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Hamilton makes strides  to become art-focused city

Two local businessmen focus some or all operations on the arts.

Ryan Shoemaker, front, is converting his retail store Galaxy CDs to an arts center, providing regular live music events, gallery exhibitions and art lessons to keep alive the community that had gathered around the store. His long-time friend Jared Bowers will help by booking all the music.

file photo Ryan Shoemaker, front, is converting his retail store Galaxy CDs to an arts center, providing regular live music events, gallery exhibitions and art lessons to keep alive the community that had gathered around the store. His long-time friend Jared Bowers will help by booking all the music.

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Richard O Jones, Staff Writer 8:45 PM Tuesday, November 8, 2011

HAMILTON — It’s been a long, slow, steady process, but the city of Hamilton is beginning to feel the results of a push toward the arts that has been under way for the last two decades.

The industries that had been the backbone of the city’s economy — the paper mills, the safe companies, the automobile plants — are gone, and while no one would suggest that the arts could generate the same level of jobs and revenue to get the city back on its feet, many agree that the arts could be a catalyst for an economic revival by attracting new business and revitalizing the existing ones.

Two local businessmen have recently made moves to focus some or all of their operations on the arts.

Morton Combs, a Hamilton tattoo artist who has operated the Tattoo Club for over 20 years, has recently turned a house on Heaton Avenue in the North End to Art Worxx, while on Hamilton’s West Side, Ryan Shoemaker of Galaxy CDs, which occupies a 2,000-square-foot store in a shopping plaza on Hamilton’s West Side, has shifted the focus of his business toward the arts.

The easy access of digital music killed the big music chain stores, and the independent stores that relied on collectors and certain niches have been struggling if they have been able to hang on. So the business model that Shoemaker put in place over a decade ago was no longer profitable.

But as a by-product of selling music, Galaxy CDs created a community by also offering in-store concerts and other events, and created an atmosphere where people would gather around their love of music.

“We have a very loyal fan base,” Shoemaker said. “Without that, we would have been gone five years ago.”

So last month, Shoemaker announced that Galaxy CDs would be closing as a record store and re-direct its efforts to becoming a hub for music and arts, enlisting the aid of long-time friend Jared Bowers to ramp up the number of shows featuring bands from all over the country.

“We don’t support any one type of genre,” Bowers said. “We think that all music is good if it’s well done, and we’re trying to foster the idea that there’s more and better music out there than what you hear on the radio.”

To complement the music venue, Shoemaker has also reached out to the artists who have been part of his clientele and the Galaxy community to turn the shop into a space for art by conducting classes and workshops in all aspects of the arts, including poetry and book readings, and hosting art shows.

“The foundation is already there,” he said. “It’s just a matter of doing what we can to build it up.”

Shoemaker said he couldn’t place an amount on his investment at this point, but he would be putting thousands into equipment.

Recognizing that affordable workshop fees and charging $5 a head to see a band at an all-ages venue without the benefit of liquor sales won’t likely be enough to keep paying the bills to keep the space afloat, Shoemaker is seeking other avenues toward viability by expanding his community to include local business owners, many of whom find themselves in similar financial straits in the current economy.

“I’ve always been a big supporter of the local small business,” he said, and envisions creating a sponsorship system that would promote local business while creating a dynamic, arts-driven community.

This summer, Combs this summer converted a rental property into North-End Art Worxx with a similar goal in mind, investing about $13,000 into the change. While the tattoo business hasn’t created the same kind of aesthetic community as the music store, Combs hopes that his “semi-private” art studio will have a similar kind of creative energy that, if nothing else, will help pay the bills so that he can have a place to practice his own fine art pursuits.

Part of his marketing plan is to get them while they’re young by offering art projects and special events geared toward families. This fall, he offered pumpkin carving with gourds grown in the studio’s yard. He’ll next offer materials and advice for local youth to create Thanksgiving projects, and Christmas ornaments after that.

“I’m trying to reach anyone I can,” he said. “I’d like to get anyone in here with artistic talent I’d like to get in here and bring their energy into the place.”

These business ventures are in many respects riding on the arts wave that began in 1989 when a group of local philanthropists began laying the groundwork for the Fitton Center for Creative Arts, a gift to the city for its bicentennial.

Rick H. Jones, who came to Hamilton from Wooster 20 years ago to direct the Fitton Center, which opened in 1993, said that Hamilton is currently reeling from some of the same conditions that existed then.

“J.C. Penney’s had just closed downtown and it had only been two years since Fisher Body had closed,” he said. “After talking to people for a few weeks, it was evident that there were bigger changes on the horizon.”

The model for an arts community began to change at that time, he said, from being a corporate-sponsored, high-brow way of thinking about the arts to a move toward more community-focused environment supported by individual donors.

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