Students find arts vibrant

Jessica Martin didn’t intend to stay here, not for long anyway.

As a student in painting and drawing at UTC, she made a careful plan: one year and then transfer. Other schools and places were more exciting and definitely more artsy, she thought.

“I ended up staying,” said Ms. Martin, who now has a fellowship with Create Here. “There is an energy (here). New York and Chicago, they are doing things, but Chattanooga is doing things, too. We are just doing things differently.”

As the city’s downtown has undergone a renaissance and shed much of its industrial core, artists and art students have begun to look at Chattanooga as a city with the resources of larger metropolitan areas without a caste system prevalent elsewhere in the arts, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga officials and local arts advocates said.

“Downtown development and the direction of the city has given young artists a hope like never before,” said Mark Bradley-Shoup, director of visual arts education at the Association for Visual Arts here.

More than 14 local art galleries popped up in the city along with artist studios, and UTC’s art department increased freshman enrollment by more than 54 percent in the last four years.

“(Students) really feel like there is a buzz, something different, something alive and really going on here,” said Helen Johnson, a creative stategist at Create Here, a organization that offers incentives to bring creative people to Chattanooga.

The UTC art department increased faculty and expanded curriculum, said Matt Greenwell, department chairman. As more professional artists moved to Chattanooga, the program increased the pool of adjunct faculty, he said.

Several years ago, it was difficult to find local teachers, but now the program doesn’t have enough adjunct spots for people who are interested, he said.

Mr. Greenwell, who came to UTC in 1997 as a professor, believes the program is enjoying success because the university is coming to terms with what it means to be a metropolitan institution.

“In a city of our size we don’t have a natural center of gravity,” he said. “To the degree that it has become that, we have created it.”

Mr. Bradley-Shoup said the UTC art department has come to rely and trust the community for its success.

Arts organizations split the bill with the university on visiting artists series, helping bring big names to UTC. Also, the Hunter Museum partnered with UTC to hire a contemporary art historian, Mr. Greenwell said.

“There is a lot of formal and informal pitching in,” he said.

Students who leave UTC are well equipped with real-world experience, in part because the community offers many platforms for their work, he said. Restaurant owners hang student pieces on their walls and larger corporations such as Unum sponsor events and showings.

The city has invested in street art and murals on downtown thoroughfares such as Main Street, and students studying studio art or graphic design can work with local businesses designing promotional materials.

“I think the strength of the (UTC) program is permeating the rest of the community,” Mr. Bradley-Shoup said. “It is kind of rare for a city this size.”