FOLIO
Words by Savanna Stillwagner
Many years ago, there was a building on Rosselle Street in Riverside that was once a match factory, but today, it lights up in a completely different way. With trepidation, one might drive past the railroad tracks and junk houses, around the potholes and errant parked cars, unknowing of what they may come across.
Looking around, there were people walking, two food trucks and graffitied walls. What seemed like a hole-in-the-wall type of event, brought excitement to passersby. Walking up, there was a small sign with black writing indicating where the event was, but it was through a small door to the same concrete building with graffiti on it. The door was propped open with something, and the fear of walking into some strange building was all consuming. Either way, stepping through the door followed in the next four and a half hours of an unexpected emotional rollercoaster of beauty, art, nostalgia and community.
CoRK Arts District is one of those places people don’t realize they are missing out on until they witness it for themselves. The location, 2689 Rosselle St., has its history. From a matchbook factory to a furniture store to a milk bottling plant, its building has been many things. With its creaky floors telling a story with each “eeerrrrr,” and its musty, wood smell, this place, now, tells more stories than just something one might find in a history book.
Established in 2011 by developer Mac Easton and artist Dolf James, the CoRK Arts District originally opened with eight artists in the West Gallery. After their opening, the studios filled up quickly, according to Crystal Floyd, CoRK Arts District director. In its first year, they built an extension, which they called the East Gallery. They also added the North Gallery as a separate building. Seven years ago, Hope McMath bought the Yellow House located next to the galleries to be included in the arts district as well. Now, the Yellow House is home to many local artists who feature their take on social injustices. Today, the arts district in its entirety is a sanctuary to nearly 70 artists of all crafts. Although CoRK has so much beauty and history, it is not open to the public daily.
“It’s all our little sanctuary,” said Floyd, proud to be the director of such a marvelous place.
Only at their open studio events can visitors go into the “sanctuary” by walking into one of the three galleries, and they might just get so lost in the art they wouldn’t know what building they were in, but the real magic was walking inside the studios.
Rounding a corner into the doorway of two artists’ studios, first, eyes naturally gaze to paintings of wilderness and nature; trees of all kinds across a dark landscape seeming to be a forest. It was almost as if the painting itself could crack like fallen tree branches were being walked on and crickets were chirping all around me. Then, my eyes moved across the room, and I could see a woman’s face, a man’s face, vines of grapes and other fruit. Each scene on a different piece of parchment, yet each held the work and dedication of its artist. In the corner of the room, what is seen will make time move ever so slowly.
It was there in the organized mess where crusted paint tubes were stacked by color, different colored and textured jars and cups of paint brushes on shelves above; wicker baskets of cloth with color splatches; old tree branches poking out from the top of the shelves. To the right of the scene, there was a man and a woman. The man had white, wiry hair around his head and the woman had a blue jean jacket and hair of gray and white lying across the top of her head to her shoulders flowing straight down. Both the man and woman had glasses on the tips of their noses and their eyes like beads speaking to wandering guests with passion in their smiles. It was then the realization hit: This scene is the very room where artists’ minds come to life. A place where their ideas and inspirations shoot across the room — where either silence or laughter is so profound it could bring tears to the eyes of whoever was witnessing the scene. We asked the artists what their inspiration is for their art.
“My inspiration is nature,” Allison Watson, the tree painter, said matter-of-factly.
Her work is showcased in over 400 public, private and corporate collections nationally and she is also an instructor at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens.
The inspiration didn’t end in Watson and Pablo F. Rivera’s studio. The magic ran steadily through the buildings.
In Studio 4 in the East Gallery, the familiar pungent smell of wet and pasty gray clay seeped into the hallway. It wasn’t the sculpted faces with collars of roses and kilned eyes of wonder that caught the eye. It was witnessing Larry Wilson scrub and shape his newest work of art on a pottery wheel. Holding a yellow sponge, his smile beamed brightly with passion for his work.
“As a kid, I had a desire to create things…I think you are just born with that gene, ya know?” Wilson said.
With a laugh, he said he does have a “real job,” with an interior design company, but he is happy he has it, so his art isn’t his only income.
This makes his art less of a hassle as he has “no deadline, no criteria,” he said.
“Each artist has a different approach. To me that’s fun,” said Wilson.
“It’s nice to have a studio because you can come, leave a mess and lock up,” Wilson said. “It’s a special place to build a studio. It’s affordable.”
