Creative tour in Torrance finds art in historic places.

In 1926, the Madrid Market opened as one of the first mom and pop neighborhood markets in old Torrance. It became famous for its meat department, which drew customers from a wide area.

By 1969, it had been long vacant and vandalized. That’s when artist Connor Everts spotted the derelict market while driving by one day and thought its roominess and high ceilings would make it ideal for a studio. He’s worked there ever since.

Several blocks away, a 1930s-era factory building--the last workshop of pioneer aircraft designer Edmond R. Doak--also has become the domain of an artist. After Doak’s death three years ago, stone sculptor Nick Agid took it over and makes art out of marble and onyx, and is surrounded by the tools, furnishings and memorabilia of Doak’s aviation career.

The two studios are high points on an “Art in Historic Places” tour being conducted Saturday and Sunday in old downtown Torrance by the Torrance Historical Society. A third major attraction is Kent Twitchell’s 20-foot-by-110-foot outdoor mural saluting six Los Angeles artists. He painted it 10 years ago on the wall of the Employment Development Department building on Engracia Avenue.

Tour co-Chairman Janet Payne says she’s not about to claim that Torrance is a booming center of working artists hidden away in old buildings. But, she says, the city has more of an art life than suggested by its image as a home of industry, suburban residences and one of the world’s biggest shopping malls.

“The point of this tour is to show off a new area of interest, Torrance as an arts center, and to show that historic buildings are being reused,” she said. In the case of the old market, Everts saved it from destruction because the dilapidated structure was being eyed by the city as a site for apartments.

The self-guided tour begins at the Torrance Historical Society Museum, which was originally a 1930s Art Deco-style library. At the museum, visitors will receive a brochure and map detailing the historic sites, including Irving Gill’s Southern Pacific Railroad Bridge over Torrance Blvd. At 11 a.m. Saturday, the society will hold a ceremony honoring the bridge’s recent listing in the National Register of Historic Places.

Everts and Agid will be at work in their studios during the tour and Twitchell will be at his mural Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m.

Twitchell, who has done many highly visible murals around Los Angeles, painted a group of Otis Art Institute graduates for the Torrance mural. “Somehow,” he said in an earlier interview, “it seems appropriate to put often-unemployed artists on the side of an employment office.” Three of the six, he says, became quite successful after the mural was painted.

As part of the weekend tour, the historical society museum will highlight artwork depicting city history. And to lend more flavor and authenticity, artists from the Torrance Traditional Artists Guild will set up their easels curbside to do paintings of the old downtown.

Visitors to Everts’ studio will get little feel of the old market. Thick foliage hides the building now, the asphalt parking lot has become a garden, and Everts added a second story in the back to create living space and a well-lighted painting space.

“It’s ideal for a studio, deserted and quiet,” said Everts, who is working on large new paintings for an upcoming show. They cover a wall of his studio.

Agid’s old factory building, on the other hand, retains the echo of aviation visionary Doak--a man who employed 6,000 people when his aircraft company built training planes during World War II and who is most famous for a vertical takeoff plane he developed in 1958.

Pictures of his planes hang on the walls, along with decades-old group photos of aircraft executives, and even Doak’s rack of pipes sits alongside his old desk. Alfred Perry, a former Doak employee who still calls his old boss “the chief,” will be on hand this weekend as a guide.

Agid’s art space--which he shares with metal sculptor Orell Christian Anderson--is a cavernous room with a curving roof, large white wooden supports and big doors. He says it makes a good studio: “It has a high ceiling, the light is quite nice all around.”

He has done lighted onyx sculptures that bring out the colors of the stone. His current art project is a striking adventure in what one museum director called “stone mail.” In an admitted act of self-promotion, Agid turned postal cards into art, mailing onyx “postcards” to museums and art galleries around the country. He asked for RSVPs and is at work duplicating the written replies on large slabs of marble.

Some of the movers and shakers of art who got the stones were amused. But the post office, Agid said, “was not thrilled.”