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Features
Sunday, October 3, 2004
Area artists are finding
downtown Bloomington's fine art dimension
has gone from sparse to hard-to-miss since the late 1990s.
Art appreciation, awareness thriving
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McLean County Arts Center director Doug Johnson, left, considers original art to be part of a relationship, not merely decoration. He surveyed a painting with artist Mike McNeil during the Sept. 25 art walk downtown. |
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By Steve Arney
sarney@pantagraph.com
Doug Johnson explores a Miles Bair painting in the downtown Bloomington art center's Brandt Gallery.
From a distance, the landscape painting looks almost photographic. Moving closer, he sees it almost as a series of dots pasted to the canvas. Still closer, the piece dissolves into a dot pattern of paint on canvas.
Original art gives so many looks -- based on distance, angle, lighting.
A mall-bought print never approaches this creation, said Johnson, who is executive director of the McLean County Arts Center, 601 N. East St.
The mall print becomes a decoration in the home, said Johnson. An original painting, a mixed-media piece, glasswork and sculpture -- these become part of a relationship, he said.
"That's more than an image. That's something completely real -- even spiritual."
He added, "People want a sense of authenticity in their lives that you don't get at a mall."
Johnson said that sense helps explain a surge in the visual arts scene downtown and a surge in the downtown as a whole.
Art, architecture, special shops, uniqueness, special places.
In March, the arts center hosted a 90-artist show over two days in the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts; it drew 2,000 visitors -- "shoppers," said Johnson.
It demonstrates that a public has a growing awareness of the strength of the art community, said Johnson.
The arts center director said several forces are at work in bolstering the downtown Bloomington art scene. Among them, he said:
• Demand in big cities dropped after Sept. 11, 2001, because of U.S. economic decline. Most profound was the reduction in corporation purchases. The drop in big city markets forced artists to look more to their own, smaller cities, such as Bloomington, for support.
• Downtown Bloomington's overall health rose, but not to the extent that studio space became unaffordable.
• Local artists increased their ability to market themselves.
• The work is worthy.
• The work is affordable. The same piece sold here would cost double in Chicago.
Johnson sounds sure that the art scene can continue to grow.
As proof, consider the findings of a survey conducted for the art center last year: Just 5 percent of McLean County residents knew the arts center existed.
The art center's membership of 650 households marks about 15 percent growth in the past two years. Johnson thinks the center can triple its numbers -- from roughly 100 people attending an opening to 300 -- within a couple years.
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Artists creating outlet Exhibitors see some success as network continues to evolve
By Steve Arney Artist Jeff Little savored a new painting begun and another just completed. "My career's going great," he said cheerfully. He starred with 12 other Twin City artists at an exhibit in Mount Vernon this summer. He sold $6,000 in work at this year's Sugar Creek Arts Festival in downtown Normal. But "success" with downtown Bloomington artists has its own definition. He spent as much as he made at last November's Around the Corner art walk, a joint studio tour with four other artists who have studios near the Center-Monroe intersection. He made nothing from the Mount Vernon show. And Little squeezes every drop from his oil-paint tubes, because he hasn't been able to afford new supplies for a half year. Without his full-time job as a designer for State Farm Insurance Cos., he might not be unable to pursue his art -- at least not with the vigor he gives it now. Not with three children and a wife. Downtown Bloomington has seen a resurgence in the new century, and the art scene has surged with it. But as is the story of artists through history, the local artists' story comes with struggle -- to produce, to sell, to survive. Most artists have second jobs, or spouses with income or both to enable creativity. These creations must happen, sculptor Rick Harney stated. "It may not make financial sense," said Harney. "When you're not doing it, it's like you can't get air." Those impulses, plus market forces, have changed the downtown landscape. Downtown revival When downtown leaders talked in the late 1990s about bringing downtown back, they mentioned the art community as a strength to build upon. But outside the McLean County Arts Center, evidence of that community downtown was meager. Since then: • Seven stores -- new or new to