Creativity Brews Amid Old Factories of Lincoln Heights

The entry area of Bruce Gray’s home is perfectly suited for laying a nice clean bead with a MIG welder.

The walls are rusty corrugated aluminum, the floor is concrete, and the front door could accommodate a full-size pickup.

With railroad spikes and gas canisters spilling into his frontyard, Gray’s decor might raise an eyebrow in some neighborhoods. But not here, not at the Brewery.

Gray, a metal sculptor, resides with several hundred other artists who live and work in the century-old brick and concrete buildings of the now-defunct Eastside and Pabst Blue Ribbon breweries. The usually cloistered community opened its doors to the public Saturday for a glimpse of its works of art and modern life in the old industrial yards of Lincoln Heights.

“There is an energy here,” said oil painter Guillermo Bert. “It’s really a creative environment.”

Photographer E.K. Waller and her husband moved into their cavernous studio in the Pabst warehouse nine years ago. Old railroad tracks crisscross in front of their entry.

When the couple moved in they had to build a kitchen, add a bathroom and arrange the furniture in ways to make the loft look less like a giant concrete box.

Now it is home, they say. “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to live in a place like this,” said Waller’s husband, Alan Boltuch, who is not an artist. “It’s the one place in L.A. that’s really a community.”

Tenants say they chat at the Brewery cafe, collaborate on art projects and revel together at block parties. The community’s location among the weed-choked railroad yards and industrial warehouses between the Golden State Freeway and the Los Angeles River also makes cheap art supplies easy to find.

Gray welded a sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus rex using only parts he got from the Southern Pacific railroad. The roaring head is a train link, the tail is a chain from a crane, and the claws are various spikes and tie-downs.

With all this useful junk floating around the community, trash takes on a new meaning. “The dumpsters are great treasure troves,” said Denis Kuratz, a landscape architect.

Junk is part of the Brewery’s ramshackle ambience. Although some studios in newer buildings seem sterile, others are set behind grape vines, splintered wood and corroding tin. Eclectic gardens of cactus, banana plants and motorcycle parts sit in the shadow of the Edison smokestack.

This weekend’s Artwalk is scheduled to continue from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. today.