Stories
Article in The Phoenix
Exit signs: Endangered and dwindling, Fort Point's artists take panes to give voice to their outrage
WUML Sunrise Radio Interview with Maxine Farkas and Ashley Welz Smith
Stories from Western Avenue
Diamonds in the Dirt
Life at Western Avenue.
I am not as good now with words as I once was, but I hope these words will be read anyway, and some understanding of why I love Western Avenue and think of it as a home of my heart comes through.
Not long ago, some misguided souls decided that Western Avenue wasn't a fit place to live. Not because it was a health hazard, or wasn't zoned for residentials or anything like that. No, the reasons they gave were because it was "too dirty, smelly, and noisy, and not conducive to a creative environment."
I challenge that statement.
I love it. To me, there is beauty in entropy. The most precious things in the world are the small struggles. The dandelion reaching for the sun, thriving despite the poor soil and the broken glass is an inspiration. The birds that nest on the roof by my window that sing at sunset, a soft counter-melody to the staccato shrills of humanity, are a comfort. The thought that, as I walk down the halls of the Mill, I am walking in the footsteps of some of the most famous women in our nation's history, the Lowell mill girls. The window I sit by is the same window that one of them may have leaned against as she snatched a moment's respite from her day's labor. How can one not be moved by that? How can one not stand in awe, and want to share that wonder and awe with others?
As an artist, my greatest inspirations have always come from the aged, the broken, and the cast aside. The forgotten and unwanted. Where some see a necklace damaged and bent beyond repair, I see it cleaned up and in a new setting. Where some see a torn and tattered book, covers gone and pages worm-chewed, I see it carefully arranged with an old photograph of a woman whose name has been lost to time and perhaps a small brass key hanging on someone's wall. Who knows? Perhaps that book, that very passage, was one that she had read and loved, and somewhere she is glad to be with it again. I like to think so.
Dirty? Maybe to you. To me it's the patina of time, the thin cord that connects me to Humanity.
Smelly? No more so than the heart of Boston, and unlike that miasma, it blows away in the breeze. The scent of the spring flowers is so much sweeter when it's unexpected.
Noisy? I can still hear the birds singing lullabies to the sun in the evening, and the wind trading stories with the train of the places they've been. It's all part of the same song to me.
How could someone not want to be here, where there are so many beautiful things to see and hear all the time? How can one not see that this is a place where Life (which is really Art) happens all the time in such magnificent ways?
I'm sorry for those who can't see this place as we see her. I truly am.
Melissa Carr
Corvus Rising Arts
Studio 332
Other Stories
111 1st Street, Jersey City Part 1
111 1st Street, Jersey City Part 2
Requires Adobe Acrobat get it here
About the Zoning Board
In case you were interested in what happened at the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on January 28th . . . the streaming video is at
http://ltc.org/streaming/zoningboard/2008-01-28 we are second on the agenda.
This is a response to the ZBA meeting
The most frustrating experience is when you speak at a public hearing and then folk come along and say things that you know are just not right . . . and you can't do or say a thing in response, all you can do is just sit there and wonder how you were transported to this planet, because this definitely isn't the planet you inhabit!
It was like that at the Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on the Western Avenue Lofts. Before I get started describing this surreal experience, let me set the stage a bit.
Western Avenue runs from School Street to Dutton Street, except it doesn't really run to Dutton because the grade crossing of the railroad tracks got closed years ago, so in reality Western Avenue is a dead end street coming off of School Street. If you turn off of School Street onto Western Ave you can't help but notice that there are railroad tracks on your left and the Pawtucket Canal on your right . . . the Canal goes under the railroad tracks down at the end of the street. So, in other words, Western Avenue is a quarter mile long dead end street on a chunk of land that is separated from the Highlands by a canal and from the Acre by railroad tracks. The chunk of land is kind of narrow as you come off of School Street and then widens out at the middle, probably as wide as a football field is long. If you google 122 Western Avenue, Lowell, MA and look at the satellite image you can get a pretty good idea of what I am talking about without having to drive over and look.
There isn't a lot on Western Ave, there is a long low brick building (Phoenix Workstations, Western Avenue Recycling and a bunch of businesses that don't have signs) that runs along the railroad track on the north side of Western Ave for about 700 feet. On the canal side there is a power plant and a big parking lot and the Western Avenue Studios complex (Used to be Western Avenue Dyers/Joan Fabrics, then was sold to Collins and Aikman who ran it into the ground before they sold it to BPV Lowell.) The majority of the buildings in the complex are separated from Western Ave. by a large parking lot. The railroad tracks come pretty close to the complex near the north end of the A-Mill (Classic Elite Yarns and two floors of artist studios), B-Mill (vacant) and the east corner of the Main Studios building (three floors of studios, FI Office). Alpha Imaging is kind of sandwiched between the Main Studio Building and the G-Mill. The G-Mill, where they want to put the lofts, is about as far from the railroad tracks as you can get on Western Avenue.
