Currency Exchange is a neighborhood-first arts and community center rooted on Washington Blvd in Mid-City Los Angeles that creates space for community to practice & integrate the exchange of alternative cultural currency.
Born from the evolution of DMST Atelier, Currency Exchange expands the role of the traditional gallery into something broader: a neighborhood resource.
All Currency is Welcome.
Casting Shadows David Vega & Andy Montiel Phillips Opens Saturday 9/12, 5-8 PM
View Exhibition >>David Vega & Andy Montiel Phillips ▲ Casting Shadows ▲ Opens Saturday 9/12, 5-8 PM ▲ Karaoke Saturday 10/10, 7-10 PM ▲ Closing Reception & Community Feed ▲ Saturday 11/14, 4-7 PM ▲
David Vega & Andy Montiel Phillips ▲ Casting Shadows ▲ Opens Saturday 9/12, 5-8 PM ▲ Karaoke Saturday 10/10, 7-10 PM ▲ Closing Reception & Community Feed ▲ Saturday 11/14, 4-7 PM ▲
CXLA offers an art gallery, artist residency and supportive programming as a bridge between artists, neighbors and the residents of the affordable housing community above the gallery.
While art remains the central tool, our identity extends beyond exhibitions and cultural programming and is defined by an enduring commitment to advocate for the current needs of the neighborhood.
Through decentralized resource & idea sharing, partnerships, outreach and engagement CXLA facilitates a space of care and connection.
“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”
▲ Art Exhibitions
Rotating exhibitions featuring emerging and established artists whose work cultivates curiosity, dialogue, and reciprocal exchange between the contemporary arts community and the local community.
Learn More >>▲ Programming
Workshops, talks, shared meals, and public events designed to facilitate access to art, education & mutual care.Learn More >>▲ AGAPE Artist Residency
A year-long residency, which includes a free studio, financial support and a culminating presentation for established artists interested in developing new work alongside community-based projects.Learn More >>▲ Community Center
A welcoming space for neighbors to gather, share experiences, build relationships, and support one another.Learn More >>David Vega & Andy Montiel Phillips ▲ Casting Shadows ▲ Opens Saturday 9/12, 5-8 PM ▲ Karaoke Saturday 10/10, 7-10 PM ▲ Closing Reception & Community Feed ▲ Saturday 11/14, 4-7 PM ▲
David Vega & Andy Montiel Phillips ▲ Casting Shadows ▲ Opens Saturday 9/12, 5-8 PM ▲ Karaoke Saturday 10/10, 7-10 PM ▲ Closing Reception & Community Feed ▲ Saturday 11/14, 4-7 PM ▲
Board of Directors
Frannie Hemmelgarn
Frannie Hemmelgarn is an artist, cultural organizer, and community development professional whose work explores the intersection of art, the built environment, and community.
Founder-
With a background in economics and accounting from Claremont McKenna College, Frannie has spent more than a decade working in affordable housing and community development, most recently at Brisa Development Partners. Her work has spanned public funding, development strategy, financing and the delivery of affordable housing, transportation, and community infrastructure across California.
Her artistic practice is visual and social. Her multidisciplinary multimaterial visual studio practice uses processes of deconstruction, reconstruction, layering, weaving, and repair to explore access, fragility, balance, experimentation, and care. Her social practice and community development work have increasingly converged around a shared set of interests: activating underused spaces, working within and around existing infrastructure, and experimenting with ways art programming can cultivate connection and belonging in housing and surrounding neighborhoods. .
In 2021, Frannie co-founded DMST Atelier with artist Marantz Moon out of a desire to build artist community and create greater access to the arts. In 2024, after losing their original Downtown Los Angeles location, the gallery relocated to the ground floor of a newly completed affordable housing development in Mid-City Los Angeles, and the current location of Currency Exchange, where Frannie serves as co-founder and Executive Director.
Liz Stringer
Liz Stringer is an artist, arts administrator and educator based in Long Beach. In her practice, Stringer uses science fiction as a framework to fracture and rearticulate narrative...Board Member-
boundaries between the physical and metaphysical. Collapsing scientific research to create a hybrid language that transforms into multimedia installations of smell, ceramic, and drawing. She received her dual Bachelor’s degree from UC San Diego (BFA & BS 2016), and her MFA at UC Irvine. Stringer has led programs for youth, teens, and adults as a gallery educator through the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and at La Jolla Country Day School for grades 5 -12 for the past seven years. She is was involved in the 5th and 6th versions of INSITE.Her artistic practice is visual and social. Her multidisciplinary multimaterial visual studio practice uses processes of deconstruction, reconstruction, layering, weaving, and repair to explore access, fragility, balance, experimentation, and care. Her social practice and community development work have increasingly converged around a shared set of interests: activating underused spaces, working within and around existing infrastructure, and experimenting with ways art programming can cultivate connection and belonging in housing and surrounding neighborhoods. .
