When Second Street Gallery vacated its home in the McGuffey Art Center—its location since 1984—City-subsidized McGuffey was left with 850 square feet of prime real estate and several options. Suggestions ranged from more studios to accommodate the collective’s ever-growing applicant pool to a large sculpture gallery to a guest-curated space to be run by non-McGuffey artists. But in a close vote the members opted to try something altogether different: a performance space.
“The possibility of doing something entirely new was just too compelling,” says current McGuffey president Rosamund Casey. “The space was clean and if we were ever going to try a performance art space, this would be the time. Because once you put an artist there all hell breaks loose.”
And so, after a strict selection process, starting in December three new performance groups will move into McGuffey, all of them dance-focused—the long-running Zen Monkey Project, Brad Stoller and Mecca Burns’ Presence Center for Applied Theater Arts and new troupe Prospect Dance Group.
But the hoofers aren’t the only budding arts groups moving on up. With Second Street, Live Arts and Light House setting up shop in Water Street’s new City Center for Contemporary Arts (C3A), several sweet Downtown venues were left for grabs—and quickly snatched up. The ever-increasing number of creative types in the City make for a constantly changing arts landscape, with new galleries opening (bonjour, Mountain Air Gallery and Dave Moore Studio), old ones closing (ciao, Gallery Neo) and established spaces shaking it up a bit (zut alors! Bullseye and Nature).
The new opportunity is especially exciting for Zen Monkey, which has been without a space to call their own since August 2002, when they left their home of seven years in the New Dance Space above Hamiltons’ (a space subsidized largely by Zen Monkey co-founder Katharine Birdsall). On and off since then, the 8-year-old group has been rehearsing at the Living Education Center for Ecology and the Arts for their next performance, scheduled for early 2004.
From a dollars-and-cents point of view, McGuffey is such a plum prospect for the troupe because of the vastly reduced rent. “That’s very attractive. When we were at New Dance Space we were struggling how to stay there, and eventually we didn’t,” Birdsall says of the $2,552 monthly rent that the New Dance Space commanded by the end. “This is very manageable. We feel like we can go back to doing what we’ve always wanted to do, which is the work.” McGuffey will charge less than $300 per month for the dancers’ admittedly smaller space, she adds.
Not only that, the work will be bolstered, Birdsall says, by the input of “having the community right there. Not only within the space, being in alliance with these two other groups. But being within the building, all these other artists.”
That communal feeling is also a perk for Prospect. A nascent collaboration between dancer/choreographers Ashley Thorndike and Dinah Gray and musician Peter Swendsen, Prospect has already performed at McGuffey, using veteran choreographer Miki Liszt’s third-floor studio.
“All of us—Peter, Ashley and I—have been really thrilled with the reception we’ve gotten from the community, especially from McGuffey,” says Gray. “We feel it’s a big risk of McGuffey’s in a way, but it shows a lot of confidence in our group and the future of performing arts in Charlottesville in general, especially dance.”
Folding the dancers into the visually oriented McGuffey presents some logistical quirks, however. “It’s difficult because visual artists are very different—they don’t tend to make a lot of noise, don’t need a lot of space, they can keep their exhibits up, they’re not ephemeral,” says Presence’s Burns. “It’s going to be interesting to see how that works with the vision of McGuffey, how we find creative ways to incorporate our rehearsals to [McGuffey’s public mission of] being open to the public.”
That challenge explains why the new tenants will start out with an eight-month trial period. McGuffey’s current operating hours are 10am to 5pm Tuesdays through Sundays, extended only to 7:30pm on First Fridays—not exactly conducive to drawing audiences to live dance performances. All three groups remain unsure of how, or even if, they’ll be able to use the roughly 30-seater space to host evening performances.
Birdsall isn’t overly worried—this opportunity is too good to blow. “I don’t really see that it wouldn’t work because in the end, to just have the rehearsal space and works-in-progress shown there during the day is a big thing in itself,” she says. The dance community, traditionally “last on the totem pole,” she says, “really needs this.”
Casey is optimistic the dancers will resolve these and other issues like noise and public access. “We feel like we’re doing what we did when we let Second Street in however many years ago—we’re taking a big chance,” she says. “Second Street worked out beautifully, and we think this will, too.”
Massive attack
Also available following the C3A move, Live Arts’ Market Street digs now house another community culture entry—at least temporarily. As of November 1 the former main theater space became Club Massive, a dance club run by Garden of Sheba co-owners Scottie B. and Abba that continues the concept they ran briefly last year in the Water Street storefront now occupied by Blush. Landlord Gabe Silverman agreed to let the duo use the space through at least the month, but is open to extending the option, Scottie says.
Don’t come expecting the numbingly familiar electronica heard at Club 216. Scottie plans to create a multicultural gathering place—really an extension of what the duo already puts on at Sheba—featuring DJs on Fridays and live music Saturdays and assorted other events, like the family-oriented Massive Day of Culture on Saturday, November 8. The music will vary from light hip hop to reggae to Brazilian rhythms. “I’m trying to get people to dance again,” Scottie says of the space, which can hold 400. “Nobody’s really doing that. I want to bring the whole dance-party atmosphere back. The club scene is hurting here, even with places like Starr Hill. You wonder what’s going on. Too many people are sitting at home, too many people forgetting.”
