art beat / By Bob Doran

Aftershocks

This year’s Artware Affair is more important than ever

(March 18, 2010)  It happens around this time every year, The Artware Affair, a gala benefit for the Ink People Center for the Arts that, like many benefits, offers an elegant dinner with entertainment, capped by the proverbial fundraising auction.

The theme for this year’s affair, “Elephants and Tigers: Bollywood!” takes things to India on the art front and with the food. The music and dancing are about as international as you can get. The annual event has always been the Ink People’s main fundraiser. In recent years, as funding for the arts from the state dried up and many foundations turned their focus elsewhere, pulling in money from the local community has become increasingly important. This year it’s even more crucial. Why? Let’s call it an earthquake aftershock.

Mary Martin Harper

GALLERY >

Following the 6.5 quake that hit Humboldt in January, Ink People offices, studios and classrooms behind the Eureka Municipal Auditorium were red-tagged. “It was because of the plaster,” explained Ink People co-founder and Executive Director Libby Maynard. “It’s plaster and lathe construction from 1902. A lot of plaster fell because there had been leaks that weakened it — it was delicate.”

The part of the building that has housed the Ink People Center since 1988 was built as an addition to the original Winship School, a three-story Victorian schoolhouse built in the 1880s that once stood where the Muni is now. “They tore down the original schoolhouse in 1926 because they found during earthquake inspections that the foundation was full of dry-rot,” said Maynard.  “They took the school down and left the standalone sitting there. In the ’30s the WPA [Works Project Administration] built the Muni, designing it to attach to the freestanding Winship annex as the greenrooms for the auditorium.”

The city owns the building and they’re making plans for repair. A daunting initial estimate of half a million dollars for the work has been lowered since they’ve learned that asbestos is not part of the problem, but budgeting problems and bureaucratic hoops remain. California Emergency Management Agency (Cal-EMA) is in line to pay 75 percent of the bill, but that still leaves a quarter of the cost uncovered. Maynard has been talking with the city’s redevelopment agency. “It’s not finalized, but I’m pretty sure they will take care of it,” she said, although it’s still uncertain when repairs might commence. “In the meantime we’re in the Carson Block Building.”

The Northern California Indian Development Council has been generously loaning office space to the Ink People and to the teen MARZ Project, but that will likely end in July, again connected to earthquake factors. “Their building is about to undergo its own retrofit and renovation, something they’ve been working towards for 20 years,” said Maynard, and that means the Ink People may soon be homeless again. “It’s kind of discombobulating,” Maynard added.

One interim plan that’s been floated is to set up shop in Jefferson Elementary School. As reported in a story here a month ago (“Schoolyard Scrap” Feb. 18) Eureka city officials have been negotiating for purchase of the former school site from Eureka City Schools. They’d lined up a number of potential tenants, only to be blindsided by an early February announcement of a tentative deal to sell the site to College of the Redwoods. Then on March 5, following a public outcry, CR President Jeff Marsee announced that that deal was off.

“Now that CR is going to be pulling out, it looks like the city will be able to step back in and continue with their purchase plan,” said Maynard. When (or if) the deal goes through, Maynard hopes that the Ink People could serve as a placeholder group at the school while other entities sort out their projects.

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