Art Crawl or Art Sprint? The Rapid Growth of Stillwater Art Community

Once a month, as the sun begins to set, people in the Stillwater community come together to partake in humanities universal language, art.

Members of the community walked to different events that businesses hosted during last week’s Final Friday. The crisp air and beautiful sunset at the art crawl created an unreal scene for people to enjoy the different activities in. Events ranged from casual groups hanging out at Blue Spruce to Modella featuring a full gallery of student-created works.

Incoming students and new residents to Stillwater couldn’t be blamed for assuming that this event is something the city of Stillwater has always enjoyed. With less than a year of growth, Stillwater’s popular Art Crawls have capitalized on a community need for a centralized art experience. The many artistic outlets that have been growing Stillwater’s art community seem to agree.

“The Stillwater Art Guild is almost 60 years old. Within the last couple of years, they have really been feeling a need that has spread out in the community.” Brian Mitchell, a member of the art guild, said.

“We added a gallery that stays up all year in the community center,” Mitchell said, “we have found that there are a larger group of artist in Stillwater that are interested in displaying their artwork, so our membership has been steadily increasing.”

Stillwater Art Guild approached the Stillwater Community Center shortly after the first Final Friday event, and a gallery has been in the building ever since.

“Something that has been very positive for us is having local artist coming together during every art crawl just to paint together. Artist tend to work alone, so having a way for them to collaborate has really helped a lot,” Mitchell said.

One attribute to the success of the Stillwater art crawl is the amount of artist that where active in Stillwater and looking for outlets to express and display their crafts. In much the same way artist were searching for outlets, outlets where searching for artist.

Businesses in Downtown Stillwater happily jump on board as soon as they were approached by art crawl organizers. While some business enjoy an increase in customers, others saw a different benefits in facilitating these events.

“Interest in art and its variety of forms has been steadily growing in the community for a while,” Valerie Bloodgood, owner of Modella Art Gallery, said. “I think that the students, through Final Fridays, have elevated the interest and awareness of art in the community.

“Each event and every idea keeps the circle of growth going in the community… we were packet tonight because of the student show. They approached me with an idea and we were able to get a spot for them. They took it, ran with it and did a fabulous job. I think that their drive and creativity is what is bringing people out.

“I love the brain storming. I love when people come in with ideas and it is something that we can actually work together to do.”

At the center of these new ideas is a drive from organizations like OSU to help provide the facilities needed to host projects of this scale.

Most students know about the Bartlett Center for Visual Arts on campus, but OSU also owns two arts buildings in the Downtown Stillwater area. The OSU Museum of Art holds galleries and has facilities for things like graphic design. Prairie arts center is OSU’s more hands on art center, which helps promote arts to the community through events like Pop Up Art.

“A Lot of [the growth of arts in Stillwater] has to do with OSU” Mitchell from the art guild said. “Their commitment to making sure the Museum of Art was downtown when it could have easily been put somewhere on campus really helped this revitalization in the arts we are seeing now. Along with Modella, Stilly [and] prairie [arts], all of the sudden Stillwater has a bunch of art focused facilities in the same area that have a vested interested in collaborating with each other.”

This has been a theme with OSU’s approach to revitalizing their arts programs. After OSU bought the post office and renovated it into the Museum of Art, it moved on to prairie arts, which just celebrated their first year of being open.

Now OSU turns it’s attention to the musical arts with the opening of the McKnight Center and the Greenwood Center. Much like the Museum of Art and the Prairie Art’s facility, OSU is ensuring the new preforming arts facilities have the technology and equipment necessary to facilitate student creativity.

The theme behind all of these events is enabling the artists who are already here to collaborate with other artist, display their work and inspire creativity with new works.

“There was always a large art community here, but now they are a lot more aware of each other and want to collaborate more,” Audrey Gleason, an organizer for the art crawl, said.

Gleason says that in the past they have had events constructed with kids in mind, but that businesses are realizing that Final Fridays tend to appeal to adults. While there are activities around Stillwater for adults, Audrey feels this isn’t a demographic that has been catered in a way that Final Fridays does.

In the same interview, Gianna martucci’fink, another key organizer for Final Fridays, added that collaboration is an important aspect of the art crawl.

“I know it’s over said, but this is inspiring the future generation of artist,” Gianna said,” We are all in this together, and I think it’s really beautiful that we finally get to see all our work together at this level. We are growing together and can expand on that.”

While not always the case, over the last hand full of years Stillwater has enjoyed a growing arts scene that the community can easily partake in. With so many possibilities ahead, it’s hard to see what is next for this community.

“Something that is really important to remember about Final Fridays is that it is a student-led event,” Gianna said. “Everything we are doing we are doing ourselves, which is why it is so amazing to see different businesses supporting us. This is defiantly all about partnerships.”

There is an inherent timer on student-led project due to graduation.

“I’ll eventually be handing this down, so it’s hard to tell what’s next for Final Fridays,” said Gleason. “In my time left though, I want to see more student and student origination involvement expand beyond the museum… for me, I will always want more films, art work, dance, fine art and more collaboration between them. As and person in the arts, it’s never going to be enough, which is why I’m dedicating my life to the practice.”

“The amazing thing about these events is there really is something here for everyone here,” Gianna added. “These events really are the best way for us to get the message out that we are here and that we are a strong presence… We have so many resources just at the art museum to help with activates from graphic design to art history papers, and one of our biggest challenges is just letting people know that they are here.”

While the sun may have set on the event last Friday, it seems to be steadily rising on an art community ready show our city why they are so passionate about what they do.