Genie Davis Just Opened a Gallery. Of Course She Did.
- Kristine Schomaker
- 31 minutes ago
- 3 min read
By Kristine Schomaker
I've known Genie Davis for years. She shows up. That's the first thing you notice about her — and also the thing you never stop noticing, because she just keeps doing it. She's at openings, she's writing reviews, she's telling anyone who will listen about artists she believes in. For over a decade, her blog Diversions LA has been quietly, consistently documenting the Southern California art scene because she genuinely loves it. Not as a career move. Because she loves it.
So when she told me she was opening her own gallery, I wasn't surprised. I was thrilled.
Diversions Fine Arts Gallery just opened in Manhattan Beach, and the timing is not lost on me. Starting a gallery right now takes nerve. The economy is shaky, arts funding is precarious, the cultural landscape feels like it's shifting under our feet every single day. And yet. Genie keeps building things anyway. This is who she is. I've watched her do it.
The opening show is called Springtide — and the name does a lot of work. Spring. Tides. Things that come back. Things that surge. It's a group exhibition with 26 artists working across oil, acrylic, watercolor, mixed media, neon, sculpture, and photography. Local artists, national artists, international artists. All exploring spring — its colors, its textures, the particular feeling of resilience that comes with it.
What strikes me about this show is the range. Not just in medium, but in sensibility. This is a curator who is genuinely interested in what different artists are doing — not presenting a unified aesthetic statement, not curating to impress, just: actually curious about people and their work. That comes from spending years paying attention. I've seen it in her writing. I've seen it in how she talks about art at openings, how she remembers what artists are working on, how she follows up.
Genie curated this show herself. Which is worth saying out loud — she didn't wait for someone to hand her a space. She built the platform. She's booking the artists, writing the press, opening the doors. This is what making things happen looks like in practice. Not glamorous, not easy. Just someone who decides this needs to exist and then does the work.
We talk a lot in the art world about gatekeepers. Genie is not a gatekeeper. She never has been. She's a door-opener. That's what ten years of blogging about art shows — not building a brand, building a record of who is making work and why it matters.
Opening a gallery this way, in this moment, is an act of optimism. Not naive optimism — she knows this is hard, she's been around long enough to know — but the kind that comes from genuinely believing art matters, that community matters, that showing up for each other is how we get through the parts of the world that are trying to make us smaller.
I'm so proud of her. And I love that she named it Diversions. It comes from her blog, yes. But diversions also means: a detour from the difficult road. A turn toward something else. Something beautiful, alive, worth stopping for.
Go see Springtide. And then keep watching what Genie builds. We need more people like her.
Diversions Fine Arts Gallery 1069 N. Aviation Blvd., Manhattan Beach Thursday–Sunday, 12–4pm diversionsla.com
Photos Courtesy Diversions Fine Arts Gallery and Dani Dodge
