The following is part of a work-in progress called The Art Colony.
Preface
The first book I wrote was a self-published memoir called An American Comedy. It was a chronicle of my 20s--a very personal story about depression, art, loneliness, and the search for identity after losing ones faith. Like Dante’s Divine Comedy that was its inspiration, it began in misery and ended in a kind of happiness. In my case, this happiness revolved around an art community I became a part of that lasted through most of my 30s.
I’m now 42 years old and the art colony that I was a part of no longer exists.
As I reflect on these important years of my life, I have the idea to write a new book. It will also be a memoir of sorts, but it is less about an individual and more about a community.
It was a very unique community of individuals who formed the Magoski Arts Colony in a old warehouse on the edge of downtown Fullerton, Orange County, California that lasted from 2010-2018. But in another sense, while the individuals and art studios that made up the Colony were totally unique, there was a universality and a historical precedent for what we tried to create. In many cities throughout the world and throughout history, artists have attempted to form alternative spaces, enclaves of mutual support on the edges of mainstream society.
Just as with my memoir, which because of its particularity, I hope, touched on some universal themes, the story of the Art Colony is both unique and kind of universal and therefore maybe a story worth telling.
Because we existed in the days of social media, there still exists a digital archive of what we did and created in the form of Facebook photos, blog posts, digital art show flyers, and YouTube videos. All of this should, I hope, refresh my memory in the telling of this story or, more accurately, stories.
The Art Colony was not a single story but rather a multitude of stories, as it was made up of many individuals and art shows and poetry readings and concerts and film screenings and conversations and experiences. It was, in its best moments, a budding cornucopia of stories.
I hope to interview some of my friends who were there and who were a part of it.
Why does this story, or these stories, matter?
As I write these words in a notebook, sitting at the bar in Mulberry Street Ristorante (a place full of its own stories), a friend walks in and asks, “What are you writing?”
I tell her, “A history of the Art Colony.”
She looks at me with disappointment and says, “It seems like it was too short-lived.”
“It was eight years,” I say, and to me this longevity is actually a kind of little miracle.
I can tell this topic is kind of sad for her. She loved the Art Colony and the associated Art Walk and she is not the first person I’ve run into who has asked me, “What happened to the Art Colony and the Art Walk?”
I tell these friends the truth as best I know it. The Art Colony was closed down by the City due to code violations and the Art Walk was killed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
If I’m honest, I feel a sense of responsibility, of guilt. I was instrumental in getting these things started. I devoted nearly a decade of my life to keep them going. And although they ended due to forces beyond my control, people still look to me to bring them back, perhaps not fully understanding the enormity of effort and sacrifice it takes to create such things.
Perhaps this book will be not just a remembrance of things past, but a weird little handbook about what it takes to build and sustain a true creative community in America that is, in theory, not bound by the inhuman confines of capitalism and government--but by human creativity and mutual support. That was the dream, anyway, and I lived in that dream for nearly a decade.
If there are any lessons to be learned, I hope to discover them in the process of writing this story.
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| Photo by Brian Prince. |