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The Art of
Cooperation
LAFAYETTE AND THE ARTS COMMUNITY OF EASTON
MOVE INTO THE FUTURE TOGETHER.
BY BARBARA MULLIGAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHUCK ZOVKO
When painter
and collage
artist Ken Kewley moved his
studio, home, and much of his life from
New York City to downtown Easton
in 1999, he gladly embraced a narrow space that many locals dismissed as too small or too rundown. Kewley, who lives with his wife and six-year-old daughter, says the family doesn’t feel crowded at
all in their three-story row house near
the public library: “I lived in a space
that was 200 square feet for 17 years.
Out here, it’s so different. This house
feels like a small apartment building
in New York, and we have all the apartments—three floors and a
walk-out basement!”
Kewley adds that the $41,000 price tag didn’t hurt either. All he had to do was rip off the aluminum siding, tear down the paneling and dropped ceilings, install a skylight for his third-floor studio, and spend lots of time painting the interior. Eventually, a new version of the house emerged, its original brick exterior restored and new colors added to an interior that
now offers plenty of studio and living space.
As Kewley was infusing new life into his house, Easton’s artistic community was creating a new life for itself. A handful of artists, business owners, and arts patrons banded together in 1999 to form the Arts Community of Easton (ACE), a group that now boasts nearly 150 members and a full slate of projects and activities.
Just two years later, Lafayette completed the transformation of an old downtown automobile dealership on North Third Street, at the foot of College Hill, into the Williams Visual Arts Building. The building, with its signature wavy brick walls inside and out, houses Lafayette’s studio arts program and the Grossman Gallery, where students, faculty, and artists
from Easton and far beyond show their work. The building is also home
to the College’s Community-Based Teaching program, which offers a
variety of opportunities to local artists and art students.
For Kewley and other local artists, the formation of ACE, plus the advent of the College’s downtown facility and programs, equaled a welcome chance to bond and assert themselves. ACE artists, in groups and solo, have created more than a dozen murals in downtown Easton, on College Hill, and, most recently, in the city’s West Ward, funded by Community Development Block Grants, the Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley, the United Way, and business owners. ACE also holds group shows and an annual studio and gallery tour and sponsors annual Artist of the Year and Patron
of the Year awards. Over the years it has conducted many activities
in conjunction with the annual Forks of the Delaware Shad Fishing Tournament and Festival.
Kewley, who continues to exhibit his work in New York and elsewhere, has also shown in the Grossman Gallery and other local venues and
become a regular at the Community-Based Teaching program’s Thursday evening figure-drawing sessions.
“You have to get there early to get a good seat,” he says, explaining that more and more artists are taking advantage of the opportunity. “I have to get there very early to get my favorite seat.”
Easton artist Ken Kewley (right) speaks with high school students in the Community-Based Teaching program run by Jim Toia (left).
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Jim Toia, director of the Community-Based Teaching program and the Grossman Gallery, and Anthony Marraccini, co-owner of Easton’s Connexions Fine Arts and Antiques Gallery and president of ACE since 2004, say artists like Kewley offer a taste of Easton’s future. Toia and Marraccini envision the city as home to a large community of working
artists who’ve found themselves priced out of New York’s art enclaves
and other established art communities.
Both point out that when artists move to a community that has experienced economic decline, they tend to bring energy and imagination, helping to make the community more appealing for businesses, restaurants, and residents. Both point to the 2002 study Arts & Economic Prosperity, sponsored by Americans for the Arts, which encompassed 91 communities throughout the United States, including the Lehigh Valley.
According to the study, the nonprofit arts industry generates $134 billion a year nationally in total economic activity by arts organizations and their audiences, and an annual $24.4 billion in federal, state, and local government revenues. That’s $21.4 billion more than those governments spend each year in support for the arts.
“Art is something everybody can rally around,” Toia says. “Locally,
ACE has done a tremendous job of gathering people, putting a face on
the arts community, and giving it a central core.”
In 1982, when sculptor Karl Stirner converted an old brick warehouse on Ferry Street into studio and living space, the idea of Easton as an arts community was hard for many area residents to fathom. But slowly, over the years, more artists have made Easton and the surrounding area their home, lured in part by inexpensive property and cost-of-living prices, interesting architecture, and the promise of foot traffic from the Crayola Factory and National Canal Museum at Two Rivers Landing.
