Category: Thinkspace Family

Thinkspace Gallery celebrates twenty years as a beacon for disruptive and emerging artists, and holds it down through catastrophic loss and collective grief. Art heals.

Interview by Sawa / Art Bar Magazine

Below is the full unedited interview / original appeared in Volume One of Art Bar Magazine, now available nationwide at all Barnes & Noble locations and direct via their website.

‘What Would Shawn Do?’

Twenty years ago, Thinkspace threw its first art show. Founders Shawn, Andrew, and LC took what they learned from their respective art collectives Sour Harvest and Cannibal Flower to fill a hole in the LA art scene of the early-aughts. They knew they created something special when Thinkspace’s first showing attracted nearly 2,000 people to their kitchen-sized gallery space, forming a vibrant community that’s kept growing throughout the years. Recently Thinkspace faced a devastating blow after the loss of co-founder Shawn Vezinaw to breast cancer. Andrew and LC have vowed to keep her memory alive through the magic they’ve created together at the gallery, 

Sawa: Let’s start with the beginning. How did you all find each other, and end up starting Thinkspace Projects?

Andrew: I mean, ultimately, we met through Cannibal Flower. Shawn and I were patrons and became collectors and we all started hanging out. We were like-minded.

LC: A friend of ours at the time, Nathan Spore, suggested that we hook up because we
were kind of doing something similar. I was doing an underground art show (Cannibal Flower) and they were doing Sour Harvest. And Sour Harvest was this ultimate guide to the art scene.

Andrew: The birth of Thinkspace grew like an organic community. Our first show was unreal. I mean we probably had like 2000 people show up in a gallery that was the size of most people’s kitchen. After the 5 year anniversary, that’s when we really started kind of thinking that there could be something there.

Sawa: Wasn’t that a special time, a unique era, in Los Angeles for Art?

Andrew: I think definitely, the time from 2000 to 2010 was a magical era in LA for the arts. And Cannibal Flower was the precipice for a lot of it.

LC: Yeah it was really. There was nothing that was getting artists together. And I think Cannibal Flower just kind of started a scene. Artists got to know each other. They came outta their bubbles, outta their studios. It was actually talking technique with other artists. And I think that’s what really made the scene happen. Just establishing a community. I think everybody was looking for something.

Andrew: Definitely a desire. Back then it was more naive. There wasn’t as much
competition in the air.

Sawa: It wasn’t polluted yet. It was still pure.

LC: Cannibal Flower was an open door. And I think that made things, like you said, just more innocent. We weren’t pressuring artists to make money. We were just celebrating the art that they made. And we just put it on the wall and people came out and made whatever judgment they wanted to make about the art.

Sawa: One thing I will say that I loved about it, was it was just like a full immersive experience. There was performance art, and fire dancers, and people riding BMX. It was a time, the early 2000’s. You guys do have a special talent of discovering artists. I’ve seen artists get their start with you or they’re fresh outta school and you guys nurture their career.

Sawa: One thing I’ve always felt about Thinkspace, is that whenever you come here, there is a sense of community. You can go to other parts of the art world or art scene and it can be very pretentious. And I just like how you guys are creating a community and I feel like you have good relationships with your artists and patrons. Is there anything you can say about the importance of community in art?

Andrew: I mean, I can’t tell you how many people have just always thought Shawn was a gallery mom. A lot of it was her.

Sawa: I once had a teacher tell me: human beings are the only species aware of their own mortality. And it’s one of the reasons we make art. It’s something that can live on after we’re gone. And I feel like with this gallery, you’re keeping Shawn’s memory alive through the space.

LC: Art is definitely the key to immortality. You know, you go to museums and we see
artists that passed away but you can still feel their legacy.

Andrew: I found a couple of paintings in the garage that Shawn did, after she passed. I framed them up and those are definitely what I would grab as I run of the house, if it’s ever on fire. I didn’t even know she did them. I came across them and you’re just like, oh wow. There’s a lot of things I found since she passed. I just had no idea. I even found her high school sketchbooks and stuff. She used to draw Eddie from Iron Maiden and all the Led Zeppelin covers. And she was fucking good. You know, I kind of wish she had shared that a little bit more with everybody.

Sawa: Speaking of finding things, that tribute show that you put together for her was so special and beautiful.

Andrew: Yeah, that helped me get through it for sure. That was a special show, probably the best one I ever did.

Sawa: You did a beautiful, beautiful job. I’m so sorry. Alright. I won’t, I won’t make you talk about it…

Andrew: No, it’s cool. I want to put this out there in print. Don’t be afraid to talk about her. Don’t be afraid to come up to me and share her memories, because it’s all I’ve got and I don’t want her memory to fade. I don’t want to forget what her voice sounds like. I don’t ever want to forget what her face looks like. She will always be in every fiber of this gallery. Keep your loved ones tight. Love ’em all the time.

