It started with a trip to Africa, and a dream of a shared art space in Tacoma. Now the dream has a building, art supplies and equipment and a small but growing community of folks making art together. Tacoma Art Place celebrates its first year Saturday, and its supporters are excited by where the nonprofit cooperative is going.
“I got the idea while traveling in Mali in 2006,” says Linda Danforth, founder and president of Tacoma Art Place.
Part of a group studying microeconomic projects in the west African nation, Danforth visited a women’s cooperative run by the Edmonds-based Fabric of Life Foundation. Communal sewing machines and jewelry-making materials made work and income possible for people who could never have afforded the equipment on their own and, in turn, created a supportive community. Danforth envisaged such a cooperative in Tacoma – but based on art. “I thought it was such a great model for people to share expensive equipment,” she says.
A jewelry artist, Danforth already was setting up professional artist cooperatives in Tacoma’s warehouse and theater district areas: The Jet Artist Cooperative and The Broadway Artist Cooperative. But the Tacoma Art Place was going to be something different: a place where anyone, from beginner to professional, could go to learn, make art and make friends.
AFFORDABLE ART
“I’ve made 30 pieces since I joined seven months ago,” says Bo Chambers, a Tacoma fabric artist. Chambers is a poster child for the kind of outreach TAP is aiming for: a former fashion designer, she’d been unemployed for a while, making the odd piece of art at a rehabilitation center. Now, thanks to TAP-supplied fabric, beads, glue guns and work space, Chambers has made 30 textile sculptures in her seven months at the cooperative, is marketing her work again and will be a featured artist at TAP’s upcoming studio tour today. Danforth also helped her set up a Web site at no cost.
“I’m in here three or four days a week,” says Chambers. “If not for Tacoma Art Place, I’d only be making something occasionally for a gift. I just wouldn’t have the space.”
A year after its inception, Tacoma Art Place runs as a nonprofit under the umbrella of the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, the cooperative has its own 501(c)3 application in process. It has a five-person board, an advisory board, 114 memberships and a five-room space in the Alberta Canada building just off Martin Luther King Jr. Way, on South 11th Street.
“There’s nothing like this anywhere, except for the homeless,” says Sue Pivetta, a ceramicist who has also been on the TAP board since its inception. “This place helps artists – not just the art snobs, but people in the community and low-income artists.”
The idea behind the community cooperative is its affordability. For $48 per year (negotiable for low-income earners) members can use any of the equipment or free supplies, store work, check out cameras for two weeks and get a discount on classes (some are even free). A $10 day-pass gets most of the same benefits. For the standard fee, visitors can also just attend a class.
The nonprofit has a bunch of supplies and equipment, all donated by local artists and companies. There’s a photographic darkroom, an array of cameras, seven sewing machines, a light cabinet, eight easels, three kilns, work tables and various tools. The nonprofit also has a library of art resource books and a TV for watching instructional videos. Walls in the lobby offer gallery space to show artists, and 13 classes run each week on everything from drawing and painting to knitting, beading and glass fusing.
The community cooperative also is reaching out to people who can’t come to its space to make art. During the spring and summer, a city grant allowed the organization to run five workshops at Tacoma Housing Authority and YWCA locations, led by artists such as Pivetta and with free supplies and firings. More free outreach workshops were held at TAP’s Hilltop location.
“I myself have access to equipment at M-Space, the Museum of Glass. Artists need to share equipment. Tacoma Art Place works on the same principle, on a different level,” says Oliver Doriss, a glass artist who owns Fulcrum Gallery just around the corner on Martin Luther King Jr. Way.
Olympia glass artist and visitor Kim Merriman says, “It’s an ideal space. People can do their craft and enrich themselves and their community. It’s a big need.”
ART FOR ALL
Tacoma Art Place is offering something different in the South Sound. Neither Pivetta nor Merriman has heard of anything similar to the community art cooperative in Seattle or Olympia. And, when Danforth was researching her idea nationwide, she found cooperatives for professionals or classes for children – but nothing for the general community.
Filling that specific need is the reason why Tacoma Art Place has the support of the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation. “We want to support creativity in this town,” says Rose Lincoln Hamilton, president and CEO of the community foundation. “Tacoma Art Place fits right into that – accessible classes, accessible space. That’s hard to come by in Pierce County.”
Richard Walters is an example of an artist looking for accessibility. The glass and silk-screen artist had a large studio when he lived in Oakland, but – after years of depression and migraines – he had to stop. After moving to Tacoma, Walters had neither room nor reliable power for a kiln.
Now, Walters teaches the Saturday afternoon glass-fusing class, stores his tools at TAP for anyone to use and has a kiln whenever he likes. “I can come in here anytime and do my work,” he says. “It’s a perfect space.”
Yet the community cooperative isn’t a humming place yet. On a recent Saturday, there were only two visitors and one teacher, Walters; no one had shown up for his class. Average weekly attendance is 23, down from 40 per week in the spring, with visitors’ ages range from 18 to 60. Yet memberships are gradually increasing.
“It’s right where I want it to be,” says Danforth, who recently won her the City of Tacoma’s AMOCAT award for arts outreach, partly because of the organization she founded. “But I want to take it further.”
Danforth’s plans include making the TAP model financially sustainable and expanding its community and artistic scope. The organization is currently staffed by volunteers, and – while this keeps bills down – Danforth says they’re “trying to build on that” to eventually hire staff. The organization also is not self-supporting and relies on charitable donations.
“We need 240 memberships to be self-supporting,” says Danforth. “We’re also working on getting more kids into classes, though at present an adult has to be with them.”
Part of the attendance problem is telling Tacoma about TAP: Without much money or volunteer time, the advertising has mostly been brochure-dropping in local neighborhoods. “I think the city needs to embrace the idea,” says Pivetta. “There needs to be more public awareness. Linda’s done a fabulous job, but she needs more help. Marketing takes money.”
Another part of the puzzle is finding out just who uses the community cooperative. While some visitors find the art therapeutic, others come for the social networking and would attend classes “even if we held them at midnight.” Others are working artists, like Walters, who simply don’t have enough space at home. “We’re trying to figure out our branding,” says Danforth.
Danforth’s plans for creative expansion, though, are taking shape. Corporate and foundation sponsorship has been generous, and upcoming funded projects include an artist-in-residence program, an after-school art program at McCarver Elementary School, a Saturday arts program for middle-school students, promotional YouTube video and T-shirt slogan competitions, more traveling workshops next summer, a Web page design workshop for low-income artists and community-sponsored memberships for seniors and low-income students.
Danforth also plans to ramp up local partnerships, such as a recent initiative with Tacoma Art Supply giving a 15 percent discount to TAP members, to help with programs and marketing.
In the meantime, Tacoma Art Place seems already to be fulfilling its mission – to build community with art. “People meet each other in a creative environment, and it supports artists as a business through the principles of cooperation,” says Danforth.
“Art isn’t an extra,” says Pivetta. “When people are down, they need something to connect with themselves. Tacoma Art Place is building community.”
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568
What: Tacoma Art Place’s first anniversary celebration
Includes: free one-day entry, free and low-cost art classes, refreshments
When: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday
Where: 1116 S. 11th St., Tacoma
Other events: regular opening hours 1-8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays, ongoing regular classes, artist workshop 7 p.m. Nov. 18
Information: 253-238-1006, www.tacomaartplace.org
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