Dwelling in artistic possibilities: Former church and homeless shelter now hosts artistic exhibitions; artist-in-residency program in the works

By Holly Dillemuth, Ashland.news

Along East Main Street out past ScienceWorks, a collaborative artist hub has been taking shape in Ashland since late spring.

A brightly-colored building, known simply as “the Annex,” painted in charcoal and gray-scale, jumps off the landscape. Splashes of bright yellows and oranges jump off the walls in “broken geological shapes.” The house is eye-catching and promotes curiosity. Designed by artist Xavi Panneton, it’s called “Deep Space Murmuration.” 

A new Ashland-based nonprofit, Gambrel Arts, founded by owners of the Gambrel Gallery to nurture diversity and creativity, launched the Annex at 2082 E. Main St. earlier this year.

“People are asking about it,” Emily Santiago said during an interview with Ashland.news earlier this summer at Gambrel Gallery, located in a barn next door at 1982 E. Main St. since 2021. “That’s part of the Schneider Art Museum’s Art Beyond collaboration.”

A sign at the entrance to the Annex parking lot says, “Our anxieties must change,” a piece by artist Lisa Jarrett.

Hand-thrown porcelain mushrooms dot the grass out front, a creation of artist Annabel Lee Allen.

In the field adjacent to the dwelling, pupa-like and “U” shaped structures are situated near the residency in progress, all part of artwork known as “12321 … Go!” the creation of artist Ahuva S. Zaslavsky. 

Santiago began leasing the Annex property, former home to the Rogue Valley Church and, more recently, a homeless shelter, in January. In the past several months, she has secured a three-year lease on the East Main Street property, renovated the spaces, and set up a 600-square-foot community gathering room available for public rental.

Santiago and her husband, Chris Leishman, and Santiago’s daughter live on the property adjacent to the Annex, where a big red barn houses the contemporary Gambrel Gallery. 

After leasing the building from Northwest Baptist Foundation of Vancouver, Washington, Santiago created the Gambrel Arts nonprofit so she could fundraise and provide affordable studio space for artists, build an artist-in-residency program, and host events for local artists. 

Since then, Santiago has been shaping it into an integral part of a rural arts district, which includes Gambrel Gallery.

“We’re trying to start a little arts district,” Santiago added. “So it’s growing, it’s just an opportunity to build kind of a rural art space.”

Eventually, Santiago would like to see active artists with an established practice come for the residency and receive a travel and materials stipend for a four- to six-week residency. 

“People who have shows, are professional artists with diverse perspectives,” Santiago said of prospective artists-in-residence candidates. “So new ideas coming in and it will be a win-win. They get to come to a beautiful place and rest and relax and rejuvenate and we get new ideas, new people to collaborate with, new work.”

Homeless shelter turned artists’ hub

Looking around the property, one wouldn’t know offhand that the building that holds the Annex previously operated as an emergency homeless shelter operated by Rogue Retreat in 2021 and 2022.

What’s visible now on the property are sculptures installed for an exhibition that ran from May to July in conjunction with Art Beyond 2023, organized by the Schneider Museum of Art. The museum funded the estimated $25,000 for travel and materials for artists to create five pieces of art on the site. 

“The funding comes from our fundraising efforts,” said Scott Malbaurn, executive director of the Schneider Museum of Art. “We have museum members, we do donor fundraising events, small events … workshops. Our big annual event is our museum gala that we also had this year.” 

The exhibition is the idea of Malbaurn, who started the “Art Beyond” project in 2021 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. With more individuals hesitant of being indoors amid the pandemic at the time, he saw a need for more outdoor-friendly art spaces and, through the inspiration of seeing similar programs around the country, saw room for growth in Ashland in this area.

Malbaurn had visited exhibitions in Michigan where works of art were being shown outdoors in public spaces, giving the public a chance to vote for the best work. In California, he had also seen exhibitions where works of art installations are placed in the desert and the public use GPS coordinates to locate them, like a scavenger hunt.

“I thought that was a really fun adventure,” Malbaurn said. “I thought that Ashland is kind of poised for something like this with international audiences coming in for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.” 

Malbaurn said he’s always had an idea to do something that would be suitable for the local area — an exhibition that would allow art and outdoor enthusiasts to get the best of both worlds.

The Annex was one of several sites for the exhibition, along with Lithia Park, Hither Cafe, ScienceWorks, and Willow-Witt Ranch.

“They would find themselves in a place they might not otherwise have gone to visit,” Malbaurn said of the multi-site format.

“They are so kind, generous, and open to working with artists,” he added. “I’m so fortunate that the stars aligned with us and the Gambrel Annex.”

Though Art Beyond ended in July, the art pieces remain on site at The Annex.

Panneton, who lives in Ashland but paints murals all over the country, describes how the colors came together for “Deep Space Murmuration,” which is painted on the Annex’s exterior.

He said the black-and-gray background of the house is made up of broken geological shapes, a concept that emerged from what he describes as “a studio accident.”

“I had some old plastic shelves that broke one day, sending my paint crashing to the floor,” he said on the website. “Upset, I decided to smash them to bits. I noticed the interesting shapes of the pieces and saved them to arrange into compositions, which I then photographed and turned into digital graphics to use as layers in my painting works.”

