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Cuesta has the facilities—a beautiful theater, a modern gallery—but not the resources to let its performing and visual arts students soar [18]

BY MAEVA CONSIDINE AND RACHEL FIELDS

FILM Melancholia … sigh [36]

Find out how health workers are fighting the flu [13] Four artists get playful at SLO’s Compact Gallery [27] Meet and relax at the new Alegria Wine Bar [44]

Curtains?

Everyone has a theory on why Cuesta arts are dwindling

BY MAEVA CONSIDINE AND RACHEL FIELDS PHOTOS BY STEVE E. MILLER

N

o last rites were given, no priest was present at the bedside, but it was clear in the beginning of fall semester that things were desperate for the arts at Cuesta College.

The easiest source of blame was the budget. In the last three years, Cuesta has lost almost $3.5 million in annual funding along with around 1,200 full-time students.

art gallery director of four years, retired in the spring. The position has remained frozen ever since.

In the year before Anderson’s retirement, Cuesta officials made a lastditch effort to save several key positions throughout the college.

“We managed to use a sort of escrow fund that had accumulated because there were no worker’s comp claims that year,”

Anderson managed to keep the exhibition schedule steady up to his retirement, with a new exhibit every six weeks.

In the spring of 2011, even as a 9 percent cut to the university’s total budget loomed, students remained faithful to the gallery.

“We absolutely maintained student interest; that has never been the problem,” Anderson said. “It has always been about getting the public involved, and I don’t

sold anything,” he said. “So when I would solicit out-of-town artists, I would say up front, ‘Look, you’re not going to make anything doing this.’ And then I would have to ask them to drive their work up to us? So, yeah, you almost have to say, ‘Do me a favor and show at my gallery.’”

Anderson explained that an academic gallery couldn’t survive on the generosity of willing artists alone: “You need

AGING BY THE SECOND The CPAC is equipped with all manner of high-tech equipment and facilities, from laundry and sewing rooms to the necessary equipment to make actors fly.

But employees worry that it won’t be state of the art forever and want students to be able to use the equipment to its full potential now.

And for the most part, the budget is fair game for criticism. No one in the school’s Fine Arts Department would likely point to anything besides lost funds as the source of their woes. But in the case of the Performing Arts Department, there might be more at play than just a depleted pocket book. But more on that later.

In the face of dwindling funds, to keep his position and several others from the chopping block, Tim Anderson, the Cuesta

Anderson said. “So we used those funds to keep several people, but we knew it was a one-time fix. It was good timing, because I was ready to retire.”

Anderson estimates that the funding scheme was able to save seven of nine positions slated to be cut.

While he ran the gallery, he managed seven to eight shows per year, bringing in student and local art, as well as artists from the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

know how Cuesta is ever going to do that, even if they get the director position back.”

Even in relatively good economic times, it’s hard to convince artists who don’t live in San Luis Obispo County to support the cause. The Cuesta art gallery isn’t a thriving marketplace. At any given faculty show, maybe a piece or two will sell; student shows would move four or five pieces, Anderson said.

“But an out-of-town artist? I never

community involvement.”

The gallery received little attention from the community, in part because campus hours are mostly limited to weekdays when the average person is at work. Anderson insisted he sent out press releases to TV and radio stations, but rarely got any coverage.

But after he left, the real trouble began for the Fine Arts Gallery.

How do you keep a gallery open to

the entire student population, let alone the public, without a director, with limited funding from the state, and little support from the community? The answer is: You don’t.

Soft close

bother to wire their canvasses or name their piece. The simple answer: Who cares?

“People don’t know about the gallery,” one of the students said in class. “So the students don’t take their work so seriously because they don’t think anyone will see it.”

Furloughs forced him to stop teaching the gallery class a few years ago, and early on his budget began to shrink.

“We got creative real quick,” he said.

“That’s what art is about: working creatively in those parameters. We massaged and stretched and pulled together what we had, and there are ways of doing that.”