Sawa: People die twice, once when they leave this world and once when you stop
talking about them. So I think it’s important to keep sharing memories and talking about them. I love how you’re always attributing things to her as you keep the space alive.

Andrew: No, I think she liked being in the backseat, so to speak, of the car. She never did the interview. She seldom wanted to be in photographs. And I think due to that there’s a lot of people that didn’t think she was anything other than my wife. She was as integral to this place and she was the ying to my yang ’cause I would have spent us broke and probably the first year wanting to do crazy things. She was the one that was really good about making sure that everything was staged properly and flowed properly. Shawn is one of those beings, that I think her energy will always be around us. I was blessed to have the time I did with her.

Sawa: She definitely just lights up the whole room.

Andrew: Yeah. No one worked that fucking room like she did.

Sawa: So many artists have referred to her as the Gallery Mom. What does it mean to
be a Gallery Mom?

Andrew: Oof. I mean we never had a family and everybody here was her kids. Every
artist that we worked with was her kids. She looked after everybody, and she just loved it. She was really good at building a community of people and just making people feel loved and wanted. And there were so many people that always would tell me that I don’t feel as nearly as anywhere else as I do here. And you know, I think that’s something that we try to remind ourselves of. I mean we have a saying: W-W-S-D, “What would Shawn Do”?

Sawa: It’s a crazy time to be alive and I feel like art is more needed than ever in times like this. Is there anything that we can say about the importance of art as therapy or art as an escape, art as an outlet, art as an experience?

LC: I mean pretty much it’s all those things but you know, art is just a good therapy to quiet things down. Thank God for artists that they have that creative outlet that no matter how loud things get or how wild things get, they can zero in on something and quiet everything down and then create something that they can con they can congratulate themselves on. Art is self therapy. I know how I feel when I finish a piece, nothing matters.

Sawa: While you’re in it you can just be present and able to tune out some of the thing out.

LC: Yeah, just create balance, ’cause there’s so many bad things happening, and you
make a piece of art that is just like one of the good things that you had control over. And I think art as therapy is just really important.

Sawa: I love that. What’s next for Thinkspace outside of all of the shows and
international pop ups?

Andrew: We are bringing back portfolio reviews. In the early days we used to do more portfolio reviews, which led to pretty amazing talent coming down, and we’re bringing it back. It’s something that Shawn and I had been talking about talking about with LC for a minute. I think Shawn’s passing has made me realize that there’s a few things that we kind of moved on from that were silly for us to move on from. And so we are righting some of those wrongs I guess.

LC: More artist opportunities. And to focus on our city. There’s so many local artists here that just needs the visibility. And we also, I also noticed that, you know, the more you show their work and you get them involved, the better they get.

Andrew: And especially now that Shawn’s gone, there are things that she and I were
already talking about. And she always loved those. She felt that we got a bit too away from the LA scene.

Sawa: Is there any piece of artwork that has sparked emotion for you?

Andrew: If I had one, my most meaningful piece would be, from Josh Keys, one of
Shawn and I’s favorite artists. His work was always about life after humans, like the animals kind of come back and start to reclaim nature. I’ve always had a soft spot for polar bears because they’re so affected by man, and they’re defenseless. Josh did pieces about them drowning, unable to reach the ice. He had a series of portraits where they were either about to be saved or it was their last attempt. At the time, I couldn’t afford one. I remember bemoaning it to Shawn. We loved A Christmas Story. We could recite it; turn the sound off and just go back and forth. Shawn loved that stupid movie, and I grew a great fondness for it. There’s a scene where Ralphie is bummed because he didn’t get his Red Ryder BB gun. Then his dad, with a shitty grin, says, ‘Well maybe there’s one more present you haven’t seen just yet Ralphie.’ It was behind the curtain, and it turns out to be the Red Ryder. That Christmas, I’m going to say 2010, 2011, we opened presents. Shawn came out of the kitchen and It was verbatim from the movie. I picked up on what she was doing. She just said, “What’s that there?’ Behind the curtain?” She had saved up and gotten that piece. It was epic. That’s one of a handful of paintings I’d grab in a fire. The story behind it is so rad. A lot of his work is symbolism-based, revolving around children approaching wild beasts, naive to the fact that they’re wild beasts. A lot of it is about how races need to get along and not be scared at face value. Just showing love to all things. It’s morphed over the years but has always been about the detriment of society. Animals are infiltrating derelict cities, but children are always present, which speaks to the rebirth of human society. Maybe realizing our animal friends are not our enemies, so to speak..

Sawa: You just reached your 20 year anniversary, which is a huge landmark for a gallery.

Andrew: I mean, 20 years in this world is like dog years. Especially doing it the way we’ve done it, which is ass backwards, you know, blindfolded. But we’ve figured it out. None of us knew what we were doing when we started. That’s why we called our anniversary show “Perseverance.” I think we all wanted to just fucking kind of go out and disappear into the woods when Shawn passed. But at the same time I realized that this was our family and that’s our legacy. And I think we’re more driven than ever to keep going.