The shapes painted on the house represent more than what meets the eye.

“The colored murmurations in the foreground are derived from my ongoing photographing of water ripples and love of the living patterns reflected on the surface of water in different settings,” Panneton added. “Lakes, ponds, rivers, calm, windy, sunny, cloudy. The subject provides infinite visual interest. I have a history of creating work with 

an unlimited color palette, but lately I have been interested in creating works with more focused, limited color palettes which create specific moods and high visual impact.”

Artist Ahuva Zaslavsky described her artistic piece on the gallery’s website as being based on a Jewish hand-clapping game called “12321…GO!”

“By counting 1,2,3 forward and backward, it is an infinite game with no beginning nor end, and creates rhythm and musicality,” Zavlasky said about her art on the website. “When two people play a clapping game their hands create a circle. They touch, they look into each other’s eyes and when they get confused, they burst into loud laughter.” 

Then the direction is to start again.

“I wanted to mimic this game by creating a circle of clay columns and placing it outdoors to invite ideas of playgrounds and play,” Zavlasky explained. “I am curious about concepts such as places and spaces having their own essence and how their physicality impacts people. I hope visitors will experience the circularity and rhythm of the sculpture by walking in, around and between the installation and also interact with the natural environment it is placed in.”

Her work is grounded in a personal interpretation of the Golem in what she describes as  Jewish mythology, according to her description of the artwork on the website. “Golem” in Hebrew, meaning ‘raw material’ but also pupa, portrays the transformational stage of the insect between its immature and mature stages. As the story goes, the Golem was created from raw clay dug from the river bank. This work refers to the story in several ways.

“I am attracted to the ‘imperfect’ and ‘unfinished’ aesthetic,” she said. “One can see the finger marks, the rawness of the piece, the ‘defects’ and ‘failures.’ I see beauty in the process of making, where things are emerging, transform, take shape. During the making, I am never sure where the work will lead me and how the end result will look like. This way of working leaves room for exploration and for problem solving.

“Like palms reaching up to the sky, clay emerges from the ground and rises above it, forming formeless shapes that look like they were built by children and are about to collapse. But just like kids, they are not as fragile as they seem, but rather strong, confident and playful.”

Santiago said people seem to have a lot to say about the piece, as it is most visible from the road.

“It’s fun – it gives people a lot of thought and curiosity,” she said.

Artist-in-residence program in the works

Gambrel Gallery, with the help of private donations, grants, and financial support from the Schneider Museum of Art, is working toward forming an artist-in-residency program, pending some more fundraising and outreach, according to Santiago. The aim is to host four to eight artists in residence a year, in addition to those who use the space just as a studio.  

“There’s cool models for (artist-in-residency programs) done around the country and we’re just trying to create one in Oregon,” Santiago said.

While there are programs where individuals are required to teach as a component of the residency, she said that’s not a requirement with this one.

“I think we’re such a great art hub, but we lack diversity here, we lack different perspectives,” Santiago said of Ashland. 

Currently, the artist-in-residency program is invite-only it becomes established over the course of the next year, according to Santiago.

“We kind of want an urban/rural collaboration,” Santiago said. “So, urban artists from across the country come stay here, make work, have an artist talk, engage with the community, share their ideas, maybe leave a piece of art behind — that’s the goal.”

She hopes the proposed residency program will create something that looks more like an arts collective in Ashland, which Santiago aims to be a nurturing experience and one where those living in urban environments can collaborate in a more rural community. One example of that will be farm-to-table meals from the Gambrell Gallery’s vegetable garden.

Preparator and Gallery Manager Maureen Williams also expressed optimism about the host of art community offerings the Annex will provide going into the fall and beyond.

“It’s a great opportunity that they’re offering for this community,” Williams said. “It strengthens the relationship that regional artists have … it’s a great opportunity for artists in our own backyard.”

Events, classes also planned

The Annex is also hosting local musicians and held a dance party in July at the Annex to raise funds for the nonprofit.

Santiago said another goal for the Annex is to eventually offer art classes for teens, in addition to an outdoor art park.

“We need to do some fundraising, but our goal is to put up some type of graffiti walls in the field and then some of the muralists and artists could teach mural and graffiti,” Santiago said.

Santiago relocated to Ashland in 2018 after living in Oakland, where she experienced being part of an arts community.

“We felt here there are a lot of artists, but there are not a lot of arts communities,” Santiago said, “that bring artists together in a collective way, so we wanted to help them that way.”

She works as a school psychologist part-time for the southern Oregon region for Southern Oregon Education Service District, and has spent 25 years in the field. The Gambrel Gallery and Annex are providing her a new outlet of her own and a new way to build community.

“I felt like, especially amidst the pandemic and the fires, we needed ways to build community and art and mental health,” Santiago said. “Art promotes mental health, art promotes mental well-being.”

Her aim is for the Annex to do just that.

“We’re open to collaboration with the community,” Santiago said. “We’re building an artist cooperative that artists can apply to join.”

Reach Ashland.news staff reporter Holly Dillemuth at [email protected].