Stephen you’ve been a supporter of the arts for some time. How did you get interested in the arts? Are you an artist yourself?

Well I graduated from Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Theatre, Visual Arts and Creative Writing. I was there the first year when the school was started by Mary Frances Whittaker and she was still the principal. I guess Ive been interested in all the arts pretty much all my life—starting as a kid. I still paint, sculpt and work with photos… and I have either written and/or directed a number of the plays that we do at Boomtown, plus I performed in the Spoken Word circuit through the 90s. In theatre though I tend to like working in off center genres. I love doing experimental work like the revisionist cabaret styles we did and really enjoy creating interactive theatrical forms. I’m primarily a writer though, its been what I’m passionate about.

I hear you have quite an interesting art collection although I have not seen it in person. What type of work interests you?

There isn’t any one type of art that I’m drawn to. I collect from a whole bunch of different genres, Realist, Photography of several different varieties, some minor impressionists and a whole lot of whats coming to be called ‘contemporary’ work. Everything from vintage graffiti to neo arts and crafts and multimedia. I go through phases. For the past 5 years I have been collecting the work of self taught urban artists and scupltural work. Before that I was picking up mostly photographic pieces.

When did you buy your first piece?

in 1985

How do you know to buy a piece? Do you just get a feeling?

I really just buy peices for their beauty or their intent. I never take into account the financial investment side, although I have been extremely extremely lucky that way.

Do you follow an artists work for a long time usually?

From the minute i become aware of them….even if i don’t purchase anything they create immediately.

How do you store you work? Do you have most of your collection hung for viewing?

Not really. I have a pretty large collection, of which I am able to show about 1/8 of it at a time.

What artists do you have the most of in your collection?

Locally, Ryan Rummel, Lee Harvey and Tim Bullard.

For an UrbanJacksonville.info post with a podcast of Stephen and pics of his collection click here.

The Folio wrote a pretty interesting article about you a few months back. It seemed a bit one sided as there wasn’t one person who said anything good about you? How did that article develop? Why do you think the Folio attacked you so much in that article?

Who knows. The quality of Folios journalism has been in a tailspin since Bob Snell left the editorship position. Its hard for me to complain about Folio, long term since they have given me a lot of positivity and credit over the years. Probably the writer, Susan Eastman wanted to wrote about me from a different point of view.

We met in the previous January when she and a friend came to boomtown to celebrate new years eve. That particular night she seemed inordinately intereste in my partner John, asking pretty inappropriate questions about our relationship and private lives—next time I saw her she was interested in doing an article about my career and work—-which of course ended up being a lie.

She didn’t write anything at all about my work or career, just whatever collection of personal scandals and nonscandals she could dig up. People made themselves available to her. My business partners, former lovers, former business partners, collaborators and etc. But she was only interested in finding negatives and simply didnt print any positives. Apparently she spoke with my former partner Cheryl Crowder, in Indiana, with whom I raised two kids, and pumped her for about 45 minutes for negatives or something bad to say. Cheryl finally had to tell her that if she was looking for her to say something bad, there wasnt anything she could do for her and Susan thanked her and hung up.

I privately think its because we have never ever advertised with Folio in any significant way. Boomtown, obviously, is an arts based business, and Folio would like to present themselves as the end all, be all of arts marketing. Boomtown succeeded without them. On the other hand, our neighbor and competitor Henrietta’s spent more than a hundred thousand with them, had their full backing editorially and co-sponsorship wise and Folio rewarded Craig Van Horn with Man of the Year, despite the fact that he was swindling people out of their livelihoods left and right……despite all that, they failed.

So you have two businesses with identical business plans. One spends NO money with Folio and succeeds. The other spends GOBS of money with Folio and still fails. Added to that the fact that Metrojacksonville and the blogs are giving them a real run for their position as alternative journalism. Those are my private conspiracy theories, but in the end I really don’t know. I have remained on speaking terms with the editor, Anne Schindler and have kept up a friendly acquaintance with the writer. But Susan has never given me an honest or even intelligible answer as to why she wrote the article that she wrote.

Regardless of being attacked you keep on going. To me it seems Jacksonville has a way of attacking the ones who speak their mind. Do you feel their is any truth to that?

