By Michelle Saturley
Staff Writer

Matt Cahoon stands next to a Monet print at the Stockbridge Theater, located at Pinkerton Academy in Derry. Cahoon is working with Freed to transform the walls of the theater lobby into an art gallery, featuring original works by local artists.

The idea of introducing public art to Manchester is not a new or recent one.

Various attempts have been mounted over the years to turn the city’s bricks, concrete and steel into a canvas for local artists who want to personalize, and beautify, the Queen City. Some of these campaigns have yielded positive results. The “Mill Girl” statue, located on Commercial Street in the heart of the millyard, has become a city landmark, and featured prominently in brochures to attract tourism and industry. And more recently the installation piece, “Boogie Lights,” hanging at the intersection of Hanover and Elm Streets, received praise for bringing some whimsy to a bleak winter landscape. Yet, the permanent loss of a cherished historic mural on the side of the building now owned by the Hanover Street Chophouse barely raised an eyebrow in the community.

Rick Freed is hoping to spearhead a more concentrated push for public art in Manchester. Freed has been the cultural administrator for the Manchester Convention and Visitor’s Bureau since last August, and the Manchester resident is also an accomplished mural artist who works with oil and watercolor paints, and pen and ink. Visitors to the Millyard Museum, the Verizon Wireless Arena, or the New Hampshire Aviation Museum, located at the Manchester Airport, have seen examples of Freed’s bold, colorful drawings.

It was Freed’s experience creating murals in public places that sparked his latest project – a public art campaign. His hope is to transform many of the city’s bland walls and courtyards into mini art galleries that feature paintings, murals or sculptures for all to see.

“If you walk around Manchester, you see all these great old buildings, where businesses and restaurants are thriving,” Freed said. “But you look at the walls, either inside or outside, and they’re rather generic. There’s nothing special about them.”

Based on his success with mural work and other public art projects in the city, Freed has been working through the CVB to match businesses with area artists to help “dress up” the walls of Manchester. He put out a call to artists and business owners, and a few weeks later, he heard from Matt Cahoon, a Manchester resident who runs the Stockbridge Theater at Pinkerton Academy in Derry.

“I met Rick through an arts incubation project I worked on last year,” Cahoon said. “We had a lot in common, fi rst and foremost being our goal of fostering arts in Manchester.”

Cahoon off ered a venue where Freed could kick off his public art campaign.

“Matt had recently started working at the academy, and he said they had these huge walls leading into the theater that were just underused,” Freed said. “He was interested in making those walls into a gallery of some kind.”

The walls in the lobby of the Stockbridge, a state-of-the-art performing arts center, are already set up to showcase art. Currently, a collection of prints of famous paintings hangs here, but the school had only intended them to be “placeholders” until something more substantial could be purchased.

“There’s already track lighting hanging on the walls, ready to go,” Cahoon said. “Right now, a lot of that lighting is pointing at blank spaces on the brick walls.”

After Freed and Cahoon talked it over, they decided to get more people in on the project. Cahoon recruited students from the academy’s art department, while Freed put out an open call to artists interested in showing their work.

“Based on my experience, projects like these need the support of the surrounding community if they’re going to last at all,” Cahoon said. “I wanted the involvement of the students and the faculty at the academy because once they see the value of the project they will want it to keep going.”

Once the testing ground of the Stockbridge Theater was approved, Freed sounded a call to his friends and colleagues in the arts community.

“I know a lot of artists in the Manchester area, so I started sending them the application information,” Freed said. “It really is a good deal and an exciting new venue.”

Though Freed has put no limits on the themes or media, he did specify that, since the theater is housed in a high school, artists refrain from overtly sexual or extremely controversial pieces. The work must be ready to hang and look professional.

“That’s my only real requirement – that the work looks professional,” Freed said.

A 20-percent commission fee for any pieces sold will be collected to support the gallery.

“That’s actually quite reasonable, since most galleries charge at least a 30-percent commission,” Freed said. “The idea was to make this as aff ordable as possible for the participating artists.”

Freed hopes to feature a diff erent artist each month, and hold an artist’s reception the fi rst Friday of the month. Art students at Pinkerton Academy will help hang and light the show, which Cahoon said is important to their artistic education.

If this collaboration goes well, Freed said he hopes it will spark interest from other Manchester area businesses and schools. Following on his recent work on a mural at the Aviation Museum, he has approached the management at the Manchester Airport about creating a mural inside the terminal.

“I’d like to do something with kids,” he said. “The airport terminal isn’t really a place where you can do something too heavy with a mural, because people are coming and going. But something whimsical and colorful would work well there. Airport security and travel schedules can make air travel unpleasant sometimes. I’d like to see something on the walls that would lift people’s spirit.”

And that, said Freed, is the number one purpose of public art.

“It should make people feel something,” he said. “Even the average person who doesn’t attend art openings, or own expensive pieces of art in their homes, can appreciate that sentiment. And maybe, with art in their faces everyday, the average person would come to see the value of it in their lives and want to attend an art exhibit down the line. It has to start somewhere.”

For more information about showing work at the Stockbridge, or for businesses interested in participating in the public art campaign, call Freed at 666-6600, ext. 103, or visit www.manchesterarts.org.