Parklets are here!

Recently, the City initiated an effort in conjunction with the Downtown Improvement District, Chamber of Commerce, and Convention and Visitor’s Bureau to improve the sociability of our downtown. Due to the Center’s interest in creative placemaking in our downtown, we were invited to be part of the Promotions Group.

The Promotions Group focuses on marketing, special events, and public relations for the downtown area, focusing on making it look more inviting and appealing to the local citizens. While we have been contributing to the ongoing research about how the public uses the downtown area, we have also played a key part in the first transformation project.

Right outside of our windows, we can see the City taking its first steps towards re-imagining downtown Modesto by converting non-usable street corners into pedestrian friendly ‘parklets’. These are small urban parks created to provide a public place for citizens to relax and enjoy the atmosphere of the city around them. Through the redistribution of city owned tree and flower planters, the addition of some decoupage painting techniques, and cafe tables and chairs, the city has in one weekend transformed the urban experience of 10th and J street.

The transformation was covered in two Modesto Bee articles, here and here.

And the Building Imagination Center was right there to help. Come out, enjoy a sandwich, and enjoy this transformation firsthand.

parklet-moving-planter — The City redistributes it’s tree and flower planters to define the borders of the new parklets.

parklet-almost-finished — Bistro tables and chairs welcome pedestrians to stop and sit.

October 8, 2012September 11, 2015

ArtPlace spoke with the Building Imagination Center about succeeding in its initiative to create community change

ArtPlace spoke with Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Director for the Building Imagination Center, about the goals of the Center and the downtown art scene in Modesto, California.

ARTPLACE: What do you have to do really (really) well to achieve success with your initiative?

GOMULA-KRUZIC: My experience has been that change doesn’t happen until people can visualize it. Change will happen when people can imagine a better future for themselves and their community, and have a sense for how that future can come about. The whole purpose of the Building Imagination Center is to stimulate people to imagine a better Modesto and provide a path to get there. This is what we need to do really really well.

Modesto is already known as the least livable city in the county and everyone here is well aware of the ranking and why it is so. For our gallery exhibit, we will help people see the physical place of Modesto in a different light by exploring some of the area’s architectural heritage. Local artists of all ages will exhibit photos, drawings, paintings, and watercolors of Modesto’s architecture. We will also have an exhibit of the architectural design of Frank Lloyd Wright associate and local resident Robert Beharka. This exhibit, and the Building Imagination Center itself, will serve as the hub of the fifth annual Modesto International Architecture Festival.

ARTPLACE: How do you expect the community to change as a result?

GOMULA-KRUZIC: It is not enough just to have an exhibit. We want to create concrete changes for the better. Together with the Modesto Art Museum and other community partners, we have asked people to submit paint schemes for a nearby dilapidated Art Deco Style gas station in downtown Modesto. One entry will be selected, and the building will be revived and painted accordingly. We want to show that imagining how a building could be better is actually the first step in making it happen. As part of our first show, we will exhibit all the designs that were submitted by Modesto residents and others along with photos of the transformed building.

Additionally, we will be hosting a PARK(ing) Day event as part of the architecture festival. This is an annual worldwide event where artists, designers, landscape architects, and citizens transform metered parking spots into temporary public parks.

Read the article

September 22, 2012September 11, 2015

Center Aims to Attract Artistic Talent to Modesto

MODESTO — The Building Imagination Center, a downtown Modesto venue to promote video and the visual arts, has its grand opening reception Sept. 20.

Thursday’s reception is timed to fall during downtown Modesto’s Third Thursday Art Walk, when several galleries stay open late.

Modesto Bee – DEBBIE NODA/dnoda@modbee.com Some of the gallery of images of architecture by Robert Beharka on display at the Building Imagination Center, Sept. 18, 2012.

Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, the center’s director and an associate professor at CSU Stanislaus, said she hopes to serve the community by helping residents learn and improve video skills that could aid them in their careers.

“Our goal is to attract talent to Modesto and keep talent in Modesto,” she said.

