Creston Arts to start artist’s residence program

Creston Arts announced the upcoming opening of their new Artist in Residency program. Through this program, an apartment at 107 N. Maple Street, rented by Creston Arts, will be available through application to artists for a couple of months at a time.

Creston Arts board president Brian Zachary explained resident artists would be expected to perform a later specified amount of hours work as payment for the apartment.

“Artists in residence would be required to provide a certain amount of hours at the art center and do a certain amount of hours doing workshops at the art center,” Zachary said. “They will be able to have a residence on Maple Street, but also have access to a studio space in the back of Creston Arts. Hopefully it will give an artist a chance to focus on their art, have a place to make some art and free them up from having to pay the rent.”

The apartment has one bedroom along with a pull-out couch in the living area. Though there aren’t concrete plans yet, Zachary said Creston Arts is looking to do three-month cycles of the program.

“We would probably have a winter version and maybe a fall version,” Zachary said. “In spring we often have a lot of artists coming to town to work on murals or workshops, so we’ll probably use that to house visiting artists.”

Zachary is hoping having an artist in residence in Creston will help Creston Arts’ goal of developing Creston’s appreciation for art.

“Artists are really trying to develop an art ecology in Creston and so that requires a place to make art and a place to display art and a place to sell art, but it also requires an engaged critical response,” Zachary said. “The depot gallery is a big part of that, bringing in differing viewpoints, differing media, differing types of art just to broaden out people’s perception here in Creston of what is art, which is a pretty big goal.”

Creston Arts’ idea for the Artist in Residency program came from the Corning Center for Fine Arts. Lisa Glasgo, a volunteer at the Center for Fine Arts, explained how the Corning Artist in Residence program started there.

“We purchased this building and it had two apartments upstairs,” Glasgo said. “They had done a lot of research, the founding members of the Corning Center for Fine Arts, and they had saw some resident artist programs elsewhere, so that would probably be a good way to attract new artists to come that could display their work here, and also have a studio and different kinds of things.”

Glasgo said that the program has been great for the city of Corning.

“It’s always been a win-win situation, where the artists in residence always had a lot of community support,” Glasgo said. “One of our last artists that we had ... was a web-designer, so that helped a lot of businesses in the community. It’s really benefited us more, probably more so than the artists in the community. It’s been a really, really good program, and we still have a lot of work here that we display from past residents and artists.”

Artists interested in joining the Artist in Residency program in Creston can contact Creston Arts at info@crestonarts.com.