RedLine is a proud partner and administrator of the Arts in Society grant. This collaborative program provides grants to both individuals and organizations that use art as a vehicle to promote social justice and community welfare. 

We love highlighting our Arts in Society (AiS) grant recipients and all the unique and impactful projects made possible by their grant.

We’re excited continue this series with the 2023 AiS Grantee: Museum of Friends!

Learn all about the Museum of Friends and their AiS project: Artists & Veterans Work Project 3D Design for Community Development.

Tell us about your organization

The Museum of Friends (MoF) seeks to honor the artists who have freely given art to the museum's founders, thereby establishing MoF’s collection.  MoF’s mission is to foster open inquiry toward cultural education and its ideals through exhibitions, public and educational programs, with an extensive public reference library, in addition to its permanent collection.

MoF collaborates with and is informed by our rural community. Our art exhibitions and public programs are designed to be socially relevant and explore the intersection of art, education and humanities.

Our goals are mission driven to create community economic and workforce development. It pledges to serve the state of Colorado as a cultural resource, and to create opportunities for the underserved, underrepresented, and under-resourced community of Walsenburg and Huerfano County.

MoF has added jobs in the creative sector including a locally sourced gift shop, Made in Walsenburg, for artists and craftspeople, and presented socially engaged programs to attract and energize our rural, marginalized community.

MoF’s programs are inclusive and designed for artists, children, parents, people struggling with sobriety, and older adults.

Tell us about your first project that will utilize your AiS grant

In the spring of 2020, the Museum of Friends (MoF) requested funding for the Artists & Veterans Work Project 3D Design for Community Development project from the Arts in Society grant. This project grant addressed the community’s need to employ veterans, while continuing the downtown beautification project with lively plants and colorful planter boxes for Walsenburg’s pride.

The need for this project was made known during the public mural painting project at Miner’s Plaza Community Public Health is a Puzzle.

Maria Cocchiarelli—with MoF team members and community public service probation clients—painted the mural commissioned by Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment. The mural painters/assistants sent by probation’s 3rd Judicial District were veterans, and, one was a painter/muralist Ryan Estelle. 

In discussions during the mural painting, I realized that there was a real need for jobs for unemployed veterans and people on probation this might be realized with their interest in recycling and learning 3D printing technology to create useful objects such as the planter boxes. COVID-19 was announced almost exactly at the same time that the mural was completed early March 2020. 

MoF received the Art in Society Grant in June 2020.  During that 1st year and part of the 2nd year of COVID the AIS grantees continued to meet via zoom regarding our projects. Many of us expressed how difficult it was to meet in person and continue our work with the audience we had intended.

I was not able to reach 3 out of the 4 veterans, as they moved and the only one who was still in contact with me did not want to drive to Walsenburg from his rural home and expressed anxiety about contracting COVID.

I continued to communicate with Nick Vigil, Veteran’s Affairs Director, however he was unsuccessful in attracting unemployed veterans for this project. He also expressed that COVID-19 was a factor. 

In the summer of 2021, I met a veteran who was interested in working on this project with MoF and reassured me that we would be able to find and create jobs for veterans with the 3D printing.

Earlier in the spring, Huerfano County lent three 3D printers to MoF and artist and professor Mike Metz (School of Visual Arts) of Gardner and New York City offered training in this media for the MoF staff. 

However as a few months went by it became apparent that the veteran we contracted with was also unsuccessful in recruiting other veterans and did not learn the 3D printing process.

By December 2021, after initial conversations with newly elected Walsenburg’s Mayor Charles Bryant I learned there was a real community need to design, fabricate and place substantial art planter boxes in the Downtown that would not deteriorate with time and adverse weather conditions.

I also learned during this time that the 3D printers lent by the county would not be adequate to create the size planters we needed to create public art.

I asked the Arts in Society grant funders to reconsider this new proposal by redirecting the funds intended for Artists & Veterans Work Project 3D Design for Community Development to an integrated community project with partners from varied sectors listed on the following page.

I worked with Lares Feliciano on this new project entitled Planter Boxes for the Common Good/Walsenburg.  The revised plan would help to harness the energy of the last 14 years of Downtown Art Planter Boxes Beautification program. 

Now, with new partners such as Downtown Revitalization Committee, the Mayor of Walsenburg and City planning committee members design planters meant to be sustainable in the future.  The planters were to be designed by a local artist/designer Diane Lohman, with input from the Mayor, the Downtown Revitalization committee and MoF team members and artists. 

We met with Ryan McWilliams, director of Johnny’s Boiler Shop in Pueblo located at the new Water Tower Place, to discuss them.  Water Tower Place is a creative reuse of an historical meat packing plant where artists and innovators are collaborating to energize this old building with new possibilities.

Ryan with his consultant Gregory Howell were planning to create planter boxes for the rooftop of Water Tower Place and welcome this collaboration with MoF and our partners for this design challenge.  Unfortunately, this collaboration did not meet fruition.

