Brentwood Art Center Reflects Founders’ Dream

“Retirement means not running a business, but going to my studio every day with my dog, Beau, and being the artist I’ve always been,” Ed Buttwinick says. After 35 years, Ed and his wife Linda are retiring and selling the Brentwood Art Center School of Fine Art, which has grown to over 600 students, with 50 employees, including 35 teachers. Their business is a testament to faith and the power of passion. After Ed graduated from UCLA with double degrees in art and education, he started out teaching in the inner-city schools for five years before transferring to Warner Elementary School in Westwood. When the teachers went on strike in 1969, a parent at the school asked Ed to teach art, offering her house and garage. After nine months, Ed had 80 students. After the strike ended, Ed and Linda were faced with a decision. Should they follow Ed’s passion for art and teaching, or take the safe route and have Ed go back with LAUSD at Warner? At the time, they had two small daughters, and a wrong decision could have spelled disaster. Linda knew her husband’s dream. “I just want to teach art,” he said. She backed him completely and they opened a school. “Linda’s the gambler,” Ed says. “She gave me 100-percent total support.” In the beginning years, “it was very scary,” Linda says. “In addition to our start-up costs, we also had to give $4,500 back to LAUSD, which was half a year’s teacher’s salary.” Ed had taken a sabbatical and LAUSD paid half a teacher’s salary on the condition that the teacher come back for two years. “We sold some of my comic book collection for $800 for the seed money to start the business,” Ed says. They hired a second teacher and moved to their current site at 26th Street and Montana in Santa Monica. At the time, the building housed a beauty shop, liquor store, and cleaners in addition to their art school. “We had to be young to do it because we didn’t know any better,” Linda says, smiling. She quit her job in a medical office and became the administrator for the school. They were living in North Hollywood at the time, so she’d drop her six- and seven-year-old off at the local school, drive over to Santa Monica, work a few hours, then turn around and do the commute back to the Valley. One night while Ed was teaching in 1979, the owners of the building called Linda and told her they were going to sell the building. She talked to them and made an instant decision. When Ed got out of class, she told him, “I think I just bought the building.” It was month to month for the next four years. Ed says, “Linda had faith in me.” They rolled up their sleeves, dived in and improvised. Their first art tables were hand-me-downs, complete with nails and splinters. Much of the early furnishings came from Linda’s grandfather, including cabinets that now house over 500 art books that Ed started collecting as a teenager. They contain visual references, instructional books and art-historical texts. When Ed and Linda leave, the books will stay. In the small administrative office, the far wall is completely occupied by a massive six-foot-long antique desk that belonged to Linda’s father. When they moved it to the Brentwood Art Center, there was no administrative office. The 6-ft by 12-ft office was simply built around the desk. When the Buttwinicks retire, the desk will stay because there’s no way to get it out, unless a wall is torn down. That there’s not more attention given to the luxury of administrative office is typical of the Buttwinick style. “It’s always the students and people and their art first,” Linda says. Those first years were intense. Ed taught 13 classes a week. As the school’s popularity increased, Ed found himself training teachers to help with the demand for classes. Now they proudly say that half of their current teachers were either students, worked at the front desk, or were their blue crew (maintenance). “The teachers have given us life, people and place in the community. The school is a collective spirit,” Ed says. “It’s a family, a blessing. “I feel nachas,” he continues, “that’s Yiddish for good fortune, a deep sense of gratitude and fulfillment.” Both Ed and Linda nod their head in agreement. Ed and Linda, so different, yet so complementary. They met at Fairfax High School, when both were on the student council. Linda says, “We were very different in every way except values.” He, the artist, she, the business person. Linda continues, “We let each other do what we do best.” Ed adds, “My passion was art and she supported me. I was lucky.” Linda goes on to explain, “If it came down to a decision between whether money should go for the business or the school’it all came down to the school, because the school made the business.” Ten years after the school was opened, Linda took her first art class. She’s shy about her painting. “I don’t think of myself that way.” Reflecting, she adds, “I love the process of art. I don’t care about the end result, which gives me artistic freedom to do what I want, which allows me success.” “She’s become a better artist than I’ve become an administrator,” Ed says matter-of-factly. Ed specializes in assemblage, a sculptural technique that combines found and other objects in composing different objects into a unified whole. Over the desk in the office is a glass, wood and metal piece that he put together during the Gulf War. He explains that much of his work deals with themes of Judaica and the history and conflict of Israel. He has a piece on permanent collection in the Skirball Museum and piece in the Sha’arei Am synagogue in Santa Monica. They have two married daughters: Jill, who is a speech pathologist, and Karen, who trained as a lawyer, but now works as a sculptor and a jeweler. The Buttwinicks have four grandchildren with whom they’d like to spend more time. Five years ago, they started worrying about what would happen to their school if they retired. Linda wistfully says, “It’s like a third child to us. It has a life of its own. Three generations have come through here.” “We prayed to find someone in the family whose heart was in the same place,” Ed continues. That person is new owner Sarkis Melkonian, a musician from Malibu. “Linda and Sarkis have been working together for seven years.” Linda adds, “Ed and Sarkis laugh together.” As part of the sale agreement, Ed and Linda will continue at the school as advisors for the next year. Don’t expect many changes with the new owner. “The school is perfect the way it is,” Melkonian says.