Even though I’ve been in San Francisco for nearly two years, you’d be surprised how many people still ask me what it’s like to be here and be running a cultural center as someone from “out of town.” And not just out of town, Connecticut. People who live in San Francisco have the same impression of Connecticut that I did when I was growing up in the midwest: Martha Stewart, old Yankees, rich New York suburbanites. San Franciscans are proud, and rightly so, of the diversity and empowerment here. But we (and I mean we San Franciscans—myself included) have so much going on that it can be hard to think beyond the city limits and imagine, let alone appreciate, what is happening in the community arts elsewhere in the country.
There have been many times when I have wished I could take the artists and collaborators who inspire me here and show them what is going on in the Connecticut I know. New London, Hartford, New Haven, Middletown—the little cities that shaped my dreams of what is possible when people embrace the arts as a way to build strong and healthy communities. I am fortunate to see the transformative power of the arts at SOMArts, an organization that enjoys city support that is almost unprecedented elsewhere in the country. Because Connecticut cultural organizations do not have the same funding resources, and because I have always rooted for the underdog, what happens with the arts in Connecticut still evokes deep admiration in me, as well as pride for what the people living there have achieved and keep striving for.
Two projects in Connecticut caught my eye this week. The Green Street Arts Center, where I was the assistant director for several years, has created not one but two murals over the past two years. The most recent one, created by Marela Zacarias in collaboration with the after school program and a local soup kitchen, recognizes the city’s homeless population.
Further north, Hartford City Councilman Luis Cotto has begun a Kickstarter campaign to fund a cultural center without walls. We San Franciscans need only look to the city-supported virtual cultural centers to know how powerful this can be. The first project of the center was a collaboration between Cotto and Oakland-based artist and activist Favianna Rodriguez, whose work I have admired but who I have not had the pleasure of meeting personally.
Although I’ve had no hand in this project whatsoever, I am excited to see that someone from the Bay Area is playing a part, and to see another example of how the marriage of great minds can help accessible art continue to thrive in Hartford. Cotto’s right-hand-man at City Hall, Brendan Mahoney, is a longtime friend of my fiance‘s and will be officiating our wedding in September, and we will be hosting a gathering of many friends from around the country at SOMArts. So, while I can’t bring all my West Coast friends east, at least I will be able to share with my friends and family around the country the creative home that inspires me in the present, and look forward to future insurrection, connection and community through the arts.
