If there’s one quality that really sets artists apart from
everyone else, it’s their innate ability and willingness to look at
the world differently, to think outside the box and shed a creative
light on a tired or well-known subject.
Hollister – If there’s one quality that really sets artists apart from everyone else, it’s their innate ability and willingness to look at the world differently, to think outside the box and shed a creative light on a tired or well-known subject.
So even though hopes for an arts center in Hollister fell through years ago, San Benito County’s art community is refusing to give up, and is instead trying to approach the problem from another angle.
The fledgling group, organized by local art enthusiast Mike Smith with the help of the Community Foundation for San Benito County, met for the first time on Wednesday night to discuss pooling their resources and connections to get plans for a local arts center back on track.
“What art does is enrich all of our lives, even if we’re not artists,” County Supervisor Anthony Botelho told the audience at Wednesday’s meeting. “I think an organization such as this can help heal some of the wounds this community has right now. And if we’re going to grow as a community, we have to have this.”
Smith said he left Wednesday’s meeting with a positive outlook on the group’s future.
“We had 27 people get together with the same interest of moving the arts forward in the community, and I was really encouraged to have representatives from the county board of supervisors and the city council and Gavilan College,” said Smith.
In addition to supervisors and council members, Hollister Redevelopment Agency Director Bill Avera was also on-hand to extend what may become a very real offer of RDA support.
“I’ll be your conduit between the grass-roots organization and the city,” Avera told the group. “I can help you identify what’s possible and what’s not possible as far as RDA funding.”
Avera said Thursday there is a chance the RDA could help the arts advocacy group structurally and financially once they get a plan together. The RDA had helped fund an Arts Center Commission study to gauge public support for a local arts center back in 2000, according to former Commission President Ignacio Velazquez, and Avera said yesterday they’ll still do what they can to help out.
“Generally speaking, I’d go out on a limb and say yes, we’d be able to help; but not having an idea of the project and the location and what it’s actually going to do, I’d be hesitant,” Avera said. “We’ll approach those things and make sure that we’re making legal expenditures when the time comes. I don’t think it’s feasible for them to expect a constructed building with Redevelopment Agency funds, but there’s probably some aspects where we could help. If it’s a piece of property that’s either blighted and we need to do something with it or if it’s a vacant site and we’d like to see other uses for it, we could help with those kind of things.”
Velazquez, a restaurateur and former photographer, told the audience of artists Wednesday he was confident they could make an arts center happen with a little creativity and a lot of tenacity.
“As artists, you all know that nobody can stop us because we know how the world works,” Velazquez told the room of 27 artists and arts supporters Wednesday night. “We need to stick together as a group because if we do, nobody can stop us.”
The study Velazquez and his commission had done in 2000 found overwhelming support for the center, he said, but the feasibility of actually making the center a reality fizzled when the county board of supervisors dissolved its own arts commission shortly thereafter.
“If you’ve ever seen the movie ‘The Piano,’ you know how traumatic it was when she (Holly Hunter’s character) lost that piano. And that’s what I feel like happened to Hollister,” local artist Shannon Grissom said at Wednesday’s meeting.
But now, the new advocacy group is banding together actors and painters, poets and photographers, singers and potter and everyone in between to show San Benito County what local artists are capable of and why they need a home to share their work with the community.
Local artists said they were ready to fight for an arts center in Hollister for a slew of reasons. Judge Steve Sanders, who is also a member of the Oriana Chorale choir and the city’s gang task force, told Wednesday’s group he’d like to see an arts center with programs that would keep kids off the street. Laurie Venturini, president of Oriana, said she wanted a venue where the choir and other dance, music and stage groups could perform for free. And Hollister City Councilman Brad Pike told the audience he envisioned an arts center that could make the town a destination point for culture-seekers from Gilroy and Salinas.
And by the end of Wednesday’s meeting, participants seemed eager to make all of these ideas happen.
“We’ve been surrounded in the past by a critical mass wanting to make this happen,” said art instructor and Gavilan College Trustee Kent Child. “Now we’re surrounded by a critical mass again, and now’s time for that to gel.”
The arts group will hold its next meeting on Wednesday, May 25 from 6:30-8:30pm in the banquet room upstairs at the Vault restaurant in Hollister.
For more information, contact Mike Smith at [email protected]
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
