Inside the outsider Eris Temple Artspace

One night not long ago, along the stretch of old rowhouses and empty storefronts that is West Philadelphia's 52d Street, a group of kids gathered before a large window to watch what was going on at Eris Temple Artspace.

Under the noses of local fringe theater, art, and music aficionados, the gallery and performance space has been there for a decade. It's the last of the area's grungy DIY art spots, operating without the grants available to scrubbed-clean arts stages. And each of its denizens believes the best is yet to come.

On Tuesday evening, it's a set of local musicians, running the gamut from free noise (drummer-poet Ed Wilcox) and emotional lounge jazz (from A Piano and a Cocktail Mistress, whose rendition of Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" elicits more than a few tears), to skronky rock operas based on Eurydice from Radio Eris, the space's owner-operators.

(Coming Saturday: A Spazz-presented event with Mumblr, Teenage Halloween, Mike Bell, and Brandon Can't Dance; Jan. 17: A Comics Cosplay life-drawing club organized by underground comics creator Dre Grigoropol.)

"We're here to bring the outsider in, to turn things inside out," says Ken Brown, Eris' synth player and husband of Lora Bloom, the house's de facto headmistress. She says, "When we moved here, we weren't sure if or how we'd fit, but it seems now that we do. We're edgily creative, very broke, and not a force for gentrification."

Though the storefront window currently involves mannequin parts and smiley-face balloons, other evenings at Eris Temple featured multimedia exhibitions from feminist artists and LGBT activists, theater readings, craft shows, screenings of avant-garde cinema, screaming performance artists, and the internationally heralded likes of Gothic cabaret crafter David E. Williams. "Freedom from a grant equals freedom from a granter's agenda," says Williams.

"Within Eris Temple Artspace are four members who've dedicated the past 10 years to its survival," says Daniel Baker, one of the founding quartet who own, run, and live there. He says frats and house parties may exist in West Philadelphia - "old houses great to get drunk and rowdy" - but the temple is a safe environment for all, without harassment or frivolous overconsumption.

Says Bloom: "What bonds us is that we are all somehow different, out of sync, socially awkward, yet seem to complete each other. If someone disappears, someone else steps up; where one person is unskilled, someone else is proficient. We're like family, people who make art together, host together, and spend time together."

Matt Stevenson, the most sarcastic member/housemate, says, "Maybe we're all passive-aggressive, but there's a real ability to compromise and agree on consensus that lubricates it all."

Eris, named for the Greek goddess of discord, is an intriguing sight to curious African American preteens in the neighborhood. As Bloom, onstage, invokes bloodlust in the name of all that is holy while dressed in a shroud, the awestruck kids stare through the window. While Baker says he was called "Officer" when he first moved in, Stevenson, the house soundman and the band's keyboardist, jokes: "We're probably a 'white-people-are-crazy' carnival to our neighbors. Which we are."

Brown puts it succinctly: "Poor is color-blind. Once people saw we were just a bunch of working stiffs, we were accepted."

Radio Eris, the spoken-word/musical project, has been around since before 2000, first as a poetry and noise project stemming from Bloom's shrieks and Stevenson's soundscapes after the two befriended each other in college.

"He babysat me through a bad trip, and we were friends ever since," says Bloom, who by 2003 also had enlisted Brown and Baker. They change drummers often in Spinal Tap fashion, make brash albums such as The Cruel Tutelage of Master Hotei and Who Is Toulouse Turac?, and craft long-form stage projects such as the Zappa-esque Eurydice opera. To fuel their projects more readily, the four bought the 52d Street space in July 2005. "It was easier to do things where we controlled the space," says Stevenson, "than have to deal with bars or outside studio owners."

Radio Eris used the space as its studio/clubhouse, and also began booking like-minded artists, musical and beyond, more for the sake of community than enterprise - and with the house members in control of Eris' destiny. No reliance on grants, no begging for money.

"For six years, I would leave the temple for months at a time to do carpentry work at Fashion Week" in New York, says Baker. "It took a toll on my relationships, as well as the band's momentum, to have me constantly leaving, but that was what it took to support a creative endeavor like this." He also runs a voice-over production company out of the temple.

Liz Zimmerman, the singer of A Piano and a Cocktail Mistress and Stevenson's fiancée, is the temple's special-projects coordinator, deadline-enforcer, "heavy paperwork filer, investor who has lovingly taken personal financial losses, writer and performer of theater, holiday boutique originator, body painter, and hostess with the mostess."

Having worked in the nonprofit world, she seriously discussed having Eris go that route, "but these guys wanted to keep 100 percent control, and amen to that," she says. "We are all really weird, but kind and loyal. We get the painful edges of life and the necessary catharsis of expression."

Shortly after closing a 2010 holiday pop-up boutique, Zimmerman found a temp government job and realized a permanent one with the state Department of Human Services would make Eris sustainable on their terms. Working for the Man by day would mean working for art the rest of the time.

"I got a permanent state job and started preaching to everyone how they, too, could continue to be their freak selves and have a regular paycheck and real medical benefits," she says. Those who listened, including Bloom and Stevenson, have prospered. "Merely surviving in this world seems to get more and more difficult, and I am able to give some people tools to help them get through," says Bloom, a newly promoted income maintenance caseworker, who could also be discussing her work at Eris. "One of the things we at Eris Temple share is that we're all people who want to give of ourselves to help others."