Painting the city's art canvas

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Anne Meysenburg remembers taking an art class as a kid in a cool downtown Omaha building. She made an outline of her body and splashed it with paint like Jackson Pollock. She was about 9 years old.

Years later, as director of the Kent Bellows Studio and Center for Visual Arts, she saw its student participants have the same experience. Many teenagers in the Bellows program are from poor neighborhoods. Some haven't traveled to museums or know much about artists.

When the Bellows students spent time inside the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts — the same place Meysenburg took a class as a kid — they felt the impact that art could have on their lives.

The Bemis has been affecting Omahans — often without Omahans knowing it — for 30 years.

The center brought an artist to the city to create one of the largest murals in the nation in north downtown. The Bemis long has nurtured community programs like the Bellows Center. And Bemis leaders help choose artists to create new public art in Omaha, quietly reshaping the city's art landscape in the process.

“Without Bemis, the advancement of Omaha, culturally, would be in a wasteland,” said Larry Ferguson, chairman of the Omaha Public Art Commission.

Now, as it celebrates its 30th birthday, the Bemis is unveiling what's possibly its showiest project to date: a major renovation of its Old Market building at 12th and Leavenworth Streets and a major expansion to its renowned artist-in-residence program.

This weekend, people can tour the first part of Bemis' $2.6 million renovation project. Five new studios for resident and visiting artists on the center's renovated third floor will be open to the public.

Artists Jun Kaneko, Tony Hepburn, Lorne Falke and Ree Schonlau founded the Bemis Center in 1981, and in 1984, they opened its first location in the Bemis Bag warehouse, on Jones Street between 11th and 12th Streets.

The original location had 14 studios, a first-floor exhibition space and a ceramic and sculpture studio with three large-scale kilns. The group named the program the Bemis, after the building. The group aimed to create an experience that would take artists from their everyday surroundings and place them in one where their only responsibility was to create art. That idea grew into a year-round artist residency program.

Bemis moved into its current location — the McCord-Brady building — in 1992. The building used to be a grocery warehouse. Renovating the first and second floors into gallery space and studios began in 1993. The building opened to the public in 1995, and the Bemis Underground launched in 2004.

Bemis now plays host to more than 20 exhibitions a year and membership has grown from 50 in 2003 to more than 1,500 today.

During the next year, Bemis will continue remodeling the 10,000-square-foot Okada building, across the street from the center. Bemis leaders hope to turn that space into a world-class studio for artists to create large-scale ceramic work and sculptures.

The renovations allow the center to expand its residency program from 24 artists per year to 36.

Competition will be stiff for the new spots. More than 1,000 artists applied for a coveted spot in the program last year, and the Bemis officials expect a dramatic jump in applicants next year.

The $2.6 million for the project, a combination of money from foundations, corporations and individual donors, includes funds for four years of programming in the expanded space.

On the newly renovated third floor of the Bemis building, there's now a wide-open, 8,000-square-foot space with high ceilings, natural light from a huge bank of windows and no dividing walls. Bemis Executive Director Mark Masuoka, who came to the center in July 2003, said this flexible space adjacent to the five new studios will allow residents to be creative. They could create a site-specific installation, or work on a piece too large to fit in their assigned studio.

Bemis provides a temporary home to residents from around the world each year and offers residents dual live and work spaces with round-the-clock access to a wood shop, installation spaces, a dark room and a large sculpture fabrication studio.

But it also provides support to the local arts community.

Its annual fundraiser, the Bemis Auction, invites Omaha artists to be part of a large group show. The Bemis Underground, the center's edgier space, gives young and emerging artists the chance to display work.

“The Bemis has a real commitment to the place we live,” Masuoka said. “The impact of the arts is comprehensive. It affects people's lives in a profound way.”

Ferguson, a respected photographer, said Bemis is quietly working behind most of the large-scale art projects in the city and has been for most of its history.

Bemis gave space to the Kent Bellows Studio, Meysenburg's program, for its first two years while the studio raised money to renovate its own space. Meysenburg said the program's association with Bemis catapulted it forward. The Bellows Center provides education for burgeoning high school-age artists.

“We were a success story,” she said. “It's good to have our own place now, but the exposure to Bemis and the artists there was incredible for our students. They learned that artists can say amazing things with their artwork.”

Bemis also helped to bring artist Meg Saligman to Omaha, where she created one of the world's largest murals, “Fertile Ground,” on the site of a north downtown building near TD Ameritrade Park.

And the center helped curate public art around the Qwest Center Omaha and in the Gene Leahy Mall.

“It's changed the whole landscape of Omaha,” Ferguson said.

Marjorie Maas, director of Nebraskans for the Arts, said Bemis profoundly affected her sister, artist Leslie Iwai. Iwai did a number of projects at Bemis and was the first recipient of the center's Community Artist Fellowship. She created “Sounding Stones,” the public art piece in Elmwood Park in midtown Omaha.

Maas said the center has been a touchstone for Iwai, who recently relocated to Middleton, Wis.

“The Bemis adds enough cultural infrastructure to the community that it keeps artists in Omaha who wouldn't have stayed here otherwise,” Maas said. “I think many in the art community here would say similar things.”

Ferguson said since he moved to Omaha in the early 1980s, Bemis has been committed to local artists beyond the participants in its residency program. He's had a one person-show there. So have Jun Kaneko, an internationally known ceramicist, and Karen Kunc, a noted printmaker based in Lincoln. Keith Jacobshagen has a show there now.

“Bemis made the Omaha and Midwest art scene come alive,” he said.

Masuoka said that the center's support for the community and its artists isn't going anywhere. If anything, he hopes to broaden it.

“The community is so valuable to us,” he said. “But I also want to capture the attention of people who may not see an art show. We have to respond, but we also have to lead.”

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