In 2021, Frannie co-founded DMST Atelier with artist Marantz Moon out of a desire to build artist community and create greater access to the arts. In 2024, after losing their original Downtown Los Angeles location, the gallery relocated to the ground floor of a newly completed affordable housing development in Mid-City Los Angeles, and the current location of Currency Exchange, where Frannie serves as co-founder and Executive Director.
Marantz Moon
Marantz Moon, Los Angeles, CA based is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores identity, memory, culture, and the symbolic power of form. He holds a B.A in Studio art & M.A in Art.
Founder-
Working across sculpture, painting, resin, clay, and found materials, Moon creates works that invite viewers to reconsider their relationship to history, humanity, and contemporary society. Recurring motifs—including the silhouette of the Afro—which serve as visual anchors that connect personal experience with broader cultural narratives. With 12, plus years of Art handling, installation and art service practices he has a vast knowledge of space, form and installation design.
Alongside his studio practice, he is a lecturing professor of Art and social justice education at CSUF. As a Co founder of the space, Moon has also co developed community-based projects through Currency Exchange formerly DMST Atelier, expanding conversations around accessibility and the role of art beyond commercial systems. His work seeks not to provide definitive answers, but to create spaces for reflection, empathy, and dialogue, encouraging audiences to pause, question, and engage more deeply with themselves and the world around them.
Joseph Sherman
Joseph Sherman is a Los Angeles-based artist, photographer, and creative director whose work moves between fine art, sports, and contemporary culture. His career spans collaborations with...Board Member-
the National Basketball Association, Los Angeles Lakers, SLAM Magazine, Complex, and other leading cultural organizations.
Sherman holds an MFA in Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited throughout Los Angeles, including at SoFi Stadium, Residency Art Gallery, Praz-Delavallade, Bolsky Gallery, and DMST Atelier. Drawing from photography, basketball, and the visual language of popular culture, Sherman brings together a career built inside culture with a fine art practice that looks critically at the images, objects, and ideas that shape it.Her artistic practice is visual and social. Her multidisciplinary multimaterial visual studio practice uses processes of deconstruction, reconstruction, layering, weaving, and repair to explore access, fragility, balance, experimentation, and care. Her social practice and community development work have increasingly converged around a shared set of interests: activating underused spaces, working within and around existing infrastructure, and experimenting with ways art programming can cultivate connection and belonging in housing and surrounding neighborhoods. .
In 2021, Frannie co-founded DMST Atelier with artist Marantz Moon out of a desire to build artist community and create greater access to the arts. In 2024, after losing their original Downtown Los Angeles location, the gallery relocated to the ground floor of a newly completed affordable housing development in Mid-City Los Angeles, and the current location of Currency Exchange, where Frannie serves as co-founder and Executive Director.
Kim Garcia
Kim Garcia is a Los Angeles–based multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work begins from her experience as the daughter of immigrants, tracing how personal memory expands into...Board Member-
questions of belonging, power, and the making of American identity. Working across sculpture, installation, drawing, and painting, she uses material processes of folding, compression, and accumulation to engage what resists closure, approaching history as something active and embodied. Recent projects move from intimate family narratives outward to examine Filipino American identity and U.S. imperial histories, creating environments that invite viewers to reconsider America as shaped by layered arrivals and unfinished histories.
Her work has been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Luis De Jesus Los Angeles, Feia Gallery, Phase Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA), and Torrance Art Museum. Kim holds a BA from UC San Diego and an MFA from UC Irvine.
As an educator, Kim leads sculpture at the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara and serves as Gallery Director of the CCS Art Gallery, where she shapes exhibition programming and student engagement with contemporary practice. At Santa Monica College, she teaches gallery exhibitions courses that give students hands-on experience organizing shows, grounded in a commitment to mentoring students with transparency about the art field.
Cara Rae Joven
Bio coming soon...Board Member-
Bio coming soon…
David Vega & Andy Montiel Phillips ▲ Casting Shadows ▲ Opens Saturday 9/12, 5-8 PM ▲ Karaoke Saturday 10/10, 7-10 PM ▲ Closing Reception & Community Feed ▲ Saturday 11/14, 4-7 PM ▲
David Vega & Andy Montiel Phillips ▲ Casting Shadows ▲ Opens Saturday 9/12, 5-8 PM ▲ Karaoke Saturday 10/10, 7-10 PM ▲ Closing Reception & Community Feed ▲ Saturday 11/14, 4-7 PM ▲
Recent Exhibitions
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SIKE!
Joseph Sherman
Opening: January 24, 6-8 PM
Community Feed: March 7, 3-6 pm
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Is It True!?
Adrian Culverson, Christina Joseph, Marantz Moon, Jakia March, Monique Mitchell
Opening: Saturday, June 13 from 4-7 PMCommunity Feed: Saturday, July 11
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Blue Collar Crime
Group Exhibition Curated by Lauren Kim
Opening: Saturday, May 2 from 4-6 PMCommunity Feed: Saturday, June 6 TIME TBD
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Shapes of Imposition
Kim Farbota & Svetlana Shigroff
Opening: Saturday, March 14 from 4-7 PM
Community Feed: Saturday, April 18 from 3-6 pm
