Walton Arts Center’s history reflected in ‘20 Years’ exhibit

FAYETTEVILLE — Twenty boxes illustrate and celebrate the first two decades of the Walton Arts Center. Collectively, they are “20 Years,” an art installation exhibit by Kathy Thompson, an artist, art teacher, and longtime Fayetteville resident.

About a year ago, Jenni Taylor Swain, vice president of programs at the arts center, asked Thompson if she would propose an artistic commission that had something to do with a box.

Thompson knows a lot about boxes. With her business, H Boxes, she creates custom artistic pieces from clients’ personal artifacts — all that stuff stored in attics and closets that chronicles their family and their past. She’s done public installations of these “history boxes” for Arsaga’s Espresso Cafe at the Fayetteville Public Library and for Bordinos Restaurant.

She did the same thing for this client and commission. At first, she considered creating one gigantic box to place in the center of the gallery, maybe something interactive. But she determined this collection of rectangular boxes told the story better.

A COLLECTION OF THINGS
Thompson collects things — random things, deliberate things, series of things. Studio 3, her creative space on East Mountain Street, is full of objects she’s found at salvage yards and that people have given to her over the years. The shape, texture or pattern of the object is often more important than any meaning found from what it once was or is.

For this project, she first interviewed various people who’d played different roles in the arts center’s history — from its founding to current operations. She inquired about the role the arts center has played in the community, about when major shifts had occurred at the arts center, and about the business of being an arts presenter.

Thompson realized that the arts center is one of the most respected in the country, and that many others that are a similar size look to this one for guidance and assistance. She said many people in the community don’t realize the asset that the center is. However, she wanted to make sure her artistic creation didn’t seem like propaganda.

By about April, she realized she needed to be showing the history of this community fixture. She looked through the arts center’s archives — cardboard boxes stored in the back of a nearby building. She began stitching together these objects and the stories she’d gathered to create a series of boxes — 20, of course.

HISTORY WITH THE ARTS
Thompson has lived here since the 1970s and had served on the first committee to discuss creating the arts center. She’s witnessed the growth of the arts center and the community during that time.

“I had just been a part of watching it evolve and change, and also knowing a lot of the historical parts, like the parking problems,” she said.

So, she started making lists of what should go in the boxes — the various themes she wanted to cover, and specific objects necessary to tell those individual stories. And she rummaged through those cardboard boxes of artifacts looking for just the right pieces.

Starting in June, she worked on the boxes daily, with a deadline of late September.

“They evolved. They changed. Sometimes I would change the whole idea about one of them,” she said.

The boxes are layered, both with objects and meaning. Many boxes are whimsical, in the objects used and the presentation.

“For me, I tried to make it kind of funny, and for there to be little treasures that all kinds and ages of people would like to look at over and over again,” she said.

SIFTING THROUGH IT ALL
Artist Eugene Sargent made the wooden boxes that are the interior pieces to the boxes. Thompson built her creations inside those while he made the steel frames, which he let rust over the summer for just the right patina.

She labeled the themes of the boxes with notes: fundraising, symphony, jazz, dance, gallery, Artosphere, philanthropy, education, audience, and theater.

“I’m a process person. So I knew that it was a process. I knew that it was going to work; I knew that I would do a good job. But there were moments when I would get worried about it,” she said.

She looked through the objects gathered in her studio, and used pieces from the arts center’s archives. She did have to go out and find specific items: sheet music from Dickson Street Bookshop; toy yellow busses; photographs of jazz performers from Robert Ginsburg.

Frank Sharp gave her an original trowel he received at the groundbreaking, as well as dirt from the site that he’d kept in a jar. (She added dirt from her yard in that box, then topped it off with original dirt.)

Early on, she pored over historic photographs in the collection at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. For one, she specifically wanted a photograph of the site before construction. The resulting box includes photos of the former Mayflower building (in flames), the groundbreaking and the construction — as well as the dirt and trowel.

“It gives people a lot to see, right there, of the arts center that most people would never, ever, ever know,” she said. “You know, who thinks about what was there before?”

