Real Art Ways Marks 40 Years Of Defending Gritty, Contemporary Art

In 1975, a two-story building at 197 Asylum St. in downtown Hartford with an upholstery shop, an appliance store and a sheet-music store on the ground floor became the unlikely epicenter of avant-garde art in the city.

This Saturday, May 21, more than four decades later, the ongoing legacy of what began in that space is being celebrated with a big-ticket party in Hartford.

Don’t try looking for 197 Asylum St. It was torn down in 1980 to make way for CityPlace. But from 1975 to 1980, through a fortuitous set of circumstances, that building became the birthplace of Real Art Ways, an unexpectedly long-running organization that changed the face of the Hartford arts scene. All it took were four young artists looking for a place to live, work and hang out with other artists; an uncommonly lenient landlord; and a pile of junk left behind by the previous tenant.

One day in 1975, those artist-tenants — Dan Talley, Ruth Cutler, Al Baccili and Joe Celli —- were messing around with that pile of junk.

“The last renter of the place was an airline hostess school. It had these classrooms. … There was a box of plastic letters, the kind you’d put on portable signs on the roadway,” Talley said in a recent interview. “We started pulling them out to see what words we can make with them. We were being goofy, having a few beers, laughing. We came up with real, art, ways.”

They put the letters in the window. Their grass-roots thing now had a name. Soon it had a reputation, too, as a place to see recent work by local artists and performances by cutting-edge performers Celli brought up from New York. Often local artists helped organize shows, like Talley’s college buddy Stan Sharchal, who did so much in the early days of Real Art Ways (RAW) that he’s considered a co-founder, too.

Over the years, Real Art Ways’ energy level stayed high, as Cutler, Baccili and Talley moved out, pursuing other goals, and new artists moved in with Celli. As those artists moved out, others moved in. They gave Celli new ideas and new media to present. Celli ran the show, as Real Art Ways’ first real director.

But Real Art Ways’ cash flow was spotty. Sometimes the rent, which was low to begin with, was late or didn’t come, the landlord, Henry Zachs, said. Zachs said he let that slide.

“How many months did I let them live rent-free? … It could have been one month. It could have been six months. I don’t remember,” Zachs said recently. “If I hadn’t given them free rent they might have been out on the street.”

Zachs liked his tenants and appreciated the artistic vigor they brought to the neighborhood. Zachs can be said to be the founding group’s “fifth Beatle.” Without his generosity, it’s unlikely Real Art Ways would have survived until 1980, let alone 2016.

This week, Real Art Ways is celebrating its 40th anniversary with a bash at its current digs at 56 Arbor St. to honor the highlights and legacy of Real Art Ways, which transitioned decades ago from a fringe player to an anchor of Hartford’s cultural landscape.

The path toward RAW’s current status hasn’t been easy. Over the years, despite government and foundation grants and private donations, money has been a recurring worry. In the world of art, this isn’t uncommon; financial woes annihilate many an art space. Real Art Ways was no exception. In the early ’90s, RAW was on the brink of extinction. Today, donation pleas have a foreboding tone, even as the venue opens innovative exhibits, throws popular soirees and screens outside-the-box movies that rarely play anywhere else in the area.

National Trend

Celli said the mid-1970s was an era when many young artists around the country were showing work in their urban cribs. Most of those makeshift art spaces dissolved as the trend dissolved.

“Artists were creating their own alternative exhibition and performing spaces,” Celli, of Bridgeport, said in an interview. “In New York City they had this big loft movement taking place in SoHo. People would invite friends to their loft to do a performance event. … So many of the [museums] were closed to what contemporary artists were doing.”

Hartford was an exception, Celli said, because the Wadsworth Atheneum had the MATRIX gallery for contemporary art, which had its first exhibit the same year Real Art Ways was founded. Andrea Miller-Keller, MATRIX curator from 1986 to 1998, loves Real Art Ways, calling its contribution to cutting-edge art “unmatched by any other arts organization in this state.”

The early days of RAW were loosey-goosey, toggling between exciting high points and silly failures. Cutler, of Ashford, remembers days when Celli booked artists and then forgot he booked them, so she was the only person in the audience. Baccili, of Jersey City, N.J., remembers a “happening” he planned, with a beach-party theme, after which it took a long time to get all the sand out of the building.

A Hartford Courant article from the early days of RAW ridiculed a performance artist who blew up a log.

Cutler remembers projecting slides onto the exterior wall of the Civic Center across the street and Mardi Gras parades that ended at 197 Asylum. “The police sat outside our building but never came in,” she said.

She also remembers the day photographer William Wegman, then a visiting artist at Hartford Art School, came to RAW to check it out and brought his Weimaraner, Man Ray. The dog, the most down-to-earth of all art-world superstars, rooted in the garbage and flipped over the can.

Celli remembers other events that can be seen, depending on one’s viewpoint, as high or low points.

“We presented John Zorn. One person was in the audience,” he said. In 2016, Zorn, known worldwide, received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant and was feted on his 60th birthday in 2013 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Other events were more popular. “We presented the American premiere of John Cage’s 12-hour piece ‘Empty Words,’ in the church across from G. Fox,” he said. “Three hundred people came for 12 hours. It was broadcast on National Public Radio.”

Doubting voices about RAW’s purpose were heard, sometimes from The Courant. A 1995 editorial, after Celli left, recalled his leadership: “The people running RAW had gotten a little too esoteric and smug about what they were doing. If their events drew small audiences, that proved they were avant-garde. The smaller the audience, the more avant-garde. Had that continued, the organization would have achieved perfect vacancy and reduced itself to a concept.”