During the reception, the center will screen a new short video on homelessness by the center’s first filmmaker-in-residence, Christian Hali, and four students from CSU Stanislaus’ Video and Time-Based Media program.

Decorated J Street parking spots were projects to raise urban awareness

Honda. Hummer. Hyundai. Hammock?

Vehicles on the streets of Modesto had some unusual company on Friday. A few downtown parking spaces were temporarily transformed into mini-parks in honor of international PARK(ing) Day.

All were on J Street. One in front of the State Theatre featured lawn chairs, plants, turf and a fence made out of architect blueprint tubes that also doubled as drums. The Serrano Social Club’s mini-park featured a hammock and a bike rack. The final park, in front of the new Building Imagination Center, sported log seats.

History buffs admire downtown Modesto’s design gems

MODESTO — She was discussing the library building on I Street, but Ilse Craane might well have been describing downtown Modesto:

“It’s almost nondescript, but when you start looking, you see really great details.”

Craane led a handful of history buffs on a 10-block architecture tour of downtown Modesto on Saturday morning. The tour kicked off the fifth Modesto International Architecture Fest, which runs through Sept. 23, and served as the opening of the Building Imagination Center, a venture of California State University, Stanislaus, and the Modesto Art Museum.

Saturday’s tour focused on modernism in architecture, with the library a case in point.

September is a Busy Month

September is a busy month in art and architecture for the Modesto Art Museum. The Building Imagination Center will open in September on Tenth Street. At the invitation of CSU Stanislaus, MAM will move into the Center at 1009 J Street. The center includes a movie making lab and theatre. The 5th annual Modesto International Architecture Festival is 9 days of events, activities, movies, tours, talks, and workshops that will run September 15 – 23, 2012.

Building Imagination Center, A New Art Gallery and Cinema Partnership with CSU Stanislaus, Announces Opening Schedule

The Building Imagination Center — a partnership between the Building Imagination Initiative, California State University (CSU), Stanislaus and the Modesto Art Museum — has announced the schedule of events for its mid-September opening.

• Sept. 15, 2012: Starting point for a one-hour guided tour of downtown Modesto modernist buildings, as part of the Modesto International Architecture Festival (Beginning at 10:30 a.m.).

• Sept. 18, 2012: CSU Stanislaus assistant professor Dr. Staci Gem Scheiwiller explores the mingling of traditions that created Islamic architecture, in a lecture entitled “Architectural Hybridities: Pagan, Christian, Islamic, or all the above?” (Beginning at 7:30 p.m.).

• Sept. 20, 2012: Guests welcomed during Modesto’s Third Thursday Art Walk.

The events are free and open to the public.

September 4, 2012September 11, 2015

ArtPlace spoke with the Building Imagination Center about the Center & the downtown art scene

ArtPlace spoke with Jessica Gomula-Kruzic, Director for the Building Imagination Center, about the goals of the Center and the downtown art scene in Modesto, CA.

ARTPLACE: What is your elevator pitch when you describe your project to people?

GOMULA-KRUZIC: We are transforming a vacant storefront in downtown Modesto into the Building Imagination Center, a space for video and visual arts exhibitions, arts education, and artist residencies.

The Center will provide a link between CSU Stanislaus, the Modesto Art Museum, and Modesto’s downtown cultural district. It will provide a physical space for exhibiting visual arts in a non-commercial gallery, and will regularly host visual arts programming through the Modesto Art Museum’s Building a Better Modesto program. The Center will host video screenings and visual art receptions which will coincide with the downtown ArtWalk.

Using a relaxed “48-hour documentary filmmaking” model, resident artists will work with community groups to create original documentaries, using CSU Stanislaus students as cinematographers. Community members will be an integral part of the production process. Half of the resident artists will be CSU alumni, encouraging them to stay in the area and building a bridge between their academic and professional careers.

Read the article

September 3, 2012September 11, 2015

Building Imagination Initiative on Modesto’s Modernist Architecture funded by the Creative Work Fund

While immortalized in the film American Graffiti, of late Modesto’s charm has been tarnished by high rates of foreclosure, unemployment (16.7%) , and crime. Last year it placed nineteenth in Forbes Magazine’s list of the nation’s most miserable cities.

