Back on the first day of the month, The Goshen News ran a front page article about the downtown art ally that juts through the elegant facades on Main Street between Washington Street and Lincoln Avenue. That day the alley happened to be alive with activity as Cindy Cooper, head of the Goshen High School art department, worked to utilize the space as a gallery for her students’ work.
Visitors of First Fridays that day got to see the amazing renderings of students, including Darlene Vasquez, Ellen Schlabach and Gisell Calderon. It was an amazing display of the young artistic talent that resides right here in this community.
The Art Alley is a relatively new addition to downtown Goshen, and, like many other improvements, is the brainchild of Dave Pottinger and Jeremy Stutsman. Pottinger is a local entrepreneur and Stutsman, his son-in-law, is the owner of Lofty Ideas and an at-large member of the Goshen City Council. When the alley isn’t being utilized for a specific exhibit, it is an outlet for creative expression with boards and paints provided for local artists.
The alley was even the venue for a marriage proposal a few First Fridays back. From what we understand, she said, “Yes.”
And last week staff photographer Sam Househoulder caught up with Goshen’s Leah Cassidy-Borden as she worked on the preliminary stages of a wall mural along Middlebury Street on the north side of the city. Children from the Goshen Boys & Girls Club and Chamberlain Elementary School are expected to help Cassidy-Borden complete the mural over the course of the summer. We are excited to watch it come together.
Public displays of artwork may not seem like much, but their effects can poke at the community pride in all of us. Why not magically transform a barren concrete wall into a colorful collaboration that may inject a sense of belonging and civic responsibility into a young person’s life?
The art alley in downtown Goshen and now a mural on the north side are two examples of good things happening in this community. They may seem to be minor efforts, but pile them onto the spectacular art programs at Goshen College and our local high schools, the downtown art galleries that have popped up in our store fronts, the community theaters that make us laugh and cry and the artist guilds near the Farmer’s Market, and we seem to onto something here.
Goshen has become quite the artistic city. That is very encouraging to us and we hope all will appreciate and respect the beauty among them.
Opinion
Related Photos
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Paintings by Goshen High School art students Darlene Vasquez, left, and Ellen Schlabach, right, are among the numerous pieces of artwork that were on display in Goshen's Art Alley this past First Fridays. JOHN KLINE | THE GOSHEN NEWS
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