Liz Stewart leans forward to point out a series of bracelets made from metal nuts, washers, and wires. “It’s mostly new and repurposed hardware,” she says. “The idea is to take ordinary items and put them into situations you wouldn’t expect to see them. People look at them and see something beautiful, and then they look closer and say: Oh my gosh — I know what those objects are.”
This is the idea behind Stewart’s company Lush Beads, but it is also a fitting description of the weekend event that brought us both here. The second annual Alchemy Artisan Fair, held at Gateway City Arts along the Race Street canal in Holyoke on May 2 and 3, is an ambitious attempt to reimagine this block of deteriorated mill buildings as an appealing destination for the Valley’s large base of shoppers inclined toward funky, up-and-coming arts scenes.
This year the fair hosts 40 vendors selling jewelry and clothing, home goods and soap, paintings and photography, coffee and tea, and more. A large number of vendors are local, although Stewart has come out from Lowell — a city that she says includes “tons and tons” of artists and craftspeople. Stewart decided to trek westward this weekend, she says, because “this city reminds me of what Lowell used to be.”
In recent years, downtown Holyoke organizations like Gateway City Arts — as well as the BRICK Coworkshop and the Open Square office building around the corner — have attempted to bring together a critical mass of creative makers, artists, shoppers, and benefactors. The goal, says local ceramics artist Malea Rhodes, is to bring visitors past an assumption that the economically depressed Holyoke — where more than one in four residents live below the poverty line — is too gritty and crime-ridden for a new arts scene to thrive.
“Holyoke is a hard sell,” says Rhodes, who created the Alchemy Artisan Fair last year. “People from Northampton ask me why I’m not doing this there. Come on — I couldn’t find this kind of space in Northampton. If I did, it would cost way too much.”
The venue is definitely an attractive draw. Vendors are spread through two large, high-ceilinged rooms. One is a former garage, with a wide-open interior and a cement floor. The other is a cozy event space, all white paint and hardwood. On Saturday afternoon, a few hours into the start of the fair, warm pools of light filled both rooms through large banks of windows, and talk among the slow but steady stream of visitors — a few dozen at any given time — generated a welcoming murmur of background noise.
Last year Rhodes paid to rent the venue, but Gateway City Arts suggested a more complete partnership for this year: the nonprofit is donating the space and will keep the $5 admission fees, while Rhodes will keep the participation fees from vendors.
Rhodes lives in Leeds and runs The Celadon Studio in Northampton. She says a friend of a friend introduced her last year to Jeffrey Bianchine, the creative economy coordinator at Holyoke City Hall. Rhodes says that she was reluctant to base the fair in Holyoke, but that working with the people here changed her mind. “They have been nothing but welcoming,” she says. “It made it a really easy choice to do this here.”
When asked whether there are buyers in Holyoke to support an event like this, Rhodes nods. “People in Northampton think there’s less culture in Holyoke. But in Northampton you’re slapped with hippies and art all the time. It’s just a different demographic here.”
But looking around on Saturday afternoon, it was not clear that the fair was attracting any members of the local Holyoke population. Is they’re not coming out, who is?
A few small groups of visitors sit scattered around the tables and chairs in the sun-drenched courtyard between buildings, which Gateway City Arts is turning into a semi-regular biergarten now that the weather is getting warmer.
Co-workers Nancy Sullivan and Brenda Callahan, both nurses, are sipping fresh-poured drafts from Paper City Brewing Company. Sullivan, who lives in South Hadley, read about the event in the Daily Hampshire Gazette; Callahan, from Easthampton, saw a listing on Facebook.
“Arts. Crafts. Beer. And a beautiful sunny day. What could be better?” says Callahan.
“To me, this is nirvana,” says Sullivan. “I think Holyoke is primed to be the next up-and-coming place. I think preconceptions from years gone by are going away.”
Callahan agrees. Her home in Easthampton is a ten-minute drive from here, she says, and her daughter attended Holyoke Catholic school. “But driving down here today, I noticed all the great architecture all over again. It’s such a beautiful city.”
At the next table over, Rachael Mannion is visiting with her family. Mannion lives in South Hadley, and she liked last year’s festival enough to invite her clan up from Connecticut this weekend to check it out. “The food is good. The space is good. The architecture is funky. It has a lot of different elements that should draw people,” says her mother Peggy.
They have made two purchases so far: a sampler of cinnamon, lavender, and mint honeys from Golden Goddess Honey and a steampunk dragonfly necklace made by artist Amy Wheeler.
“People are really into this kind of thing, but they don’t always know where to find it,” says Ted Mannion. “I hope this event is getting some exposure.”
Is a lack of exposure part of why there are 30 to 40 visitors to the fair in its first hours, few of them residents of Holyoke?
Lori Divine, the co-founder of Gateway City Arts, is standing in the courtyard in a T-shirt and baseball cap, wearing a name tag on a lanyard. “We struggle with the best way to do PR,” she says. “I feel like we do a lot to get the word out on a tight budget, and then people come up to me after and ask why we didn’t advertise. We’re figuring it out.”
Gateway City Arts opened almost three years ago. Divine says the development work is constant, and that getting a new endeavor off the ground takes a few years, whether it’s a year-round arts nonprofit or a one-weekend craft fair.
“We’re trying to create events that can attract both of the Holyoke communities, but it’s tough,” says Divine, referring to the fact that the city is almost 50 percent Hispanic. Gateway City Arts threw a Puerto Rican Christmas party here in December, she says, and the venue was filled. “And there were, like, five white people at that event. There’s just not a lot of crossover. But I think the potential here is phenomenal.”
Alan Gilburg, a Holyoke woodworking artist, feels a kindred sense of hope for events like the Alchemy Artisan Fair. He sits at a table covered in wooden pens, plates, bowls, and pepper mills. Over the ten years he has lived in Holyoke, he says, the city has changed. “We’ve gone from feeling sorry for ourselves, absorbed in nostalgia for the good old days, to having a much more upbeat view of the future.” Gilburg is a board member of the South Holyoke community development organization Nueva Esperanza, and he volunteers with the Holyoke Safe Neighborhood Initiative. He thinks this city is “the coolest place in the Valley,” and that more events like this are bound to draw more visitors to Holyoke over time.
“I’m excited, big time,” he says. “Holyoke has been turning around. So far, it’s slow. But what change isn’t?”•
Contact Hunter Styles at hstyles@valleyadvocate.com.
