(bright music) - Welcome to Forum 360, I'm Stephanie York, your host today.

And thank you for joining us for a Global Outlook Local View.

Today, we're talking to Rick Rogers, founder and president of the Curated Storefront, an organization dedicated to transforming Akron into a dynamic urban destination through the arts.

And you won't believe where you will find some of these art displays in Akron.

They are integrated into storefronts, building wraps, storage containers, courthouses, and more.

Rick has motivated, inspired, and brought to life public displays of art so that we, the average person can enjoy art and culture right where we live, work, and play.

And I'm excited today to be here with Rick, and we have so much to cover that I'm just gonna jump right in.

Hi, Rick, thanks for being here.

- Thank you, Stephanie.

- Yes.

- I'm happy to be here.

- Yeah, so if you would, could you just tell me a little bit about yourself, your background, where you grew up, things like that.

- Long-term resident of Akron, Ohio, born and raised there, went to the Akron public schools, actually ended up going to Western Reserve Academy here in Hudson after that, and Hiram College and Ohio State.

So pretty much the whole- - The Buckeyes.

- A Buckeye thing.

(Stephanie laughs) And I've had several other business careers.

I started a software company back in 1980, and ran that for about 20 years and sold it, and then came to run a family business my grandfather had started.

- Oh, that's interesting!

- And ran that for 20 years, and sold that about six years ago.

So I'm probably dating myself.

(Stephanie chuckles) But I had always enjoyed the arts, I got involved with the Akron Art Museum when I was a kid, my mom used to take us there.

My grandmother was involved in the organization, and we got to know Mitchell Kahan very well, and kinda he inspired me to start collecting art.

And so that led to building up a collection.

And when I sold our family business seven years ago, I thought, man, why not do something I really enjoy and really was passionate about?

And so I started the Curated Storefront after Hieronymus, which is which we call our collection.

And that's the background.

- It's great.

Yeah, so you've answered my first four questions.

- Oh, sorry.

- That's that's awesome.

No, I was gonna ask about your passion and where it came from for the arts and Akron, but it sounds like it came from your family a lot.

- Somewhat, my mom kind of, she had a collecting bug or addiction, I don't know how you wanna characterize it, but she liked to collect objects and things.

And I got focused on, I mean, I think I started with some friends when we were kids collecting coins and things like that, ball cards, and it evolved into antiques.

And I don't wanna anticipate your questions here, but- - No, you're doing good, no, I like this discussion.

- So I went from that and started collecting art.

I think actually Mitchell Kahan was a real inspiration in that, and Eva Kwong, she's a Kent State-based ceramics artist.

And she got me involved with a kind of a collector impresario in China named I Chi Hsu.

And I Chi kind of connected me, he published a magazine called Dao Clayform, and he connected me with a lot of Asian artists over the years.

And I started collecting Asian art through I Chi, and we'd travel around the world and pick up objects from wherever we went.

- That sounds fascinating.

When downtown Akron was struggling, I mean, they had empty storefronts, abandoned and dilapidated buildings, and just an overall sense of neglect.

You had a vision, didn't you?

- Well, several things came together at about the same time.

It was 2017, I was thinking it'd be neat to do something with Downtown to try and use art to create a better environment for living working and playing.

And the Knight Arts Challenge was instituted that year, I think it was the first round of it.

So all you had to do was come up with 150 words or less.

And we put in a proposal and we got selected, and we had initial generous funding from the Knight Arts Challenge grant, and- - Was that the birth of Curated Storefront?

- That was Curated Storefront.

- Nice!

- So we started from that platform and built from there, it was kind of slow at first, and we were learning how to do things and what worked and what didn't.

- So tell us what Curated Storefront is for people that don't know, what is it?

- Well, it's a non-profit organization, it's based in Akron.

It's dedicated to transforming the streets of Akron, it's really arts and community, because we're trying to build on the downtown core.

And I believe strongly that if we don't have a vibrant core to Downtown Akron or the county for that matter, we don't really have a community.

And some of the things that Jane Jacobs said about, "If your sidewalks aren't interesting, "the city is not gonna be interesting."

If the sidewalks are boring, your city is not going to be very exciting.

So how do we bring interest back?

How do we make the street edge feel safe?

When I looked around, I went up and down Main Street, maybe about a mile long between the Goodrich buildings on the south, or where GOJO is now in the Northside, 70% of the storefronts were empty and there were for sale or for lease signs, windows were dirty, it wasn't attractive, it didn't feel safe.

And I figured why don't we put art in these storefronts?

And I also thought about when I was a kid, we used to come down to O'Neil's and Polsky's at the holidays and you go see the windows and do your shopping, and there were crowds all the time on the sidewalks.