Among recent arrivals are master printmaker and painter Charles Klabunde, who moved his studio from Frenchtown, N.J., to Easton’s North Second Street in 2004, and painter Marta Whistler, who moved from Irvine, Calif., and converted a four-unit apartment building in the same block into studio and living space the next year. Even more recently, painter Jacqueline Lima moved from Canadensis, in the Poconos, to a row house in Easton’s West Ward.
Originally from New York City, Lima, an adjunct art instructor at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Centenary College, says Easton offers a happy medium between the bustle of New York and the rural charm of Canadensis.
“It feels a little more like there’s a community here than in the Poconos,” she says. “There’s more opportunity to get involved.”
Lima, a regular at the Community-Based Teaching program’s drawing sessions, says Lafayette’s resources helped attract her to Easton.
“I’m at the library at the College all the time,” she says. “I’m a campus junkie.”
Among other bright spots on Easton’s art scene are the Easton Clayworks on North Bank Street, currently owned by Bill Iacovone; Diane Bower’s Just Around the Corner gallery shop, just next door to the Clayworks; and the id gallery and high-end toy shop on North Third Street.
The Arts Community of Easton selected Michiko Okaya (left), director of the Williams Center Gallery, as the recipient of its inaugural Patron of the Year award. ACE’s paid membership has grown from 33 to nearly 150 since Anthony Marraccini (right), co-owner of Connexions Gallery, became the group’s president in 2004.
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And, within a year, Lafayette plans to convert two buildings it owns at the foot of College Hill into more space for community artists. The former Case’s Tire Co. building, at the corner of Snyder Street and North Third, is being reviewed by architect Joseph Biondi, who designed the Williams Visual Arts Building, for use as studio space for ACE members.
Toia says the arrangement will benefit the community by providing an opportunity for artists to work and become better known. “At the same time, it allows them to give back to the community,” he adds. “The larger the community of artists there is, the stronger the pull is. Lafayette knows that it can be part of that energy and help the city continue to develop that further. The most logical way is to continue encouraging the artistic community to thrive.”
Across the street, the former Club Mohican is slated to house a gallery, restaurant, and art supply store. Biondi is also set to redesign that building.
Marraccini, who grew up in the Easton area, and his business and life partner, Alice Kwiatkowski, an ACE board member, say they’re certain the plans, combined with the other happenings in the city, are further evidence of Easton’s bright future.
“If you aren’t from Easton, this place seems a lot like New York,” Marraccini says, pointing out that the density and architectural style of buildings in the city’s downtown give it the urban flavor of a New York neighborhood—traits that are easy to overlook for those who’ve lived in
the area for a long time.
And, Toia and Marraccini add, Easton sits almost at the hub of a circle of artistic influence, with New York City to the east; New Hope and Philadelphia to the south; the remainder of the Lehigh Valley, including Bethlehem’s Banana Factory, the Allentown Art Museum, Kutztown University, and other venues to the west; and the Poconos, including arts towns such as Delaware Water Gap, to the north.
“We have all these linkages,” Marraccini says.
ACE-member artists, including Carmen LoBaido, are a fixture at the Easton Farmers’ Market in Centre Square on Saturdays from May to Thanksgiving. Established in 1752, it is the oldest continuously operating open-air farmers’ market in the United States.
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Mark Napier, a New York City digital artist who displayed his work at the Grossman Gallery and has considered buying property in town, says he believes more and more artists will leave New York City for smaller communities in the next decade.
“I see Easton’s potential because of its location,” he says. “It’s outside
the immediate development area of New York City, which is sprawling in terms of its prices.”
Napier adds that during his visits to Easton, he enjoyed exploring the downtown. “I like the layout of it and the closeness. There are some nice little back alleys and streets. They’re fun to be in.”
Napier says that while artists in revitalized industrial areas near Manhattan, such as Hoboken or Williamsburg, can maintain a daily connection to the city, Easton artists would likely need to establish a cultural “base of operations” that relates to New York, but remains independent.
“The real question is, can the environment be developed at low cost?” he says, referring to plans for several higher-priced condominium developments in the city. “If the price point gets too high too fast, then artists will go elsewhere. I think the key is just cheap, raw space that artists can develop, with high enough ceilings that they can do the things they want to do. Everything else follows once you get that critical mass.”
In Napier’s view, Easton can achieve that.
“I have no doubt that in the long run, it’s going to develop substantially,” he says. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t.”
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ACE artists
have created more
than a dozen murals
in downtown Easton,
on College Hill, and
in the West Ward.
ACE artists are a fixture at the nation’s oldest
continuously operating open-air farmers’ market.
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