The Last Shall Be First
SpaceCreate, the Ann Street Gallery, Teran Studio, Thornwillow Press, and SUNY Orange's gallery anchor an arts scene that snaps, crackles and pops like Rice Krispies, but far more nutritiously. Atlas Studios has a major new gallery planned. Phanatix Entertainment produces Phan Media, a Web-based variety-TV showcase for local indie artists and venues. Excitement is already building for the annual Newburgh Illuminated Festival, happening June 18 with over 20 bands, pop-up and performance art, historic trolley tours, hoop dancing, and a showcase of local ethnic foods.
Last Saturdays, spearheaded by Healing Arts Studio owner Lisa Gervais, will mark two years this April; she's receiving a Placemaking Award from the Orange County Citizens Foundation. "It's grassroots, volunteer-run, and driven by social media," she says of the monthly cultural explosion. "Different venues join in each month, but there are anchors that nearly always get involved. New people are jumping in all the time." Saturday April 30 will include a reception at SpaceCreate for artist Elisa Pritzker's solo exhibit "Spirit of the Selknams," which has already been the subject of a short film aired on PBS; the launch party for a new Calling All Poets anthology featuring local work; and an exhibit at Thornwillow Press focused on the role of the artist in urban regeneration. Newburgh Art Supply owner Gerald Castro coordinates the public-art Light Bulb Project and the OPEN Studios program with Last Saturdays celebrations.
The restaurant scene is, well, cooking on high. The beloved Caffe Macchiato is thriving under the new ownership of a born-and-raised Newburgher, and now has a chef/owner French bistro as a neighbor. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge–Newburgh hosts lively open mikes, live music, art, and great food are staples at the Newburgh Brewery and the Wherehouse. Four-year resident Ann Stratton blogs about her effort to eat at every restaurant in town at Newburgh Food Journal, and she's playing catch up at this point. "My next one is going to be a soul food place on South Street," she says. "There's great Caribbean, Mexican, Peruvian, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican, Italian, American. The city is about 50 percent Latin American now, and their food is fabulous. I've fallen in love with this city; I lived in the city for 35 years and never felt like part of a community as I do here, and a lot of us are fighting desperately to make it a great place for everyone—not to gentrify, but to revitalize."
The Newburgh Heights Association has secured a Green Streets grant to add trees to a budding Liberty Street. The Land Bank folks are building hoop houses as the beginning of a community urban agriculture center in Downing Park, and an Urban Farming Fair is being held on April 30. On the waterfront, which has long been a thriving nightlife zone with multiple restaurants, the seven-acre Consolidated Ironworks Superfund site was opened to the community for the first time ever on Last Saturday in March. Plans for its future are embryonic, but the site includes an idea board on which visitors can offer suggestions to fill them out. On the west side, the five-year-old Newburgh Armory Unity Center is adding a new family literacy program developed with Mount Saint Mary College to its array of wellness and educational programming, helped out by a $10,000 grant from the Ulster Savings Charitable Foundation last fall. Plans for a state-of-the-art skateboard plaza are moving forward.
"It's palpable how grand it once was," says Sellars. "You feel the energy of what it used to be. I know it will get there, and it is our responsibility to do our little bit, one parcel at a time. If we show that it can be done, it's going to draw waves. But it will be impossible for us to move forward without empowering the most disadvantaged."
"People here were so beaten down," says Brooks, "and feeling the finger-pointing and shaming that was coming from the rest of the county and state. Now, there's a growing pride and hope. I think we're back on the map."