And how do you recapture some of that energy, and at the same time attract commercial development?

So we started putting different art displays, and it wasn't always art, we took Chuck Auerbach, for example, lent us a bunch of gig posters from The Black Keys, and we put those on a window and we're in talks with children's hospital and Goodyear to take pieces from the Goodyear archives, for example, and do a lighter-than-aircraft window.

So we'll curate other objects into these windows, not just what an artist would produce new.

- And these rotate?

- And the other thing that we felt is that we didn't want things to get stale, that after about six months, it's time to bring something new in.

So we're constantly looking for new artists, new subject matter to place in these windows.

We actually dipped into the Polsky basement, and that this was last year during COVID.

- There is a lot of stuff in there.

- We pulled out all these old artifacts, and we had a night, this was 2019, I think, holiday season, we brought all these old pieces of the Polsky history up, and put those- - I hope you wear your sweatpants, 'cause I've been down there, it's pretty dusty, right?

- Actually, I was not involved in the installation on that one, we have a really great team of people backing us up.

- So, like what people are involved?

What partners in the community?

I know the Knight Foundation, but what other partners do you have in the community?

- And I gotta apologize if I leave some names off.

- Sure!

- But you know, we've got Knight, GAR has been very helpful, Akron Community Foundation, Smuckers, and we've got a whole host of others.

- City county, were they involved at all?

- The city has been very helpful in providing empty storefronts.

I think the county is the largest landlord that we have.

We work with cities after that, the county has given us some financial assistance.

- That's great, so it really is a community effort?

- Right, exactly.

And then other landlords have given us their space.

- Right.

So Downtown Akron has been in the midst of a transformation in the past couple of years, especially the construction of the new Main Street corridor.

Right?

How does the new Main Street tie into your projects?

Has the construction helped or hurt, or do you see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak?

- The light is burning brightly right now.

Yes.

- Good!

- There were periods that we were a little bit concerned about what's gonna happen.

- Sure.

- And it was very difficult to get access to Main Street.

And we lost some of the organizations that we had along Main Street, but I think it's coming back now.

- Good!

- If you go Downtown, you'll see a lot of people up and down the street on the sidewalks, they've got scooters.

- I've seen those little people movers or whatever they call them.

- Ah-ha, ah-ha!

- And there's just a lot more activity, it feels vibrant.

We had an opening, we could go Friday for band, which is the lighting, we've got an LED artists that put on the 19th floor of the old Cascade Plaza Hotel building.

- Yes, let's talk about that, 'cause that is really cool.

I mean, I've seen activity up there.

Did you just like look at the skyline and think, "Hey, this needs to pick me up"?

- Well, we had worked with Ian Brill, who's the artist, before, he did what's called Building Two, and it's on the segment of Main Street, north of market.

And he lit up a whole facade that was in 2018, and it was a pretty compelling piece.

'Cause it was like the whole front of the building became an abstract expressionist, but moving piece of art.

So it was dynamic.

And we'd had a lot of people like that piece.

And Kyle Kutuchief at night approached us last year and said, "Well, can we bring Ian back?"

And we talked about the Cascade Hotel building, that Joel Testa is in the process of renovating.

So I called Joel and I said, "You know, can we use a side of the building or the top?"

And he said, "Well, we're in the middle of construction."

So we couldn't do one of this building's sides.

- Sure.

- And we picked the band at the top, so that's where the name band came from.

- Yeah, it's the whole top floor.

- Yeah!

- And it wraps around the building?

- Wraps around the building.

There are spots where we had to black out because there was a kitchen and that you couldn't get to the windows, but it's- - But it's like a light show, right?

- It's a moving light show.

There's over 20,000 LED cells in this display.

- Boy, I'd hate to be the one to change the light bulbs, right?

- Yeah.

- I'm just kidding.

(both chuckle) - Well installing them is a lot of work.

- Sure.

- They pulled it off in less than two weeks.

But the LEDs don't burn out, they last for a long time.

And it's computer controlled, so it's completely random, it's never the same pattern over and over again.

And it's viewable from just about all directions Downtown so it's a great beacon for Downtown.

- It is.

Is that gonna stay up a long time do you think?

- We'd like to keep it up for maybe 12 months?

We're thinking at this point, it's really, we're at the mercy of the construction project and the building, and once they get to the top floors, we're gonna have to decommission them.

- Well, if it's so interesting, maybe we'll hop to another.

- Well that's the plan.

- Right?

- We'd like to put it along Main Street, and maybe have a whole series of places on Main Street.

So you'd look up and down Main and you'd have something going on in any empty windows that are along the street.