Wilson wasn’t the only one at the open studios who agreed.
In the North Gallery, through a short hallway, Studio H rested. It had double doors opened wide for guests to peer in and speak to the woman in charge.
Barbara Colaciello is a multi-faceted artist whose work focus is the “improvisation for all art forms and certainly pertains to crafting a story live,” she said.
As two young girls in striped and mismatched clothes asked to explore BABS’LAB, they rushed up the steps of the studio and Colaciello told her story.
Colaciello always wanted her own space. BABS’LAB is a place where the community can come together to challenge themselves to be more creative. Studio H hosts Story Slams and improv nights. At the slams, a monthly theme is chosen. Anyone can tell a story based on the pre-selected theme, and at the end of the night, everyone votes on their favorite story.
Poets, musicians, actors and people who just want to share their stories come to BABS’LAB to express themselves.
While Colaciello explained that one part of her work involves improvisation across all art forms, definitely when telling a story live, the two young girls made their way to her stage to begin doing flips and cartwheels.
CoRK’s art doesn’t end with painters, sculptors and playwrights, though. Author and Florida State College professor Tim Gilmore’s doors were closed for the first half of the open studios. Gilmore is also a professor at Florida State College at Jacksonville. When his double doors were eventually open, the author was seen selling his books and drinking something of a dark brown color. It could have been wine as there were some bottles on the desk behind him. He wore blue Converse with dirty laces and grass stickers stuck to them. His socks were tan with pink polka dots.
As he spoke to his fans, he truly wanted to get to know them.
“Tell me about you and your story,” he asked one lady who was getting a book signed.
When it was time for him to share his own story, he shared that at around age seven or eight, he learned he enjoyed writing. His first introduction was with a friend in one of his grade school classes.
The two of them used to write scary stories and read them in front of their class. He would be so nervous, he said, but that was what helped him become the writer he is today.
“What became apparent to me, even if I was really, really shy, I could ask people questions,” he said, emphasizing how powerful this is.
Topics come to Gilmore, he doesn’t go looking. He said he likes to walk around the city, drive around, and just look and wonder.
“I like to wonder about the things I’m looking at,” he said.
With nearly 800 written works, Gilmore is a true artist putting together stories about Virginia King, an author herself, shocking murders in Jacksonville, a remarkable house with an interesting backstory and even a story about banned books.
Gilmore’s story was captivating. His spoken words were just as compelling as the words he wrote on paper.
One of the beauties of the arts district wasn’t just the open tubes of paint, cameras with backdrops to take pictures at a moment’s notice, an empty canvas with a grid so an artist could work slowly or the words of social injustices printed across a wall inside the Yellow House. It was how the art community was a family. Gilmore knew Colaciello, who met the cartwheeling girls on her stage. The girls who cartwheeled across her stage were the granddaughters of a man whose wife is friends with Watson, the painter.
The grandfather of the girls who cartwheeled across BABS’LAB’s stage spoke to us about Watson, the painter after we had spoken with Wilson, the sculptor.
Ted Head, the grandfather, approached and asked how we got into journalism because his granddaughter who did the cartwheels loves to write.
As I explained my love for writing books at a young age, the little girl chimed in, “Me too!”
After Head spoke of his granddaughter’s likes and interests as an artist, she said, “I also love to draw. I want to be an illustrator.”
For those longing for a creative outlet, many of us can relate to those young dreams of being an artist.
After leaving Head with his bouncing beans of granddaughters, thoughts of the passion of art were in the air. The early days of doodling, drawing, sketching and the excitement of grade school writing prompts all came swirling back. For Christmas, the list to Santa would say things like “a pottery wheel” or a “pretty journal” to write stories in. The familiarity of Head’s granddaughter brought an emotional draw to the past.
This familiarity, as it became more present, wasn’t in one little girl. It was in each studio and each interested mind strolling through the art studios. It was in the air at CoRK. It was as if through all their stories, they were telling us to keep that pottery wheel spinning just like Wilson does, keep that brush painting like Watson, keep telling those stories like Colaciello and Gilmore; and here we are, telling our story, making our own art.
We can see more artists tell their stories Nov. 22 and 23 during CoRK’s next open studios weekend.
Source
CoRK ARTS DISTRICT (est. 2011). CoRK Arts District. (n.d.). https://corkartsdistrict.com/about
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