By Erin Aubry Kaplan
Guest Columnist
It’s been three months since Milan Wilkinson lost her father, Sika Dwimfo, the beloved jeweler and cultural impresario who was widely known as the godfather of Leimert Park. The city sign erected in his honor just days before his death at the age of 83 and the block-party memorial in August are just a couple of ways the locals are preserving Sika’s legacy of fusing Black art, commerce and community in the face of a rapidly changing Los Angeles.
So it is painfully ironic that today Wilkinson is struggling with the impending loss of another Sika — the eponymously named shop on Degnan Boulevard that her father ran for 32 years, a storefront that wasn’t just his place of business but also the place where he lived, worked and held court.
In July, before the memorial, the property manager told Wilkinson she had 30 days to leave, or face eviction. He wanted her out.
Wilkinson was stunned. Not so much at the notice, which is always a possibility for tenants like her who don’t have long-term lease agreements and pay month to month. It’s the fact that she hasn’t been able to talk directly to the property owner about the notice.
“The rent is paid, what’s the deal?” said the 39-year-old Wilkinson, who grew up around the shop and, since 2017, has run the business operations.
The kicker is that the landlord is assumed to be Mark Bradford. Bradford, 62, is a world-renowned artist and L.A. native who has deep roots in Leimert Park and for nearly a decade has made very public commitments to elevating the Black arts scene there.
That commitment includes acquiring property for galleries, educational spaces for youth and the like.
While the ambition has been almost universally lauded, it’s the string of acquisitions that have made longtime merchants uneasy over the years, and has become now a sticking point for Wilkinson. Bradford hasn’t helped himself by keeping a very low profile. For someone from the neighborhood claiming to care about the community, such a low profile is unconscionable, especially now as gentrification in Leimert Park approaches a serious tipping point.
To some in the village, Bradford is another indifferent landlord hastening Black displacement, using his local boy/art superstar status as a cover. Bradford’s rags-to-riches story that evolved into a giving-back story is worthy of Hollywood.
Growing up, he worked in his mother’s hair salon on Leimert Boulevard around the corner from the village. He was an average student, and his art career didn’t get under way until he was 30, after he won a scholarship to California Institute of the Arts. His large-scale abstractions, which often comment on race and social realities, have been exhibited everywhere, including a permanent work at LAX.
In 2015, Bradford, along with the philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton and his partner Allan DiCastro, founded Art + Practice, a revamped art deco storefront combining gallery space for emerging Black artists with education for foster youth, in Leimert Park Village. Suddenly the area was on the map of institutions like the Hammer Museum, which has a long association with Bradford.
One of the first artists in residence at Art + Practice was Dale Davis, a Leimert Park originator: It was he and his brother Alonzo who opened the Brockman Gallery on Degnan in 1967 and launched the whole scene, with its distinct tradition of “for us by us.”
When another venerable Degnan business, Zambezi Bazaar, closed its doors in 2014, Art + Practice opened its office there. Bradford offered the space to Eso Won Books, yet another flagship Leimert store located across the street, in a move that was highly anticipated. But the deal fell apart and, in 2022, Eso Won closed for good.
While much of Leimert Park’s struggle over decades has been economic and not Bradford’s doing, there remains room for grievance. Ben Caldwell runs the multimedia center Kaos Network, one of the few tenants in the village who also owns his building.
Caldwell knows Bradford, whom he taught as a student at CalArts. He said Bradford is not the enemy.
“Mark chose to locate in Leimert Park when he sees artists going to other parts of town, like Echo Park and Silver Lake,” Caldwell said. “There was never a question for him what place is more valuable, more deserving of being built up.”
As she scrambles to pack up, Wilkinson is planning to move into one of the spaces across the street by Feb. 1, a deadline recently worked out with the property management. She likes the space, which has been renovated and offers a 99-year lease — an upgrade that literally takes her from zero to a hundred.
Still, the shock of being suddenly uprooted from Sika’s longtime spot, next to the alley that the city christened with his name, lingers.
“It’s very hurtful,” she said of the move overall. “It’s been worse than losing my father.”
Erin Aubry Kaplan is an award-winning journalist who examines the persistent barriers to racial justice and opportunities for progress in an era of receding Black presence in Los Angeles and California. This article was produced by Capital & Main, a nonprofit publication focused on inequality. It is published here with permission.
