Featured Story
Growing
Mixedmedia artist H.C. Porter moved to 121 in 1989. She was barely 25, brimming and hopeful. "We'd get together at lunch and dream, talk about how we were going to make a living as artists. We had time on our hands, and the whole art world in front of us," she says.
But Porter's printmaking fumes permeated the building, and other artists complained. Less than a year in, the Billupses asked her to move to what is now Ezra Brown's jazz café . "I cried," she admits. "It was this big block building, musty and ugly."
Then something revolutionary happened. Unlike 121, her new studio was firmly situated among neighborhood homes. Curious kids began to knock on her door. "Who are you, what do you do, can I do that, too?" she remembers.
With the help of other artists and her partner, Karole Sessums, Porter got a $500 community grant and started Avenue for Art. Eight weeks a summer for five years, she sectioned off her studio and 50 kids in mask and printmaking. For the first time in it's brief history, the Millsaps Art District seamlessly blended with the street's indigenous population.
At the end of each summer, Porter hosted a show, selling the kids' work for $3 to $5 a pop. "It worked like real gallery," she explains. "The kids keep half the money, and the rest goes toward next year's program. We had 8-year-olds walking out of here with $45."
Eventually, she started photographing the neighborhood kids and transferring them to canvas as serigraphs, establishing the tonal work that is still her trademark today. "Picasso saw cubes, Mondrian saw line and color, and I saw Millsaps Avenue," Porter declares.
Reaping
By the early-'90s, 40-plus artists were registered in the now city-sanctioned arts district, and the 121 building housed many of them. Operating as a co-op gallery, the artists shared maintenance duties, held annual Holiday Studio Tours and publicized their efforts through mailers or word of mouth.
Wanting to increase gallery traffic, a group of tenants opened Gallery Restaurant, "a white-tablecloth, valet-parking affair, started with maybe $500," glass artist Elizabeth Robinson recalls. "It never became profitable, but it was a lot of fun."
The Billupses donated the space, and the artists did the work themselves, installing glass brick and painting concrete floors. Robinson credits James Prime as "the true creative force–he had this great sense of how to do something out of nothing. He'd haul huge pieces off the street and make these decorative items that went up to the ceiling."
"The street was lined with expensive Northeast Jackson cars," Porter says, "because it was this hidden spot where you could get excellent food. Sometimes women's groups held meetings there." Painter Richard Stowe recalls how "(Hinds County) Sheriff (Malcolm) McMillin would eat there almost everyday."
To up the ante after dark, the tenants "put pool tables out back, and overnight, we had 800 college kids," Robinson recants. Sitting around the courtyard one evening, they tossed around names for their newest venture. Young slapped at a mosquito and grumbled, "We should call the thing Mosquito, because that's what's back here."
So they did. Young designed a graphic, and a nightclub was born. With help from promoter Malcolm White, Mosquito started booking bands. "We got great response from the musicians, because we'd feed them from the restaurant. We'd have themes, like once we had a folk event with guest artists from Memphis, and we cooked up soft-leaf kudzu. It wasn't very good, but we served it anyway. Because that was the point," Robinson reminisces. "And every little trend, we'd be on top of. We had raves and smart drinks, mosh pits, cabaret, sometimes costume parties. If we got two hours of sleep, we were fortunate." She shakes her head, long brown hair swinging adamantly. "I was thankful for clean underwear. It was just that point, where life works that way."
-Cheree Franco, Jackson Free Press, 2008
