” she said, “especially for an abstract painter. The buildings, the lofts and the style of architecture that’s very hot downtown really does mimic that painting style.”
Form, after all, follows function.