downtown -- started selling fine art made in Central Illinois. They are A. Renee, Artezen, Just for You, Push, Call of the Wild, Specs Around Town and Timothy Kent Gallery & Framing. • Three artists -- Kay Seefeld, Herb Eaton and Morgan Raines -- opened first-floor studio galleries that also serve as sales points. • Artists increased the number of studio open houses, as individuals and in group "art walks," to bring the public into private studios. • Merchants have collaborated on art walks, with local artists setting up for one-day events in stores and offices. • The Scottish Rite Temple underwent change to a public place and was renamed the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts. This spring, its neighbor, the McLean County Arts Center, hosted a two-day 90-artist market in the performing arts center. The fine art dimension of downtown has changed from sparse to hard-to-miss. Said artist Harold Gregor, "There's a whole distinct energy downtown that wasn't here five years ago." Push represents the latest entry, opening Sept. 25. Advertised as a shop "for singular women," it arrived as Anne Scott and Bob Steinman, husband and wife and downtown Bloomington residents for 20 years, embraced the comeback of their neighborhood. Steinman decided to open the women's store in downtown Bloomington and close Other Ports in downtown Normal on a June day this year when he saw a For Rent sign in the window of the former Gaston's barbershop, which moved. It wasn't just the space; it was the neighborhood. He jokes that a few years ago he could have sunbathed naked in the middle of Main Street on a Sunday without being noticed. Now, the streets have a vibrancy -- not like they did in the more Bohemian 1980s, but better. "Adult and sophisticated," he calls it. And the visual and performing arts have set a tone for the new vibrancy, he said. Push will expose a niche that Steinman thinks needs a place: shows with for-sale work of quality female artists who don't show their work much, if ever. Scott, his business partner, is Push's first featured artist. They've always been aware of the art scene downtown, as their friends and neighbors have been a part of it -- artists like Gregor, Rhea Edge, Harold Boyd and Ken Holder, who work and/or live downtown. But two art sellers admit they discovered the downtown arts scene almost by accident. Subtle evolution "I had no idea it existed," said Amy Calhoun, a lifelong McLean County resident. She and her mother, Cindy Beier, began noticing the artists, starting with Eaton, in 2002 as they researched downtown for a business partnership. This year, the women opened A. Renee, a wine and snack store at 306 N. Center St. The walls hold more than 70 paintings from 33 local artists. Some of the wine bottles have custom labels -- again, work of the local artists. Calhoun thinks her store brings new customers into the art market. People will come in for wine, look at the paintings, buy the wine, return to look again, and then perhaps return and purchase art. Others comment that art walks and gallery openings bring people downtown, where they discover stores they hadn't realized existed. The art walks produce displays in places like Alliance Optical, 410 N. Main St., which hosted Susan Palmer during the latest downtown art walk, Sept. 25. Alliance placed Palmer's water colors in its front display in anticipation of the event. Little, who opened a studio downtown in 2002 less than two blocks away, wondered in the days preceding the art walk, "Was that window always there? I'd never seen that business. I stopped and noticed the eye store because of Susan's work." Alliance has been at the site more than 30 years. Art draws business -- and business draws art. The two intertwine by necessity, said Deb Risberg, a former gallery curator. Art for art's sake But there does remain room for another category: Art for its own sake. Among examples: • Marlene Gregor (who is married to Harold) organized a whimsical show throughout the downtown -- the Corn on the Curb designs of fabricated corn ears -- in 2000 and 2001. • Risberg used Phoenix Gallery, 108 1/2 W. Washington St., as an art gallery from fall 2001 until this spring, doing so as a public service. McLean County Arts Center had done the same at Phoenix until a dispute with a board member, building owner Fred Wollrab, prompted Wollrab to quit the arts center board and evict the gallery. Risberg didn't get the community response she had hoped, with limited publicity and nearly no sales for the artists. At openings, few came beyond a featured artist's friends and family. Few of the artists came to another artist's opening, she said. It became costly and time consuming, so she stopped art shows and focused on other programming for the Phoenix building. Brian Collier encounters a similar frustration at Room 305 Gallery at Washington Square East, a former school at 510 E. Washington St. He devotes studio space for installation