RUMFORD – A group of art enthusiasts is working on becoming a nonprofit organization, which they believe will boost the economy while giving the area’s many talented people a chance to showcase their work.
Lem Cissel, developer and owner of the Pennacook Art Center and Scrappers Domaine, has hosted two brainstorming sessions aimed at trying to create a space large enough to accommodate fine arts, performing artists and artisans.
“We are at a turning point. Are we going forward aggressively and who’s going to serve on the committee? There are almost unlimited grants out there,” he said.
But first, said committee member Linda Macgregor, a vision must be created.
“We need to have a vision, then go after the money,” she said.
At the still unnamed committee’s first meeting last week, members suggested creating a space, possibly on one of the floors of the River Valley Technology Center, that could include studios for individual artists and artisans in fields such as traditional crafts, music, dance, writing, and spinning and weaving, complete with classrooms, an art gallery and other arts-related spaces and businesses.
Cissel is about to add a century-old printing press to his list of art-related offerings at the gallery, and Norway printmaker Pat Chandler has offered to teach classes. That press could also go into such a site, he said.
Rumford Town Manager Steve Eldridge said the town is in a unique position to try to develop such a space.
“There are a variety of artists, performing artists in the area. We need to get them all together and form an arts council,” he said.
Becky Welsh, coordinator of the River Valley Arts Initiative, suggested patterning a creative arts space after a similar one in the Washington, D.C., area that transformed a former torpedo factory into an arts center called, appropriately, The Torpedo Factory Art Center.
The soon-to-be-formed council will include artists, art enthusiasts, the area’s town managers and representatives from the River Valley Growth Council and River Valley Technology Center.
Eldridge plans to meet with representatives from Portland’s Maine College of Art on June 29. After he has taken them on a tour of the area, members of the committee will join in to provide presentations on the arts initiative in the River Valley and on the history of the town, including its history of fine and performing arts. A follow-up meeting will be held soon after the MECA tour.
Cissel said that when he started the gallery a year ago, he envisioned taking it further than a small art gallery. He has already begun the legal work to turn it eventually into a nonprofit organization.
“It is important to take this beyond the River Valley,” he said.
Comments are no longer available on this story