While previous Downtown dance clubs like The Jewish Mother were breeding grounds for trouble, Club Massive is designed to be a smoke-free, violence-free environment. In fact, Scottie is so serious on this point he says you can expect metal detection at the door. “Anybody looking for trouble can’t come in,” he says. “Just come in with a peaceful heart.”
Change will do you good
One gallery that’s already benefited from a recent change is Nature Visionary Art, which moved from a space in the rear of the Jefferson Theater to its swanky new Fourth Street digs in September. The switch required more than just a change-of-address label, though. As co-owner John Lancaster explains, the enterprise matured a bit from the funky studio showcasing cutting-edge local art to a more grown-up gallery featuring both emerging regional artists and national folk art masters. While he and partner Laurel Hausler had to give up hosting some of the coolest parties in town, they traded up for other amenities when they left the still-empty Jefferson space—like, say, a heated building.
The reception to the 5-year-old enterprise’s growth has been “outstanding,” Lancaster says. “Our grand opening was grand, definitely.” Not only did they sell five paintings on opening night, they nearly sold completely out of their traditional Mexican folk art.
Expect even more changes at the space like exhibitions that will focus more on individual artists or genres. November spotlights the work of Mose Tolliver and Jimmy Lee Sudduth, who Lancaster describes as the “two foremost African-American folk artists in the country,” and others. “We feel like it’s actually a museum-quality show we’re bringing to Charlottesville,” Lancaster says.
Also going through an identity shift is the Bullseye Gallery, Nature’s former building mate located just under the Jefferson. The space comprising five studios has an entirely new crop of artists, a new head and a new name—Cilli Original Designs Studio.
That’s the primary business enterprise of new gallery head Monty Montgomery, a graphic designer and painter whose work has been popping up all over town lately, from Liquid to Station to, well, Bullseye. On November 1 he took over the lease from former Bullseye leader Kimberly Larkin and promises that the gallery’s erratic schedule will level out some, but the place will continue its after-hours, come-on-down-and-see-the-works-in-progress feel, while expanding its outreach to the community.
“I want to have a space to give people who are wondering if they’re artists a chance,” says Montgomery. “If you only have six pieces, not 30, now you can have a show,” he says. He’s also planning to extend the space’s back hallway to graffiti and experimental artists to do their thing, inspired by the nine studio mates working around them. “I want this to be a hub for artists, more of a SoHo vibe.” First Fridays will bring more “serious” shows, too, including December’s showcase of C-VILLE contributing photographer Billy Hunt’s work.
Though Montgomery has zero experience running a gallery, he is passionate about making CODG (shorthand for the new space) work. “Dude, I don’t know how the hell I’m going to this,” he says. “But I know I’m sure supposed to do it. I feel it.”
The "G" force
While the alternative Bullseye enters its next permutation, one of Downtown’s earlier experimental galleries has called it quits. Gallery Neo, which existed on Second Street for 18 years, closed its doors in September, replaced by the third store in the O’Suzannah retail empire. Painter Edward Thomas, who took over the gallery in 1999, says that the 15-year lease terminated when the landlord asked for too much rent.
Neo had mutated several times itself, as both a private studio and showplace for emerging artists. In its most recent incarnation, artists were given solo shows and all the proceeds in exchange for doing community service with the Boys & Girls Club.
The enterprise will live on, in a sense, when Thomas launches his new website, gallery-neo.com, sometime around Christmas as an online portal to sell his work. “If things work out I’ll develop the website more and replace some of the functions of the gallery, and maybe show other peoples’ art,” he says. “And if things work out down the road Gallery Neo might come back in some form in a physical space.”
Given the booming real estate market, where commercial space can command $15 per square foot, Thomas isn’t surprised Neo had to close its doors. “It’s just inevitable with the gentrification, or whatever word you want to use, with the market Downtown pushing out all the places that initially made Downtown cool. Gallery Neo was one of them,” he says. “The real artists and the real kind of movers and shakers that made Downtown desirable and an arts center are now getting pushed out because nobody can afford to live there. It’s a shame that happens, but it’s kind of inevitable.”
Concern over spiraling leases extends to other arts observers, too. Charlottesville’s recently formed Arts and Culture Task Force certainly will consider the need for more and affordable arts spaces, says Bob Chapel, chair of the UVA drama department and a task force appointee. Though by press time the fledgling nine-member group had met only once, Chapel is confident that in its investigations “all aspects of the arts community will be addressed, and real estate is one of those aspects.”
Good times
Two other new players have joined the already-crowded Downtown art marketplace. In October, photographers Bruce and Robin Pfeifer opened Mountain Air Gallery in the former Gitchell’s Photography Studio at 107 E. Main St., where they’ll showcases local artists. Further down the Mall, Dave Moore Studio opens this week in the long-vacant spot underneath the Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar. It will serve as an old-fashioned atelier where the painter will work and operate with an “open-door policy,” he says, meaning visitors (and he hopes, paying customers) can drop by spontaneously to see his art. Moore will also mount group exhibits, including pieces by artists “unknown to this region.”
With so many changes on the playing board, it might be hard at first for arts cognoscenti to keep up with who’s showing what where, but as far as Chapel is concerned, it all makes for “an absolutely fantastic time for the arts.”