Changes swirl inside the Charles City Arts Center

By Kate Hayden | khayden@charlescitypress.com

Imagine sitting in the Charles City Arts Center on a November evening, listening to a pianist play softly during an open reception for local artists. Or dropping by after school is out on a week day, and listening to an instrumentalist tutoring a student in the building’s south gallery.

Those are the kind of experiences Director Jacqueline Davidson wants to start fostering, now that a local resident donated a Yamaha piano to the center. The piano was delivered last Saturday and was an instant hit with visitors stopping by, she said.

“We had people on Saturday playing,” Davidson said. “It’s beautiful. It’s just beautiful. People would just come in to play on the piano.”

Movers just barely lucked out when delivering the piece. It was pretty tight.

“It just fit into the elevator. It’s 59 and a half inches long, and the elevator is 61 inches,” Davidson said, laughing. “It’s supposed to lift 1400 pounds, and this isn’t 1400 pounds, but it was complaining all the way up.”

The sounds from the piano made the bated breathes worthwhile.

“The way this room is, it’s like it was made for a piano to be in here, it just echoes in the whole entire building, even in the basement you can hear it –– and it sounds wonderful in the basement,” Davidson said. “We were just thrilled beyond compare.”

Now, the center is looking for piano teachers –– be it a longtime instructor, or high school or college student thinking about teaching piano. Visitors have already started donating piano books, including Christmas music –– which Davidson hopes to use for a Christmas party.

It’s another step in Davidson’s central goal for the center: joining local creatives together.

“I would like to see all the art organizations in town start to be united and help each other out,” Davidson said. “Now if the orchestra or the community chorus needs a place to rehearse or a reception, they’ve got the piano. It’s already here, it’s already finely tuned and it’s in great shape. They’re more than welcome to use it, and that way we can start pulling together as a unit and making sure that Charles City keeps the culture that it worked for for so many years.”

The Arts Center already had an older piano in a room off of the main floor galleries, but that piano has been somehow damaged, harming it’s ability to stay perfectly in tune. It’s still close enough that it can be used for young beginners, Davidson said, earning it a continued home at the center.

“It needs repairs before it can be re-tuned,” she said. “It’s good enough though, said two orchestra members, to learn on…When you get a little bit older and your ears start picking up on the tune, and the subtleties of it, you’re going to know it doesn’t sound right.”

Saturday also start a massive cleanout in the basement classrooms for the Arts Center and seven volunteers.

“Two truckloads went out, and we still have more to go. At least you can imagine it now,” Davidson said.

And nestled in the depths, a huge, red dragon head, started by a children’s class a few years ago for the Chinese New Year but never finished. Davidson, who said she has Welsh ancestry –– in which red dragons are a prominent Welsh symbol –– wasn’t about to give up that dragon.

“They were talking about throwing it away, and I said, ‘oh, we can’t do that’,” she joked.

The dragon now resides in the pottery room –– fitting for a beast known for firing.

It will take three more days or so to clean out the basement. It’s been another solid month of Davidson and volunteers sorting through physical records, trying to centralize membership lists, local artists and other database items into digital files.

Children’s classes are also starting up again Nov. 17 for students in grades 3-5, taught by Jill Strick on Thursdays from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Classes will run until the middle of December, and new classes will resume in February.

“She does a lot of mixed media, and I think that’s a good place to start them off in,” Davidson said.

There is plenty more to keep the Arts Center busy this month. The organization is accepting submissions from local artists for the artists’ holiday market between Nov. 5 and 11. After that, there is a holiday party being planned, wine and cheese dates in the making and community concerts and recitals to attend to.

As always, all free to the public thanks to center memberships –– as Davidson says, the Charles City Arts Center belongs to Charles City.

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