Art & the Antelope Valley - Where to go in the AV to see contemporary art

What is the art scene in the Antelope Valley?

            The most prevalent public art form in the Antelope Valley used to be music. Bands performed at the Cedar Centre in downtown Lancaster and, according to legend, they were loud.

            Today things have changed.

            The Lancaster Museum and Art Gallery is transitioning from a local history and children’s museum into a small scale, legitimate art museum. The LMAG promises to be the cornerstone of the “new Antelope Valley art scene”.

            In addition to the LMAG, downtown Lancaster boasts several galleries. The Cedar Centre for the arts houses a gallery as well as playing host to various summer arts programs and a weekly open mic night (Thursdays @8pm).

            On Lancaster Boulevard, the new Artists Lofts apartments are trying to attract artists to the area and offers a display space for their work in their Lofts Gallery. The gallery is not exclusive to residents, however, as the first several shows have demonstrated. The Lofts Gallery is interested in bringing life to the arts, bringing art to Lancaster, and bringing people to the art.

            The more traditional styles of Antelope Valley art are also present on Lancaster Boulevard with the Frame Shop showing many landscape works of local painters.

            In Quartz Hill, Sagebrush Café coffee & art house has brought in artists from Illinois and Oakland as well as giving space to local talent to show their work. The café is a prime example of artistic interest in action, with an eye and an ear to the impulses that have always informed art – space for conversation, atmosphere, society, and individuality.

            Also in Quartz Hill, a small gallery has opened in a shared storefront on 50th Street west.

            Rumor has it that in the Lakes area (Lake Elizabeth & Lake Hughes) another new gallery has opened up so that there are now two art galleries in the area.  

            The Antelope Valley has a college art gallery as well that functions more like a legitimate university gallery than a community college showcase. The director of the gallery, having taken over in 2009, seems to share an attitude with the LMAG’s new director which says, “We can bring real contemporary art to the Antelope Valley, foster the arts here. There is nothing to stop us.”

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            Kay Ryan, the current poet laureate of the United States of America and AVC graduate, recently returned to Antelope Valley college to give a reading of her poetry (December 8).

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            What is the Antelope Valley?

            The Antelope Valley is a wide, flat, windy valley north of Los Angeles. There are no antelope. There are hares, and coyotes if you look hard.

            The Antelope Valley is not part of the Los Angeles metropolitan constellation. Standing 60 miles away from LA in a wide-stance-crouch, the populated parts of the Antelope Valley begin with Palmdale, filling the southeastern section of the valley. Lancaster is just north of Palmdale and stretches westward a bit. And the towns of Rosamond, Mojave and Lake LA take up space in the north and eastern sections of the valley. To the west are Lake Elizabeth, Lake Hughes, and Leonna Valley.

            All tolled, nearly 500,000 people live in the Antelope Valley, many of them employed in the fields of Aerospace and Education, and an equal many employed in the greater Los Angeles metropolis. We call these people “commuters”.