Five Studios For Artists In Residence 0
The former bank on Old Main Street in South Yarmouth, a gift from an anonymous donor more than 10 years ago with the caveat it serve as a community center, was beautifully renovated and operates with a lot of volunteer labor. It is already being looked at as a model for other community centers on Cape Cod.
“We’re bursting at the seams. The demand is extraordinary,” Lauren Wolk, associate director, said in an interview last week. The Cultural Center has been planning to build an educational wing on the former Owl Club site next door to accommodate the demands from groups as varied as knitting clubs, artists and musicians, ethnic organizations, student groups and even performers from outside the country.
The Cultural Center has raised more than half the funds it needs for the new wing. “With over $500,000 raised in grants, donations, and formal pledges, the center still needs nearly $1 million to completely equip every part of the new facility, but it needs only $400,000 of that million to get the wing built and make it available to artists of all kinds,” Wolk said in a prepared release. The center staff will know by November whether a $400,000 Massachusetts Cultural Council facilities grant is approved.
“We’re optimistic about that,” Wolk said. Executive Director Nash it should help that the Cultural Center had its business plan in place and all the state and local approvals in preparation for the new building.
“It will take us a while to raise all the funds we need to outfit the recording studio, pottery studio, culinary arts center, and other special features that so many people on the Cape have requested,,” Nash said, “but we’re getting close to the point when we can break ground, build the structure, and open its doors to the ever-expanding population of artists and arts patrons who are lining up at our door.
”Other features of the new wing will include five studios for artists-in-residence, a performance hall that also serves as classrooms and exhibition space, a photography studio, music education and rehearsal space, meeting rooms, office space, storage space, and, in the building connector, a lighted night-gallery. A sculpture garden and al fresco recital space will fill the area between the Cultural Center’s main facility and the new wing.