Van Kleeck recognizes how hard it is for students to stretch their educational dollar, but he also stresses the importance

The Cuesta Fine Arts Gallery is a gorgeous, modern facility equipped with moveable pillars for displays, a ceiling lined with adjustable spotlights, and a sunroof in the center of the room.

Despite its polish, the gallery isn’t just underutilized, it’s usually closed.

The space is still used for the small but involved gallery class, taught by professor Patrick Trimbath. The class has only six students, who recently organized their own show in the gallery. But because the space is only open at specific times, visitors could only see the show by making an appointment.

Because of budget cuts, many Cuesta professors have begun to assume multiple identities at the school. In Anderson’s absence, faculty members have picked up the slack, but finding time to juggle teaching and running a gallery can take its toll. David Prochaska, a full-time faculty member, teaches four classes, including painting and drawing. He’s also been acting as the gallery director, a position that technically doesn’t exist anymore due to a lack of funding.

The curatorial position involves more than just babysitting art. It’s physically strenuous, requiring heavy lifting and long stretches of driving to transport pieces. The salary for the position was $30,000 a year.

Prochaska is doing his best to nurse the gallery. He organizes an annual book arts show, but this year he’s adding two more shows to his repertoire. He’s booked Sherri Simons of Chico State University to present an installation this coming spring semester, and the annual student show will also run in the spring.

But that’s about it.

The sporadic use of the gallery isn’t some dirty little secret. In fact, the gallery recently housed a student show describing its own problems. The show, dubbed “Presence/Non-Presence,” filled the space with transparent forms made from packaging tape and squares on the wall as

Across the pond

is no stranger to the challenges faced by university art galleries. While he’s not thrilled when his budget is cut, he can usually make it work.

Currently, 41 percent of Cal Poly’s operating funds come from the state of California, with the other 59 percent coming from student tuition.

“I get part of my funding from the college, and I get part of my funding from the university, and the funds from the university go up and down,” Van Kleeck said. “Last time, it went up, so that’s good. But you never know, and you do the best you can.”

Like Anderson, Van Kleeck tries to bring a wide variety of contemporary artists into the gallery.

“We look for artists who we think understand the educational mission,” he explained.

However, Cal Poly’s gallery never sells

of taking every opportunity.

“There are wonderful studies out about the power of art to keep kids in school, keep kids engaged, and it’s just unfortunate that it’s what’s immediately cut. … Art makes you think creatively about everything,” he said.

Van Kleeck holds out hope for Cuesta’s art gallery.

“They just built that beautiful arts center,” he said. “And if they shut that art gallery down, I mean, I don’t know. … I hate to say that they’ve turned their back on an incredible opportunity to have that synergy between music, theater, and art right there. … I hope they’ve got a bunch of creative people sitting around thinking, ‘How do we make this go?’”

phantom frames. These see-through shapes represented a question of whether the gallery was a part of reality: present, nonpresent, or somewhere in between. Visitors were encouraged to leave comments on Postit notes, and many responded with surprise that the gallery even existed.

On a recent Thursday in Trimbath’s class, students discussed the current art in the gallery. They talked about why some of the artists who entered pieces into the show hadn’t acted professionally: Some didn’t

the work it brings in, and Van Kleeck thinks that’s the way it should be.

“The mission is the visuals,” he said.

“We don’t need the money to operate. It would be nice, but it’s not our role. We aren’t in competition with local galleries.

We want to bring in things to make students and, in general, people in town, pause and think differently about things.”

In thinking differently, Van Kleeck has managed to make the gallery accessible to a wide variety of students and locals.

Cultural and Performing Arts Center peers out onto a panoramic view of the arts department. Twenty years ago, when the idea for the facility originally hatched, the concept was to build an arts plaza.

Picture a lawn surrounded by music, theater, and fine arts buildings.

After 10 years of meticulous planning and $24.5 million, the CPAC finally completed the trifecta. Funding for the building came out of the state general fund, state bonds, private donations, and

One explanation for Cuesta’s problems is the economy and cutbacks to the school’s budget. But Jeff Van Kleeck, director of Cal Poly’s Fine Art Gallery,

WHERE IT’S AT The recently completed CPAC faces the Cuesta Fine Arts Gallery, as well as a host of performing and fine arts classrooms, making the area an art hub.

