This week, twenty or so folks have been making catrinas (paper mache figures) for Día de los Muertos in my studio at 411 E. 9th Street. Organized by Somos Lawrence, kids, parents, grandparents, tíos and tías are seated along a table that runs the length of the building. There’s hot coffee, donuts and music to keep the team going. The artistas began during the last warm days of autumn with the big garage door rolled open and are now buttoned-up inside after our first deep-freeze.
This community workshop will be the last for my studio at 411. By the end of the year, I will have moved, what I can’t give away, to a new studio about ten blocks west. The new space , the renovated garage of my mom’s old house, is really not that far away, but I recognize as friends have told me that closing down 411 will mark the end of something for me, for East Lawrence and for our arts ecosystem.
I moved into the studio in 1997, at the same time I was leaving my last day job as a Wheatfields baker and beginning to work as an artist full-time. It was a dilapidated old building being used as an electronics repair shop and, with floor to ceiling parts and wires, it was hard to imagine it’s potential when I first walked through. The building was originally built by Les Proctor as his auto repair shop in the 1950’s and has stood witness to how the neighborhood has changed and adapted. At the time, renting such a big and expensive (for me) space felt like a gamble. I would have saved money maybe if I hadn’t, but I also would have missed all the things that have kept me rooted here in Lawrence.
Together, over the years, passersby, local artists and fellow travelers co-created a new home for imagining that hadn’t existed in Lawrence for a long time. It’s been and incubator a percolator a third space a hide-out a headquarters a club a crash-pad a haven a hangout a launch-pad a project space a refuge and an info shop. From the early days of the Percolator and Seed lectures, to the US Department of Arts and Culture Field Office and the many campaigns, protests, marches, and exhibitions that found a home there, 411 has been a dream come true for me – a place to make things happen.
I know that new spaces that suit the needs and desires of local artists and their comrades will emerge (they probably already exist), but I still feel an ache in my gut that goes with leaving and letting go. I’m grateful for the folks urgently working there today. (You can see their finished work on Thursday, Nov. 2 in North Lawrence) They remind me just how special the studio has been over the years. Homegrown independent non-commercial. Spaces like this are essential to artists and activists. They expand our spatial imaginary (what’s possible) while supporting experimentation and frivolity.
Thank you to all who have shared 411 over the years. It’s been a joyous ride.