art -- riskier, unconventional work. He stopped holding open hours in September because, beyond the opening events, only a trickle of people came. Lacking time and money, Collier will close Room 305 Gallery in December. Collier participated in two building-wide studio open houses the past two years. Next year, he'll be a visitor. He will move his studio to his home. But within the building, artists are becoming more familiar to the public -- and each other -- through the studio openings. Artists network To Harney, the open houses are more about getting to know the other artists than bringing new customers. Other artists, including Little, use the studio walks as a key component to draw new and repeat buyers. He needs that. The big-city gallery market isn't what it once was, said Little. So artists are developing local mailing lists, hosting studio parties and putting smaller, less pricey pieces into downtown stores, where $5,000 masterpieces don't sell. They are spending hot summer weekends in booths at festivals here and elsewhere. Bloomington's art scene builds its vibrancy, in large measure, from programs at ISU and Illinois Wesleyan University, said Harold Gregor, a retired ISU professor whose landscapes receive nationwide attention. Both institutions have galleries, art programs, artists-teachers, students and graduates. Mention Bloomington to New York City gallery curators and it will bring a positive reply, said Gregor. The cluster of artists into the limited market of Bloomington-Normal also brings anxiety, Gregor said. He said the anxiety will grow if more artists keep entering the market, unless the market can expand. Little describes "a little bit of a funky atmosphere" among artists that he attributes to pressures everyone feels to survive as artists and to pay bills. He urges artists to "trust each other's hearts" and to celebrate each other's accomplishments. He sees those victories in abundance in a new downtown Bloomington landscape, to the benefit of the entire community. Said Little, "What we're doing is flavoring our society."
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www.pantagraph.com ANNUAL REPORT: COMMUNITY Saturday, March 13,2004 SPOTLIGHT: DOUG JOHNSON
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Director wants to raise arts center's profile
by Dan Craft
BLOOMINGTON - Just a month into his second year as executive director of the McLean County Arts Center, Doug Johnson thinks the center is headed for a period of stability and growth following an unsettled decade. During those previous 10 years, the Arts Center, admits John-son, "had a lot of directors." The result, he says, was something of a "roller-coaster ride" for the venerable institution located in the heart of the city's cultural district. Thirteen months after strapping himself in, Johnson is still on the track, and very happy to be there. "I anticipated there would be a learning curve for it (the job), and that has been the case," he says. "It has sometimes been a bit of a roller-coaster but I've found that the Arts Center board has been terrific in joining together with a vision of serving the community"
Among the fruits of Johnson's first-year labors was the debut earlier this month of a brand new spring fine arts fair, titled, appropriately, the Spring Bloom Arts Festival. Designed as a kind of indoor counterpart of the summertime Sugar Creek Arts Festival, also organized by the Arts Center, the Spring Bloom Arts Festival attracted 70 artists to the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts on March 6 and 7. In a statement released before the event, Johnson said that "We have always been excited by the wonderful artists we host at the Sugar Creek Arts Festival, and we want to expand that relationship while providing a family friendly art experience at a time of the year that had previously been ignored."
What's more, the Arts Center gets another big boost in the public visibility department, something Johnson feels is crucial if the institution is to thrive and grow. "For a lot of reasons, the Arts Center historically has had a limited audience," Johnson says. "A lot of people are intimidated by the arts and the idea of high culture and low culture and things that require you to 'get it.' And I think that's a big hurdle for folks." Helping people get over that hurdle is part of Johnson's mission, which involves stepping up the community outreach efforts and getting folks actively involved. "We've had a more limited membership than an organization like this needs to sustain itself," he says. "And there hasn't been a lot of outreach, or what outreach we had was done too quietly" As an example, he adds, "I don't think a lot of people know that the McLean County Arts Center organizes the art for Sugar Creek, even though it's been our role for years and years." For his part, Johnson has a deep-rooted feel for both the community and the role of the artist in it.