- It's great for the pedestrians, but man, when you're driving (chuckles) it could be a little distracting, but very, very interesting.

- Yeah!

Actually, one of the best views, if you're coming into town from the south west on the Innerbelt, as you approach after dark, it's really pretty special, it's cool to watch.

- That's awesome.

I'd like to remind our viewers and those who may have joined late, that we are here with Rick Rogers, founder and president of the Curated Storefront, an organization dedicated to transforming Akron into a dynamic urban destination through the arts.

We are learning about how this particular arts organization is focused on bringing arts and culture to the average person where we work, right?

We live, we play in all sorts of unique ways.

So you had this really interesting collection called Hieronymus, did I say it right?

- Perfect.

- Hieronymus objects.

Tell me about that.

- Well, I think I mentioned before that I got involved in collecting art seriously toward around 2000, 2002.

I think I started buying stuff and accumulating things, and I just really enjoyed looking at things of beauty and it made me feel good, and it was nice to be surrounded by this stuff.

And at first I would put them in our house, and I started adding to the collection as I traveled, and it's grown to about 2800 objects today, and- - Still in your house?

- Well, it's grown beyond that.

I ended up having the opportunity to buy the house next door to us and that's become our gallery and my office, so... - In Akron?

- It's in Akron.

In the neighborhood?

- Yes, in the neighborhood.

So- - That is so cool!

How do people know about this?

- We have a website, hieronymusobjects.com, so if you wanna check us out there, you can see what's in the collection.

We picked the name Hieronymus after Hieronymus Bosch, who was a kind of a quirky surrealist painter from, and I'm gonna get this wrong, I'm not an art historian, but I think he's 17th century, maybe 18th century, but he's familiar to a lot of people in the art world.

And so a lot of the objects in the collection are getting a good following along and some of the paintings that Bosch had done.

And so it grew to our gallery in the house next door, and we have documented the whole collection.

It took almost two or three years to really photograph them all.

- So people can get on your website and find out they can come and look at, tours and- - Yeah, we do.

We will do tours if somebody wants to, and we loan pieces, we've loaned pieces to other museums all over the world from the collection.

- Wow!

Tell me one of your most unique pieces.

I know that it'll be hard with 2600.

- That's a difficult one.

You know, maybe I'll pick Paul Day, as he did a, it's about a 36-inch circular almost like a diorama in raw terracotta.

And it's an illustration of a scene in the Chatelet train station in Paris.

And you have to see it to really understand the layers of things that are going on, but it's all executed in clay and- - And it's here in Akron?

- It's here in Akron.

And people can go see it?

- Ah-ha!

- That's amazing, and really to think about all these unique pieces of art from around the world, being in a house in a suburb or in the middle of Akron, very, very amazing.

So we know the pandemic has affected all organizations, but I would venture to say that arts and culture organizations, because of its heavy reliance on community engagement and visitors has taken the brunt of the hit, but your project seem pretty COVID safe.

I mean- - Yeah, we were lucky.

- Curated Storefront, you stand on the sidewalk and you look through a pane of glass at the objects.

Outside the Box is another one.

Tell me about that, that seems pretty COVID-friendly.

- Outside the Box is up on the Northside.

So if you, there's a parking lot right across the street from DBA, or from, it's right on the corner there.

You really can't miss it.

And there's five shipping containers.

And we had the idea to take the containers, build a frame around them and bring art in.

This was inspired from the Wynwood District in Miami, because they really dramatically changed that whole neighborhood, and the whole Northside of Miami is now just on fire with activity and development.

- Is that where you first saw it and thought of it, or did you notice it after you thought of this?

- I mean I didn't, they paint on buildings down there.

My idea was, how do we get the same level of world-class art in Akron without having to import all the artists here?

And so we developed frames that we put on the containers, and we have the artists execute their work, well, they can come locally, but they can execute their work anywhere in the world and ship eight-by-four-foot aluminum panels with the mural already painted on it.

And we just hang it on the outside of the containers.

- Outside the Box, hence the name!

- Outside the Box, yes.

But we also have Inside the Box, 'cause we have one of the boxes is just dedicated to a kind of a micro pop-up gallery.

So we've- - Oh, that's interesting.

And last summer, we had an artist do his studio space there.

And we also, we've got a beautiful piece by an artist named Peeta from Italy that just came in, and we just put up on one of the boxes.

It's pretty impressive.

- That's awesome!

And that's a pretty popular destination in Akron, and you've got Luigi's, you got DBA, you got the hotel there, I mean, so little art galleries in there.

So hopefully that's getting a lot of eyes on it, I hope.

- Yes!

- World of Wonders exhibition.