Well, what is ‘attack’ anyways. Once I left the suburbs, I realized that Folio is definitely not the end all be all. Folio is entitled to its opinion, such as it is. Its barely distributed to 10 percent of the population, –a very white—very southside portion of the population. And of that 10%, fully half of them have learned through the shoddy hit peices of the past 5 years to take whatever they say with a grain of salt. In any case, very few Folio readers have anything at all to do with the urban core. They certainly arent going to leave the suburbs and make their way downtown unless their looking for vicarious thrills.—–In which case they managed to make me seem mildly dangerous and at least as thrilling to meet as the creature from the black lagoon.

The other 90% of Jacksonville doesn’t read Folio. Luckily through my various projects there are enough people who know me well enough that Folio’s misrepresentations were seen for what they were.

Jacksonville does attack its own. Its a carnivorous culture—-possibly even cannibalistic. After travelling, I realized that if you can succeed in Jacksonville—-where the opposition is pretty certain that you are a one way ticket to everlasting hellfire, being denied the precious love of jesus and most of the ’support’ is waiting for one wrong move before the rocks start flying and the big pot of water starts boiling—then you can make it anywhere.

After Jacksonville, Seattle and San Francisco’s idea of adversity is a fucking joke. Relaxinville’s art community is basically a huge slacker town. Read the story ‘Slacker Wedding” by Jason Pettus. It totally nails Jacksonville even though it’s about a town in Missouri.
http://www.jasonpettus.com/ebooks/slacker.htm
http://www.jasonpettus.com/ebooks/slacker.pdf

There isn’t enough opportunity in this town. Nowhere near enough venues, no where near enough possibilities. Thats the source and root of it. If there were, people would concentrate on their own successes rather than the simply the failings of everyone elses. Its not really personal. It has a lot more to do with frustration thats just inappropriately channeled. Whenever I am on the receiving end, I try and remember that.

Why do you think Jacksonville is so closed and not open to dialogue?

People are afraid of rejection. When there is no opportunity or reward in this town except the plain joy of creation and the praise of others, then words are the most powerful currency around. We do not pay artists, artisans, creators or thinkers—-especially the creative types. If all they get is the chance to volunteer and some friendly encouragement then criticism feels like attack.

Dialogue, by its nature, is an invitation to criticism, and we haven’t established the idea in this town that there is a higher reward than validation—-which is the push towards excellence and competition in the realm of ideas. I think if people could simply win an argument and create no further meaning than having validated a point before moving on it would be easier. But people take every point personally. It would probably help if more people led by example, and won or lost their debate points gracefully. Websites that establish those rules help, although I can tell you from experience that it’s a bloody process to establish the conventions of civility.

There seems to be a lot of positive energy in the Jacksonivlle art community lately. In the last couple of years there have been a handful of spaces open up. What is your take on what is happening in the Jacksonville art scene?

See, I don’t see that. To me, it seems that there has been a net loss of spaces and there is fewer opportunity in the scene. There is definitely a lot of positive energy in the arts—-but there usually is. The city still hasn’t recovered from the Spiller Vincenty debacle, in my opinion. Maybe it will take even more time. Id like to see a few more independent galleries and some production companies. A couple of actual dealers would also be awesome.

I find the Jacksonville art scene sort of fractured. Sort of the case of the haves and the have nots. The ones who are making money at it don’t seem to associate with the emerging scene. What do you think the reason is for that?

Lack of venues on the parts of the established artists and lack of interest on the parts of the new artists. When there were more galleries and more openings there was a lot more opportunity to meet, mix and mingle. The older artists still don’t seem to have mastered email lists, blogs and websites, and the younger artists havent learned the trick of joining groups and showing up to functions.

For some reason I had thought that MOCA Jacksonville would be interested in working with the emerging scene to help it grow. I haven’t personally seen any of that other than the shows they have on the fifth floor gallery. Can you see a reason why MOCA Jacksonville wouldn’t work hand in hand with the emerging galleries like OPAQ, Bogda, and Jane Gray? I could see so many ways that they could partner together.

How would you suggest that? Shouldn’t you be pro active? We can all agree to love one another on the farm, but its hard to love a barn into existence. You need a plan, and a schedule.

I’ve always thought that MOCA Jacksonville would be excited about JaxCAL.org and what we have accomplished as far as community building in such a short time, but have yet to hear back from them? Do you have any ideas why this might be?