I've been going to Western Ave. on almost a daily basis since July of 2005, been there at 6 some mornings, been there on weekends, been there long after midnight some nights. Unlike the studios which are open 24/7 the other businesses on the street tend to all shut down by 6 at the latest and only a few (Western Avenue Recycling, Classic Elite's Hub Mill Outlet Store) are open on Saturday. There isn't a lot of truck traffic on Western Ave. most of it comes to the Studios building . . . on a really busy weekday we might get 10 or 12 trucks, including UPS, Fedex and Mill City Catering (without Tony we would starve!). During the summer the National Park canal tours go by and you sometimes hear the tour guides . . . and on summer Sundays you can hear singing from a church across the canal. Oh, and a couple of the Zoning Board members seemed to think that none of us who were at the meeting had ever been to Western Avenue . . . sorry to disappoint, but all but one person who raised their hand in support of the project works at Western Avenue on a regular basis. Oh and one of the zoning board members said he really wanted us to move to Lowell, just not to Western Avenue . . . sorry, most of us already live in Lowell as well as work here.
I guess what I am trying to say is that it isn't all that noisy over on Western Avenue . . . one speaker was worried because he runs the salvage yard on the other side of the railroad tracks and he was afraid that folks who buy artist live/work space would be offended by the sight and sounds of his yard. You can't really see the yard he is talking about from the G-Mill where the live/work space is going . . . the best views of the yard are from the 5th floor of the Main Studios Building east wing, north side studios . . . I used to share studio space on the 5th floor and would take breaks and watch the crusher at work . . . in the summer all you could hear from the yard was the back up beep from the heavy equipment, the occasional loudspeaker announcement and their lunch truck sounding its horn, during the winter you heard nothing from them. Now that I have a canal side studio down on the 3rd floor I don't hear anything from the yard at all.
People who spoke against the project said they were concerned by the diesel fumes from the trains that like to idle on the tracks . . . this is more of an issue for the artists on the east end of the Main Studio Building and those in the A-Mill because those areas are closest to the train tracks. We've discovered that if you ask the engineers to move the train because the fumes are doing a number on you . . . often they will . . . we've also had contact with the health department and talked to them about how to register complaints. This is a concern for the Studios because they are not air conditioned and the windows are usually open from May until October . . . but the live/work spaces will be air conditioned and are as far as you can get from the train tracks and still be on Western Ave. I really appreciate the concern that these folks showed about smells . . . but we produce some pretty prodigious smells on our own (ever been in a dark room, hung out with an oil painter who still uses turps, spent any time with someone using egg temperas?)
I noticed that one of the zoning board members, as well as a few of the other speakers were concerned that once the artist live/work spaces were built that the residents would be complaining to the city about existing businesses. Like the Moller Lofts folk who complained about the club across the alley that made life a misery until the wee hours. But it is kind of like apples and oranges . . . the buildings in the downtown are packed in there pretty tightly, the alley's are what, 30 to 40 feet wide? This is where the proceedings started to get rather surreal, who would the live/work residents be complaining about? What is around the building to complain about? What are these folks planning on doing on the other side of the canal or the railroad tracks that would be so annoying that people would be moved to complain?
Could we have a reality check here? The reason that the G-Mill at Western Avenue Studios is so desirable for artist live/work space IS BECAUSE THERE AREN'T A LOT OF BUILDINGS AROUND AND NEIGHBORS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THE ARTISTS!!!!
People who buy true artist live/work spaces (not those looking for the loft lifestyle, whole other kettle of fish) are looking for spaces where they can be dirty, noisy and smelly without bothering anyone.
Several of the comments at the meeting were directed at keeping land zoned for light industrial use dedicated to industrial use. One of the ways I help pay my studio rent is by showing vacant spaces in the buildings to potential tenants . . . I've shown spaces to people looking for industrial space and people looking for commercial space and to folks looking for office space and to artists . . . guess which group wants the space?
One last item before I put my soapbox away. In my statement before the Zoning Board of Appeals I said that we wanted to make Western Ave more vibrant. A board member wanted to know what was vibrant about Western Avenue. He felt that the area was too dirty, noisy and smelly to be conducive to his creativity and implied that if it wasn't conducive to his creativity then it wouldn't be conducive to anyone's. In response, I would like to point out that there are 118 studios at Western Avenue and more than 155 artists working in those studios. The studios are 100 percent occupied and there are 38 people on the waiting list for studio space. These are bare bones spaces, the walls don't go to the ceilings, there is no air conditioning, you haul water from a central sink room and if you want something more than the one florescent light and quad outlet that comes with the space, you pay for it yourself. Turnover is extremely low and vacancies are filled in less than a day. Creative people want to be at Western Avenue.
I have a studio at Western Avenue, I want a live/work space at Western Avenue.
Maxine Farkas
Studio 321