Finding Rooms for Art

It’s the late 1970s, and the heroine of “Antony and Cleopatra” is not so much “onstage” as “afloat.” The legendary production devised by renowned director Peter M. Sellars ’80 made visionary use of the Adams House Pool, now a common venue for Harvard theater.

Sellars’ production is just one example of the experimental, anti-establishment creative work that has profited from the use of house facilities. Basement darkrooms and dance facilities give students the opportunity to make art outside of established venues such as Sanders Theater or the Carpenter Center.

But while these facilities are advertised as being open to all, some have gone unused in recent years, and relatively few students know of their existence.

A few may soon stop collecting dust, however, as students, house tutors, and supportive house administrations seek to rejuvenate and re-imagine the possibilities and purposes of various house spaces. Chief among their goals is increasing student awareness not only of these renovated facilities but of their availability to those who aren’t world-class violinists or skilled oil-painters.

“That has been my goal: to get people who don’t self-describe themselves as artists to come and use the facilities,” says Kevin Moore, the resident art tutor in Lowell House, who also oversees the house art room and darkroom. While many house arts facilities remain off the beaten path, they’re striving­­—in some cases, successfully—to follow in the footsteps of the Adams House Pool Theater and establish themselves as poplar institutions.



FIXING A BROKEN ARROW

Perhaps one of the more unique facilities on campus is the Bow and Arrow Press, a manual, moveable-type printing press located in the basement of Adams House. The students in charge of running the press—called “press masters”—are currently seeking university recognition as an official student group.

“We’re looking at trying to establish more reliable sources of funding,” says Sam D. Jacoby ’08-’09, one of five student press masters involved with running the press. Historically, funding for the press has come from Adams House and grants provided by the Undergraduate Council (UC) or the Office for the Arts (OFA). Funding has been somewhat “haphazard,” according to Jacoby. Since it lacks official standing, the press can only apply to one-time project grants from the OFA and the UC.

According to John Pyper, an Adams non-resident tutor and a local artist in charge of the underground press, the space was first established in the 1950s as a means of publishing left-wing propaganda and protest literature. In the mid-90s, the press had a close relationship with the local Grolier Poetry Book Shop and commissioned several poems from distinguished poets such as Donald Hall ’51. But when Pyper first walked into the press four years ago, he found the space in shambles.

Today, the Bow and Arrow Press caters mainly to students who wish to create flyers for their groups and events. Most students find out about the press through word-of-mouth and as a result, Pyper estimates that only 100 students take advantage of its facilities each semester.

“Of that, there are maybe 10 or 15 that are really active, but not even on a real consistent basis because it’s all based off of whether or not the student wants to spend the time,” Pyper says.

The press masters, however, have a slightly more ambitious outlook for Bow and Arrow. They hope recognition as an official student organization will boost the profile of the press and attract more students—even those without any artistic experience—to try something new.

“The main motivation is to let more people know about it,” Jacoby says.

UNLOCKING THE CAGE

Like the Bow and Arrow Press, the Quincy Cage has come to occupy a special place on campus among students looking for an offbeat place to perform. The Cage has primarily hosted rock bands and pop groups since it opened in the spring of 2002. In its brief history, the Cage has staged performances by a wide range of groups, including a “Star Wars” tribute band and a dual-laptop electronica outfit.

Due to construction in Quincy, the Cage was hastily shut down last spring, leaving many campus bands without a place to perform.

According to Parker K. Barnes ’08, bassist for So Long Princess, the closure pre-empted a lot of shows that might have otherwise taken over the Cage.

“I could really only name one or two other places on campus off the top of my head where you can play really loud music,” he says. “So the taking away of one of those spaces was certainly noticeable.”

The space reopened on Feb. 7, and according to Quincy Cage manager Alexandria Eisenbarth ’09, various groups quickly booked available performing slots soon after. Though the upcoming acts are still primarily rock bands, Eisenbarth is hoping to reach out to other performers who would not normally find the Cage a natural venue.

Eisenbarth’s goals for the Cage are in many ways similar to those of the Bow and Arrow: she wants to publicize the stage and end its status as a niche venue.

