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108 East Madison Avenue Berryville, Arkansas 72616 |
Ozarts and the Grand View |
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Grand View Hotel Ozarts News, Columns, and Writing Pictures |
By Alexander Virden
The Ozarts Center vs. The Ozarts Gallery
After this week, the Ozarts Gallery will be open by appointment. This is part of the restructuring of our overall plan. The gallery was opened as a way to give local artists exposure and, hopefully, help support the Ozarts Center for the Arts. What it has done is create a great deal of confusion about our mission, distract us from our mission, and cost us money to keep open. Everyone came to see the gallery, as what Ozarts was about, and that has made it difficult to make people understand what were doing here. In essence it has actually worked against us, instead of helping us with our mission. The gallery has been rewarding, disappointing, and confusing, all at once. Some of it would make great Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie material. But when half the people, that come through your door, immediately raise their hands in front of their chests, and announce, "I’m not here to buy anything!" before even speaking a greeting, or looking around, it’s time to lock the door. I found it strange the first couple of times this happened. After it had happened several times, it was all I could do to keep from chuckling out loud. Also a great number of people came in asking for money. I had to repeatedly tell people that Ozarts was a Center for the Arts and a non-profit corporation and that we were trying to raise money. For which I received a blank stare, a pause, then a second request for money. We’ve also had a great many people trying to sell us things, like we were an art pawn shop. The gallery was a small part of what we were doing and it has quickly taken over the show. We put a huge amount of energy into something that was suppose to work in harmony with the studio and the studio has suffered, because of the energy the gallery is taking. We will be open by appointment. Anyone who would like to see the gallery this winter, just give me a call, and I’ll be glad to open it for you. We will continue to highlight local artists. It is a beautiful venue for the painting medium, and everyone can continue to look at Ozarts as they drive slowly by in their cars, until they see something they like. In the future we will have shows for our artists and also feature works in The Grand View and on the web. The gallery will be open for special events as well. The smaller fun items, books, and movies will move down to the Grand View Antique Mall this spring. This will open the gallery space up and it will be used for openings and meetings. Ozarts itself will place the focus back on the studio and doing original productions and the gallery will be strictly paintings and, high end, sculpture and pottery. This will also allow me more time to develop the animation classes. The first production, as I mentioned last week, will be a promotional video for Berryville, focusing on historic attractions and the town square. If you have stories, pictures, old recordings, that relate to the history of Berryville and Carroll County please contact me. I’m building a file now as this will be an ongoing film project for Ozarts. Antique Mall and Hometown Harvest: In my column last week I called the proposed co-op Local Harvest and was summarily reminded, by Sandra, that was a working title and we had decided on Hometown Harvest. Anyone interested in renting booth space in the antique mall or in helping with Hometown Harvest Co-Op, including those interested in forming a canning circle, please contact me. OZARTS Ozarts is still looking for: Artists, Independent Publishers, Bands, musicians, potters. Come check out our movies, books, and five dollar table. Please feel free to send me your questions by mail, or email.
Ozarts Center for the Arts 108 East Madison Avenue, Berryville. (Across from the post office.) Ozarts.org (870) 654-3231 Alexander@Ozarts.org Hours of Operation: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 11am to 6pm. By appointment after December 25th
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