May 11, 2003|By Chris Kaltenbach | Chris Kaltenbach,Sun Staff
What started as a restaurant owner's wish to create a little ambience for customers has, in eight years, morphed into a thriving grassroots arts organization with a major role to play in the revitalization of one of East Baltimore's most storied neighborhoods.
It has been a long journey for the Creative Alliance -- from its early days as a gallery above Margaret's Cafe in Fells Point, through its relocation to an old Pep Boys store on Conkling Street in Highlandtown, to what promises to be its ultimate home, the former Patterson movie theater on Eastern Avenue.
Long, but never dull. And much appreciated.
"There's a great kind of energy radiating, pulsating and emanating from that group," says Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum. "It connects real people with the world of art. ... They have the ability to draw on a synergy of a variety of real folks who live in real places. In a sense, our ability [at the museum] to reach and inform and energize a community is less than theirs."
On Friday, the community-based arts group will celebrate its move into the 73-year-old movie theater with a $200-a-plate dinner and a "Marquee Ball." Both will afford guests a chance to tour the new facility, view its first major exhibit (featuring the work of Baltimore artist Vince Peranio, who designed sets for all of John Waters' films, Barry Levinson's Liberty Heights and the TV series Homicide: Life On the Street) and hobnob with Waters, Peranio and Emmy-award-winning producer and writer David Simon.
On Saturday, the Patterson opens to the public with clowns, bands and short films for children.
'Getting art out'
Converted from a single-screen movie theater to a mix of gallery space, artists' studios and classrooms (at a cost of $4.5 million, including $1.9 million from the state and $750,000 from the federal government), the new space gives Creative Alliance what its officers have sought for years: a place where artists can create and showcase work and community members can experience art in a way that's both fun and accessible. Their mission long has been to present art as a grassroots experience that invites people to become eager participants, not just casual observers.
"It's about just making art really acceptable and available and fun," says Executive Director Margaret Footner, one of the group's founders and owner of the restaurant below its original headquarters. "It's all about the idea of getting art out."
Adds Christy Berglund, an art therapist and president of the alliance's nine-member board of directors: "The Patterson is a concrete manifestation of what our mission is all about. It will be kind of a cultural factory, with artists' studios upstairs, people working and living there, and with many different venues within the buildings for art to be seen."
And if, at the same time, the Creative Alliance's heightened visibility makes it a rallying point for the revitalization of Highlandtown -- hey, that's part of the plan, too.
"They're in the process of remaking Highlandtown, in a sense," says Father Lou Esposito, pastor of Our Lady of Pompei Roman Catholic Church, where he's served since 1964. "They'll be bringing in more professionals, more artists, more intellectuals -- bringing back to Highlandtown what we thought was a lost identity altogether."
Some of that revitalization is already happening. "It's really important to the fabric of the city," says Janice Campbell, who moved to Baltimore from Minneapolis last year. She and her partner, Reagan Gibbs, have purchased the property across the street from the Patterson, which they intend to operate as a salon geared toward theatrical works-in-progress. "The quality of life in the city is affected by the arts community and by the educational oppor- tunities that exist. It makes the quality of life better for everybody, and it makes people nice."
An artistic potpourri
And what, specifically, is the alliance bringing to Highlandtown?
In the last eight years, the alliance has presented a contemporary musical score for Buster Keaton's silent film, Steamboat Bill, Jr.; clowns performing Macbeth; Ken Waldman, a fiddle-playing poet; a "comedy cabaret" entitled Dubya Dubya III; a short film titled, The Vibranator, presented by The Charm City Kitty Club, a group whose aim is to "foster, showcase, and celebrate creative expression for lesbian, dyke, bisexual, transgender and transsexual women and all our allies"; performance artist Phat Man Dee, who sang the National Anthem with her fist shoved down her throat; and David Franks, who took letters written by his father urging him not to make art his life's calling, shot them full of holes, then crafted poems from the mixed-up words and letters.
