he Tucson Arts District Partnership is moving out of its offices and into a corridor.
No, the nonprofit management and development agency for the Arts District isn’t being banished to the hallway for misbehavior. The corridor in question is the area stretching from Congress Street through Arizona Avenue to Armory Park, and is gradually developing into a miniature arts district of its own.
“It’s a wonderful location,” says Arts District Partnership executive director Vera L.Y. Uyehara of her new address. It’s the former Youth Storefront, 118 S. Fifth Ave., facing the alley ambitiously called Arizona Avenue. You can plow right into the building if you’re not careful exiting the parking lot of Barrio Food and Drink.
What’s so wonderful about the spot is that it positions the Arts District Partnership as a bud right in the middle of what soon could be a sturdy branch of the Arts District. It stems from the north end of Congress Street, nourished by activity at the Rialto Theatre, Hotel Congress, and, a bit further north, the soon-to-be rehabilitated train station and the future Depot Plaza. Already along the branch are the TCCC building (the community-access cable TV headquarters), Art Square (a parking lot at 172 E. Broadway that doubles as an outdoor juried art market and performance venue), Barrio, and the original Etherton Gallery. The southern tip of the branch bushes out into the greenery of Armory Park.
“We’ll have space for a community gallery, we’ll be located right next to a group of artists who have studios in the same building, and we’ll be next door to Access Tucson and talking about collaborating with them for programming on art on a regular basis,” says Uyehara. “It looks like the stars were all aligned for our 15th anniversary next year.”
Uyehara, who has headed the Partnership for not quite one year, hopes to tie the move in with a revitalization and expansion of the Arts District Partnership’s programs and services. Her ambitions are high, despite the fact that her organization is struggling under what she acknowledges is a difficult budget situation. The current annual budget is about $250,000, down from about $400,000 four years ago, before a series of cuts necessitated by slashed city spending. The City of Tucson currently provides $186,300 of the Partnership’s budget, with the remainder coming from grants and donations from various other sources.
“We’re looking to diversify our sources of revenue, from instituting fee-based programs to looking for other kinds of support from business sponsorships and grants,” says Uyehara. “We really want to try to be more entrepreneurial and practice what we preach, so we want to offer programs to people that they’re willing to pay for. I want to be very customer-service oriented.”
The move was precipitated by the sale of the Partnership’s current home, the Bank One Annex located near Stone and Congress. The Partnership lost its lease, but found comfort in the welcoming arms of the Business Development Finance Corporation, which owns the former warehouse in which the Partnership will establish residency on Jan. 1.
Gary Molenda of the BDFC welcomes the Arts District Partnership with open arms. “The Partnership moving in here as a tenant is very consistent with the original vision for redeveloping and repositioning this building as part of the Arts District,” he says. The building’s second floor has been converted into 11 apartments, and the warehouse space below is offered mainly as rental artist studios.
Molenda points out that the BDFC is already quite familiar with its new tenant, having submitted and managed a number of grants for the agency, including Back to Basics funding for the infrastructure for Art Square—power, lighting, and rigging for aerial dance performances—and separate grants to spruce up Arizona Alley. “It was a pilot project that would show how you could convert an alley into a more active, pleasant urban space,” he says. “We hope to work with the City to get the last phase of the grant for additional art opportunities and landscaping. This would be a terrific way to pull together a little arts district between TCCC and Barrio, both of which have been very supportive.”
Meanwhile, the city Parks and Recreation department is deciding exactly what to do with its $50,000 Back to Basics grant from the mayor’s office for fixing up Armory Park. Julie Parizek of Parks and Rec says that $5,000 will go toward a wall mural at the Armory Park Senior Center; use of the remainder—as well as additional money that may come from other sources—is under discussion. Landscape architect Stephen Grede, who lives nearby, has volunteered to work on a master plan with community and City staff input. The Arts District Partnership has been involved in advising Parks and Rec regarding performance and arts festival improvements to build into the project.
“Maybe we’ll have a casual, intimate venue for performances—not a bandshell for something huge and loud, but something where you could have a guitar trio,” speculates Parizek. Whatever happens, Parizek wants to increase programming to draw more people to the park, thereby increasing its perceived safety.
Meanwhile, back at Arizona Alley, the Arts District Partnership’s Uyehara is looking forward to moving dumpsters out of the way to make room for sculptures and an arcade, hanging directional signing, and developing some of the adjacent ground-floor spaces.
“We’ll be getting back into some of the real estate development we were involved in earlier,” she says. “This is all turning a new page for the Arts District Partnership.”
he Power of One implies the power of the individual and the powerful source of the exhibiting artists’ voices – the culturally diverse community. Curated by George Welch, painter and faculty member at Pima Community College, the artworks are from perspectives of diversity and global response.
Welch elected to invite artists whose work has interested him as he has watched their evolution and progression. Inviting the artists to create new works for the exhibit, Welch’s emphasis is to encourage a focus on what is most exciting to them right now in their work.
The emerging theme, The Power of One, is one of connection, of being confidently rooted in their cultures of birth while fully functioning within the broader society. The artists, American, Mexican-American, African-American, Yaqui, Navajo, Tohono O’odham, Otham, from the Colorado River Tribes, Iraqi and Mexican, choose artistic expression that incorporates tradition to technology.
Welch believes that the contemporary edge of art can most readily be found where artworks come from opposing sides, with a richness derived from the cross-fertilization of styles and expression, where artists seek and find new voices on the cutting edge. Welch states, “The uniqueness of this exhibition is its emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism with many of the artists not yet having claimed a voice from a specific genre or media, or claimed a specific territory. This diversity is in contrast to the uniformity or thematic, minimalist quality often seen in galleries.”
The Tucson Pima Arts Council’s move to 10 E. Broadway resulted in a temporary loss of the community gallery space but created an opportunity to collaborate with existing galleries. Raices Taller 222, an artist member-based gallery whose mission includes providing exhibition space and educational and cultural experiences for segments of the population rarely visiting galleries or museums, strongly supported the concept of a cross-cultural exhibition.
The Power of One is sponsored in part by the Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Tucson Pima Arts Council and Raices Taller 222. The Tucson Pima Arts Council is the local arts council for the City of Tucson and Pima County whose mission includes advancing our community through the arts and making the arts integral to the lives of our citizens.
6. What ideas would you suggest to the artists as being most important to you for incorporation into public art for the Depot and 4th Avenue Underpass?
Phone 624-0595, ext. 10 to receive an additional copy of this survey or for more information. You may also find out more about the Tucson Pima Arts Council and public art projects at www.tucsonpimaartscouncil.org. Provide your name, address, phone number and email address if you would like more information about the design process for public art for the Depot and Underpass.
Please complete and return by November 28, 2003 to:
Public Art for Downtown Tucson
Tucson Pima Arts Council
10 E. Broadway #106
Tucson, AZ 85701
Partnership Moving to Arizona—Avenue That Is
he Tucson Arts District Partnership is moving out of its offices and into a corridor.
“We’ll have space for a community gallery, we’ll be located right next to a group of artists who have studios in the same building, and we’ll be next door to Access Tucson and talking about collaborating with them for programming on art on a regular basis,” says Uyehara. “It looks like the stars were all aligned for our 15th anniversary next year.”
he Power of One implies the power of the individual and the powerful source of the exhibiting artists’ voices – the culturally diverse community. Curated by George Welch, painter and faculty member at Pima Community College, the artworks are from perspectives of diversity and global response. 