The preservation of Somerville’s Central Street Studios as permanently affordable artist workspace was marked Wednesday with a ceremony that, like all art, helped people see their surroundings in a whole new way.
Somerville is “a flagship art city,” said Ami Bennitt, a founding volunteer with the Art Stays Here Coalition. She was the final speaker before a ribbon-cutting to a new era of studios that have hosted artists for 43 years.
“Some people might not feel comfortable hearing that or saying that, but from an Art Stays Here perspective, Somerville is the flagship art city across all of Massachusetts,” Bennitt said.
It’s not just because of its many festivals or the number of resident artists, but for “some really practical things” such as fabrication district zoning and development set-asides, as well as being on the brink of establishing the first municipal cultural trust to collect and distribute money to support cultural space and buy and manage properties dedicated to creative work, Bennitt said.
Somerville also has seven artist workspace buildings including Central Street. “That’s more than any city or town in Massachusetts,” Bennitt said. “Somerville is the art space hero.”
The ceremony marked the turnover of the three-story building at 57 Central St. in Spring Hill – home to 20 studios and 30 artists, musicians, writers and other creatives – from owners David Benson, Nancy Dutton, and Karen and Paul Morse to the Arts & Business Council of Greater Boston. As described by speakers Wednesday, the move was facilitated by city staff and councilor Ben Ewen-Campen, the Art Stays Here Coalition and the formation of a tenants association over the past five years, after the owners announced their intention to retire but leave the studio community intact.
Union Square’s Gracie’s Ice Cream even donated a specialty ice cream called Art School Drop Out, Bennitt noted in an email.
After a sudden turnover in tenants, a new group organized and fundraised: a silent auction, an online auction, a summer block party, a Halloween benefit concert, exhibitions and tabling were among the efforts toward preservation before and after a “false start” that added time to the work, Sidebody band member, artist and journalist Cara Giaimo said.
The years of uncertainty were “scary and stressful,” Giaimo said. Eventually, as efforts came together, it “felt like maybe the universe had a need … and that need was for art space in Somerville.”
Central Street Studios tenant Jack Gruman, a video installation artist, emphasized how hard it was to organize. “We all have jobs outside of this, we have other rents to pay outside of this and we’re trying to do art in our free time, and then everything else in our free time,” Gruman said. “The urban landscape that I grew up in has been marked by a feeling of instability, with my rent, my housing, with my job. I don’t know what the next thing is going to be. So having one thing that you’ve been able to nail down as stable, as preserved in time, really feels great.”
As refugees in the 1980s from an increasingly artist-unfriendly Fort Point in Boston, the owners came together to buy the Central Street building on a handshake basis, Paul Morse said. They took possession of a 1850s structure that once held an auditorium for performing arts, a kitchen and assembly hall, and a basement candlepin bowling alley – uses followed by an A&P grocery store and moving company (which added the third floor and put in an elevator the partners had to take out). A tailor shop and silversmith were in residence as the partners moved in, seeking a place for their own business and “to provide affordable, safe workspace for other artists without them having a fear of exorbitant rate increases,” Morse said. “We were blessed with great tenants from the beginning” and stayed mostly full the entire 43 years.
The partners on hand Wednesday reminisced briefly about the art and artists they got to see move through the building – potter, painters, sculptors, woodworkers and poets. It was “lots of hard work keeping the finances going, keeping the leases going and maintaining the building,” Nancy Dutton said. Once the decision was made to move on and organize to keep their legacy, they held a community-forming backyard barbecue and began fundraising toward a handover. “That this actually got to happen is still a little stunning,” David Benson said.
“Many people and entities came together to preserve Central Street Studios,” including the ownership group, the city of Somerville and City Council, Mass Cultural Council and its Cultural Facilities Fund, some big-ticket private donors and Jim Grace and the Arts & Business Council, Bennitt said, making particular note of the city staffers and officials: “They’re the people that figure out how to get the money part of this done. They are the real saviors here today.”
Collectively, Bennitt said, “it shows that Somerville really does care about artists and the arts. Art Stays Here does a lot of volunteer art space advocacy in Somerville. This is the first artist workspace we have preserved, but let it be said it will not be the last. It is our mission, with everyone here, to preserve all seven of them and to create more.”
The assembled hundred-plus people were invited to a reception at the Somerville Museum, 1 Westwood Road, which is across the street from the studios, where there was cake and an #ArtStaysHere exhibit called “Faces, Spaces & Places” exploring the causes, impact and potential solutions to end artist displacement. It’s up through Aug. 23.
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