The Man Behind the Arts Scene

Art lover Don Cribb gazed at the abandoned brick building in downtown Santa Ana--past the rats, trash, broken glass and water damage. He saw the once-splendid Grand Central Building and envisioned the 1924 architectural treasure as a jewel in the crown of a vibrant city arts scene.

“I felt I had discovered a Duesenberg that could be brought back to life and celebrated,” said Cribb, a 52-year-old Santa Ana resident who loves cars as much as he does architecture.

Seven years and $7.2 million later, the block-long Grand Central Art Center at Broadway and 2nd Street houses three art galleries, a theater, classrooms, graduate student dorms and a cafe. It’s the focus of the Santa Ana Artists Village, a thriving arts hub and Cribb’s brainchild.

During his 20s, Cribb had his finger on the pulse of the modern-art world, jetting between Los Angeles, New York and London, rubbing shoulders with David Hockney, Andy Warhol and other artists.

“I’d gone out and had all these adventures in the art scene in Los Angeles and New York and saw how much artists contribute to a community. I wanted to bring it back and share it with my hometown,” Cribb said.

“I thought there was only one opportunity left--the golden plum--to save the town from irrelevance.”

As a county seat with an aging urban core, Santa Ana might once have seemed an unlikely place for a thriving arts community. But the proximity of the Bowers Museum, the gentrification of some of its older neighborhoods and a civic leadership eager to renew its downtown all have converged to make it a city of promise.

And Cribb’s vision of a local art scene is now, in some ways, becoming a reality. Vacant storefronts, boarded-up windows, drugs and gangs have declined dramatically in the area.

The city has spent more than $11 million in and around the center. Monthly art walks attract 1,000 or more visitors who hop among 50 galleries and attend shows at theaters in the village, one named for Cribb.

“The idea that this could happen seemed incredibly far-fetched,” said Mike McGee, who works at Grand Central as a project facilitator of exhibitions and at Cal State Fullerton as director of its main art gallery.

“I really thought the project would fail a couple of times, until it finally happened,” McGee said, citing high renovation costs, which doubled initial estimates.

It’s been an uphill battle. But Cribb, the 6-foot descendant of an English bare-knuckle champion boxer, has never been known to shy away from a fight.

For many years, Cribb approached City Hall again and again as a concerned, disgruntled resident. “The more they dissuaded me from getting involved, the more I realized I had to get involved,” he said.

Since the 1980s, he has worked behind the scenes to persuade others to get on board. He spent hours at then-councilman, now-Mayor Miguel A. Pulido’s muffler shop, convincing him that the arts were key to downtown revitalization.

He invited council members for countless espressos, lobbying them to commit funds. He awoke at the crack of dawn to make telephone calls to New York and Europe to promote the area. He has given personal tours to prospective homeowners, artists and civic leaders showcasing the city.

“He seems like a neighborhood association wrapped up in one person,” City Manager David N. Ream said.

In 1986, Cribb came to Ream. “When Don approaches the city with an idea, it’s always critically important and it’s biggest and the best, and it needs to be done immediately. But that’s not how city governments work,” said Ream, who has often rejected Cribb’s ideas.

Turning downtown around has been a jaunty ride and Cribb’s thorny personality didn’t smooth many bumps. He has protested projects such as a fast-food restaurant in a residential neighborhood. He has threatened to reject a live-work project because he disagreed with its name. He has stormed out of meetings.

“I’m not driven by familiarity; I’m driven by differences,” he said.

Critics and admirers describe him as irascible, aggressive, offensive, persistent and passionate. They say that’s why he gets results.

“The city’s arts agenda wouldn’t be where it is today, if he had been a milquetoast,” McGee said. “Don has been so urgent with his agenda that there are people who are offended by him. He can be incredibly persistent to the point that he will wear people down.”

Cribb sees a problem and just won’t quit. He is a fixer by nature, running an antique conservatorship from his home in Santa Ana and an apartment in Los Angeles. He makes house calls to clients who need their vintage furnishings maintained and sees to it that they are repaired and polished.

His tireless approach to all his projects extends to the renovation of the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, the development of the Discovery Science Center and the relocation of the Orange County High School for the Arts. He founded the Santa Ana Council of Arts and Culture, a civic advocacy group, and he found a home for the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art.

