Building the arts
While some organizations are in survival mode, others have already expanded or are making major plans for the future.
Down the street from its Hoogland home base, the Prairie Art Alliance, a nonprofit visual artists’ association, this summer opened a second gallery at 221 South Sixth Street, Gallery II. “The H.D. Smith gallery [at the Hoogland] has always been more of an exhibit space and the sales have never been what this gallery [Gallery II] has because of the traffic,” says Jane Johnson, PAA’s executive director, explaining that the new location, two blocks north of the Hoogland, sees more foot traffic. Gallery II is already outpacing the Hoogland gallery, which in 2009 had a 9 percent increase in sales followed by a 30 percent decrease in sales this year. Johnson adds that holiday sales at the older gallery appear to be above last year’s levels.
PAA also maintains an office, a classroom and artists in residence space at the Hoogland, but much of its space is really only suitable for the more compact arts. “The Prairie Art Alliance has a classroom which is suitable for painting class, but that’s about it,” says Roland Folse, PAA vice president. Folse says artists who require more space and larger, more expensive equipment – like those in ceramics, sculpture, printmaking or glassblowing – are on their own at this point. “It’s much more efficient if several artists come together,” Folse says.
To meet that end, the Prairie Art Alliance and the Springfield Art Association are collaborating to plan a space that, like the Hoogland has done for the performing arts, would inject additional energy and cooperation into Springfield’s visual arts. “Everywhere when artists come together there’s a mixing of ideas, new things happening and excitement,” Folse says. “Almost every major community of this size and larger has something like that. It just stimulates artists to be more productive, to be more innovative and to share ideas in what they’re doing, to learn from one another.”
The idea for a community visual arts center is still just an idea, Folse says, although PAA has been talking about it for several years. Folse says he would like to see a 17,500-square-foot structure with big, open rooms with space for such equipment as kilns as well as space for resident artists. Folse says such a project would likely require a separate foundation board, with representatives from all of Springfield’s many visual arts organizations.
Though location scouting is in its infancy and, Folse says, still very much up in the air, the Springfield Art Association is pushing for a cultural campus in the Enos Park neighborhood, where SAA is already located in the historic Edwards Place.
SAA’s executive director Betsy Dollar says she’s inspired by the Enos Park master plan, released this fall, which envisions such a development tying into Edwards Place. “I was as shocked as anyone when I first saw that, but the more I started thinking about it the better idea I thought that was,” Dollar