Established organizations don’t have the time or nature to hang out waiting and or listening. Right now they are fighting for their own lives, just like you are. They dont have the resources to nurture anyone. I mean if you think about it, they consider themselves in the same way as one might consider a workshop. Use the facility. Have meetings. Come up with objectives. But the museum will only occaisionally reach out and hold your hand or pat you on the back. Use them to better yourself, but find out what it is that they actually do. Volunteer one day a month. Its usually the best way to discover the organization.

I think people mistake the Museum in Jacksonville for one of the more established institutions of the larger cities. It has only barely elevated itself from the status as gallery and it is still defining its educational mission statement. Ideally the Museum will become a place where Contemporary Art is studied, taught and created. But it needs to create those functions still. Help them along. Come up with an actual program, or class. See if they have funds. If they don’t, see if you can find a sponsor from the community. Dont be afraid of rejection, because you WILL be rejected more times than not.

When it comes to the Arts, Jacksonville is a DIY town. remember that.

Realistically the Jacksonville art scene needs a lot. A lot of money. A lot of planning. A gallery district. A viable art market. How do you see this coming to fruition? How many years do you see it taking before we have a gallery district and a thriving art market where artists can make a living developing bleeding edge contemporary art?

Depends on how long you want to take to do it.

I’m at the age to decide to stay in Jacksonville throughout the remainder of my thirties and raise my children or to move on to a city that has more of what I’d like to surround myself with culturally and artistically. I think a lot of young families are in the same predicament. We have to make a choice to stay and help build Jacksonville or go to a more progressive city where what we are looking for already is there. Do you have any words of advice for young families like myself?What city would you advice someone to move to if they decided to move for the arts?

Boston, Philly, Seattle, New York, San Francisco. Raleigh Durham if you like film, Minneapolis if you like experimental music. Chicago, Boston or New York if you like architecture or the design arts.

Or Jacksonville if you want to do it yourself without an already established community telling you what is acceptable and what isn’t. It’s one of the things I like about this town. You are totally free to do whatever you want to do.

There’s no one to tell you that you can’t.

You’re quite the writer, have you written any short stories or anything for fun?

sure. tons. check out homerville in the breakroom on metrojacksonville.com.

Metrojacksonville.com is an advocacy journalism/ news site that focuses on urban development and creating more vibrant centrally organized communities.

What do you have in store for MetroJacksonville.com for the future?
Well we are aiming to be the largest online news source in this part of the country.

Could you tell me a little bit about Metro Jacksonville. How did it start? Who are you working with on it? How do you guys decide on a story? Is there an editor?

Metrojacksonville is owned by five guys. Me, Ennis Davis, Dan Herbin, Steve Congro, Kevin Conner. Ennis is a landplanner/ architect, Steve is an IT guy with a background in the cities ITdepartment and politics. Dan Herbin is another IT guy who works with the railroads. Kevin is a financial planner and real estate investor.

We all kind of met on urbanjacksonville.info in a discussion about the Peterbrooke’s plan to open a factory in the Main Library. We got into a huge debate and the conversation was so vibrant that it moved over to a blog forum called metjax.com.

While we all enjoyed the forum environment, we started having an issue with the type of work that our little group was doing. We were doing more indepth analysis that really needed more editorial space and graphics and video capability in order to properly publish. We started metrojacksonville as a complement to the larger group/ focused mostly out of the political gossip and onto urban issues and then started growing.

Since then we’ve gotten heavily involved in downtown development, transportation and analysis of metropolitan policies. We meet in person weekly to decide the best way to cover our subjects, which we decide on at the meetings. Besides the five principals who do the website, we have also got a pretty awesome forum, whose contributors are among the best informed and positioned people in the city. Between our investigative and analytical pieces and their parsing and filling out, we’re pretty proud of what it’s become.

What projects do you see yourself working on in the future?

Right now I plan on concentrating on reviving the Main Street Corridor for the arts. That and Metrojacksonville.

What local blogs do you currently read?

That’s easy. Urbanjacksonvillle. Jacksonvilleconfidential (a guilty pleasure),jaxcal, flog (its like a trainwreck of malice sometimes, but sometimes its useful. I like gwynedd’s peices.) I also like synclive.com which is awesome.