Breaking ground

The interior lobby of the Cuesta

ticket sales.

The building has been open for two years and is still in pristine condition, primed to host high-production theatrical, dance, and musical performances.

When building the CPAC, every element of stage production was taken into account: There are multiple audio and lighting control rooms with equipment synched to computer software, a costume design room with sewing and washing machines, and massive outer doorways that allow set pieces to be moved to the stage.

But bree valle, the drama director for all of Cuesta’s major theatrical performances, has watched the school cut its productions from two a year in the spring and fall to just one.

Granted, all faculty members are taking hard blows due to cuts. But valle often picks up extra hobbies to bridge the gap for her students. She’s learning to weld so she can help build the set for the spring 2012 show, Three Musketeers, for instance. When asked what she fears she might lose next because of budget cuts, valle said, “The whole theater department.”

Richard Jackson, once the technical designer for shows and now technical coordinator for the CPAC, thinks courses at the school will be impacted by the lack of a fall show. More than the courses, the slimmer show schedule means the CPAC won’t be living up to its full potential any time soon. While the CPAC is state-of-theart now, Jackson said, “It won’t stay stateof-the-art forever.”

Space for rent

While people in charge of keeping the fine arts from flatlining seem to be cautiously optimistic for the future of their department, Jennifer Martin, tripling up as the chair of the Performing Arts Department, the coordinator for the CPAC, and the conductor for the Cuesta Wind Ensemble, has a dramatically different view of how things are coming along for the center.

When asked if the performing arts were on their deathbed, she replied, “Oh, heavens no!”

“We’re still in our infancy,” she said. “I want to be realistic, but I also want people to understand we are not at our end.”

The CPAC has had 25 outside usages

to bring in some money as well as get the word out about what it offers.

Without incoming state funds to operate the facility, Martin has run into a twofold problem: First, there was an overall workforce reduction, which meant fewer people to run performances. Then, the administrative and technical assistants had their time reduced.

“This means you have to struggle to get the support to get the productions going,” CUESTA continued on page 20

CUESTA continued from page 19

Martin said. “But we have, and the CPAC has not sat empty.”

In that regard, she’s right. The CPAC hasn’t sat empty—if you’re talking about music. A recently printed calendar for the CPAC outlines dozens of wind, jazz, and choral performances scheduled for the coming semesters.

Notably absent, however, was Cuesta’s fall drama production, which normally would have taken the stage in October or November. And everyone seems to have a different perspective on why it was missing.

“It was a budget issue and a faculty workload issue,” Martin said. “And the director didn’t want to do a production this semester, so it would have fallen to a part-time faculty member, and the only people who wanted to do it couldn’t do it with their work loads.”

Dean of Humanities Pamela Ralston offered an almost identical explanation. Without valle at the helm, she said, the department couldn’t find any parttime staff interested in putting on the show—or anyone who could manage a show on top of their other responsibilities.

But valle questions this explanation for canceling the show.

“There should have been a show this past fall,” she said. “For whatever reason—and I’m unclear of that still—the fall show was canceled. It is horrific. ...

There were so many students that wanted to be part of it that should be part of it.”

According to valle, she decided not to teach the fall production class or direct in the fall because it’s too much work for one person to take on two Cuesta productions in a year. On top of that, she said her students should have experiences with different directors. valle said she would have never canceled a show due to lack of interest.

But the history between valle and her department heads has been less than wrinkle-free.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t say that there has been, let’s just say, a historical friction, between bree valle’s position and the administration, and the administration’s view of her position,” said Stephan Gunsaulus, Cuesta’s director of marketing and communications.

The troubles between valle and her department stem from years of arguments, accusations, and finger

pointing that came to a head in a 2009 arbitration that ultimately vindicated valle of the charges against her, ranging from child endangerment (she brought her child to rehearsals) to unprofessionalism.

Martin was chair of the Music and Drama Department at the time of the arbitration and was one of several people named in the allegations against valle. She declined to comment at the time of the verdict, but the president of the university at the time, William “Dave” Pelham, felt assured that things would be business as usual for music and drama at Cuesta.

