A Do-It-Yourself Art Team

The One-Two Punch of Dover and Jill Abrams And Their Infusion Gallery

by Lea Lion

Dover Abrams is something of a jack-of-all-trades. The dreadlocked 34-year-old and his wife, Jill, own Infusion Gallery on Main Street. But Dover is also an artist, dealer and designer. It's all part of the couple's strictly do-it-yourself philosophy.

Dover and Jill Abrams moved their gallery from North Hollywood to Downtown two years ago. They specialize in showing work by emerging and self-taught artists. Photo by Gary Leonard.

Housed in a two-story former sewing factory in the Fashion District, Infusion is Gallery Row's largest art space at 10,000 square feet. The façade of the freestanding building is covered with an abstract graffiti mural that crystallizes in the middle just long enough to spell out the gallery's name in blocky script. Inside are two large rooms with high ceilings, white walls and concrete floors. On a recent visit, the air was sweet with incense and colorful paintings graced nearly every surface. Downtowners will be able to check it out this Thursday, Aug. 10 at the monthly Downtown Artwalk.

"When we first opened the gallery, we tried to show anybody who wanted to show here," Dover said, looking at Jill and laughing. "But that didn't work out. So we had to get more realistic."

For their monthly shows, the Abramses often pull from a pool of regularly exhibiting artists, but the gallery still focuses on work by emerging and self-taught artists - and its owners are not afraid to take a gamble. For example, through Aug. 25, the gallery's front room holds the cartoon-like paintings of little-known Australian artist David Williams, whom the Abrams learned about through the Australian Art Commission.

"This guy lives way out in the desert," Dover said. "He can't even get to a phone without doing some serious traveling. So, all of his paintings were shipped and then I stretched them when they got here."

Championing unknown artists (and often putting some elbow grease into the effort) is nothing new to the Abrams. They appeared on the art scene eight years ago, running an impromptu gallery on the sidewalks of North Hollywood. It all began when Dover, a self-taught graffiti artist, couldn't find a gallery willing to exhibit his work, so he decided to show it himself - along with pieces by other emerging artists.

"We did it guerilla style," Dover recalled.

According to Dover, while a lot of people liked the illegal sidewalk gallery, there was also some "community outrage," which eventually drove the Abrams indoors. In 1998, they hooked up with the then-struggling Lankershim Arts Center and transformed the neglected space into a functioning gallery with regular hours and monthly shows.

"We really breathed life into that place," Jill said. "We did a lot of community outreach and poured a lot of our own money into it."

Despite receiving positive feedback from the community, two years ago the Abrams closed up shop in North Hollywood and headed to Downtown Los Angeles in pursuit of affordable rent and a burgeoning arts scene.

The couple drove around Downtown looking for the future home of Infusion Gallery, which they found at 828 S. Main St., on the somewhat seedy southern end of Gallery Row. They scraped together rent money and then proceeded to scrape layers of old linoleum off the gallery floor. In the three weeks between closing their Lankershim Arts Center space and opening up Downtown, the Abrams knocked down walls, constructed mobile dividers, refinished concrete floors and painted the vast gallery space bright white.