Now you see it ...

LIZA SIMONE is the executive director of an art gallery that has no fixed address. Part curator, part real estate broker, she scours the Los Angeles area for vacant buildings that might serve as a temporary home for her artists.

The concept behind Phantom Galleries L.A. is simple: Get permission from the owners of empty retail spaces to display art in the windows. Passersby see the art for free, the artists get exposure, and a potential source of neighborhood blight is enlivened with everything from light installations to intricate drawings of insects.

Since Phantom Galleries began in August, several shows have cycled through its main spaces. A former furniture store in Pasadena’s playhouse district is showing a vaguely holiday-themed array of artwork, some of it by Pasadena-based artists, until the end of January. First-floor spaces in the historic Santa Fe and Pacific Electric buildings downtown are hosting exhibits curated by Simone and others, including work by the prominent local artist Gronk.

All end dates for exhibits are tentative, because the spaces could be sold or leased at any time, and a gallery could become a Jamba Juice or a Subway sandwich shop.

“A big thing behind this program is to engage the population that does not go to galleries,” said Simone, who modeled her program after one in San Jose, also called Phantom Galleries. “While we have one foot in the door of the art world, we have the other foot in the door of letting people know how exciting L.A. culture is right now, exposing art to a broader audience than goes to galleries and museums, making art a part of daily life.”

Phantom Galleries does not pay owners to use their display windows. Instead, Simone tries to persuade them that a temporary gallery is not only good for the neighborhood but might increase the building’s curb appeal enough to hasten its sale or lease.

“I thought it sounded like a nice way to have something in the building, something for the community so that people, when they were walking by, could be entertained and see something of interest rather than just empty windows,” said Richard Biggar, whose family has owned the Homestead Furniture building in Pasadena since the 1920s.

At Phantom Galleries, the viewer can only peer at the art through the windows because the buildings remain locked. Some pieces, like Richard Godfrey’s abstract fluorescent splashes in the corner of the Pasadena furniture store, were created specifically for the exhibit and are on a scale suited to this sidewalk perspective. But others, especially detailed paintings or sketches mounted some distance away from the window, can make the viewer long to be inside the room.

Ashley McLean Emenegger of McLean Fine Art, who curated the Dan Van Clapp show in the Santa Fe Lofts building, said the limited perspective is merely an added twist on what a museumgoer, who cannot touch the artwork or even get too close to it, faces.

“It’s an interesting dialogue between the viewer and a piece of art in a space they can’t even access,” she said.

A few Phantom Galleries artists have sold pieces as a result of the shows. But Godfrey says he is in it more for the thrill that his work will be seen by random passersby instead of just people who have specifically sought it out.

“I find that exciting, going outside of the limits of the art crowd. I like the fact that I have exposure to the public at large,” Godfrey said. “The idea of taking these various buildings and energizing them with art or any kind of cultural activity is a great idea as opposed to empty space.”

In downtown L.A. at 6th and Los Angeles streets on a recent afternoon, many pedestrians did not even glance at Van Clapp’s striking, life-sized sculptures of bombs with exposed innards perched in unlikely places. But a few gestured at the window and struck up conversations with their companions.

Shekinah Shakur, who lives a few blocks away and dropped by to see the exhibit at the urging of her husband, called Van Clapp’s work a “prophetic” comment on a society that “is in the process of destroying ourselves.”

“As the wife of an artist, as someone who lives down here on skid row, to make this open to the public as part of their daily walk, their daily viewing, to fully expose this to everyone, that’s the way it should be,” she said.

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Phantom Galleries

Current shows (end dates subject to change):

What: “Let There Be Light,” including site-specific installations by Richard Godfrey and Susan Chorpenning

Where: Former Homestead Furniture building, 680 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena

When: On view round-the-clock through Jan. 31

What: Gronk 2006, a site-specific installation; Raymond Y. Newton, “Leaves” photographs; sculpture by Dan Van Clapp

Where: Santa Fe Lofts, 121 E. 6th St.

When: Newton exhibit is round-the-clock; others 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. Van Clapp exhibit ends Jan. 7; others have no definite end date.

What: Slow Burn, a collection of paintings, prints and sculpture

Where: Pacific Electric Lofts, 601 S. Los Angeles St.

When: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, through Jan. 7

What: Paintings by Erik James and Peter Romberg

Where: Macy’s Plaza, 750 W. 7th St., inside the mall in the former Casual Corner and Petite Sophisticate stores

When: Open round-the-clock. No definite end date.

Info: (213) 826-2854, www.phantomgalleriesla.com