Grand Avenue has a lot of character. But it has a seedy side, which we love.
--Slumlady Beatrice Moore, describing the domain she created and maintains
by Jerome du Bois
with a coda by Catherine King
[see sidebar for background. The coda is now here.]
We don't write about art anymore, but, conveniently, neither do the local art writers. They write about the scene. So will we. This piece is about real estate, lazy landlords, spoiled artists, unearned money, downtown clowns pulling the wool over supposedly clueless city officials' eyes, and the ultimate downtown operator, Beatrice Moore --muppetsmom-- who pats the heads of wannabe artists with one hand --just keep trying, you'll make it, dear-- and takes their money with the other, through rents and alcohol. This state of affairs --this state of the art-- is peachy with Phil Jones:
"Beatrice is just a wonderful resource in the downtown art community and has been persistent over the years in trying to establish a viable artists' community in downtown," says Phil Jones, director of the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture. "She's a great example to many people."
trying to establish a viable artists' community in downtown.
No. She has done precisely the opposite. I was down there in 1996, and 1998, and then I stopped covering the scene until our recent forays in late summer 2004. But it hasn't changed. She has made sure the scene stays in a stagnant loop, with changing tenants, but always with her at the ever-expanding center, fed by the feckless efforts of the fools who enrich her. We'll have a lot more to say about her below. But first . . .
By the time we posted our two-parter on downtown's funky facades last August, the usual suspects (Downtown Phoenix Arts Coalition, Downtown Voices, Artlink, assorted others) had already received preliminary approval from the city for their latest version of the tired old typical support-your-pathetic-local-artists story: the Phoenix Artist Storefront Pilot Program.
From the March 25, 2005 Phoenix Business Journal, by Ruben Hernandez:
Funky art galleries, studios, cafes, street-corner musicians dotting central Phoenix business hubs.
That's the vision of the city of Phoenix's Downtown Development Office, which has launched a program to revitalize buildings with dilapidated storefronts, some in violation of city fire and safety codes-- not to mention a work force that disappears after 6 p.m.
Phoenix Artist Storefront Pilot Program is taking applications for grants between $5,000 and $70,000. The money is designated for renovation of commercial storefronts where at least 30 percent of the building space is devoted to the arts or an arts-related business.
The target area includes Copper Square, but extends to 19th Avenue, 16th Street, McDowell Road and Buckeye Road.
Sheryl Taylor, a city economic development specialist, said the program is aimed at artistic entrepreneurs, particularly those who are first-time property owners.
The goal is to increase artist-owned galleries in the downtown area, foster accompanying retail activity, draw more crowds and eliminate blight, she said. Art-related businesses can include visual and performing arts, artist studios, galleries, performance space and artistic retail sales.
The pilot program grew out of a downtown revitalization blueprint adopted by the city last December. The plan outlines how the success of downtown's strategic investments --Arizona State University, genomics and high-tech industry clusters-- depends on a vibrant environment for workers and residents.
The Artist Storefront program offers two options: one for property owned by the business, and one for property an entrepreneur wants to buy and renovate.
Artist Beatrice Moore is among those who helped create the concept for the program. She owns galleries and other properties, which she already is converting to mixed-use, artist studios and small retail spaces.
A founding member of Downtown Voices, an activist group promoting core revitalization, she said the program is a "good start."
The program gives artists who want to go into business a simple way to learn, she said.
"Is it enough? No. I'd like to see the program expanded citywide," Moore said.
The first-round deadline for Artist Storefront applications is April 7. Future applications will be accepted on a tri-monthly basis beginning June 1, and are based on funding available through the program's $500,000 budget.
Here's our translation of the story:
Downtown art isn't selling, so let them sell trinkets and cakes.
That's about it.
The art does not sell. That's the fact that people like Greg Esser and Kimber Lanning and StaleCake want the taxpayers to forget. You see, folks, these special people have defined themselves as artists --we can show you our degrees from the Hamberger Skool!-- and here they are in an "arts district," soooo . . . but wannabe don' mean you is, dig?
Because the art does not sell, and it hasn't for years.
It's a no-talent zone.
Hell, read local sycophant Foghorn Leghorn's Richard Nilsen's piece on Moore and Tony Zahn just before Art Detour, where they say they don't care if they sell their art. (Well, that's easy for them to say, isn't it? They have a steady income.)
