The Jacksonville Center: Community Hub Adapts to the Economic Recession
The following was published in The Floyd Press newspaper on December 30, 2010.
We see education as the active preservation and expansion of the heart and soul of our community. Therefore, we strive to create renewing and inspiring educational experiences in an intimate environment that sustains creative culture, community and individual growth. ~ The Jacksonville Center webpage.
The Jacksonville Center for the Arts is a recognizable name in Southwest Virginia and beyond. After fifteen years of promoting the arts, offering classes and workshops, and hosting exhibits and events in its renovated dairy barn since 2004, the center is well established as a leader in the rural arts scene.
“We’ve grown up. We have a seat at the state-wide table,” said Jacksonville Center director John McEnhill. Last January the center was invited to present a workshop on the challenges of a rural arts center at an art conference in Richmond, he added. “It was the best attended workshop at the conference.”
Although the center’s name has been gaining notoriety, it’s the name it does business under – the Floyd Community Center for the Arts – that more aptly describes the Jacksonville mission. “We are a community center in a rural county. Our first allegiance is to our community. We’ve built-up a solid audience drawn to specific events, and we host a wide range of community events,” said McEnhill, who explained that the Jacksonville Center is the only truly rural art center in the state.
The annual Empty Bowls fundraiser for New River Community Action’s backpack project, held in the center’s Community Room, accommodates 600 or more people. Workshops on tourism and chamber of commerce meetings also take place at the center, as well as twice monthly Old Church Gallery Quilters Guild meetings and weekly yoga classes. “We have the parking and the space to offer the community,” McEnhill noted.
This year the center introduced the first annual Floyd County Imagination Month, dubbed FloCoiMo as a take-off on NaNoWriMo’s November Novel writing month. FloCoiMo challenged countians to create art each day of the month. Spoken word, music, and visual art were shared in a coffee house atmosphere at the month’s conclusion. A book signing for a local author also took place at the center this year and a memorial celebration for a recently deceased community member who was involved in dramatic arts is currently scheduled.
The center has two art venues. The upstairs Hayloft Gallery is home to about 5 – 6 exhibits and receptions a year. Downstairs, the Breezeway showcases the works of art organizations, such as the Quilters Guild and Retired Seniors Volunteer Program (RSVP) FineHearts and Floyd Artist Association students. Classes offered at the center have included everything from painting and printmaking to blacksmithing and bookmaking. The expanded gift shop features fiber arts, woodworks, jewelry, sculpture, photography, basketry, pottery, cards, mobiles and more made by local artists and artisans.
In the interest of keeping the center accessible to the community, there is no admission charge for gallery showings and events. The center is inclusive and welcoming to new artists as well as the established. Some new artists have shown their work for the first time at the center. Established artists appreciate the fine art juried exhibit the center hosts once a year. Silent auctions and classical music concerts are among the special event fundraisers that community members look forward to. Winterfest, the Jacksonville Center’s longstanding annual art and craft festival, always draws good attendance.
Adding to the hub of activity on the Jacksonville campus – which includes 7 buildings on 7 acres – are artist studio incubators (150 – 400 square foot spaces), along with resident organizations. The center provides the rentals at below market rent and tenets share equipment and common space. They also benefit from the center’s marketing guidance, networking partnerships, free wifi, a color copier, and extended available space. “They don’t have to hire a staff person. We can open and close for them,” McEnhill said.
Jacksonville studio artist and Pickin’ Porch music teacher Scott Perry has extra room for his student’s jam sessions. Potter Sarah McCarthy uses the center’s pottery kiln. Some resident artists “graduate,” McEnhill explained, such as George Lipson, who began his “Green Label” organic t-shirt business in a Jacksonville incubator and has since moved to a building on Oxford Street. Past Jacksonville tenets include Floydfest and the Young Actor’s Co-op (YAC).
When the Tri-area Community Health Clinic needed a temporary home they found it in the Jacksonville’s Residential Craft School dormitory building. Currently, the New River Community Action Center occupies that space while repairs are being made at their permanent location. McEnhill said the center stopped using the building as a Craft School dorm in 2007 when the economy began its downward spiral but he anticipates using it as a dorm again when out-of-town class enrollment picks up.
The Association of Energy Conservation Professionals (AECP), a non-profit energy education and advocacy organization, and the Sustainable Living Education Center (SLEC) are other resident organizations on the Jacksonville Center grounds. The AECP hosts the annual Green Living Energy Expo at the Civic Center in Roanoke. Its partner organization SLEC provides interactive demonstrations and exhibits. Onsite SLEC working systems that showcase the importance of sustainable living include solar panels, a wind generator, and a straw bale building.
Another important way the center serves the community is with its engagement with youth through kid-centered activities, student exhibits, the annual Summer Kids Camps, and SOL based in-school art programs in Floyd public schools. The center recently raised enough funds through a successful Facebook appeal to provide an afterschool achievement and art program for at-risk students in partnership with Floyd Elementary School. The annual youth exhibit, currently showing in the Hayloft Gallery features the works of area school art students. “I’m proud of the fact that we showcase students and give them a venue during the holidays so visiting family members can attend,” said McEnhill.
“There is ample evidence that regular exposure to art curriculums helps students do better all around, particularly at the elementary school level and particularly in math, science and history. They perform better, get better SAT scores, are less likely to do drugs and more likely to graduate with a secondary education degree,” McEnhill stated.
