Sinning in LA

It was just before Valentine’s Day, and our fingers were covered in red paint. Our heads swimming in champagne, we found ourselves somewhere dark and deep in the 818 area code. We were surrounded by the trappings of the holiday, including chocolates and flowers, but as the slow rhythms of “Monday Paracetemol” began to play on the stereo, we continued our dive beneath the surface. We had a blank canvas in front of us, having already drawn with crayons and painted with our fingers, and we were about to let our inner children play with paintbrushes.

We were at Art Rebel, a “therapeutic creative healing center,” according to creator Ponti Lambros. “It’s a place to reconnect with your creative self,” he told us.

Unfortunately, our creative selves had just created homemade cards, fingerpaintings, and now filled this canvas, and all we could manage to paint and draw were hearts. Even so, it’s amazing how quickly we slipped out of our own heads and in to a place of youthful energy.

“This is a place,” said Ponti, “where you can just close the garage doors, listen to great music, and spend some quality time that is unique. That’s what I want people to be able to do together. To have that experience and do something memorable. Why don’t we do things that used to make us happy as children? When was the last time you fingerpainted? You don’t remember. When you did, though, all your memories are good and happy. We get so caught up in our day-to-day that even the little mundane things like fingerpainting help you reconnect with yourself. It’s about touching the texture on paper and feeling it rather than texting and emails.”

For all its convenience, the digital age pulls away some of the layers that connect us to each other and to ourselves. There’s a piece of the human experience that gets lost in the jumble of wires and transistors that comprise the computers and cell phones which fill up our days. As children, we used to make things every day that would inevitably end up on our refrigerator at home. Before we could fire off e-mails in seconds, we had to work much harder to keep up the communication in our friendships and relationships. I’m not sure I could even identify the handwriting these days of my closest friends.

“When people come here,” continued Ponti, “it’s my job to make sure that we can do everything that we say we can do. Once you come in here, the space on its own puts you in a creative space of comfort, and you’re not feeling insecure about trying to create something. It’s a welcoming vibe, and you can feel it.”

Once you actually do reach the doors, you feel a sense of accomplishment, because the location is slightly hidden. “There’s a bit of a scavenger hunt to find the door,” said Ponti. We only drove past once, but we did open a few storage closets before he opened up one of the large garage doors to let us in.


“Sometimes people flip out because they can’t find the place,” he said. “What’s right in front of your nose is sometimes the hardest to find.There’s something about it, but it’s funny with the human condition. You can’t find it. It’s part of the fun and the experience.”

It turns out that the building itself is historical. “It’s the spot where the last photograph of James Dean was taken,” said Ponti. “The flower shop used to be a gasoline station, and there’s a spot of him filling up before he crashed, and in the background is my building. The fact that it happened here was kind of unique.”

“We try to carry on his memory of being rebels without a cause, but we’re rebels with a cause. We don’t want you to revolt in a violent way, but we want you to not conform to what people say, but to do it peacefully and within yourself. The only way to make changes is within yourself. I’ve had a lot of people walk through these doors, in a lot of different states of mind, and health,” he said.

As our eyes wandered across the room, past the found objects that made up one of the drawing spaces, over Ponti’s brilliant paintings and photography, and along the flowers and the hearts that hung on strings in the air, we talked about the things that had been lost and found all around us.

“You can get lost in beats. These paintings are me getting lost,” he said. “I was an investment banker in London. I came back to LA to help out my family, and then late at night, when everything was closed, a party would start and we’d be painting, drinking and smoking until five in the morning. People from all walks of life, in some sort of art speakeasy. What I found was that there’s a healing process to art that needed to be utilized.”

People turn in all directions to handle the problems in their life, some even to chemicals and addictions. You don’t, however, tend to hear about people using art as a healing modality.

“A friend of mine has been on the homicide division of the LAPD for over twenty-five years. How do you turn that off at night? I believe he was using Jack Daniel’s at the time. I put a huge canvas in front of him, and it totally intimidated the guy. This is a detective who could determine the angle of a bullet and who killed who for what reason, but he said he couldn’t paint. I said there were three steps: brush, paint, canvas. He loosens up, and after an hour and a half, he had his tie is on his head, he was jumping up and down, and he said that it was the best night of sleep he had in twenty five years.”

One night at Art Rebel left us with a painted canvas for the wall, cards for each other, fingerpaintings, and even some spin art. A small collection of creations, with only a handful of hours and hardly any artistic talent. But there are many things to do at Art Rebel besides the Love Art Experience.

“We do a bunch of different things here,” he said. “On Tuesdays, we do a thing for kids as young as six months old. Painting classes with the parents. Next month, we’re starting classes for special needs children. We’re trying to also do stuff for veterans with post-traumatic stress from the war. Anything and everything that can help heal someone through art is where we’re trying to take this. We’re also trying to give people a unique, creative experience beyond the normal bar or club. We also do an underground dinner which tries to bring back the dinner salon of the Forties and Fifties. We play great music and the chef becomes the artist for the evening. Art Rebel doesn’t have to be just paintings. It can be music, food, art, healing through alternative medicines and meditations. We’re trying to open a large variety of classes, from Tai-Chi, to Qigong, to acupuncture, knitting, late-night nude figure model drawings, body paint nights, paint dancing nights, and of course nights like this one.”

Body painting and dancing with paint are certainly a long way from other art classes, where you might have to accurately recreate a bowl of fruit.

Ponti agreed. “Let’s do a still life class,” he said.

Look at the great things I can do. I learned how to draw a fucking apple. What are you going to do with that?

It’s also important to note that Art Rebel is located in Sherman Oaks, away from where you might expect to find such a place.

“We need to spread the word in to areas that are void of creativity,” said Ponti. “There are no galleries over here, so on a big scale, it’s trying to do a lot more community outreach and charity work. We’ve worked with Starlight Foundation, the American Cancer Society, things for people coming out of rehab, corporate art retreats, and even chakra art experiences.”

It certainly becomes a different experience, turning something you love in to a business. What was once prolific painting has receded, now that he’s managing a family and a business endeavor. But just like all of us at Sinning in LA have been searching out the undiscovered and the eclectic all of our lives, and now do it professionally by shining the lights our collective talents on those same people, he still finds it enjoyable and worthwhile. “Finally there’s someone out there that’s doing what we’re about,” said Ponti of Sinning in LA.

Of course, he recognizes the fortune that lies in doing something that you’re passionate about. “I’m blessed and thankful that I can be doing this every day,” he said,  “to be making a living in times like we live. What am I going to do in the worst recession in the history of mankind? I’m going to open an art studio. That’s being an art rebel. This is why we need to do stuff like this in times like this. Everyone’s scared, but if we don’t reclaim ourselves and the power we have as individuals, how are we going to do anything?”

Art Rebel has been in my mind a lot since we had our experience there. It comes around late at night, and it appears when it needs to. I can’t wait to unplug from my life again for a few hours and head over there soon, just to see what happens next.

Surf: http://www.artrebel.net
Go: 14321 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks 91423
Mail: info@artrebel.net