ArtPlace’s grant to the Creative Work Fund allowed us to award grants to five new place-based projects in locations where need is high and grant opportunities are limited. One such Creative Work Fund grant supports a partnership among media artists Jessica Gomula-Kruzic and Steve Arounsack with the Modesto Art Museum. The partners are making a film about one of Modesto’s distinctive but forgotten assets—its remarkable stock of mid-century modernist buildings.

Like many United States cities, Modesto enjoyed a building boom after World War II. According to architect and writer Kiel Famellos-Schmidt, “All of the major civic buildings date to the post war boom. Glass, steel, aluminum, exposed aggregate concrete, and terra cotta sun screens structure these buildings.” While its public buildings are noteworthy, it’s Modesto’s modernist homes that drew national attention. The Heckendorf Residence, designed by John Funk in 1939, set the city’s modernist movement in motion.

Read the article HERE

July 13, 2012September 11, 2015

Future home of the Building Imagination Center

There is a great deal of excitement in Modesto about the Art Place grant to open a new art center in our community. In addition to several news articles featuring the Building Imagination Center (Modesto Bee, Central Valley Business Journal, Central Valley Business Times, James Irvine Foundation, ArchDaily), we have also received volunteer offers to participate in the program from civic leaders and the community- at- large.

The new Center will be located in the heart of downtown Modesto, next to several other arts organizations, including the 1600-seat Gallo Center for the Arts. Yet, despite its proximity to this regional arts attraction, the area in which the Center is located is currently half vacant. Currently the University is securing the lease agreement and all the necessary paperwork to help us to gain access to the building as soon as possible.

But, while the negotiations have been taking place in the background, we have been actively working in the foreground, getting bids from various contractors to provide services such as:

Repairing the flooring.
Installing track lighting and providing other needed electrical improvements.
Repainting the existing walls.
Constructing new walls for artwork.
Securing furnishings.
Purchasing video editing and display equipment.

In addition to addressing the physical remodeling of the existing site, we have also been busy:

Launching our new website, BuildingImagination.com
Implementing a mobile and online ticketing system for our events.
Having our mobile phone App built by Apptology.com
Defining the specific job responsibilities of every member involved with the Center.
Posting employment opportunities, including a workshop leader / assistant to the Director position and several gallery assistant positions.
Preparing PLAY, one of our current Building Imagination Initiative projects, for the San Jose Zero1 Art and Technology Biennial.

Naturally, this preliminary down time has led to a great deal of brainstorming and realistic ideation about how to make our space as functional and flexible as possible. Having different sections of the Center perform multiple uses is an absolute necessity, and making sure that we have the infrastructure there to support all of those needs is of paramount importance.

One of the primary needs of the space include a visual arts gallery. The Center will be the physical embodiment of the Modesto Art Museum, the only visual arts museum in the city. For the Museum to be able to offer historical and contemporary masterpieces for public viewing it must be able to provide a secure and professional location. Currently the Museum is arranging several exhibits for the Center, with the opening exhibit featuring architectural photographs, renderings, and models as part of the 5th annual Modesto International Architecture Festival. Accompanying this opening exhibit will be several community forums, lectures, tours, and the architecture festival’s opening night gala.

The Center will also be a hub of community activity through its Resident Filmmaker Program. This program is the cornerstone of the Center’s vision on creating real and permanent change in the community. The program will create a cycle of empowerment by having CSU Stanislaus students serve as the film crew for regional filmmakers. These filmmakers will work with local community groups to create short form documentaries about their community work. These films will create a personal bridge between the community, the students, and the filmmakers. In turn, the community groups, and the public at large, will be able to attend free video training workshops to increase their own marketable skills. Half of the resident filmmakers will be alumni from CSU Stanislaus, providing a reason for them to remain in the area after graduation. All of the staff employed by the center will also be either current students from CSU Stanislaus, or recent graduates.

The Building Imagination Center is planning its grand opening to coincide with the Third Thursday ArtWalk in Modesto, September 20.