"First Thursdays" event

Albion Cultural Exchange building, formerly the old Wakefield Gas & Light building.

We stopped in last light to Wakefield's "First Thursday" event. This is a local event that features some art-related event on the first Thursday of every month at the Albion Cultural Exchange building. 

http://www.albionculturalexchange.org/content/first-thursday-art-exhibit-july-7th

It was really nice to see all the cool artwork created by teachers and students of Kidcasso and Create Artisan Studio in Wakefield. I had a few pieces of my artwork as did a couple of my students. I particularly love looking at artwork created by children. I'm often amazed at how well they do and how creative they get. There's always a few pieces that put a smile on your face. Children are so innocent and they usually give you a completely honest opinion and have no problem telling you why they do or do not like your art. I love getting their unfiltered opinions. Life should be so easy and free. 

The event was held at the Albion Cultural Exchange building that was formerly the old Wakefield Gas & Light building. It's a great building and I'm really excited about the future possibilities that this location holds for the arts community. The town recently won a grant for a feasibility study on what it will take to fix up the old building, make it handicap accessible, bringing it up to code, etc. The building is a wonderful old brick building with high ceilings on the main floor that will make a great gallery and art workshop space. It has huge windows that would make it an ideal space for painting workshops or for renting out for events. 

The main floor has been fixed up a bit and walls were painted with a new coat of paint. It was very promising seeing all the people who came out last night. It was good to see the building put to good 

I took a quick look around last night and in addition to the main floor there is some great space downstairs. I'm sure there are just as many ideas for this space as there are costs to fix the place up but I couldn't help envisioning what it could be some day.

There is some great space down in the basement that could be the future location of a ceramic studio with it's own ceramic kiln, pottery wheels and shelving to store ceramic works in progress. I would love to see one of the basement rooms converted into a silk screening station where students could learn to screen print their own posters and tshirts. 

There is more great office spaces upstairs that could be rented out as artist spaces that would be rented out by the day, week or month. It would be great if one room could be kept as a open artist space that artists could rent hourly to work on current projects. 

When I envision the possibilities for our new Cultural Exchange building, it's truly amazing and I hope it comes to fruition sooner than later. I'm a member of the Artist Asylum in Somerville and they have a great concept, they teach classes and have expensive equipment that artisans can use as part of their memberships. It would be nice to have something like that here in Wakefield for artists in this area to use. It would be great if this building could grow into a self-sustaining model and become a wonderful resource for artists or people who want to become artists.