By Jessie Raynor, AAAA Director

Although construction on our Knight Foundation-funded project is a month behind schedule due to HVAC contractors, Summit Artspace is still able to present its first public event on our second floor, which is currently being renovated for performance space and arts offices. On New Year’s Eve, as part of the family-friendly First Night© Akron celebration, award-winning artist Mark Soppeland will present Strange Experiments of the Midnight Sun, a black-light, interactive art installation. Soppeland will fill the second floor with visual arts demonstrating the magic of science, technology, engineering and mathematics including optical illusions; light and lenses; bubbles, mobiles; lasers; water; magnets and creative structural amazements. Throughout the fall, the artist has been working with teachers in Akron Public Schools to have their classes create lanterns for this event, which attracts thousands of visitors. Each child receives a First Night© admission button for participating.

In June 2010 the Knight Foundation awarded the Akron Area Arts Alliance (AAAA) a generous $200,000 grant allowing this non-profit, arts advocacy organization to take an important next-step in converting a historic building into a downtown headquarters for its creative community. The 55,000 square-foot building, which is owned by Summit County government, was originally built by father and son Charles and John Knight in 1927 to house the Akron Beacon Journal, the first newspaper in the family’s illustrious media chain.

Summit Artspace has been a First Night® venue since 2003 when it only housed a first-floor gallery dedicated to displaying the talents of local artists. Today the building has a second gallery called The Box, classrooms and six third-floor studios for artists working in diverse media and styles. It is a major 2010 New Year’s Eve venue with activities throughout the building, including live musical performances ranging from vintage American cowboy/country songs on the guitar to Indian Rayas songs on the sitar plus dance demonstrations from ballroom to Bollywood. Both galleries will be open for viewing. The main gallery is featuring an annual juried show called Kaleidoscope including 79 two and three dimensional artworks. The Box is showing bold, abstract digital paintings and photography. Summit Artspace tenant artists will be working in their studios for people to visit. This includes our newest tenant, painter/printmaker Cari Miller, who has rented our last finished studio space. She joins portrait/plein air painter Carolyn Lewis, contemporary painter Katina Pastis Radwinski, fabric artist Connie Bloom and mixed media sculptor Terry Klausman.