Celli didn’t care and still doesn’t. “Doing cutting-edge art in the insurance capital of the world is sort of an oxymoron, isn’t it?” he said. “If our intent was to do things specifically to attract a big audience, we would have opened up a McDonald’s. But that’s not what it was about. It was about the quality of the work itself and trying to develop an educated audience for that work.”

Celli used composer Philip Glass as an example. “Initially, we brought him in. … He and I carried equipment up to the second floor and he helped me sweep the floor and set up the chairs and he played a concert for 75 people,” Celli said. “Later, he came back to Hartford and played at the Atheneum for 300 people. The third time he played at The Bushnell for approximately 1,300 people.”

On The Move

Money hasn’t been Real Art Ways’ only challenge. Finding a permanent place has been an issue, too.

After Zachs sold the building, the new owners evicted Real Art Ways to raze the structure in 1980. RAW had to leave its second space, at 40 State St., also due to redevelopment. It was forced out of its third downtown space, at 94 Allyn St., due to plans to build a skyscraper that, in the end, was never built. Real Art Ways then left downtown and landed at its long-term home at 56 Arbor St. in 1989. It’s possible RAW will move again someday, said current director Will K. Wilkins.

Over the years, the arts organization has played host to hundreds of musicians, sculptors, performance artists and other creative talents, many who became stars — Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, Judy Chicago, Louise Bourgeois, Christo, Laurie Anderson, Ornette Coleman, Eric Bogosian — and many who did not.

Wilkins took over in 1990, after Celli’s successor, Jeffrey Jones, left after only two years out of frustration with RAW’s financial straits. Wilkins — who previously worked as an on-air host at WBAI in New York and with Central Park Summerstage — was left to deal with it.

His first important duty was to lay off everyone except the bookkeeper.

“It was a really perilous moment for them. … The economy was terrible. … There was a real-estate crash. … There were enormous cutbacks in all the major insurance companies. It all happened at once,” Wilkins said. “[Real Art Ways] had very little money. What money they were expecting to get kind of fell apart. The way I saw it, there was no choice. We could have kept people on a little longer, but then there would be no money and no possibility for any future.”

In the aftermath of that debacle, societal factors were afoot that helped redefine RAW’s reputation and refill its coffers. The National Endowment of the Arts was under attack by conservative activists. Artists Tim Miller, John Fleck, Holly Hughes and Karen Finley had their NEA funding vetoed, making them famous but difficult to book. Wilkins invited them all to Hartford. They were a succes de scandale.

“All of a sudden people were coming and selling out performances. That was one of the ways that really turned it around,” Wilkins said. “Every time Jesse Helms would attack somebody from the floor of the Senate, I would invite them to come to Hartford to present them. I felt that Jesse Helms should get a curatorial credit.”

Wilkins considered the NEA controversy an attack not just on art but on LGBT openness. One of his missions became embracing LGBT art, at a time when gay activists were fighting for greater visibility.

“In 1994 [LGBT-themed] Metroline magazine named me an ‘Honorary Homo,'” he said. Miller, of the NEA Four, called Real Art Ways one of the most “queer-friendly” spaces in the United States.

Other missions included reaching out to the city’s neighborhoods in the form of public art and events. One highlight was Pepon Osorio’s 1994 “En La Barberia No Se Llora: No Crying Allowed In The Barbershop,” a pop-up installation presented on Park Street in 1994. The centerpiece work from that exhibit is now in the permanent collection at Wadsworth Atheneum.

The expansion of RAW from 1,500 to 12,500 square feet at the Arbor Street complex, and the 1996 addition of a movie theater, also increased the scope and profitability of the art space.

Real Art Ways Today

Today Real Art Ways has an annual budget of $1.2 million, a staff of about 25 full- and part-time employees and about 1,500 member households. Wilkins said the earned and contributed income is split four ways, in roughly equal percentages: government funding; foundation and corporate funding; individual contributions; and ticket sales and concessions.

However, financial uneasiness seems to be a constant. Last August, Wilkins sent out a mass e-mail begging for donations, writing that “longevity is not a guarantee.”

Still, there are battles to fight. Wilkins says the reluctance of many suburbanites to come into Hartford is a stumbling block.

“I’ve talked to so many young people who grow up outside Hartford. They don’t know what goes on in Hartford and don’t go in to Hartford. They’ve been told since they were little kids, ‘You don’t do that,'” he said. “I think that will change over time, but that’s a challenge.”

Financially and spatially, he added, there is room for improvement, too. RAW has a cash reserve of about $500,000 but Wilkins is hoping someday for a generous endowment. He also hopes to expand to multiple screens in the cinema and more exhibition space. To accomplish this, Wilkins is in the preliminary stages of floating the idea of relocating Real Art Ways yet again.

“We’re actually having conversations right now whether our future will be in this building or whether we might look at some other alternative,” he said. “We’re definitely thinking about growth and how that’s going to happen. We need to see what we can afford.”

This week, however, the emphasis is on celebration. Talley, an art professor at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania, will be at the party on Saturday, as will Cutler and Celli. Baccili, who is busy helping his wife, artist Sandy Skoglund, with her exhibits, can’t make it. (Sharchal is deceased.) Wilkins, supporters, members and well-wishers will fill the Arbor Street venue with reminiscing and hopes for the future.

Zachs, who lives in Farmington, will be there, too. He is one of RAW’s biggest fans and is still a generous contributor, for the same reason he was back in the early days.

“You do those kinds of things,” he said, “when you see something that’s good.”

REAL ART WAYS’ 40TH ANNIVERSARY REAL PARTY is Saturday, May 21, from 6 to 10:30 p.m. at 56 Arbor St. in Hartford. Each guest gets to take home a work of art. Limited tickets are still available, starting at $175 per person, here.