Public funding for the arts has dwindled in recent years, but Margie Bovee didn't have to worry about that when it came to realizing her dream of opening a public arts education center. She had the good fortune of being able to tap into funds from her family's nonprofit foundation.
"I had always wanted to open an art center," Bovee says. "So I met with my family and they thought I was crazy, but they said okay."
Bovee's father, Albert Slavin, managed the Cowan Slavin Foundation, which Bovee became a director of in 1970. When she moved to Saline from her family home in Boston in 1993, she says she was surprised to find that she "couldn't give [the foundation's money] away."
"They didn't trust it," Bovee says. "It was very frustrating. I was a stranger in a strange land from the East Coast with a funny accent, and they weren't going to take my money."
While working as a writer for the
Saline Reporter, Bovee met a number of local artists and began to realize that they had few ways to network and learn together.
"They were very lonely," Bovee says. "And I thought we could just get everybody together, working and sharing."
And so in 2006 the combination of unused foundation dollars and an unfilled hole in Saline's arts community gave rise to the
Two Twelve Arts Center, so named for its original home at 212 W. Michigan Ave. The center has since moved to 216 W. Michigan, a somewhat larger space that's still decidedly intimate. The re-purposed residential space is impeccably clean and inviting. Living and kitchen areas on the first floor are used for classes and meetings, the basement holds two kilns and a pottery studio, and administrative offices lie upstairs.
Most days of the week, the public spaces at the center are bustling with activity from one of the center's numerous classes. Starting off with around 20 class offerings for its first season in 2006, the center is currently offering over
80 different sessions for the winter 2013 season. Program coordinator Cindy Barnett says the most popular classes include watercolor painting and drawing for children. But Two Twelve's course catalog also includes more esoteric selections like rubber block printing, as well as technologically-minded instruction in using Etsy and Pinterest.
A former English and drama teacher, Bovee doesn't teach any classes at Two Twelve herself; "I dabble in the classes, but just for fun," she says. Instead, most of the instructors are former Two Twelve students. One of them is Cindy Baxter, who teaches the center's classes for homeschoolers.
"The moment you show up here, they say to you, ‘Can you teach a class?'" she jokes.
Children's pottery teacher Cathy Harmon has participated at Two Twelve in a number of roles: as a mom bringing her children to class, as a student under pottery studio manager Sharon Graf Horning, and now as an instructor.
"My kids took classes and then when my last one finally went off to school, I thought, 'It's my turn,'" she says. "Now they can't get rid of me."
At the heart of Two Twelve's programming is a monthly meeting called Cake Eaters, which brings together instructors, students, and other artists of varying disciplines and skill levels. Bovee says Cake Eaters started in the early days, when she and several other artists were trying to collaborate on a mural project in town. They set a meeting to discuss the project, with cake promised as a refreshment.
"We had plenty of cake, so we kept meeting," Bovee says. "The mural never got done."
These days, Cake Eaters meetings usually draw a crowd of around 30. There's a show-and-tell segment for artists to share their work, and the members often participate in crafting challenges.
"We have an agenda now," says Two Twelve program coordinator Cindy Barnett. "It used to be just chit-chat."
"Well, there's still chit-chat," Bovee interjects, laughing. "And there's always cake, of some sort."
The meetings are also a valuable way for artists to get more deeply involved in Two Twelve by participating in the center's annual Christmas sale, teaching a class, or entering works in Two Twelve's tent at the Saline Summerfest. Bovee expresses a fierce dedication to enabling artists to make money from their work. All teachers are paid for their efforts, and the center doesn't take a commission from any of the art exhibited in its sales.
"That's a very, very, very big thing for me," Bovee says. "Artists do not work for free. People think that artists are just hanging around, waiting to make things pretty. A doctor came into Two Twelve and said he was opening up a practice and did we have anybody that could just do a mural for him? And I thought, would you go and ask him if he could just do a little filing?"
The center's mission of lending artists new exposure and empowerment reaches far beyond the walls at 216 W. Michigan. Two Twelve sponsors a regular display at My Favorite Cafe in downtown Saline, and has also collaborated with the
Saline District Library on displays and other events. It also offers a regular outreach program at the
Fifth Corner teen center. Community outreach has been key to the center's growth, as Bovee and Barnett agree that Two Twelve's greatest challenge so far has been "getting people to know that we're here."
"People drive by us all the time," Barnett says. "They know that we're here, but they won't come in. And a lot of the time people say, 'Oh, I didn't know this is what you did.' A lot of people don't realize it's not a gallery, that it's education."
After seven years, the center has built up a strong following, serving an estimated 300 artists per month. Bovee and Barnett are planning to increase that number even more through new outreach work; they're currently considering options for reaching local migrant workers. But while efforts outside the center may be getting bigger, the two women say the cozy quarters of Two Twelve's current physical location are just right.
"We wouldn't be able to function as well as we do if we were bigger," Barnett says. "You have intimate classes and you have the one-on-one attention. That's what we would rather focus on."
Patrick Dunn is an Ann Arbor-based freelance writer and contributor to Metromode and Concentrate.
All photos by Doug Coombe