For the Walsenburg planters, the team members regularly met over a period of months to brainstorm about: using donated reclaimed materials; how applied designs reflect the multicultural make-up and history/herstory of our community; how the design elements would be UV Coated vinyl or etched metal planning for longevity; and how we will explore meaning by conveying narrative with etched steel or printing on steel. 

We produced 10 to 12 planter boxes by July 2023 with an inaugural fall planting and community celebration soon after their completion.

What’s next in the pipeline for your organization? What other projects are you dreaming up for next year, and how will your AiS grant help to support these efforts?

The Museum of Friends is in the process of seeking funding for the planning and execution of a two-year exit strategy and succession strategic plan.

We wish to recruit an exit strategy professional to help MoF’s staff and board identify a proper entity to merge with MoF and help MoF devise a clear plan to maintain and move forward the successful non-profit we have built, so it will serve our community for generations to come.

We need to build capacity so we can perform the necessary data, technology, professional development, legal and accounting procedures ensuring the viability of this succession plan. 

In 2022, staff members participated in Governor Jared Polis’s Exit Strategy Institute and drafted, with staff and board, a succession plan that considers the art collections, the building, MoF’s monetary assets, liabilities, and consultants hired to facilitate the plan.

MoF has an established history and relationships throughout Colorado with foundations and funders. These include: History Colorado; Colorado Humanities; Colorado Creative Industries; RedLine’s “Art in Society,” Huerfano County, the City of Walsenburg local government.

The historic Roof & Dick building is MoF’s home and it has undergone four phases of an eight-phase rehabilitation plan to make the building sustainable, comfortable, ADA accessible, more conducive to exhibiting, creating, teaching, curating and storing art.

It will be transferred to the new philanthropic entity or another TBD contemporary art center or museum of Southern Colorado’s art history and the counterculture movements that define it.

Our exit strategy would be built upon two strategic plans and the work we have accomplished over the last 16 years. 

By ensuring that we take our client community feedback when deciding where to focus our efforts and creating programs and exhibitions that are culturally responsive to our community.

The Museum of Friends is the community art center and museum that presents educational programs, films, panel discussions, book and poetry readings and exhibitions/community outreach to celebrate the local culture of South Central Colorado’s regional artists and art movements.

Early on, MoF established its association with the counter-culture art movements of the 1960’s that began in our region. We wanted to share this rich story with the rest of the state.

Artists moved to this area in the 1940’s drawn by its beautiful land—a tradition begun with artists Bill Thatch and Jeannettte Faris (daughter of Asperidon Faris.) Both were landscape painters and business owners. Their influence extends to the founding of the artists’ community in Gardner.

There, Bill Thatch located 600 acres for Dean and Linda Fleming’s “Libre Artists Community.” “Celebrating Libre 50th” exhibit in 2018 included “Genesis of Communes,” a panel discussion led by Dr. Timothy Miller, Religious Studies professor at KU-Lawrence; the films: Lisa Law’s “Flashing on the 60’s” and Jean Grossman’s “Drop City”. In 2008, MoF presented a series of local artist interviews that were published - exploring this story.

This was expanded with four exhibitions at the Huerfano County Courthouse—celebrating over a dozen artists (from the 1940’s to the present) with stories of community building.

In 2009, the School-Tour program extended MoF’s outreach in local schools—with tours, pre and post-visit programs that responded to teachers/students’ needs. Currently, photographs of the children 2008-2022 are on view in the newly built County Courthouse.

Walsenburg has an estimated population of 3000 compared to 6,645 in Huerfano County. MoF works closely with the community of Walsenburg program participants and Made in Walsenburg vendors from nearby La Veta, Cuchara and Gardner.  MoF’s board is comprised of 50% women and Native American, Hawaiian and Hispanic ancestry.

About 20% are from the LGBTQ+ community. MoF’s 2022-2023 focus “Celebrating Women and Black and Brown Artists” developed due to COVID's effects on women in the workforce and on BIPOC in health, economics and labor.

As many children were home-schooled, women -- typically the caregivers -- bore the responsibilities of child rearing, teaching, and home duties. They left the workforce in record numbers. It is expected that many of the jobs lost during the pandemic will not return.

The inequities of race, class and gender were exacerbated with the murder of George Floyd and other racially motivated crimes, increasing uncertainty in our rural community, where lack of resources, isolation, low population and racial inequities persist.

MoF’s youth program “Friday Art/Lab” is STEAM; and its School/Tour program inspires youth to develop self-expression, reading/skills, vocabulary, math/science, and self-esteem through examples of artists who grew up in Huerfano County.

Our exhibitions develop through conversations with local partners who bring new ideas to inspire and transform anxiety and conflict through art. Our adult “Visualization, Art and Meditation” class begun in 2018 provide offenders a “Pro-social” program and is part of their recovery offered through 3rd Judicial District – Huerfano and Las Animas Counties.

What was your experience like when applying for Arts in Society? What tips would you share with artists looking to apply for an AiS grant?

I would suggest that you make contact with the program director to brainstorm about your project.  Also, maybe talk to other AiS recipients to learn what worked and what may be challenging moving forward.

I would read the guidelines and the reporting requirements before the project started and really look at the time line and get all of your partners to agree to the time plan and their part before committing.