The Bloomington-Normal native graduated from Normal Community High School and received both his bachelor's and master's degrees at Illinois State University A period of additional schooling and teaching followed in Chicago, where, as a painter, he showed with the Peter Miller Gallery Johnson returned to the Twin Cities six years ago to work in student affairs at ISU, while also teaching classes at Heartland Community College and the Arts Center itself.
When the executive director position opened up a little more than a year ago, he jumped at it. His Arts Center connection extends much further back than that moment, however: "I even won prizes in the amateur competition there while I was in high school."
Currently Johnson oversees what he admits is "a very small staff" - one full-time employee and several part-timers. There are student in-terns and volunteers, too. As executive director, he handles "all day-to-day operations and long-term planning, developing fundraising and event planning, doing every-thing in the newsletter and Web site, overseeing the seven interns, working with volunteers, doing outreach to community groups, writing grants and teaching the occasional class." In his spare time, Johnson the artist still finds time to paint "one or two nights a week, as opposed to the six or seven previously And sometimes that's enough."
Meanwhile, his goal of outreach and actively involving the community in the life of the Arts Center continue apace, alongside the evolution of the cultural district itself. "I think too often people view the arts as something they experience in a passive way," he says. "My belief is that being active and giving yourself a chance to become involved with art on a sophisticated level plays a vital role for both adults and the arts facility"
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For students seeking an escape from the strains
of academia, a plethora of opportunities for creative outlet are available at
the McLean County Arts Center.
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"We have everything from clay, to photography, to jewelry making and watercolor
painting," said Doug Johnson, executive director of the center and ISU alumnus.
"[Classes] just about run the whole gamut of the studio experience, as well as
children's classes," he said.
According to Johnson, classes are available to anyone in the community, and
sometimes people will drive from as far as Peoria and Champaign to take part.
"I taught here for years before being executive director, and I would often have
college students or students that were preparing to apply for graduate study [in
my classes]," Johnson said.
While college students can be found in almost all of the classes, they do tend
to gravitate toward photography, he said.
"A lot of college students want to have the experience of making art and being
involved in the arts without having the pressure of grades," Johnson explained.
"Ultimately, art is recreation. Being creative re-fuels their juices," he said.
The McLean County Arts Center also offers a variety of opportunities for
students looking for internship prospects.
"The most obvious way college students have been involved with the arts center
is through internships. That's the most direct way," said Curator Alison
Hatcher.
At any given time, five or six students from ISU will be working on their
internships, Johnson said.
Students can intern in many different capacities depending on their majors and
areas of interest, Hatcher said.
"We have a number of different ways college students can intern here - be it as
gallery assistant or helping with education in art classes," she explained.
"We've also had marketing and business interns," Hatcher added.
According to Johnson, there are also several opportunities for volunteer work.
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Media Credit: Joe Troutman The McLean County Arts Center offers visitors a creative outlet. At any given time, five or six students from ISU will work at the facility for their internships. Volunteers from local colleges are involved in phone calls, stuffing mailers and community outreach.
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Volunteers from colleges are involved with publications and community outreach,
as well as answering phones and stuffing mailings.
"There's a lot that people can do," he added.
Basically, the Arts Center is a good way for students to get involved, Johnson
said.
"Last month we had our annual Fiesta de la Noche event, which is Festival of the
Night. [It] is essentially a margarita party," he explained.
"We had a lot of college students at that."
Another direct involvement opportunity is their amateur show in the spring,
which starts in March and runs through April, Hatcher said.
"It's the longest running exhibition of McLean County artists that aren't
professional. This is open to college and university students," she explained.
The Arts Center tries to encourage students to attend these, she added.
"Sometimes professors look for shows that might go along with what they're
covering in a particular class. Some classes even draw in the galleries,"
Hatcher said.
"We provide the creative outlet for the community," Johnson said.
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