“All the folks [in the Performing Arts Department] are professionals, and I would anticipate they’re going to behave accordingly,” he said.

grant money is becoming incredibly limited.

The CPAC recently held a silent auction and managed to raise enough money to fund future productions, according to Martin, but the question remains: What type of productions will be seen in the CPAC?

By the numbers

For as much as some Cuesta officials talk about the budget, none of them seemed to be able to point to exactly where it hurts.

Many people at Cuesta were very patient and willing to give a layman’s guide to a community college budget.

Beyond the framework, however, the specific numbers were hard to come by—

When New Times finally received the budget figures, they came in the form of a spreadsheet, which outlined the 201112 general fund allocations for the CPAC and Performing Arts by performance groups. The spreadsheet lists one fulltime faculty member working for drama, three full-time music instructors, and one part-time music instructor. It doesn’t list their salaries. Drama received a general fund contribution of $5,000. The music department, when tallied together by class, received a budget of $2,000 in general funds.

In short, the question of how money is distributed and whether it’s distributed fairly can’t be answered by the budget in its current form. And it’s yet to be seen exactly how much the arts have lost, in dollars and cents, over the last several years.

Finding the pulse

ALL DRESSED UP … Everyone agrees that Cuesta’s Fine Arts Gallery is a beautiful space to showcase art, but without an official gallery director, it mostly sits empty.

Nevertheless, when it comes to Cuesta Performing Arts, it still seems there are two groups of thought, and valle is the dividing line.

“I secretly support bree,” Gunsaulus said. “Last year, I bought her the music for Rent. I buy things for her that she doesn’t have the ability to buy on her budget because I want to see a great play and a great work by our students and I want to see it recognized. And so we don’t even talk about it; she just calls me up and says, ‘I need help. I need 300 bucks for make-up. Can you do it?’ And I say, ‘Well, just send me the bill, and I’ll do something.’ So I don’t even talk about it with her people.”

Asked if there’s still an existing division between the music and drama departments, valle said, “No comment.”

There’s little doubt that the budget has had a profound effect on the performance schedule for the CPAC. The university has cut its faculty to “essential” positions, and

and at times inaccurate.

Cuesta’s total budget for the 201112 fiscal year is available through the university’s website. But when New Times asked for specific budget figures broken down by department for the last four years, the request had to be cycled through several faculty members—Marketing Coordinator Jay Thompson, Martin, Ralston, and finally Gunsaulus—before any specific numbers were provided.

Martin described the search for such figures as “a big research question.”

Gunsaulus said that a budget broken down by department wouldn’t accurately reflect how much funding each department truly needs or receives, for several reasons—primarily because each department doesn’t necessarily pay its faculty out of its own allotted budget. That means the funds for specific salaries are often drawn from several different places through the university’s budget.

Despite conflicts and all of the losses, Cuesta’s professors, as well as its students, are keeping their heads high and their fingers crossed. Many students are working harder to reach their goals, with less available classes or conflicting schedule times requiring them to stay enrolled longer in order to get a degree.

“I’m only 20, but as an actress and performer, I’m not getting any younger for my profession,” said Katie Sachen, a student of Cuesta’s Performing Arts Department.

Sachen is studying in both the music and drama

programs and feels a direct impact from the budget constraints. For example, her class was recently told to scrap its plans to attend a festival in Utah. The trip was tentatively approved by the dean of academic affairs. The students enthusiastically agreed to pay for travel and lodging themselves. Even valle, who was slated to direct, was working to get a license to drive the bus. All seemed well, but after months of planning, valle was told in an e-mail that the class had been canceled because the school couldn’t afford to pay for another trip after higher-level choir students had traveled to Europe.

“We don’t quite understand the logic behind it,” Sachen said. “It’s ridiculous that this should get in the way of my future.” ∆ Interns Maeva Considine and Rachel Fields can be reached through Managing Editor Ashley Schwellenbach at aschwellenbach@newtimesslo.com.