Stylish synergy
Stylish synergy
By: Evelyn Dorman
The seeds of downtown development are starting to sprout and hold root.
Witness the established arts corridor and rebirth of the Padre Hotel. But the growth of new businesses is not just confined to 19th and Eye streets and west of Chester. A new art gallery and combined Web/graphic and furniture design studio opens in mid-January featuring the abstract art of Johnny Ramos and expertise of Web designer Kynan Chambers of Fluxor Studios. The new Bossanova Studio joins Fluxor nestled next to Goose Loonies Cafe at 814 18th St. and expects to bloom with more business dealing in art, furniture and design.
Speaking of flowers, it’s the 8-foot-tall abstract floral paintings that won Ramos initial recognition after gallery showings at Metro Galleries. Considered an emerging painter of the 21st century, Ramos prefers to use the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s as his muse for his abstract art, furniture and design. Inspired by Metro and other galleries, Ramos decided to partner with Chambers to bring his Bossanovastudios out of cyberspace in the form of a gallery. But just as Ramos is not a traditional artist, neither is his gallery space. His paintings will be displayed up in the front of the sleek, modern, renovated 1913-era building. When one enters, a corridor leads to offices where clients can meet with Chambers and consult on Web-based graphic and furniture design. Upstairs is a furnished loft for clients to “experience art in a normal setting,” Ramos said. The loft with an arched window that replicates the exposed arched steel tresses in the ceiling overlooks Ramos’ studio.
Once up and running, Ramos and Chambers plan on keeping later hours than most art galleries, especially on Friday evenings, they said. “It will start at 7 p.m. and stay open until 5 a.m. or until the disco ball breaks,” Ramos jokes. The art gallery will only exhibit Ramos’ work exclusively. “It will be the late-night art gallery studio,” he said.
“The florals will do better here,” says Ramos, who plans to display his creations so that passers-by and clients are exposed to it. “You can come to the studio gallery and see all my work and choose what you want. I’m one who will go to your house and do a custom painting for you — I want to give people the art they want.
“This is not going to be a normal gallery where everyone stands around with nowhere to sit. It’s going to be more like New York urban chic. It’s like an art studio Andy Warhol would have had,” Ramos said.
Chambers, who does the bulk of the graphics, Web design and marketing, believes the new studio is slowly bringing San Francisco and L.A.-style architecture to Bakersfield. He initially bought the building back in 1997 and has been renovating it over the past year and a half. It has a barrel roof and high ceilings, exposed brick and hardwood floors. Since 1997, Chambers has worked in digital design and computer engineering thus turning “art into digital design.” It’s like “an old-world L.A. art gallery that I hope will be a showpiece for my design work,” Chambers said. “We want to brand everything with Johnny’s art. “Johnny does the opposite of what I do with his abstract paintings. He turns the digital and changes it to analog.” Chambers said.
Future plans call for working on a clothing line and putting Ramos’ art on laptop covers and in other design forms. “It’s a great partnership of working together. I can compliment his artwork on the World Wide Web,” Chambers said.
In the back of the building is Ramos’ studio – bare except for his larger-than-life canvasses and alternating paint cans lining the whitewashed brick walls. The area is unfinished but already feels like an artist’s lair with splattered paint on the floors making an artistic statement all their own.
“I’ll always do the florals, but my passion is using bold Japanese brush strokes to create my pieces,” Ramos says.