His own home bears the brunt of 15 years and tens of thousands of volunteer hours spent championing his causes. Cribb has yet to finish his “three-year” remodeling project, begun in 1986 when he bought the bungalow-style house, near his Santa Ana childhood neighborhood.

A Man of Humble Beginnings

Cribb was born in Newbern, N.C., the son of a Korean War veteran who transferred to El Toro Marine Base in 1950. The Cribbs later settled in Santa Ana. His family was so poor, Cribb recalled days when he and his sister nearly went without food. Occasionally a local church intervened to feed the family.

His mother, Ethel, was a registered nurse who became a housewife, then a single mother to Cribb and his younger sister, Lynda, after the couple divorced in 1961.

Despite her modest earnings at her job in a pharmacy, she lavished on her son all he desired: expensive cowboys suits complete with leather boots, spurs and hat, a 1970 Jaguar and a high-rise apartment in Hollywood.

“You’d think we had all the money in the world the way I was living, but we didn’t,” Cribb said.

On partial scholarship and through his mother’s support, Cribb bounced around five colleges. He entered USC in 1969, eventually graduating with a film degree.

Cribb was rebellious and school didn’t come easy. He preferred two-man beach volleyball to textbooks and interrupted class to tell jokes. He was often disciplined for drawing airplanes and tail fins of classic cars during lectures.

“I never took my knack for art seriously,” said Cribb, who also had a talent for humor writing and photography. “I was told growing up that art was considered effeminate.”

But encounters with the art world illuminati changed his outlook and his life.

In 1968, Cribb befriended an art student named Larry Stanton. Through Stanton he was invited to Los Angeles parties where he met Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler, British artist David Hockney and Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev.

Nureyev invited Cribb to visit him at his home in London. Cribb dined with Andy Warhol and his entourage in New York. But it was with Hockney that Cribb built a lasting friendship.

“He was colorful, dapper and he wore different colored socks. He made common things seem so fascinating,” Cribb said. He spent holidays with Hockney in Los Angeles and at the artist’s home in London. Cribb was always the willing driver/tour guide when Hockney and friends were in Southern California.

A Familiar Face in Galleries

In 1989, Cribb organized Orange County’s first Hockney exhibition. Cribb’s face has appeared in portraits at the exhibition galleries of the London Contemporary Arts Society and in Los Angeles’ Armand Hammer Art and Cultural Center. Recent shows displayed portraits of Cribb, one by David Hockney at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and others by Don Bachardy at a show at Grand Central.

Running with such a sophisticated crowd made Cribb feel like he had to measure up. “I was the only non-famous person at these great parties,” he said. “I was in awe of these people and felt I had to outperform myself to feel worthy in their company.”

In 1976 he was introduced to Los Angeles portraitist Bachardy who recognized Cribb’s limitless energy and made him a favorite subject for 25 years. “Don has real stamina. He never falls asleep or loses his intensity,” Bachardy said. “When he’s sitting, he’s not a zombie, he’s always intensely thinking about something. I don’t know what it is, but it shows in his expression.”

Rubbing shoulders with renowned artists had a lasting effect on Cribb. He wanted to recreate the heady excitement of those days. The Artists Village was his answer.

“The guy just loves Santa Ana. He’s a true believer in the city’s future,” Ream said.

Cribb’s current Santa Ana projects are to develop: live/work studios, an urban corridor near the Costa Mesa Freeway and a design district along Grand Avenue. He serves on the city’s planning commission and the Grand Central Forum art board, and the county’s light-rail advisory committee.

Over the years, his reputation at City Hall has gradually changed from troublemaking gadfly to respected advocate.

“I’ve gone from being such an irresponsible teenager to being a more responsible person,” he said. Close friends observed that Cribb has mellowed a bit over the years. He said he has some health concerns and has considered reevaluating his priorities.

He will probably spend more time writing, but Cribb won’t give up the fight for a better Santa Ana.

His finds inspiration in his great-, great-, great-grandfather, Tom Cribb, who held the bare-fisted boxing title for 12 years and retired undefeated.

“Perseverance,” Cribb said. “I thank him for that.”