It’s been a year of growing pains for the Collingwood Arts Center (CAC) — with a long way yet to go — but the nonprofit’s leadership believes it’s headed in the right direction. Since taking the helm in August 2013, Interim Executive Director Sarah Kurfis shepherded CAC through a period of transition, most notably from an artist residency program to a more community-focused arts center.
“We’re in the process right now of figuring out what we’re going to be when we grow up,” Kurfis told Toledo Free Press in September. “There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’ve come pretty far. People are getting re-energized. We have a lot of new energy and artists and people helping out at the building.”
On Oct. 1, CAC’s special events coordinator Lexi Staples took over as executive director.
“I’m excited to continue what Sarah started,” Staples said in September. “It’s been cool to see just how much the community does want to be involved with the space and with the idea there could be a different use for the building. It’s been really fun to watch people start to change their minds about the building and be more supportive of futuristic plans.”
“We’re stabilizing and Lexi is the perfect person to carry out this new vision,” Kurfis said. “We found an avenue and a niche the Collingwood can be successful at and developed a strategic plan that can help it get somewhere great and have an impact on our community. I turned the ship slightly and now I’m stepping out of the way to let the most capable people do it.”
Kurfis said she is proud of the work she did at CAC, even her controversial decision to end the building’s longtime artist residency program in January. Faced with building conditions that included no heat or hot water, residents were given 30 days to move out.
“My original recommendation was a six-month transition, but then everything basically went to hell in a week,” Kurfis said. “It was the weather that made the decision to move quicker, but it was still the right decision to make. It just wasn’t safe.”
Michael Grover was among the residents who were displaced and he’s still bitter.
“All I can say about it was that arts center was a unique facility. Not only for this area but for the whole country,” Grover said. “Its loss is a loss to the community as a whole and is a sad statement on the state of the arts in America.”
Kurfis spent her first few months getting acclimated and studying the nonprofit’s structure, and concluded the resident program wasn’t working.
“It was a great idea; it just didn’t work,” Kurfis said. “I spent lots of time managing resident issues. It was basically a dorm, with everyone so close and sharing things. It was a dysfunctional mess.”
The center’s financial standing is still shaky.
“We’re in a lot better position than we were even a year ago or a few months ago, but we’re still digging ourselves out of a hole caused by mismanagement,” she said.
“There’s nothing you can point to and say, ‘That was the specific problem,’” Kurfis said. “It was just a bunch of bad decisions. My guess is a combination of negligent management, unreliable contractors, probably some theft somewhere.”
“We do have a complicated history,” Staples said. “It’s really frustrating to not be able to fix all the past mistakes. But we need to go forward on a clean slate.”
Finished in 1905, the CAC is a registered historical site designed as a convent for the Ursuline Order of the Sacred Heart. It later housed Mary Manse College and St. Ursula Academy. It became a community art center in the mid-1980s.
With the end of the artist residency program, CAC lost its main source of funding, which now comes from studio rentals, event space rentals and proceeds from events, Kurfis said. All current funds are tied into basic operating costs, but the hope is to eventually shift to capital improvements.
A donated boiler was recently installed and Staples said the temperature in the building is rising, making it useable this winter.
CAC’s new mission statement is “to provide an outlet for creative community involvement while preserving a historic space.” Its new tagline is Creating Community Through Art.
Many groups that rent studio space at CAC are also happy with the new direction.
Barry Aslinger started the T-Town Tassels burlesque troupe at CAC earlier this year. He and his partner are the only former residents still living at CAC. Aslinger stayed on doing maintenance work at the building, which he calls a “jewel” of Toledo.
