In Providence's downtown, a wary detente between entrepreneurs and artists
By GREG COOK | May 16, 2007
Lily Kerrigan |
Lily Kerrigan was working at a tech firm in downtown Providence last summer when she began wondering “what would happen if an art happening kind of invaded its streets?” The result was I Would Eat That, a scrappy little art exhibit in a big empty downtown storefront owned by Cornish Associates. Empty since the building at 70 Eddy St. was redeveloped in 2005, it’s just the sort of space that seems increasingly to be filled by high-end boutiques, sparking worries that downtown might be destined for a more strictly upscale future.
Kerrigan, a fourth-year Brown University art student from Los Angeles, recruited six young artists from Germany, Sweden, Austria, and Norway that she met while studying in Scotland last spring. And she spent eight months lining up the loan of the space and equipment, and financial donations to pay for installation and shipping.
Eat That, which closed Monday, evidenced the typical enthusiasms, ambitions, fizzle, and promise of a student project. There was an obscure investigation of identity inspired by a Kafka novel, video of a Los Angeles beach, and paintings of layered letter fragments.
The most interesting work was German artist Anna Witt’s video Empower Me!, in which she asks collaborators she met on the street about their desires for the world and for themselves. Then they appear blindfolded and shackled while Witt, disguised in black terrorist garb, holds a fake rifle to their heads and announces their “demands” — higher wages, investment in culture and education, a beachfront villa, a cash fortune, lower sales tax.
Cornish Associates development associate Ari Heckman says that Providence at heart is a creative community and that donating space for temporary exhibits like Eat That reflects its desire for the arts to be part of its redevelopment of downtown.
“The excitement comes from having the arts cheek by jowl with the high-end,” Heckman says. Though not all the newish Westminster Street shops are pricey, he adds, pointing to tenants like tazza café, Symposium Books, and Eno wine shop. Cornish plans to bring in a grocery and pharmacy. And Heckman says they hope to find a collaborator to operate a standing gallery like the Space at Alice on Union Street, its joint venture with the Arts and Business Council of Rhode Island that lasted from 2003 until last winter. “We’re building a neighborhood,” Heckman says.
Umberto Crenca, artistic director of the downtown cultural center AS220, doesn’t see the arts being squeezed out of the neighborhood — where Trinity Repertory Company, the Providence Black Repertory Company, and Perishable Theater continue to operate — but rather new businesses setting up shop in buildings that have long been empty. The organization aims, he says, “to make sure that as downtown is developing that there is affordable space and that artists are part of the mix.”
Tenants are already moving into 19 studio and living spaces that AS220 developed in the former Dreyfus Hotel on Washington Street. The institution is investigating other downtown spaces to convert into affordable rentals or perhaps building from scratch. As Crenca says, “We want it to be an alive and active and diverse community.”
Topics:
This Just In
, Umberto Crenca
, Visual Arts
, Brown University
