We met with T&L--the owners of 702 Main--for lunch on Friday. We being myself, Kate, Laurel, Andrew, and Nick. T&L may have felt a little bit like they were walking into the Spanish Inquisition. All went well, though, and we got down to the business of discussing how to go ahead with this massive project. We ended on a promise to have some legal documents drawn up and meet again in two weeks for the passing of the keys..
That means that potentially we could be inside the house by the end of the month.
The next night we hosted our first fundraiser (ostensibly for the development of a "community arts space") at Fusion downtown. There was an amazing turnout.. even more amazing when you consider that historically in Carleton County in November people tend not to leave their houses for very many things. There was art by myself, Laurel, and Mike; food and wine, and music by Amy Anderson and Richard Wetmore.
We made posters; a combination of laser and woodblock prints.. a hand-numbered edition of 20. The ink from the laser printer reacted strangely with the oil-based ink that Mike used to print his design and they took about four days to dry (and did so only after we spent a few hours hunched over them with a hair dryer, AND Mike spent an evening blotting off two layers of the ink with loose leaf). They were still tacky on the night of the opening, but they looked fantastic. So, we sold those along with little "you gotta have art" buttons that were fashioned after larger pins that Mike had given Nick, Amy, Mandy and I earlier in the year. Despite my best efforts I haven't been able to track down the origin of the slogan.. but a couple of websites suggest that it might have been a campaign launched by the Detroit Institute of Arts in the 80s. There was even a jingle: "You gotta have art, miles and miles and miles of art, when life gets you down, you ought come on down and get a start, you gotta have art..." So we've appropriated "you gotta have art" for our little cultural campaign here in our little town. Sorry Detroit.
We had a RiVA meeting Sunday night over eats at Murray's. Discussion of the house, plans, and possibilities occupied most of the agenda. We're getting close to appointing our first governing board, which will become crucial to making the big decisions once we're in possession of the house. It was agreed that 702 should be overseen by the Woodstock Arts Co-operative as a subcommittee of the Alliance. A kind of focus group, I guess. After all, this whole project basically came out of the desire to establish an equipment co-op (printmaking, photography, etc.), which in turn led us on a search for space. Mike, Laurel, Katelin, and myself--as founding members of the co-operative--will be leading this committee..
Also at the meeting we nixed the idea of a Christmas art show (too late for proper planning), further discussed incorporation as a not-for-profit (becoming increasingly important with the potential of real-estate entering the picture), and committed to establishing a formal mission statement and bylaws for RiVA by our next meeting in January. December will be quiet on the surface, but underground we'll be hatching plans..
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