I mean, you have a lot of things going on, and so I'm trying to pick the highlights.

World of Wonders exhibition.

- World of Wonders is we just brought about 200 objects to town, from the estate of a deceased artist from the Funk Art Movement in California, his name is Clayton Bailey.

Unless you're in the art world, a very limited segment of the art world, you really aren't gonna know Clayton, but his work I think is, again, it's kind of funky and quirky, but I think it'll appeal to a very broad cross section of the public.

It's got a sense of humor to it, it's somewhat iconoclastic, so it will raise questions in a lot of people's mind about a number of things.

He started producing this work back in the early 1970s.

He was a showman on top of it, so he really understood how to appeal to people in a performative vein, and he was a excellent craftsman.

So everything is well-crafted, he's got all these robots in there, everything's got electronic stuff built into it, and our opening is May 27th, so I'd encourage you to come and join us.

- Oh yes, for sure!

Where is it located?

- It is located at the corner of Main and Bowery, and the landmark building it's on the Civic Theater block, what they call the Bowery development.

And it's all apartments above, but it's the old bank lobby right at street level.

- Those are new apartments now, right?

- They're all new apartments, correct.

Yes.

- Right, that block is really, I mean, I know that the Civic just got renovated and everything's coming together in that block.

- It's really exciting.

It's really, it's gonna change.

It's gonna be transformative down there.

- Do you have advice for people who want to get involved in things like this?

What should they do to get started?

Can they volunteer at your organization?

- We would love to engage volunteers, particularly with World of Wonders, it's an inside gallery space now for us to stay open, and we are at 501 C3, we rely on support from the community.

It would be great to have anybody that's interested contact us, and we'd love to have some volunteers.

- And you have a website for Curated Storefront, correct?

- There is, it's curatedstorefront.org.

- Perfect, perfect.

So I'm gonna hit, we're we're short on time, but I wanna hit on a few more of your projects quickly.

So a few sentences about Curated Courthouse.

- Curated Courthouse is a collaboration with the county courthouse, and Judge Stormer had a vision too, and she applied, got funded by the Knight Arts Challenge grant about two years ago.

And she came to us and said, "Look, can you guys be our implementer on this program?

"I'd like to put art in the courthouse.

"It's a situation where most people come to the courthouse, "it's not a great place, "or not a good day for them in their life."

- And they could spend hours sitting in waiting for verdicts, for the judge, for the jury, for all sorts of tedious paperwork.

- And it was a dreary place too.

I don't know if you'd been in there recently?

- Oh, I have!

- But we've put together a really nice display, mostly local artists, and we've got permanent and rotating exhibits there, and I would encourage people to come down and see what's cooking, because it's really- - Or if you're in the courthouse, make a special trip to the area.

- You can't avoid it now, 'cause you're just walking around, and it's a great place to spend some time.

- I think it's a great idea.

There's probably more places in Akron that you can think of, you probably have a list of them that you wanna put things like this in.

- We do, I mean, this was, we called the Curated Office originally, but it's kind of an extension of what we wanted to do there.

And we were also their fiscal agent, which means we take care of all their administrative and financial affairs.

- I Promise School, the artists in training, what is that?

- That's a really exciting project.

We have Theron Brown, who's a local musician.

- He's amazing!

- He's on our team and he's the coordinator of that project.

And the idea there was to bring artists that have been, And I don't have time to get into all the details of the I Promise School, except that I think the vision has got- - That's a whole show by itself!

- Yeah, but it's got, it's just an amazing thing that LeBron has done with the school.

And I think it's the right thing for the community.

But what our idea is, it was to bring musicians that have been, not musicians, artists, both musical and visual, that have been successful in their careers to serve as role models for the kids there.

Mainly Black artists, and artists from all over the country or internationally, but mainly from the country.

And we wanna bring them in as a artist resident.

- Well, we've just scraped the surface of all the things you're doing.

But I have to say, we have to bring this to an end much to my dismay, we might have to pick it up another time and do a second and act too.

But there's no question that you, Rick, have been a driving force in the art and culture world in Akron, and your ideas are so bold yet simple enough that they can be incorporated into every city, really allowing urban areas throughout the country to also bring art and culture to all.

I've been thrilled by each new project that you've been a part of, and I'm excited to see others come to fruition.

Thank you for caring about Akron, all of us in Akron, and Northeast Ohio.

I'm Stephanie York, thank you for joining us today on Forum 360 for a global outlook local view.

Forum 360 is brought to you by; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Akron Community Foundation, Hudson Community Television, the Rubber City Radio Group, Shaw Jewish Community Center Of Akron, Blue Green, the Electric Impulse Communications, and Forum 360 supporters.

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