A place to grow and share

So back during the first week of March (yeah have had this draft sitting here that long, sorry Atom), my wife and I went on a vacation down to Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA. My wife is an artist (she just won second place at this years VU Student Art show with a ceramic piece she did, go her ) and one of the main reasons we choose these 2 cities was because of the art communities there.

While in Savannah we found a really interesting place that I would like to share with you guys and maybe it could inspire someone to do something similar locally. This is an extension of a conversation my wife and I had about the place.

So while walking around downtown Savannah checking out all the local art galleries, we stumbled into a shop owned by Chuck Hamilton where he displayed some of his own pieces as well as a few other local artists. My wife and him had some great conversations about art and I think she blew his mind when she mentioned that one of his pieces she liked was reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s work like “Nighthawk.” He was quite impressed because Hopper was actually the person Chuck was basing his work off at the time he created it. We actually bought that piece (print, not rich enough for original) along with a piece by Steve Schuman and James Dean.

What we found after that was what inspired this post, this gallery was just one of about 15-20 local artists in 2 buildings all together. This place is the called the Savannah City Market and is quite an inspiration to any artist. Basically it’s 2 old buildings in downtown that they have converted to be studios that local artists can rent out to work and sell their art. You can walk from studio to studio and talk to the artists while they are working on different pieces and their craft with them.

On top of this, there was a great kinship between all the artists there. I’m overall lost when it comes to the creation of art (oh but I can critic like crazy), but what was cool was my wife could talk to the artists and ask questions and when they either didn’t have a good answer or thought some other artist could contribute to the conversation they would call them in and have a big discussion about all things art. As well they, would point her to artists in the other building she should go talk to about specific things the other artists were doing. For an artist, this seems like a great place to be and that the art community really is something to be envied down there.

Now before you say, “Well Richard, that is where SCAD is located, what do you expect?”, you have to realize that not one artist out of the dozen we talked to actually went to school there. A lot of them actually went to schools in the Midwest. They were either originally from the area or moved there because of the art scene.

So after seeing this inspiring place I asked my wife if that was even really possible up here? I think there is a significant number of creatives in the area that something like this would be possible but what I see as the biggest issue is a location. My wife said Michigan City might be a good place, but would someone from Valpo or Lake County really want to drive out there to do work? I don’t think so. The place I would think would have been ideal for something like this would have been the Old Courthouse in Crown Point but obviously that already has a lot of things going on there.

Is there any place already like that in the area? I bet Chicago has some similar type setups but for us NWI peeps that drive is even worse then the MC drive most of the time. Also, because it better suits me, is it possible to do this with a more tech relate type of design emphasis?

As well, there have been a lot of “co-working” spaces popping up in big cities all over the country that kind of fall into this same principle but on the tech side. The idea is that you have a bunch of desks and let people come rent a space to work. This can be just a few hours a month to having a full time spot. This is something that is nice for freelancers who want to separate work from home. These environments also give people the ability to be around others who are in similar situations to be around each other to help each other and mentor/inspire each other. I have a few freelance friends who are in the middle of BFE and have issues with not being around others and able to talk shop in person.

But is this something that could work in our area? While we have a nice freelance community, is it big enough to support something like this? Is there a value in trying to schedule more events that bring these people together to help grow the community? I know Rahsaan thinks so and would like to get a designer meetup together at some point. Maybe events like these could help shine some light on whether there is a need for this type of place or if people are happy with the status quo.

I know for myself, as a web developer, would love to be able to sit down with my fellow developers in the area talk about all the cool things we are doing and how we can do them better. I’ve gotten to talk to a few at the #nwitweetups but there are people that don’t go to those (yeah, you, Atom, bum) that I know I’d like to get more time around and think that all would benefit from this.

Well I asked a ton of questions and look forward to what you guys will have to say on this. Thanks for reading my rambling.

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 26th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under Share. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.