BOX BY BOX
The 20 boxes of “20 Years” are hung at eye level in a row around the Joy Pratt Markham Gallery.

“I really tried to approach it from an artistic standpoint,” she said, and even touched on sensitive subjects, like parking, which are ultimately part of the history of this place.

For “Parking Box,” she approached it from the controversy that happened when the arts center opened in 1992 and has continued to evolve. She also did a box on the yellow bus project, which brings scores of schoolchildren to the arts center each year.

A box on Taylor Swain, called “Program Box,” includes pages from her planning calendar, as well as chemistry beakers, a pair of dice, and Thompson’s grandmother’s coin purse.

“I just figure Jenni’s job is all about sifting down through and weighing and gauging, and looking at things really hard. And, then in the end, it’s just kind of throwing the dice,” she said.

Two boxes focus on the “stars” who make the arts center happen — first, the board of directors, staff and volunteers, and, second, the artists that audiences come to see. The latter have included B.B. King, Yo-Yo Ma, Lily Tomlin, Tony Bennett, Michael Buble, Trisha Yearwood, Lyle Lovett, Terry Gross and Bill Cosby.

Thompson’s personal items are scattered throughout: a deteriorated lantern, left over from a wedding held in her yard; her grandmother’s crystal wine goblet; a pipe unearthed in a friend’s Amsterdam garden; a photograph her dad took; a map her grandmother used.

BOXES EMBEDDED WITH MEANING
For “Jazz Box,” Thompson included piano dampers that were in her dad’s warehouse in El Dorado. Her late father operated a music store and refurbished pianos. She wanted to use a long piano keyboard she’d taken from his warehouse, and Sargent cut it perfectly to fit in this box. “That’s one of the most interesting things in here, to me, is the keyboard,” she said.

Gas meters from the junkyard function as picture frames in “Parking Box.” Artist Cindy Arsaga bought Thompson vintage tin snuff cans, which she used for trash cans in the “Theater Box.”

Another box, called “Commission Box,” highlights “Slow Dancing,” an exhibit of extreme slow-motion video portraits of dancers and choreographers shown on the outside of the arts center building in 2008. At the time, it had been in several metropolitan areas — New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Venice, Italy — before coming to Fayetteville. The arts center co-commissioned the piece, done by photographer and artist David Michalek.

Everyone’s favorite is “Broadway Box.” With glitter frosting the glass, the box contains images of many of the hits that have been here: “Annie,” “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” “Legally Blonde,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Les Miserables,” “Monty Python’s Spamalot” and “Avenue Q,” which was directed by Jason Moore, a Fayetteville native.

Thompson’s favorite box is “Dance Box.” It features promotional images from the dance companies, as well old doll parts that have appeared in her life. A scrolled wood piece came from Craig Young’s wood shop.

For the last box, called “Future Box,” words are repeated and layered. She typed “What’s Next?” with an old typewriter, row after row, as a lining for the back of the box. Then, “What’s next? Can’t wait!” is written in gold glitter on a glass pane, with the shadow of those letters cast on that typed page. The inside of the box is covered with googly doll eyes — “all eyes are on you,” she said.

THE IMPACT OF THE ARTS
Thompson has seen this arts center evolve, and has seen the arts become part of the fabric of many people’s lives. This exhibit reflects those things, and the place it has in the community. Thompson would like to see even more people become “addicted to the arts.”

“I think that if you took the Walton Arts Center away, people would really feel like there was a huge black hole,” she said.

Performing arts didn’t exist in her hometown of El Dorado, but her dad took her to the symphony and ballet offerings of Texarkana. She’s now a big fan of jazz and dance events at the Walton Arts Center. She took her 5-year-old grandson to see “Shrek: The Musical,” and he loved it. After seeing “Stomp!,” they went to the junkyard for pieces of metal that Sargent is combining into a custom drum set for the yard.

“It’ll make a difference in his life,” she said of her grandson.

Gallery hours are from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday-Friday and from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. The exhibit is also open an hour before most performances and during show intermissions. The exhibit, which opened Oct. 4, runs through Jan. 13.