The Part of a Building Nobody Can Photograph

There were three things that had to be finished before anyone could put a shovel in the ground at the Meyer Art Center: the design, the engineering, and the permit application. The first two are complete. The third is filed and in process.

The Meyer Art Center is at the permit stage.

It is a short sentence, and it took years and 318 people to write it.

What the permit stage actually means

Permitting is the last stage of paper before a project becomes construction. Getting here means the drawings are finished, the engineering is signed off, and the building has been described in enough detail that a city can review it line by line. Everything up to this point has been planning. Everything after it is work you can see from the road.

It also means the expensive, invisible part of a capital project is behind us — the part that is hardest to raise money for, because nobody can stand inside a set of drawings or take a photograph of a structural calculation.

The number on the wall

$7.4 million raised toward a $13 million building. Fifty-seven percent. It moved to that number on a Wednesday afternoon in November, when four people put up two ladders in the parking lot and changed the thermometer on the side of the building — that afternoon has its own story.

318 donors have given to this campaign, from $5 to more than $3 million. That range is the point. This is not one person’s building.

What the money is building

A permanent home for art in west Stanwood: galleries, classrooms, a digital studio and an outdoor plaza. The Meyer is designed to hold what this organization already does in borrowed rooms and rented tents, and to hold it year round. It has been a long road to here.

What your giving is already doing

Here is the part that is not waiting for a building.

Afternoon of the Arts puts professional working artists in front of students during the school day, so arts education reaches every student in the room rather than only the ones who sign up for an elective. This fall that is eight classes over five weeks at Utsalady Elementary with teaching artist Shogo Ota, and homeschool families at the Saratoga School Family Learning Center for the first time. In the spring, Elger Bay Elementary, Twin City Elementary and Stanwood Elementary join.

The district has noticed.

“...Through programs like Afternoon of the Arts and collaborative community mural projects, more than 500 of our students had opportunities just this year to learn from professional artists, express their creativity and see how the arts can strengthen connections within our community...”

— Dr. Ryan Ovenell, Superintendent, Stanwood-Camano School District

Student work has left the school buildings too: the Utsalady student mural led by Shogo Ota, and the Heritage Skate Park mural made with the City of Stanwood. The program is growing school by school, toward every school in the district.

What a permanent home would mean here

Stanwood and Camano Island do not have a building like this. Art happens here anyway — in a festival that closes a brick road for a day, in classes that run wherever there is room, in a mobile art center that drives out to where people already are. All of it works. None of it is permanent.

A permanent home changes what is possible in ordinary ways first: a class that runs every week instead of whenever a room is free, a gallery that can commit to a show a year out, somewhere a parent can drop a teenager on a Saturday morning. Then it changes bigger things. A town this size rarely gets a real arts facility. When one does, the building tends to become the room where the community meets itself — at an opening, at a student art show, at a class where a retired engineer and a ninth grader are both bad at throwing pots.

That is what is being built. The galleries are the easy part to describe.

Before the Doors Open

The campaign is 57% funded and the building is in permitting. The programs, meanwhile, are running right now, this school year — which costs money this school year.

Before the Doors Open is our year-end campaign, November 1 through December 31, with a $100,000 goal. There are three moments in it:

• Giving Tuesday — Tuesday, December 1. The global day of giving, and the opening of our season.
• Holiday Open House and Student Art Show — Wednesday, December 16, 5:00 to 8:00 PM at The Floyd in Stanwood. Free to attend. Student artwork, refreshments, handmade ornaments and cards, and a hands-on art activity. Families welcome.
• A year-end gift — any time through December 31. Gifts made by December 31 count toward this tax year.

Gifts are matched by board funds while those funds last.

Give in the way that works for you

There is more than one way to do this, and for some donors a few of these are worth more at year end than writing a check:

• One-time or recurring gift — our secure online giving platform. A recurring gift is the quiet one: it keeps programs running all year rather than all at once.
• Give to the capital campaign — the same platform, pointed straight at the building fund.
• Donor Advised Fund — write to us and we will send transfer instructions.
• Stock transfer — give appreciated shares directly to the campaign.
• Mail a check — Meyer Art Center, PO Box 2528, Stanwood WA 98292.
• IRA or RMD — a tax-wise way to give at year end for many donors. Write to us, and check with your own adviser about what applies to you.

All six land in the same place: the Meyer Art Center, its building and its programs. They are all on the donate page, and development@meyerartcenter.org is the address for a conversation about a larger gift.

Thank you

When you invested in the future of the Meyer Art Center, you moved an idea closer to a real thing. Your gift is doing more than helping construct a building. It is creating a permanent home for creativity, connection and cultural enrichment in this community, and future generations of artists, students, families and visitors will walk into opportunities that are taking shape right now — because people like you believed in this while there was still nothing to point at.

However you choose to give — online, by check, from a donor advised fund, from stock or from an IRA — thank you for helping build something that will serve this community for decades to come.

— The Board of Directors, Meyer Art Center