Arts

Arts for Every Man
From its summer art camp for children to its advocacy for music programs in Aiken's public schools, the Aiken Center for the Arts is truly an organization for the entire community .

by Jim Garvey

A horse is a horse, of course. Of course. And nobody talks to a horse. Of course!

That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Horseplay.

Say what? Mr.Horseplay?

Well that's the name this fall in Aiken. Thirty colorful, whimsical life-size horses, each painted by a different artist, celebrate Aiken's equestrian heritage and raise money for the Aiken Center for the Arts. The horses will be on display from October until March, when they will be auctioned off, with proceeds benefiting the center.

Brenda Sleasman, the center's program manager, invited about 600 artists from the Carolinas and Georgia to submit designs for the horses. A selection jury narrowed the field to 50, then the sponsors selected the designs they liked best. "Celestial Derby," the prototype creation of USC-Aiken professors, sired the rest of the field. The horse's design combines a realistic depiction of a horse race with a dream-like vision of horses racing to the moon. "Celestial Derby" has been making guest appearances all over Aiken since last winter, piquing people's curiosity about the program.

Anne Campbell, who along with husband Cot owns Dogwood Stables, suggested the fundraiser to the center's executive director, Don Edmunds, after seeing the phenomenal success of the program in Lexington, Ky. But was Aiken big enough? Could it work here?

"I worried we wouldn't be able to find sponsors for 30 horses, let alone count on anyone bidding for them at auction," Edmunds says. "But United Way partnered with us and this thing just took off. It absolutely exploded from that point on. Not only did we get all the horses sponsored, there was actually a waiting list. There weren't enough horses. It's been unbelievable."

The center hopes to net $150,000-$200,000 from Horseplay, all the proceeds being restricted to providing scholarships for kids and seniors who would otherwise be unable to participate in programs at the arts center. United Way will help screen the scholarship recipients. Last summer the center's popular summer art camp for children had only four scholarships to offer.

Every summer the camp has a different theme. This year it was "Hollywood Art." Each week for seven weeks the camp focused on a different children's movie and made art based on it. During Harry Potter week, for instance, campers focused on the magic of colors and art fantasy; during Stuart Little week they created miniature art; for Spy Kids they designed artful gizmos and gadgets. It all finished in August with the Red Carpet Premiere Party to open the gallery display of the resulting art in true Hollywood style.

A quote from Pablo Picasso on one of the walls of the gallery pretty well sums up what the arts center is all about: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." To help address that problem, the center provides dozens of art classes and workshops year round for adults as well as children. The classes range from drawing, watercolor and photography to bead weaving, calligraphy and Scottish dance.

The Aiken Center for the Arts began in 1972 as the Rose Hill Art Center, a haven for local artists to nurture and support one another. The members offered classes in the stables behind the Rose Hill estate to help pay the bills. In the mid-'90s, a strategic decision was made to move downtown. A century-old two-story building on Laurens Street, which had been used as a furniture store, became available and with a grant from Aiken 2020 Corporation, the Aiken Center for the Arts bought it in 1995. Beneath the leaky roof, the indoor-outdoor carpeting, pegboard walls and suspended ceiling, members could see they had a gem. But polishing that gem took months of work. Volunteers as well as convicts from the Aiken Camp stripped the walls, took all the ceilings down, ripped out the floor and re-did 70 percent of the downstairs of the building. They knocked down old plaster, put up new gallery walls, laid a hardwood floor. When a historic mansion on Whiskey Road was demolished to make way for a Ryan's Steak House, board member Susan Victor got permission to salvage the old lumber and turn it into a reception counter. The center re-opened in its new digs in fall 1999, increased the number of classes, expanded the children's summer art camp and promoted itself as a fine visual arts center.

At the same time, the board of directors, which had been made up primarily of artists and art lovers, began to diversify: Civic leaders, business people, folks with skills in areas in which the center needed help joined the board. With the assistance of a consultant, they developed a strategic plan, created committees to oversee every aspect of the center's operations, defined a vision and goals. Now dreams for the center had a sound footing in an efficient organization, sound business practices and a board eager to make things happen.

