Hap Phillips, Nita Turnage, Lohr Barkley, Elizabeth McDonald
At 2 p.m. this past Sunday, something rare was happening on the northern edge of the St. Louis riverfront: rain was falling, from an overcast sky. For a minute, it looked like an inauspicious day for the organizers of the Artica project to offer a walk-through of their long-“temporary” annual venue. But, as with Artica itself, things just sorta worked out perfectly. Within an hour of the official Artica Site Visit, clouds parted, the rain stopped, and interested parties roamed the area with no weather worries to consider.
That’s not to say there wasn’t a little bit of visual drama involved in the afternoon. Even founders Nita Turnage and Hap Phillips weren’t 100 percent sure of what to expect when they arrived at the quirky corner of Dickson and Lewis. In recent months, the landscape of the surrounding space has changed dramatically, and without warning. Several, massive earthen berms have recently been leveled out by the city. Meanwhile, the nearby homeless encampments of Sparta, Dignity Harbor and Hopeville were ousted a few months back, with that space now cleared of any signs of their presence.
Save for one year in exile (when the base of operations moved to the base of the Arch grounds), Artica’s taken over parts of this area for over a decade. On October 13 and 14, the grassroots arts project will once again bring life to a corner of our extended downtown, in the 11th year of Artica’s own life.
“Every year, it changes,” says Turnage, of the surroundings. “Every year, we figure that we’re not going to do it the next year.”
And that’s because the space is not only physically changing; the ownership of the area fluctuates wildly. The largest property that Artica involves is the Cotton Belt Building, which is controlled by Tim Tucker and Mark Schulte. (In one of those perfect St. Louis moments, Tucker randomly biked past the Artica site on Sunday, while out on a Sunday ride on the Riverfront Trail.) The remainder of the unaffiliated space belongs to a variety of single developers, development groups, banks and the City of St. Louis, which, at worst, has turned a blind eye to Artica’s annual takeover of the space; at its best, it’s provided access to fire hydrants and other essential services to put on the event.
The anticipation, over many years, has been that the developers in the area would eventually begin to break through and begin some full-scale rehabilitation of the area. Instead, the work’s come in fits and starts. While the LEED-certified William A. Kerr Foundation building’s active and operational, other, often-huge spaces are in various states of limbo. Turnage and Phillips pointed out one building that’s undergone an investment of over a million dollars; the space has since gone into foreclosure and is being bid upon by another noted Downtown developer.
“One year,” Phillips remembers. “Everything here was under someone else’s control. And that’s the year we spent under the Arch, on the levee.”
In the same time period, the homeless encampments have come and gone. The huge mounds of dirt outside the Cotton Belt (made up of dirt from the Saint Louis Art Museum’s expansion, no less) have appeared and been leveled. And other buildings have been claimed by collapse or fire. If you were looking for a corner of the city with all the potential in the world, wed to many of the most-vexing elements of large-scale urban comebacks, this’d be your place.
All of which makes Artica’s environs, in many respects, the perfect place for a freewheeling, multi-discipline arts festival that comes, goes and leaves behind some interesting tidbits.
“I think it’s going to be beautiful every year,” admits Turnage. “I always marvel at the artists’ energy and ability to create.”
This year’s call to artists just went out, and for both Turnage (and Philips), the time when things are truly in motion is “right now. Hap and I have been really busy with other things this year. But when we call out to artists, that’s when things feel real.”
The organic nature of the event suggests that lots of participating artists will check in relatively late. But Sunday’s site visit was a chance for them to eyeball the new space, get a sense of what they can do, and on what scale.
Interestingly, on Sunday, Artica’s remote outpost was still an active one. Some kids were by to... well, it’s hard to say what they were there to do. On the loading dock of a nearby building, a small film crew taped some free-styling rappers. Bikes, like Tucker’s, were zipping by on the Riverfront Trail. Occasionally, a car would pass by, occupants just looking around, curiously.
Phillips: “It’s amazing how many people just come down here...”
Turnage: “... and just utilize it.”
Never more true than in mid-October. No need to buy ticket, just keep your calendar clear on the 13th and 14th.
