Avid volunteer and Long Beach arts leader Kamran Assadi has been an active member of the city’s arts community for many years. Post columnist Sander Wolff caught up with the busy humanitarian.
Kamran Assadi is co-owner, with Amir Zolghadr, of the celebrated Utopia Restaurant, located in the heart of the East Village Arts District on the Northwest corner of 1st & Linden. Since it’s inception in 1999, it has served double duty as a gallery, providing high-traffic wall space to well established and emerging artists, and an ever-changing artistic landscape for regular patrons.
“The gallery setting of the restaurant was a natural fit,” Assadi says. “I had a lot of connections with the artist community, more specifically with the visual artists, and we decided to capitalize on that and run a hybrid gallery from the restaurant.
“The area was under developed, and under utilized. The crime rate was very high and the most important thing was that rent was cheap. These are the main ingredients for any arts district, from SoHo to Venice. There was a lot of enthusiasm from property owners, tenants, City officials, and everybody else to make this area a vibrant arts district. So the potential was there and we made a decision to start our business in the heart of the arts district.”
Kamran also served on the board of the Arts Council for Long Beach, which recently honored him as the 2007 Arts Volunteer of the Year.
“I believe Arts Council is a good organization, and we are trying to make it a great organization. I believe in the mission of the organization but, as far as the strategy, I think we can do more. Arts Council adopted a strategic planning document late last year which contains lots of good ideas and, as a board member, I’ll try to do my best to implement the adopted plan together with other members of the board of directors.”
Arts Council for Long Beach, a private 501c3 organization, receives $600,000 in annual funding from the City. I asked Kamran if he saw other roles, aside from funding, for the municipal government.
“Our local government can support art by integrating it to all aspects of urban development. Right now the most important step that our local government can take is to integrate arts and culture into the 2030 plan, create a cultural master plan, and make sure that it is implemented.”
His college experience was focused on fine art, and he’s a founding member of the art collective, FLOOD, which produces the annual SoundWalk event. In its first four years, SoundWalk has drawn international acclaim and attention.
“If you ask any of our Flood members you will get different answers about why we did SoundWalk. I can only tell you about my intentions. There was a need for venues in the area for artists to showcase their works. We don’t have a lot of conventional gallery space in the East Village, and sound did not require any conventional exhibition arena. It is so versatile that it can be presented in a variety of spaces and locations. SoundWalk was a logical solution.
“We pretty much utilized every single corner of this neighborhood for sound installations, from alleys to trash bins, empty store fronts, U-haul trucks, the community garden, sidewalks, etc. I’d like to add that, without community support, this event would still have been a concept, and credit must go to DLBA for funding the event from the very first year.
“We are looking for corporate sponsors. For the last couple of years we held fundraising events which were successful and, as project grows, so does our operating budget. We are looking for sponsors for this upcoming year.
“The first year was purely experimental. We had no idea about how it would be received. We were pleasantly surprised. The following year we had more experience and different expectations. We needed to prove to ourselves that the success wasn’t accidental and, sure enough, the second year was even better than the first. We have had international artists coming from Europe to participate in our third and fourth events. We have a published catalogue, DVD documentation and completion CDs. We are looking forward to next year’s event. One of the ideas we are considering is to get the Long Beach Museum of Art and the University Art Museum involved for the SoundWalk 2008.”