Be patient: we'll get to Ms. "Gimme" Moore below, but first let us point out that, knowing they would be receiving these grants, the downtown Phoenix artists and other "entrepreneurs" have done nothing to their buildings in the interim. Not even for Art Detour. Not even when they knew the money was coming.
Remember, this crew constitutes a pretty tight loop:
Last July, the Downtown Phoenix Arts Coalition (D-PAC) -- made up of members of the arts community, local residents, and small business owners -- published Downtown Voices: Creating a Sustainable Downtown, based on a meeting held in May. A manifesto for downtown revitalization, the document calls for nurturing the grassroots arts community, encouraging small, locally owned businesses, preserving historic properties, and protecting existing neighborhoods, among other issues. . . .
Downtown Voices strongly influenced the City of Phoenix's Downtown Development Office in its creation of the new Phoenix Artist Storefront Pilot Program, currently accepting its first round of applications.
Greg Esser, for example, worked for the City of Phoenix Public Arts Office while helping to draft the proposal which will result in he and his wife Cindy Dach receiving, at a minimum, $15,000 to help develop their art galleries. Oh, he doesn't work for the city anymore, by the way, but I gotta admit that was one suhweet move, Greg. Is that a swing you developed in Denver? The hand that delivers the green that folds dissolves and reforms on the receiving side? Smooth . . .
Anyway, we took our pictures in August 2004, and we've swung by a few times since. But not since 2005. Back then: No changes. Same crappy deadbeat look. When we finally got around to reading the Phoenix New Times cover story on Art Detour just a few days ago, almost two months late, we decided to drive downtown and take more pictures. But we didn't need to. The reader can simply substitute the ones from the previous two stories. Or go look for yourselves. What a couple of dumps.
These people are so lazy, so spoiled, so smug, and so bereft of civic pride, that they didn't even try to spruce up their storefronts before Art Detour. Think about it: you take your grant approval to the bank and get a loan. Pour several thousand dollars into making your facade, your interior, and your art the veritable cat's ass, and blow their doors off come March! Yeah, right. They're too busy whining about "the lack of community support" while sucking city titty.
Oh, and did we mention that the art does not sell? Richard Nilsen, the sleepwalker, rationalizes it the usual way:
The art they show tends to be less commercial, more experimental than the big-boy galleries in Scottsdale, and for most First Friday visitors, the "scene" is at least as important as the art. Crowds gather for music, beer, art and commotion.
"I have mixed feelings about the buzz and excitement," says Zahn, who characterizes himself as recluse by nature. "So much of it is just poppycock. But it's that way with everything, and to me, the best thing is the opportunity for individuals to be part of the flow."
I know what he means by "the flow:" the steady cash flow which he receives from his tenants, plus the cash flow from the alcohol flow of the elbow-benders down at the Bikini Lounge. Talk about poppycock. Ka-ching!
for most First Friday visitors, the "scene" is at least as important as the art. Crowds gather for music, beer, art and commotion.
That's because most First Friday visitors are under drinking age and wouldn't know art if it hit them over the heads with a pig's bladder. And since the art does not sell, they have to wave their hands (and other body parts, the sleazeballs) around in other ways. And a prominent ASU aesthetician agrees with Foghorn's assessment:
Perhaps the art is really in support of the events, instead of the events being in support of the art, says Wellington "Duke" Reiter, the dean of ASU's College of Architecture and Environmental Design. "I'm not sure that really matters, though," he says. "Other places, other times, and other venues will evolve. Right now, there are people on the street, and I'd almost take that first and the art second. That doesn't mean it will always be that way."
But it sure has been that way, and we predict it will be as long as Beatrice Moore presides over the scene. Now, according to Phoenix New Times, she wants to go Bentley:
Retail will also be crucial in making downtown a more around-the-clock place, says artist Beatrice Moore, who owns several downtown properties where artists have created studios and galleries that are often open to the public only one day a month. "You need small retail to help create a more pedestrian-friendly environment. For some of these businesses to survive, they'll need to have something more than once a month," she says.
To that end, as current artist occupants leave their storefront studios in Moore's buildings, she says she will turn the spaces into retail, eventually keeping artist studios at the back of the properties. Also, Moore bought a 15,000-square-foot building at the intersection of Grand and McKinley, which she hopes to convert to mixed-use, small retail spaces and artist workshops. Since last April, she has been working to bring it up to code, and to get a historic designation as well as historic preservation funding.
