Living Art: Lofts provide community plus creative elbow room
Posted on Sun, Aug. 03, 2008
By AUDRA D.S. BURCH
CANDACE L. WEST / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Among the artists at Artspace Sailboat Bend Lofts is Lisa Rockford.
Tucked among the cottages and clapboard houses, the old bridge and green squares of Fort Lauderdale's historic Sailboat Bend neighborhood, a colony of professional and emerging artists flourishes in an unassuming concrete complex just west of downtown. Artspace Sailboat Bend Lofts, one of 21 such projects sponsored by a national arts organization and the first in Florida, is home to a broad collection of visual, literary and performance artists. Some absolutely embody the cliche of starving artist. Others are more needy of a permanent creative climate in which to work and live.
''This is a beautiful space that inspires art and pure expression,'' Nerissa Street, writer and performance artist, pronounces as she surveys her one-bedroom studio awash in natural light, its open floor plan uncluttering her mind. ''Here if I don't create,'' Street says, ``I feel like I am not honoring the gift that this place is.''
Before Street moved from an uninspiring Pembroke Pines townhouse in January, she wrote essays, poetry and plays in time stolen from the workday or in the quiet of nights and weekends.
Now, she is the first renter, the first artist-in-residence in her unit. Here, sitting in a woven patio chair with her notebook in her lap, Street puts her life on paper -- and, alternatively, scrawls it onto the room's soaring white walls. She is working on a frank, intimate one-woman play about her journey to become an author, poet, playwright and actress. She will perform Not an Exit in September as part of an Artspace exhibit and show.
''There came that moment several years back when I just knew my life wasn't enough,'' says Street, 34, who also works as an independent corporate trainer. ``I just kept saying I have got to do more, and this came along and it offered me chance to really step out.''
In the most primal sense, Artspace projects offer freedom. Without the inherent financial pressures. With the support of a community.
As a nonprofit real estate developer for the arts, Artspace insists that if you build it -- or rehab it -- they will come.
''One of the hurdles artists face again and again is having to move because of they are priced out. Their environments are disrupted, which makes it difficult to create,'' says Bill Mague, portfolio director of Artspace. ``So our idea is to make living and work spaces affordable with the hope that the artist becomes economically self-sufficient. We also believe that when artists congregate, they inspire each other.''
Rents are on a sliding scale. In Fort Lauderdale, they range from roughly $525 to $900 monthly. The residential component distinguishes the project from other artistic incubators in South Florida, such as Miami's Bakehouse Art Complex and the Artcenter/South Florida on Miami Beach's Lincoln Road.
Founded in Minneapolis in 1979, Artspace, now owns and manages projects from Seattle to Buffalo, many carved from industrial, urban or forgotten landscapes that, given a second chance, often become centerpieces of economic rebirth.
In St. Paul, Artspace lofts converted in the late 1980s from industrial buildings sparked the revival of Lowertown, a downtown warehouse district.
The mission never changes: a liberating place to live, work, exhibit, perform and conduct business in a city with a promising arts scene.
Broward County has more than 10,000 artists and 300 art organizations, says Steven Glassman, Arts Education and Community Development program manager with the county's Cultural Division.
The lofts are the crown jewel of a 10-year, $13 million public/private partnership that includes the renovation and adaptive re-use of the historic West Side School, built in 1923, for the county's Historical Commission.
''Honestly, if people didn't have a passion for this project, it would have died long ago,'' Glassman says. ``But now we have something that is a natural extention of the arts and entertainment district running along the river.''
The lofts are one-, two- and three bedroom studios on three levels. Each floor also has shared exhibition space.
The units -- essentially concrete boxes with exposed ductwork and high ceilings but no interior walls -- are blank canvases primed for interpretation.
Vanya Allen, 27, a dancer, poet, singer and fashion designer who moved here from Jupiter, left most of her three-bedroom studio open for creativity.
Some days, Allen, married to a drummer and poet, gracefully soars and pirouettes and whirls across the apartment, enchanted by the organic nature of human motion. Other days, she leans into the wide, bare windows and sings original folk jazz songs born of love and loss. Still other days, she sits at an old sewing machine table and writes and writes and writes.
''This building is such a sensual place. There is so much to see and hear and feel and so many good vibes,'' says Allen, an artistic director and choreographer at a community center who shares the loft with her husband and three children. ``The physical building and the people in it are supportive of artistry.''
The artists living here, who were selected by a committee of local arts community members from 135 applicants, have already formed a self-governing collective and launched a website (www.sailboatbendartists.com).
''We are meeting regularly to try to figure out how to create a sustainable art community,'' Street says. ``We want to get the most from this space.''
In April, Artspace held a grand-opening exhibit. A second show and performance is planned for September. The artists are also beginning to open their studios for private showings.
Chicago transplants Jonathan and Lisa Rockford live in a wonderfully cluttered two-bedroom loft. He is a crochet sculptor; she is a concept painter.
Almost every nook and cranny is occupied with art and inspiration: the giant red foam revolver Jonathan, 24, made for a college project; Peekaboo, the 8-foot oil Lisa, 33, painted of a whimsically posed couple; a ragtag collection of helmets,plastic lips, fur rainbow pillows, stuffed animals, mannequin parts.
''We see beauty and inspiration in the tackiness,'' Lisa says, half-giggling. An adjunct art professor at Broward Community College, she also sells vintage dresses on eBay.
The Rockfords used to live in a cramped, 750-square-foot Dania Beach duplex, the former den of a drug dealer. The police popped in occasionally, still looking for him.
So when they heard about the project through Jonathan's job as a library aide, the Rockfords were among the first to apply.
With the move to their third-floor, two-bedroom, they doubled their space.
''We felt so isolated where we lived before,'' says Jonathan, sitting in their small den with the cats Agent and Lio, a stray too tiny to justify the last letter of Lion. ``People would come to our home and see this visually cluttered place, and it was disconcerting and uncomfortable for them. They didn't get it.''
Didn't get Jonathan's innovative challenge of gender roles. He rendered manly sculptures -- hammers, grenades, gas masks -- in crochet.
Didn't get Lisa's subversion of iconic figures. In her world, Barbie, among the most familiar, enduring symbols childhood, reads sex books in a series of 26 enamel-and-acrylic portraits.
''I am hoping to create a new narrative, to expose the darker side and address stereotypes,'' Lisa says. ``There is this whole other story about how we view beauty.''
Here, everybody gets it. Here art is more likely to invoke thoughtful dialogue than befuddlement.
''Here, your next-door neighbors don't come by and ask to borrow brown sugar or butter. They ask for brown paint or a drill,'' Jonathan says. ``The connection here is we all live with and are inspired by art. We are like-minded.''
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