Colleen Houston: The new face of ArtWorks

More murals, another BLINK, a new home and much more to come for region’s art powerhouse

By David Lyman

For many people, it came as a shock when, in April 2020, ArtWorks founder and artistic director Tamara Harkavy announced she was stepping down from a role she had held since the organization was founded in 1996. But a quarter of a century is a long time to lead a group as vibrant and as sprawling as ArtWorks had become.

There was another problem, too. Harkavy had become the public face of ArtWorks. Her departure would leave a huge institutional gap in the organization’s profile. Who could possibly step in and replace the woman who had spent so much of her career covering Cincinnati’s urban walls with fanciful and sometimes politically charged murals, had employed tens of thousands of 14-21- year old young people as summer apprentices, who had filled Cincinnati’s streets with a light-filled festival we called “Blink?”

For those who knew ArtWorks more deeply, the answer was easy – Colleen Houston.

Indeed, Harkavy had said many times before that Houston – pronounced “HOW stn,” like the New York City street – was born to do this job.

Now, that sort of description gets tossed around all the time by people enthusing about a new leader. But in Houston’s case, there was a profound ring of truth to it.

Talk to Houston for even a few minutes and it’s impossible not to get caught up in the enthusiasm she has for ArtWorks. Not the sort of enthusiasm you hear from a board member encouraging you to contribute. The way she talks about her work – and the work of ArtWorks – has an earnestness that is unusual in the world of arts administrators. You get the sense that ArtWorks is a legacy she is growing into.

ArtWorks wasn’t working on many murals at that point. Indeed, Houston spent much of that first summer repairing and repainting pieces of furniture that an industrious lead artist had salvaged on garbagenight explorations. But that did nothing to dampen her enthusiasm.

Colleen Houston photographed in her home by Tina Gutierrez. The quilt hanging in background is by Denise Burge.

Houston was 18 and had just graduated from Walnut Hills High School when her art teacher, Wylie Ferguson, nudged her in the direction of what was then a relatively new group called ArtWorks. Founded a year earlier, it was one of the few places a promising artist like Houston could earn a few bucks while working hand-in-hand with professional artists.

“I loved everything about it,” says Houston. “I loved the work, of course. But I loved the relationships I built there. And I loved the whole idea of what ArtWorks was all about.” So she never left. True, she did spend her winters at Warren Wilson College, a small school hidden away in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But even there, it seemed that the major she cobbled together for herself – social and public art – was merely a precursor for a life to be spent at ArtWorks.

By 2003, she was ArtWorks’ programs director, overseeing as many as 20 varied programs every year during ArtWorks’ pre-mural days. As she worked her way up the institutional ladder, she was careful not to stray too far from the hands-on elements of ArtWorks that had brought her there in the first place.

“It’s really important to me that I’m not just a CEO,” says Houston. “I’m CEO and artistic director. That will never change. I may also do strategic planning and fundraising. But mostly, I’m here to work with artists of all ages. And to build relationships within our community.”

Building Relationships

“Relationships” is a word that comes up a lot in conversations with Houston. Relationships with artists. Relationships with funders. Relationships with “the community,” that impossible to define catchall phrase to describe those we wish to connect with. But most important, is to encourage relationships among all those different groups making sure they hear one another. And, in the case of ArtWorks’ murals, see one another.

That community involvement is part of what particularly intrigued Columbus artist April Sunami when Houston approached her about designing a “living wall” mural in collaboration with Urban Blooms.

“I have done a lot of residencies over the years,” says the 40-year-old Sunami, who grew up in Forest Park and attended Princeton High School before moving to Columbus to attend The Ohio State University. “But the fact that they have young people actually create the mural makes this completely different from the rest. At the end of the project, they will walk away with a collective sense of being a part of something big. They’ll own a part of it – something that has visibility. That is a big deal for people.”

Changing the landscape

At 41, Houston is more than twice the age of that wide-eyed kid who refurbished castoff furniture in 1997. She’s left behind the beloved Ford F-150 in favor of a VW Tiguan SUV, a far more practical mode of transportation for a married mother with two small kids.

What hasn’t changed is her love of art. And the idea that art can change people’s lives. What isn’t often understood about ArtWorks is that its work is not merely about making Cincinnati a more scenic place. You’re as likely to hear Houston expounding on workforce development and economic impact as you are on the best way to prepare aging bricks to accommodate the weight of a mural.

That’s one of the reasons you’ll see the Cincinnati Police Department listed as a partner in some of ArtWorks projects. It’s not about the art so much as it is about the involvement – the relationships.

Officer LaDon Laney, a community liaison officer in District 4, was involved with the recently completed “Switch On Avondale” project, which brought a series of Avondale-centric light sculptures to a new walk-andbike trail running behind the Hirsch Recreation Center on Reading Road. “Any time that I can be involved with a project like this, where I get to meet people every day, that’s a good opportunity,” says Laney. There is no special requirement that an officer have an affinity for the arts. “But you have to be interested in the people you’re serving. And in the things that interest them.”

Colleen Houston with her dog, Norman, an Australian Shepard/Poodle mix

Credit: Tina Gutierrez

What’s next

Where do they go from here? More murals, of course. Many more. And we’ve already heard about another edition of “BLINK” scheduled for the fall. And they recently opened the ArtWorks V2 Gallery in the group’s new home in Walnut Hills. There, they can exhibit more in-depth experiences with the artists, both professional and student, who work on other ArtWorks projects.

“I think there is huge potential to reimagine our employment model and have year-round employment,” says Houston, noting that a different approach would enable them to accept a higher percentage of student applicants than the 37 percent they can currently accommodate. Perhaps, she suggests, a solution would be to maintain art studios where artists can work on projects year-round.

“That would enable us to connect the emerging talent in our community into their next job placement,” says Houston. “And to help with employment postcollege, we might expand to skew a little older – up to 24, maybe.”

As she talks, though, you get the sense that there are very few “maybes” in Houston’s heartfelt exhortations. She is, after all, a strategic planner as well as an artist. And you wonder just how many of these pie-in-the-sky schemes are already in the works. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

About ArtWorks

ArtWorks was started on the lawn of the former School for Creative and Performing Arts under tents in Pendleton during the summer of 1996. Those first few years, ArtWorks was a program of the Cincinnati Youth Collaborative and took a lot of inspiration from Chicago’s After School Matters (formerly known as Gallery 37). ArtWorks became an independent nonprofit as it launched the Big Pig Gig in 2000, where more than 400 fiberglass pigs were placed in downtown Cincinnati and in Covington and Newport, Kentucky. Since then, ArtWorks has launched and has been part of many more public art initiatives, including large-scale permanent outdoor murals, Hero Design Company, a revival of the Big Pig Gig, Ink Your Love, and BLINK. ArtWorks, a $2.6 million nonprofit, is now a leader in workforce development and public art in Cincinnati.