In 2000, the center was looking for an executive director. Don Edmunds applied, but he didn't think his chances for the job were very good. For one thing, he wasn't from Aiken, knew nothing about the community. He was raised in Harlem, Ga., educated in history, not art or business, at then-Augusta College, and had little experience with non-profits aside from assisting Ed Bradberry at the Augusta Opera.

And then there was the comment he made in his interview when they asked him if he had any questions: "You call yourself the Aiken Center for the Arts, but all I see is pictures. What else do you do?" Silence. "If you're going to be just visual art, you should say so. If it's arts, then you have to bring in other arts."

Edmunds admits that sometimes he runs his mouth before considering consequences, but this time the interviewing committee must have liked what he was suggesting. So with Edmunds, music made its entry. There was no strings program in Aiken County schools so, with Public Education Partners, the Aiken Center for the Arts filled that gap. The string classes began last year with seven children in beginning instruction in orchestra; next year, there will be three beginning strings classes, an intermediate orchestra class and performances by the center's Aiken Regional Chamber Orchestra. Last spring that orchestra, 26 players strong, performed a concert at the center. Edmunds propped doors open and the music drew people in off Laurens Street. As a result of that concert, seven people joined the center.

That's typical of the kind of growth the center has been experiencing lately. In 2000 its budget was $145,000; next year it will be $272,000. The facility itself is stunning. Shining wood floors, rough brick walls, dramatic lighting, a 1,500-square-foot gallery store up front representing about 200 artists and then acres, it seems, of gallery space, stretching back, and beyond that, out-of-sight, a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen. With the display walls removed from the gallery, the space can accommodate 270 people at tables for eight. Its $1,000 rental fee makes it a very popular banquet space.

In fact, the Center for the Arts has become a hub of activity not only for the arts community, but for the city of Aiken as well, says board member Nat Banks. "It's such a beautiful building," he says, "and a terrific staff. They love the community and they love the arts center. And it's not an elitist art group. It's part of our community. That's what I love about it. And we have a wide range of events there. We have a few black-tie events, which are fundraisers, which they certainly need. But we also have underprivileged kids coming in and activities that reach out to all segments of the community."

Well aware of its place in the tight downtown Aiken community, the arts center tries very hard to be a good neighbor. It won't offer classes that someone else is offering; it won't stock its shop with gifts that another merchant is selling. This is in keeping with a remarkable concern for the common good that seems to characterize Aiken and that has resulted in a community with an extraordinary quality of life. A half-hour down the road from Augusta lies Oz. It's a little bit of heaven that landed just down the Aiken-Augusta Highway: quiet streets of fine old houses shaded by live oaks, handsome stables and rolling pastures where thoroughbreds graze, a charming downtown of fine restaurants and shops, sidewalks filled with pedestrians in the speckled shade. In the middle of it all is the arts center and behind that the brand new Washington Center for the Performing Arts. Aiken is cultured and comfortable, quaint and contemporary, somehow reconciling the demands of the 21st century with the heritage of the 19th. A recent visitor who works in the movie industry took one look at Laurens Street and said, "It looks like the back lot at MGM!" Aiken's leaders, representing the varied racial and economic constituencies of this city of 25,000, know they have a good thing and don't want to blow it.

The Center for the Arts is a work-in-progress, of course. Now in the works is a $1.5 million capital campaign to renovate the rest of the building. About 80 percent of the second floor something like 10,000 square feet is an unlit, unsafe, yet potentially wonderful area. Here would be a small 120-seat performance space, over here classrooms, back here space for artists' studios that could be rented for a nominal fee, this could be a dance floor for social dance or Carolina shag lessons. The "quiet" phase of the campaign has gone so well that Edmunds says he believes much of the renovation could be completed by next April when the South Carolina Watercolor Society comes to the arts center.

Meanwhile, "Celestial Derby" stands beside an Aiken street dreaming of running to the moon. In Aiken, dreams like that can come true.