BUILT OF SAND
Sand T’s role in creating a Malden arts community

interview by Roanna Forman, editor of the Malden Muse
article courtesy of the Malden Muse, May 2005 issue

 

“When I was growing up, I lived basically in a community building,” Sand T reminisced about her childhood in Malacca as we sat over darleeling tea and homemade apple, banana raisin bread. She gestured toward the end of a long, imaginary hallway. “Lots of kids to play with, a community kitchen. It’s natural for me to create community. It’s in my blood.”

She is far from Malacca now, but she has continued to thrive in the creation of community – “a vibrant artist’s community” – in Malden, in the five years since she moved here. It is a constant goal and a constant labor, aside from work in the studio. It has surely borne fruit, although she didn’t originally set out to accomplish as such as she has.

She relocated here in April, 2000 after the demolition of her previous live-work space in Fort Point to make way for a parking garage. Sand T. wryly noted that she and husband Wesley Kalloch have somewhat redressed the balance by turning a parking garage next to her Malden house into an art gallery. Initially, she and her husband intended only to build studios inside their house at Princeton Road. “But I said what a waste!” – and artSPACE@16 was created in the 24’ x 24’ garage on her property, through the labors of Sand T, her husband, and friends.

With 26 shows to date, the modern gallery space is a place where area artists are anxious to exhibit. Artist Rick Fox, whose works are showing now, noted in an email, “I went to her website and was really interested in the fact that this person, Sand T, had a gallery camouflaged as an out of the way suburban garage and not at all focused on ‘commercialism.’ Just the idea of a space like this was like running down a grassy hillside.”

A “noncommercial” space, where works are not for sale, the gallery promotes community through its group shows, installations, and events like poetry readings and tea tastings. Shows have included local and national artists with esteemed jurors, like Leslie Brown, photohistorian curator of the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University (guest juror, PHOTO LAB [ORATORY], 9/04) and Leah Oates of New York (guest juror, Small Works, 11/04).

Sand T’s twenty-year career in spatial design, art, and curating are a boon to artists who show there. “Sand T has a really great eye…and an incredibly easy, respectful and spontaneous manner about her…with a very perceptive sense of space and design,” noted artist Rick Fox in an email. His forceful charcoals and cloth sculpture are currently featured along with Meagan Schwelm’s exquisite handmade paper installations in “2 SOLOS” (through June 4).

Had Sand T merely built and sustained artSPACE@16, she would have added immeasurably to building a visual arts community in Malden. But she did more. Informed by her own experience and acutely sensitive to developer-initiated attempts at Fort Point, she contacted Malden Mayor Richard Howard when she saw developer displacement of artists threatened here in 2002, and began the push toward municipal support for live-work artist studio space in Malden. Her proposals to the Mayor led to a public meeting of artists in February, 2003 to discuss collaborations with the city in return for live-work studio availability. The forty-five artists who attended agreed with the city’s quid pro quo - space in return for offering classes in their studios and in Malden schools.

During all this time, exhibits were being mounted consistently at artSPACE@a16. But the next building block in constructing an art community was Sand T’s survey compiled in March, 2004 “to consolidate the voices of artists concerning their unmet spatial needs.” Through a questionnaire, it validated and quantified these artists’ needs regarding studio type, size, tenancy vs. ownership, financing, amenities, and community characteristics, in a way that politicians could respect and developers could use. The data are interesting: 50% of respondents were not Malden residents, indicating artists’ willingness to relocate to Malden with the right situation. Twenty-five per cent would rather own than rent, showing support for condo financing partnerships. Finally, respondents indicated that, after safety and security, transportation was the most important community characteristic. Malden has all of these.

Among Sand T’s recommendations on possible municipal initiatives for artists were lease restrictions to protect studio spaces, a staff at the MRA for art space initiatives, financing incentives for artists, and peer credentialing mechanisms.The result of all this activism was an initiative to develop a group of Malden redevelopment Authority (MRA) subsidized storefront galleries, beginning in 2004: Ideas5 Artists Studios at 183 Pleasant St.; Washington Studio, 15-17 Washington Street ; and Affordable Art Galleria at Exchange St., scheduled to open in June.

Yet a larger yield from the seeds Sand T planted is the city’s purchase of the 30,000 square foot Sacred Heart Convent, in which MRA-supported studio space is planned. “When the city does the conversion,” Sand observed, that is the announcement we really have a community.”

And there she sat across from me, just a neighbor offering me more darjeeling tea, making me marvel at how one person could have fueled such a momentum towards change. She reflected on the significance of the number 16 as it recurs in her life. The numerical symbol of continuation through change, it is a karmic number, indicating that what one did in the past will come back. The street number of her new gallery, 16 Princeton Road, emerged, so to speak, from the rubble of 15-17Stillings Street, her previous studio’s address. And in the Chinese, the homonym for the character for 6 is “smooth sailing.” Sand T. is a good person to have at the helm.

artSPACE@16
www.artSPACEat16.com

current exhibit: 2 SOLOS
Through June 4
Rick Fox – just another “american” myth/large scale drawings & sculptures
Meaghan Schwelm – vernal (in) formation/installation and sculptures

 

interview written by

Roanna Forman, Editor
Malden Muse

Current issue can be read online, please visit http://www.maldenmuse.com

 

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This interview, in pdf format to the first publication (May 2005 issue) of Malden Muse can be read and/or downloaded from the Malden Muse's "Archives" page. http://www.maldenmuse.com/archives.html