FIELD. NOTES. LA. / 0021 / THE BREWERY ARTWALK / LINCOLN HEIGHTS
A City
Within a City.
Inside the Brewery Artwalk, where Los Angeles artists live and work among the remains of an industrial past.
01
What happens
behind the doors.
A few miles from downtown Los Angeles, an old industrial campus holds an entire community of working artists.
I went to the November 2026 Brewery Artwalk to see the work, but I kept noticing the spaces around it: the worn corridors, generous studio volumes, improvised displays, old brick, and the way afternoon light moved across surfaces that were never designed to be precious.
There is something different about seeing art where it is made. You notice the unfinished edges, the tools, and the decisions happening in real time. Rather than moving through a perfectly staged exhibition, you are being invited into someone else's working world.
For me, as both an interior designer and photographer, that relationship between the maker and the room is the story.
02
Before the art,
there was industry.
The Brewery did not begin as a destination for art. It began as a place of production.
Brewing began at the site in 1897 under the Los Angeles Brewing Company. The plant became associated with Eastside beer and was acquired by Pabst in 1948. After the brewery closed in 1979, the Carlson family purchased the property and began finding new uses for its industrial buildings.
A turning point arrived in 1982, when Los Angeles adopted an Artist-in-Residence ordinance allowing artists to inhabit and work in qualifying industrial buildings. The owners began adapting the complex into artist live/work lofts. What had held brewing equipment could now hold easels, kilns, sculptures, and experiments.
Today the Brewery occupies roughly 17 acres and contains more than 300 lofts. They are working spaces as much as places to live, and that distinction matters. The architecture has not been erased to create a polished residential fantasy; it still carries signs of its earlier purpose.
Adaptive reuse is not simply about preserving a building. It is about giving its character a new reason to matter.
03
The studio
is never neutral.
Every open door revealed a different way of occupying a room.
One space was dense with artwork and people; another gave a single piece room to breathe. I moved between delicate framed works, graphic prints, ceramics, installations, and experimental lighting. The change in scale was part of the experience.
Some rooms felt domestic, others unmistakably industrial. That contrast is what interested me most. The surrounding architecture provided a common framework, yet each artist made the interior feel completely individual.
The Artwalk, which began in the early 1980s, opens the working studios to visitors. The November 7–8, 2026 edition featured more than 100 participating artists. There is no single look that defines the community, and that is its strength.
04
Atmosphere is
in the details.
I kept finding moments that were as compelling as the work itself.
A lit sculptural fixture glowed against a dark wall. A shadowed hallway became a composition of its own. In another studio, a small dog seemed to emerge from darkness. These are not the sorts of details you plan an itinerary around, but they are often the ones you remember.
As a photographer, I am drawn to that tension between what is visible and what is withheld. As a designer, I think about how the same restraint operates in an interior: one light source, an unexpected object, a textured wall, or a collected piece that gives the eye somewhere to rest.
05
A neighborhood
above the city.
Outside the studios, the Brewery's scale and its relationship to Los Angeles became visible again.
Metal walkways connected buildings. The horizon opened toward palms, rooftops, and the downtown skyline. As the light faded, visitors became silhouettes against the sky.
The place felt both enclosed and connected to the rest of Los Angeles. This is a community with its own daily rhythm, but the city remains visible beyond its edges.
That layered view is part of why I love photographing Los Angeles. You can find the personal and the monumental within the same frame.
06
What I would
bring into a home.
The lesson is not to make a house look like an artist loft. It is to make space for a life that feels unmistakably its own.
The Brewery reminded me that personality comes from more than a chosen aesthetic. It is built through objects with meaning, materials that can show their age, and rooms that leave room for exploration.
I would take away the confidence to mix scale and texture, to choose art for its connection to the person living with it, and to use light deliberately. A room can be refined without being sterile. Furnishings can be considered without making everything match.
Most importantly, it reminded me that an interior should support what happens inside it. For the artists here, that may mean creating, displaying, storing, and living in one place. For a client, it may mean gathering friends, recovering from a demanding workday, or finding the freedom to begin again.
The most memorable spaces do not simply display a point of view. They give the people inside permission to have one.
Four notes
for the next room.
Keep the layers.
Let older materials, collected art, and contemporary furnishings exist in conversation.
Design for making.
Make room for the activities and habits that define the people who live there.
Give art a voice.
Choose works that challenge, delight, or mean something rather than merely coordinate.
Let light tell the story.
Use contrast, pools of warmth, and quieter corners to create a sense of atmosphere.
A place to make.
A place to belong.
What stayed with me after the Brewery Artwalk was not any single work of art. It was the idea that a group of industrial buildings could become a living framework for hundreds of individual creative lives.
The Brewery is a reminder that atmosphere is accumulated. It grows through use, history, improvisation, and the people who leave their mark on a place.
At Curated Style Collective, that is the kind of thinking I bring to residential and commercial interiors: a furnishings-led approach shaped by art, culture, and the way people actually live. Interior Design for the Life You're Building Next.
Curated Style Collective / Los Angeles Interior Design
Make space for
your own point of view.
Thoughtful furnishings, layered lighting, art, and atmosphere can make a room feel like it belongs to you. Explore Full-Service Interior Design and Design Consultation with Curated Style Collective.
