When Mike Manzi selected pieces of his artwork for a weekend showing at the Kimball Towers condominiums (the former Kimball Hotel, located on Chestnut Street in Springfield), he never thought he’d be creating problems for anyone else.
Manzi, a Springfield artist whose work includes a shoe rendering in the city’s “Art and Soles” exhibit in the downtown district (on display through October), had an opportunity to show his work during a special open house weekend at the Kimball Towers September 11-12. Manzi wanted his very best works put up for viewing. Problem was, some of his best pieces happened to be part of an ongoing window display at the nearby Birnie Building, just across the street from Kimball Towers at the Apremont Triangle. That display was being put on as part of the Springfield Arts Initiative, a program established this year by the Springfield Business Improvement District with the goal of promoting arts in the city.
“I wanted my best art to be there [at the Kimball Towers],” said Manzi. “Who wouldn’t?”
The Kimball show offered Manzi a rare opportunity to get his work seen by the public at large. Not only was it an open house weekend for Kimball Towers, it was also the weekend of the much-celebrated Mattoon Street Arts Festival, which was going on just a block away (a planned coincidence). His idea was to have his prized work at the Birnie Building brought over just for that weekend’s open house at the Kimball, then returned to the Birnie. He was even willing to replace those selected pieces in the Birnie display with some of his other works.
Unfortunately, things didn’t go quite the way Manzi had intended. SAI Executive Director Gina Beavers told him that if he chose to remove his artwork from the Birnie display for use in his Kimball showing, he would not be able to return it. It was a tough decision, but in the end, Manzi opted to remove his artwork anyway.
“I did not find out [about Manzi’s plans] until the morning of the day he removed his work,” Beavers explained in an email. “Mike told me he would be willing to put up other pieces, but he couldn’t put them up that day, and we did not want to have an empty storefront during the Mattoon Street Arts Festival.”
The SAI, Beavers said, had to find another artist to put up work at the Birnie location for that weekend, which they were able to do on short notice, though artists aren’t paid for their storefront exhibits. But once they got the artist’s work in there, she said, they weren’t about to ask her to take it down again after only two days.
“Generally, our goal is to have an artist occupy a storefront art venue for three months,” wrote Beavers. She said that while the list of available storefronts is “very small,” the list of artists willing to display their artwork is growing. “In order to spread the wealth, if you will, once a storefront exhibitor exits, they are placed at the end of line so other artists can participate.”
That was news to Manzi, who said that at the time he was unaware of any such rotation plan. He was still determined to have his best art on display at his own showing at Kimball Towers, even at the cost of losing the longer-term showing at the Birnie Building.
The SAI was established by the Springfield BID with the stated goal of unifying the city’s artist community and fostering “collaborations between artists and organizations.” Thus far, however, the SAI’s road to unification has been a decidedly rocky one. In fact, since its creation this past June, the SAI appears to be acting more as an overseer and regulator of the arts scene in Springfield than the behind-the-scenes facilitator many assumed it would be. That might be because of the conflicting agendas attending the so-called collaborations between the various parties.
Artists, after all, are most often looking to express their creativity in a wholly unfettered artistic manner. For many of them, showing their work is not merely a business; it’s personal. Promoters and exhibit organizers, meanwhile, oftentimes come out looking like the proverbial strict parents as they set up their guidelines and restrictions for commissioned showings. In the SAI’s case, in particular, that friction between the arts side and the business side of the relationship is even more pronounced because that organization has to look out for the best interests, not of the participating artists, but of the Business Improvement District that sponsors it.
That conflict of interest was never more evident than when controversy erupted this past summer over a commissioned sculpture that was put on display along Main Street in Springfield.
Back in August, as the city’s much-anticipated Art and Soles sneaker sculpture displays were being placed throughout downtown Springfield, Ashfield artist Robert Markey made headlines after a portion of his shoe was spray-painted—without his prior knowledge—by the SAI. Markey’s sneaker had included a rendering on the shoe’s sole of a stripper pole dancing in a bikini. It was that rendering that received the sprayover.
Markey said he added the stripper as a lighthearted gesture. “I meant it sort of tongue-in-cheek—the underside of Springfield,” he told the Springfield Republican in a story that the newspaper put out on the controversy. But the SAI, and in particular the Springfield BID, certainly wasn’t looking to show off Springfield’s darker side. According to the same Republican article, SAI director Beavers said there wasn’t time to inform Markey of the painting over of his work.
“This was supposed to be a family-friendly art exhibit in the heart of (Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame) enshrinement week,” Beavers told the Republican. “… We wish we had time to let Bob in on the decision, but there just wasn’t time.”
(Days after the controversy erupted, SBID executive director Donald A. Courtemanche authored a letter to the editor of the Republican in which he apologized for the spray-painting of Markey’s work. “On behalf of the Springfield Business Improvement District,” read a portion of the letter, “I want to apologize for actions on behalf of Art and Soles. We made a mistake when we altered Robert Markey’s work. It’s a fair question to ask how a group of people who believe in the importance of art to the revitalization of Springfield could make such an error.”)
Beavers explained in her email that each artist is provided with guidelines which, she wrote, “depend on the specific project. For art in cafes and restaurants, there is a contract signed by the artist and the tenant that spells out the terms of their agreement. Art and Soles had well spelled-out guidelines and a contract that artists signed prior to receiving their sneaker.”
For storefront displays, Beavers said, there is no contract, though the SAI prefers a three-month commitment per display from the artist. (The question still remains: are the artists fully informed of this? Manzi apparently was not.)
Both Manzi and Markey could find their future relationship with the SAI in jeopardy due to these miscommunications. But it might be better for the SAI to understand that Manzi and Markey are not unique among artists, and that there will likely be many other artists coming to Springfield with similar dilemmas and desires. Better communication between the parties would be a more constructive way to keep the peace. And rather than penalizing artists for wanting to hold their own shows, perhaps the SAI should be encouraging such efforts—even assisting them.
In the meantime, even while the Art and Soles spray-over controversy was seen by many supporters of the arts as an example of artistic censorship on the part of the SAI that will hopefully never be repeated, both that incident and the Manzi episode will still serve as stark reminders to many artists in Springfield and elsewhere that their own shows are likely to play second fiddle to any greater “collaborative effort” they choose become a part of, and that they will sometimes have to rein in their artistic freedom if they wish to enjoy the public spotlight that other groups, with other agendas, help create for them.
