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COLUMBUS ARTS
Wood Artist Devon Palmer demonstrates "woodturning" (turning a log into a bowl) for an audience at the Wild Goose Creative studio on Summit Street.
Photo Courtesy of Wild Goose Creative
On any given day in Clintonville, standing along Summit Street just south of Hudson you could hear...(kids screaming while making slime)
Or this...(sound of woodturning)
Or this...(music from The Andy Shaw Band)
From children making slime with their parents, to watching a woodturning demonstration, to a concert with The Andy Shaw Band -- Wild Goose Creative is an organization that supports and promotes all types of art.
"Everything from a brewers group, to a Shakespeare group, to figure drawing and painting and a knitters group and all sorts of people who are gathering around a single art form to create community and explore a new type of art," says Ryan Hoke, one of the six founding members of Wild Goose Creative.
The group of friends from Calvin College were living all around North America. But when they decided to start a non-profit organization they were looking for a small-big city.
"Arts companies are opening and closing everyday in big cities and we wanted to be in a community where we could make a difference, where people would know what we were doing and we could impact the lives of people around us. And two of the founders were living here and they said something amazing is happening in Columbus. It is a great arts city and there's a lot of things that feel sort of on the cusp of being huge here," Hoke adds.
Wild Goose Creative opened their gallery and performance space about 8 months ago and the doors stay open thanks to donations and volunteers.
Wood artist Devon Palmer, says the arts community needs to stimulate creativity, and that's where The Wild Goose Creative comes in...
"It's so much better than sitting at home, plugged into American Idol – actually engaging your mind and creating something with your hands."
For Andy Shaw, of The Andy Shaw Band, Wild Goose helps him present his music to a new audience.
"There's not really a lot of avenues for you to perform beyond bars as an acoustic musician, but when we have events here it's specifically geared around the music and people come in for that and that's really special. It's kind of like performing in a music hall."
Wild Goose founder, Elizabeth Dekker, says there are people all over Columbus looking for new ideas or ways to connect with other artists. She hopes they will be drawn to Clintonville and to the group with an odd name, which she adds, derives from the Celtic term for the Holy Spirit.
"Instead of calling it more traditionally a dove, they call it a wild goose because they believe that the pursuit of it was a chase and it was ugly and messy and it was crazy. We really feel that is the same way with art and especially pursuing something as grand as on the scale of coming to a place we have never been to before, creating an arts space, building an organization -- it's definitely been a wild goose chase but it's certainly been a fruitful one," Dekker says.
Someone who has been on that wild goose chase for art in Columbus is Clintonville Resident Corey Reid.
"I think there is actually a lot of art in Columbus but it can be kind of difficult to get in on the scene if you don't really know a lot about it. So the cool thing about this is that they have people from the community come in and share their knowledge. And it's reasonably priced so even if you don't have a lot of money, you can still come," says Reid.
All Wild Goose Creative events are open to the public and many are free with a suggested donation at the door. For WOSU Radio, I'm Amy Juravich.
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