Of course she's going to try to ding the city for preservation funding. Operators exploit every angle. Now I see her vision: BEATRICE PROJECTS. Good luck. She is letting her original place lay fallow, except for the idiotic and insulting StopNLook window, while spending a year renovating an old bakery. (The window is now full of faux Stop signs with phrases in different languages. Say, didn't we have a windowfull of Stop signs in our tableau The Last Time? Hmmm.)
I don't know how this woman has managed to mesmerize so many into thinking progress is being made, when all you have to do is drive down Grand from Van Buren to the wedge at Roosevelt and 15th Avenue --most of which she owns. It looks blasted, and nearly deserted. Nilsen:
Although Moore, in her flowing robes and her gray-streaked hair pulled up tight in a knot, is the model bohemian, she has long worked with government. She can talk the talk of the City Council, walk the walk of mayors. Most recently, she worked on a committee with the Downtown Phoenix Arts Coalition and other groups to create a proposed plan for downtown, published in a report called "Downtown Voices: Creating a Sustainable Downtown."
And now she and her crew, and Esser and Lanning and Rainey and their crews, are $500,000 richer. They didn't have to lift a finger to fix their storefronts for years on end; then they have one meeting; they write up a proposal, submit it, and get preliminary approval --all of it quicker than the wind from a duck's ass, as the man said. Well, why not? They're all hooked up together.
We'll be checking out their progress (and the legality of their laborers: see coda) as we cruise through the area. We need not go inside, since, after all, it's a Storefront program. (Hmmm, come to think of it, that was the focus of our two August pieces: storefronts and signs; not the art --we knew there wasn't any worth talking about.)
One final note --about Ms. Moore's fashion sense; hey, Nilsen brought it up-- and then a final question about the whole scene.
Moore and Zahn met in Moscow, Idaho, in the early 1980s. He was a student at the university there. She was a sometime student, full-time boho.
"She was one of the fabulous mysterious art people you see around town," he says. "One of the glamorous chicks you see from afar."
How times have changed her.
Although Moore, in her flowing robes and her gray-streaked hair pulled up tight in a knot, is the model bohemian . . .
Dressing fifty years out of date in the 21st Century. Also if you look closely at this cover of shade magazine, at the top of Ted Decker's fawning article, you can see she wears tie-dyed leggings and top, like a preschool teacher. How can people take a person like that seriously? But city officials do and have and will. Fools they be.
In early December 2004, as we cruised up Grand Avenue on one of our periodic forays, we saw Beatrice Moore jaywalking across the street to get a better look at her window. She was dressed almost exactly like Granny on The Beverly Hilbillies, and she strode forward, ankle skirts swishing, elbows swinging, looking neither left nor right, as if she owned the avenue.
As we continued up the street, Catherine, who had only seen a photo of her, repeated several times, incredulously, "That was her?" "That was her?"
I'd met her and Tony in person several times, so I recognized her. "Yeah, that was her." (Later, she said she had a strange association after that sighting: For some reason she flashed on the mean mamasan in her plain muumuu from South Pacific, who was feral and dumpy at the same time.)
Is it catty of us to bring up this lack of current fashion sense? No, because we see it as a sign of subtle passive aggression and preadolescent disrespect. She is saying that she can show up at the City Council in a brown caftan, flip-flops, and a gimme cap if she wants to, and others have to respect that, though she herself disdains the common standard.
I've seen pictures in art books and magazines, in days of yore, when Jasper Johns and James Rosenquist and Robert Rauschenberg and Leo Castelli and even Andy Warhol showed up at openings in jackets and ties. Women dressed up. For every dingaling drag queen or Salvador Dali manqué, there were ten thousand people who respected their art.
We're not asking her to dress like us. Nobody in this town comes close to that standard, after all (as readers will soon see in a new upcoming series, "The House of Not For Sale"). We're not asking her to do anything, actually --except this:
Get your head right or get out of the way of the future.
That clear enough?
Now the question: If the silly drunk students, the visiting tourists, the infrequent experts, the sycophants, the hornswoggled locals, and the artists' friends cannot sustain the scene by buying the art, what makes the so-called entrepreneurs so sure they'll buy trinkets and cakes and hippie bead necklaces and vases and custom furniture? What if Tammie Coe Cakes but dey don't care?
Then it will be the same as it ever was --only with more bric-a-brac.
(The coda comes later; it's about the use of illegal labor with this $500,000; they'd better not do it. We'll be by. See you.)
Posted by Jerome at April 28, 2005 03:20 PM | TrackBack