“In the past couple of years it’s been mostly involvement with HCARAR [Harvard College Alliance for Rock and Roll], and we’re still trying to get a lot of talent from them,” Eisenbarth says. “But we really want to open it up to a lot of different genres. Anyone who wants to use it as a performance space is completely welcome. If that means there are different types of music or if that means a small acting troupe wants to come in and do something, or if someone wants to have a rap battle.”

Opening the stage to a variety of performing groups is a priority for Eisenbarth. “We’re trying really hard to advertise as much as possible because we want people who wouldn’t really have an opportunity to perform otherwise.”

DARKROOMS STAY THAT WAY

Though both the Cage and the Bow and Arrow Press are seeing steady streams of students entering, other house spaces have essentially been abandoned. Many of the manual darkrooms—which are located in multiple houses, including Lowell, Pforzheimer, and Adams­—are being pushed out of business by the relative simplicity of digital photography.

According to Lowell tutor Moore, much of the equipment found in various house darkrooms was procured after the Graduate School of Design (GSD) darkroom was decomissioned. The same reason that prompted the GSD to abandon traditional photography also meant that the house darkrooms quickly became obsolete.

“We definitely haven’t seen much use [of the darkroom],” says Omar M. Abdelsamad ’09, one of the co-chairs of the Adams House Committee.

“It’s the result of a long chain of digital photography taking over, basically,” Moore says.

“The [Lowell] darkroom is looking for a champion,” he says. “If anyone is still interested in developing photos manually, there is a place for them in the house, and it’s a place that I think has not been really utilized for at least the last two, three years. The state of it right now is a darkroom [that has] a developing area and two enlargers and a couple of red lights that have burned out. And the chemicals are out of date.”

PRESSED FOR TIME

Though some of these house facilities see more use than others, they all face an uncertain future. The typically overscheduled Harvard student often has little leisure time available to take advantage of these unsung spaces.

The perpetual dearth of students using Lowell House’s art room provides just one example of a venue suffering from the busy student schedules. “Admittedly, last year we had a number of workshops,” Moore says. “We had a make-your-own furniture workshop and a cartooning workshop. This year, I scaled down on the formal workshops because I found they took a lot of front-end planning and also buying of materials and several times the turnout was just a little disappointing. It seems like you never get the right hours. Everybody’s busy. A lot of things suffer due to a general overtaxed environment.”

“It’s all about giving something away for free, which is your time,” Pyper says of the Bow and Arrow Press. “How many students have that to give away? Very few. On some level, there’s a limit to how many times people really can come.”

Though the items printed at the Bow and Arrow Press can exude an aura of antiquated charm and elegance that sets them apart from the mass-produced posters one commonly sees around campus, the time commitment required to produce a poster at the press often discourages already overtaxed students.

“It can take an average of five to six hours to create a poster,” says Ke Xu ’09, another press master.

A lack of institutional memory also plagues many house arts spaces. Running the darkrooms and the press requires specialized knowledge. Despite the student advocacy surrounding these various spaces, it’s frequently difficult to keep the venues functioning after the departure of a particularly instrumental tutor or the graduation of a student organizer.

When David J. Tischfield ’09 took over the Quincy House pottery studio, the facility hadn’t been used in several semesters.

“An older woman ran the studio for years up until around four years ago when she had kids and gave up the responsibility,” he says. “It just sat there and collected dust until last spring when I started teaching classes there again.”

Though he is now actively running two separate weekly courses, each with an average of ten students, Tischfield is still uncertain about the future of the studio.

“I would hate to see it go into hibernation again. The only problem is that much of what I know about running studios comes from personal experience. I was extremely lucky to get while in high school. Most people don’t get the training I get, so it’s tough.”

Of course, even if these student spaces are successful in attracting a larger group of students, they risk losing the cachet of being underground. Sellars’ once revolutionary use of the Adams pool doesn’t seem so novel anymore. It’s now an established venue, like the Loeb or Agassiz.

Yet for students like Jacoby, much of this is irrelevant.

“Whatever an indie badge-of-honor is, I don’t think the Press is much interested in keeping it,” Jacoby says. “We’re just happy when people are down there learning and printing. That’s really all there is to it.”

—Staff writer Eric W. Lin can be reached at ericlin@fas.harvard.edu.