Practical Deets:

4606 W Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90016

Friday & Saturday - 12-5 PM & By Appointment

Definitions: 

D.M.S.T : dream more stay true 

Atelier: a french word that translates to studio or workshop.

Core Tenets - Community, Access, Joy, Sharing, Patience, Collaboration, Care. 

Our Why:

The DMST Atelier is an artist-run studio, gallery, and social-practice space founded in April 2021 by artists Marantz Moon & Frannie Hemmelgarn to establish a space that fosters a connected, accessible, and collaborative creative community.

Our Story

DMST Atelier’s first chapter began at The Drake Hotel on 7th & Kohler in DTLA, and ran from March 2021 to August 2023. The historic Drake Hotel’s ground-floor commercial space was built in 1922 to house typically single men coming to Los Angeles to work in the fields or railyard. During the mid-20th century, planning initiatives converted many of these residential hotels into affordable and supportive housing. Today, the Drake Hotel sits at the nexus of multiple neighborhoods in downtown Los Angeles. Just west of the Arts District, southeast of Skid Row, and south of the produce and flower markets, the original DMST workspace straddled many worlds.

DMST’s essence is embodied in its foundational text, Uses of the Erotic by Audrey Lorde — particularly the following excerpt:

The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

In this spirit, Hemmelgarn and Moon created programming designed to produce the possibility of shared joy between strangers. Pulling in passersby from diverse worlds as they transited past the gallery, DMST became a destination that encouraged conversation, collaboration, and bonding via making and appreciating, and sharing art, food, and experiences. 

For part of the year, DMST  functioned as a studio. Painting , sculpture, and found materials (lots of cardboard and wood!) filled the room, with artists creating works in connection to their individual practices. 

For the rest of the year, DMST operated as a non-traditional gallery space that hosts solo and group shows for emerging, established, outside, inside, and anywhere-on-any-spectrum artists. More important than material, method, or other craft-specific elements, DMST holds space for active makers and creators that share the DMST Atelier core tenets of Community, Access, Joy, Sharing, Patience, Collaboration and Care. 

The Social Practice was a year round effort at DMST. DMST hosted monthly Community Feeds serving 60-100 people. The DMST Social Practice also included various interactive, participatory and collaborative art projects that take place on the streets of Los Angeles directly outside Atelier’s doors. These activations aimed to remove barriers to entry for experiencing and participating in art-making and joy. 

In August 2023, Drake Hotel ownership decided to renovate the building’s upper units, evicting all ground-floor commercial tenants. The DMST team took this as an opportunity to take a much-needed break to focus on solo practices, and reflect on the first iteration of DMST Atelier. 

In June 2024, DMST Atelier opened in its new and current location on the ground floor of a new affordable housing building, Washington Crossing, developed by Meta Housing Corporation. Building on the momentum and spirit of its first embodiment, DMST will continue to create a safe community space, using art as its primary tool of connection. 

Located at the intersection of Washington Blvd and Vineyard Avenue in Mid-City Los Angeles, Washington Crossing is comprised of two buildings on the North and South side of Washington Blvd. The northern building is affordable housing, set aside for artists. It includes two studios that host artists as part of the MST Atelier artist-in-residency program. The southern building is permanent supportive housing for formerly homeless persons. It also house the DMST Atelier gallery and its programming in its ground-floor space.