Note: The conclusion of Community Hub Adapts to the Economic Recession can be read HERE. Winterfest pictures from past years are HERE and HERE. Photos from an Empty Bowls event are HERE.
January 8th, 2011 10:35 am
[…] Part I of the following can be found HERE. […]
January 8th, 2011 5:12 pm
[…] The Jacksonville Center: Community Hub Adapts to the Economic Recession […]
July 15th, 2011 10:38 am
[…] ~ The following was published in The Floyd Press on March 26, 2009. As the Old Church Gallery Quilter’s Guild membership has grown so has the size of their meeting locations. Formed in 1986 as a part of The Old Church Gallery, the quilters outgrew the gallery’s original Presbyterian Church location. They met at the Wilson Street gallery location, the Jessie Peterman library, the new Presbyterian Church, and then the Bank of Floyd Community Room. When the Community Room ceased to be available, the guild began holding their bi-monthly meetings at their current location, The Jacksonville Center for the Arts. What began with twelve quilters in 1986 has grown to over seventy. Pauline Hodges, guild treasurer and a founding member says that national and international teachers are active members of the Floyd based guild. “The majority are not from Floyd. Members come from Winston Salem, Covington, West Virginia, Blacksburg, Meadows of Dan, Smith Mountain Lake, and Roanoke,” she noted. Still operating under the Old Church Gallery umbrella, the guild shares the gallery’s mission of preserving and showcasing local culture and art. According to the guild’s webpage, a second goal is “to establish a framework within which experienced and beginning quilters may learn from one another, sharing techniques and quilting advances.” Their bi-monthly meetings serve that purpose. Hodges, a Floyd native who grew up with quilting, says that guild meetings draw an average attendance of about thirty members. Meetings are planned by an alternating program director and generally feature a short business portion, followed by a teaching demonstration, a workshop, or lecture. Once a month members participate in a “Show and Tell,” presenting their creative works to the group. ” Recently the guild hosted Pennsylvania quilter George Sicliano for a lecture and a “trunk show,” which refers to the car trunk load of Sicliano’s fiber art that he brought to show. Male quilters are uncommon and there are no male members in the Floyd guild, Hodges said, but she remembers a male quilter from Asheville who was a quilt show judge. “I don’t remember not quilting,” Hodges, said, explaining how quilts were “made from leftovers from what you sewed at home. In the past, dresses and quilts were also made from the feed sack bags that farm animal feed came in. Reproductions of feed sack bags and civil war fabrics are available today and used by some quilters, Hodges explained. Born of ingenuity, quilting is an art that has adapted to modern times. “The majority of members use sewing machines but some do hand quilting,” guild president Karen Tauber said. “We don’t go down to the river and wash our clothes any more. We all have washing machines and are glad to have sewing machines.” Tauber, who teaches quilting at the Blacksburg YMCA and organizes the yearly Blue Ridge Quilt Festival, remembers when guild founding member Effie Brown gave a presentation of her life’s work as a quilter and spoke about the old days of quilting. Brown, one of the eldest members, gave some advice, saying ‘if you want to do black quilt do it early in your career because later your eyesight won’t work.’ The guild has its own show in the Floyd Elementary School at the Woman’s Club annual Arts and Crafts Fair each October, displaying “over 150 entries from across the US which includes every sort of quilt from traditional to contemporary and ranging from large bed quilts, to miniature quilts, with an always impressive display of wearable art,” the guild website reads. Every year a guild member is featured and a show winner is chosen. The public is encouraged to enter their fiber art in this impressive annual exhibit. Service work is also a guild activity. At a recent guild meeting member Kim Horne posted a pattern for making quilted bags to hang on the backs of walkers and wheel chairs for donation to area nursing homes. Quilters who brought their sewing machines got busy cutting and sewing for the project. The guild has also donated collaboratively made quilts for fundraisers. Most recently they made and donated one to benefit the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. Guild members have sold their quilts, won show awards, and have had their designs published in books. “But family comes first,” one member said. “I still have some of my grandmother’s quilts,” said Floyd native Jane Shank. Quilting in Floyd is a part of its mountain culture, passed down through generations and through the help of guilds like the Old Church Gallery Guild. Although the guild has expanded beyond the county and draws from talent far and wide, its traditional roots remain. As for the guild’s next location move, they hope it will take them full circle, reuniting with the Old Church Gallery, which just celebrated its 30th anniversary. “We hope to someday have our own space with a big room with the Old Church Gallery,” Hodges said. ~ Colleen Redman Note: For more information about The Floyd Quilter’s Guild go to http://floydquilts.freeservers.com To read an article I wrote for the local paper on the Jacksonville Center for the Arts go HERE. […]
December 9th, 2011 2:44 pm
[…] Read more about the Jacksonville Center HERE. Visit their website HERE. Winterfest pictures from past years are HERE and […]
February 17th, 2013 1:47 pm
[…] innovation on exhibit at the Jacksonville Center and should be seen to be fully appreciated. HERE is an in-depth 2010 story I did on the Jacksonville Center as a community hub that has adapted to […]
December 20th, 2013 12:31 pm
[…] A couple arrives for Winterfest, the Jacksonville Center’s oldest running event. See pictures of a past Winterfest and read about the early days before the barn renovation and when I was a vender HERE. Read a 2010 story I wrote about the Center for the Arts as a community hub changing with the times HERE. […]