As the Beacon and The Riverfront Times reported earlier this week, The Luminary Center for the Arts is finally moving to Cherokee after plans to buy and renovate 2700 Cherokee (recently home to Pig Slop Studios, and Globe Drug before that) fell through. The nonprofit arts center, founded by artists Brea and James McAnally, is actually moving in right across the street at 2701-7 Cherokee, and as that range of numbers suggests, it's not just one building, but a 13,000-square-foot complex. The central building currently houses LED Craft, who will be there through the end of the year (according to the RFT, the business was looking to move anyway), but renovation on the roof begins as soon as October. In the meantime, the Luminary will operate out of temporary spaces elsewhere on the street. The finish date for the renovated building—it will be equipped with a large gallery, a concert hall, studios, public workshop space, and living space for artists-in-residence—is Spring 2013.
"We're able to actually to do all the things we were planning to do," James McAnally says. "And this space is actually divided up a little more naturally in the sense that there are two spearate entrances. The gallery and [music] venue will be one particular area, and then the housing is upstairs and separate. It's a little less space than the initial propoal, but I don't think it will hamper what we are planning to do with it."
The move from Reber will mean new programs, like classes and workshops; McAnally says now, since they can offer larger studios and living space, they can step up their artists-in-residency program (they receive applications from artists all over the world). They will also be expanding their existing programs like the AV equipment library. But as McAnally points out, it's not just about getting bigger, but putting down deeper roots. "We have projectors, cameras CD duplicators, a darkroom—all kinds of specialized equipment that most individuals may not have access to," he says. "That will be expanded in the new space, which is something I'm excited about, because it's in an area where a lot of people will actually need that equipment, who live and work right around there, and other galleries and spaces use that equipment a lot as well...we are excited to be part of a community."
Liz Deichman of the St. Louis Secret Sound Society is now running their concert series, and will be adding more dates and more experimental music to the schedule. And they have already planned out exhibits through next summer, a series titled How to Build a World That Won't Fall Apart. "It deals with how arts and arts institutions sustain during times of economic uncertainty," McAnally explains. In October, they will host an alternate site for the Creative Time Summit, and then in November, they are collaborating with Isolation Room/Gallery Kit to present "gallery kits" for independent St. Louis galleries that have shuttered in the past year, including PSTL Gallery, Los Caminos, and Cosign Projects.
Right now, though, the McAnallys' big push is prepping for the fifth annual FORM Contemporary Design Show on September 28 and 29, which will be held at the Ely Walker building downtown. The opening night keynote speaker is Karrie Jacobs, founding editor of Dwell, with participants running the gamut from local architecture firm SPACE to New York design house Chillewich. The show's free and open to public browsing on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., then closes out with a $250-per-plate "Community Dinner" limited to 35 people. Chef John Perkins of entre underground is preparing the food; the beer is courtesy of Urban Chestnut. And at the end of the night, when you get up to go home...you take your chair with you. Look through the list of designers visiting FORM, and you can bet that it won't be some backyard barbecue folding chair that gives you waffle thighs—and all the money raised goes to the capital campaign for the new space.
