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Basement of dreams

Studios are building blocks of Falcon Art Community

By Joseph Gallivan

The Portland Tribune, Aug 7, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

L.E. Baskow / Portland Tribune

Painter Alexander Rokoff started working in the basement of the Falcon Art Community before renovations that would create a set of artists’ studios were complete. Building owner Brian Wannamaker (top) said he “built it around him.”

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“Community” is a buzzword that bears a heavy burden in the Portland art scene. It can mean anything from three artists commiserating in a pub to a network of international prize winners running into each other at festivals.

But Brian Wannamaker’s Falcon Art Community is clearly defined and ready to roll out of bed and get working.

The 44-year-old developer bought the 1911 Falcon apartment building, at 5415 N. Albina Ave., in 1997 and has been slowly transforming it into a hive of art-making.

First he hired a live-in security guard to shoo out the hookers and people who slept in the halls. The guard still walks the building at night and shines a flashlight on the drug peddlers based at the bus stop outside his window.

Then Wannamaker renovated the building’s apartments with a view to attracting artists. However, he allowed some tenants – many of them older, black residents – to stay on at their historically low rents. (These are in the $300 to $400 range, while the current market rate for the same one-bedroom apartment is $775 a month.)

He converted the huge basement into 24 work-only studios for artists, musicians and even the odd writer. The art studios, which cost $250 to $500, are not live-work spaces, and you don’t have to rent an apartment in the building to qualify for one.

Walking through the space recently, Wannamaker proudly showed off the key features. Chandeliers hang in the halls, in contrast to the large steel sink where artists wash their brushes. New doors have a distressed look, which matches the muted color palette.

He worked with architect Paul Ries and carpenters Mark Meadows and Dave Laurins to “clear a lot of the chatter” out of the space, moving or hiding pipes and ducts while keeping elements with character, such as the thick wooden beams.

More than one unfinished unit uses THX, a type of drywall, which costs $180 a sheet because it has a layer of steel and a layer of ceramic material for soundproofing. This room will become a mixing studio run by Jim Brumberg of Mississippi Studios, about 10 blocks south.

“When Johnny Marr (of the Smiths) was here last year (to collaborate with the band Modest Mouse) he lived in this building and rehearsed here,” Wannamaker says. “And Pete Minn, who was a guitarist who toured with Blondie, is considering moving here for the studio.”

Distractions kept at bay

The open door to unit 27 reveals freelance writer Erin Ergenbright, who co-founded the Loggernaut reading series. It’s just her, a desk and a notebook computer. It’s her first day, and she just wants a quiet place to write.

“I need to be away from my cats and my kitchen table and the Internet,” she says. The Falcon’s shared Wi-Fi hasn’t worked for her so far, but that, she says, is a good thing.

So far 18 artists have moved in, and there’s a first-week-at-school buzz about the place. A woman with a rabbit in her pocket wanders the halls sparking conversations. Maya Levy swans about with three coffees on a tray. She’s an artist, too, and is the girlfriend of Alexander Rokoff (they met at the Falcon), himself a key painter in the building and friend of Wannamaker’s.

“I let Alex start working down here when I had the idea (for the studios) and built it around him,” Wannamaker says. The contractors literally worked around his friend.

Rokoff paints powerful naturalistic portraits in oil on board of characters such as “The Inventor” (an old man tinkering) and “The Champ” (a roller derby woman with a beer). His studio is comfortable and contains a large flat-screen TV and stereo system. On the walls he’s affixed wooden picture rails, on which to hang a dozen works in progress.

Rokoff has kept a studio nearby for years and still teaches painting there. But the move into the Falcon gives him space, community and power.

Wannamaker handpicks the artists he leases space to, with advice from Rokoff and a couple of other people. Rokoff shows at Timothy Yarger Fine Art in Beverly Hills, Calif., and he and Wannamaker hope to be able to funnel more artists to that gallery in future.

“I’m looking for real artists who are trying to make a living with their work, who can appreciate the energy of others,” Wannamaker says. “The long-term vision is to end up with a co-op gallery.”

There’s also talk of a residency program and an artists’ getaway on a boat, which would sail around the world. Wannamaker wants to establish a performing-arts space and has long coveted an industrial building one block south. He’s patient.

“I’ll work on getting a building for years,” he says, “then one day the owner will just decide to sell, without warning.”