At last month’s Champaign on the Park, the annual fundraiser for the Lark Street Business Improvement District, Michael Weidrich did something of a runway turn on the stage. First, he was presented with an award for his work as founder of First Fridays, the successful gallery night based primarily in the Center Square neighborhood. Moments later he returned to the stage having just been re-introduced as the new executive director of the BID.
Though duties in his new post are varied, from working with street cleaning crews to organizing restaurant nights, Weidrich’s immediate attention has gone to Art on Lark, the annual day of exhibitions, demonstrations and sales on the sidewalks of the main thoroughfare in Albany’s Center Square that takes place Saturday afternoon.
“Lark Street is the heart of the arts in Albany, and it’s becoming the capital of the arts for the whole Capital Region,” says Weidrich. Citing the recent start of gallery nights in Troy and Schenectady, he adds, “First Friday created a ripple effect that all comes back to Lark Street.”
Much of it also comes back to Weidrich, 34, who’s lived in Albany since 2003 and in Center Square since 2005. He’s a native of Buffalo and holds a bachelor’s of fine arts degree from Syracuse University. To join the BID, he left a position as director of technical services and office manager of the Albany law firm Green and Seifter.
Weidrich’s hiring might be viewed as a new acknowledgment by the Lark Street BID that the arts can be a key to vitality in the region, especially since his two predecessors had backgrounds in real estate management and architecture. But working with the arts community actually dates to the organization’s earliest days.
Art on Lark was the first activity that the Lark Street BID produced after its establishment in 1996. Initially, artists were invited to show art along the avenue every Sunday afternoon for most of the summer. In subsequent years, the plan was retrenched to one Saturday afternoon in early June, with exhibitors dispersed on Lark Street between Washington and Madison avenues.
Although weather is always an unknown factor, registrations have held steady in recent years at about 70 exhibitors, who pay $35 for a 10-foot-square space. Up to 5,000 people are expected to attend this year.
“Art on Lark is my favorite show,” says potter Mary Sanza. “The (other) artists are fun to be with, and the crowds are usually an interesting mix of people. I have a couple of repeat customers, who I enjoy seeing year after year.”
Weidrich says that in addition to the independent exhibitors, this year’s fair will continue some traditions and also include some new offerings.
The People’s Choice exhibit will return for a second year to the Upstate Artists Guild, where viewers of a special exhibit vote with ballots for their favorite pieces of art. Last year, more than 40 artists participated, paying $5 to show up to two pieces each.
New this year will be the closure of two side streets for special activities. On Lancaster Street there will be a chalk art contest. And Hudson Avenue will be the site of “Creative Chaos,” in which artists will demonstrate their working methods, and folks can also try things out themselves, from painting to pottery.
Creative Chaos is presented by eba, the dance and fitness studio that has been a fixture on Hudson just off Lark since 1977. Showing the public how art is made (and not just the finished pieces) was part of the original concept of Art on Lark, says eba founder Maude Baum, who’s also a founding board member of the Lark Street BID. Says Baum, “Sharing in the creative experience of what the artist is doing makes people much more interested in the arts and in pursuing the arts themselves.”
Baum successfully tried out the Creative Chaos idea at last year’s Lark Fest – the annual September event when Lark Street is closed to auto traffic for a full day. It’s the Lark Street BID’s largest production. She says that participatory art-making and an additional stage with more family-friendly entertainers has helped move Lark Fest away from being “a college drinking fair.”
Coordinating First Fridays for the past nine months has allowed Weidrich to arrive at the Lark Street BID with a built-in network of artists, business owners and neighbors. Add to that his other involvements – director of the Romaine Brooks Gallery in the Capital District Gay and Lesbian Community Council building, board member of the Albany Charity for Arts in Education, and contributing writer for Upstate Fashion and Art Magazine – and it doesn’t seem like too much of an exaggeration when he says, “I feel like I know everybody and everybody knows me.”
But thanks to Weidrich’s revealing digital photographs, art gallery goers sometimes also see a rather intimate side of him.
In April, a meeting of Lark Street restaurant owners was held in the UAG gallery. After Weidrich was introduced as the new Lark Street BID director, he rose to speak and quickly realized that a piece of his art – in which he poses nude – was displayed on a nearby wall.
“Everybody was looking back and forth at it and at me,” he recalls with a laugh.
The particular piece, “Tsohanoai” (after the Navajo sun god), was created specifically for UAG’s “Angels and Devils” show and depicts a golden-toned, winged Weidrich against a flaming background. It’s part of an ongoing series of pieces in which original digital photos are fragmented and manipulated into circular patterns, like the effect of a kaleidoscope. Weidrich uses the Hindu term mandala to describe them, and has created about 200 such pieces since 2004.
“At my peak, I could produce a dozen pieces in a week. That’s when I had nothing else to do,” he says. Over the past year, new pieces have been created in the odd late-night hours and mostly for entry in particular shows.
Regarding the nudity, Weidrich says, “I started with some clothing and sort of lost it all along the way.”
Coinciding with Weidrich’s rising prominence in the community, a new and less self-referential direction began to evolve in his art last fall with three pieces created for the “Vacancy” show, a popular annual fundraiser for the Historic Albany Foundation showcasing artistic depictions of empty city buildings. The works maintain the mandala technique but focus on the Wellington Row buildings, across from the State Capitol.
“Michael is pragmatic but also a visionary,” says Jeff Gritsavage, a Center Square resident who is the Lark Street BID’s new president. “The combination of a business sense and artistic creativity is not always the easiest to find, and with Michael we think we have that.”
Weidrich, however, plans to bone up on his fundraising and accounting skills by enrolling in a certificate program in nonprofit management at The College of Saint Rose. He’s already completed a similar post-graduate program at Saint Rose in computer education. Also on his agenda is a greater outreach to the various neighborhood associations that have vested interests in the success of Lark Street.
“I feel a great responsibility to everyone in Center Square,” Weidrich says. “There’s no place like Lark Street. It’s a universe unto itself.”
Originally appeared in the Times Union, June 3, 2007.
Also available in Artists & Activists: Making Culture in New York’s Capital Region.
