Artown fanatic

Christine Fey is the current resource development and cultural affairs manager for the City of Reno, but she's been around Artown since the very beginning.

What do you do here?

My job entails working with anything to do with the arts and culture that the City's involved in. So that would be public art programs and projects and installations, our grantees, being the staff liaison to Artown for instance, Pioneer Center, that sort of thing.

What do you do as staff liaison to Artown?

I direct their contract and manage their contractual obligations. We have other staff that works with them in the park, although I'm there most nights.

Why does the City work with Artown?

Well, the Arts and Culture commission started Artown back in 1995 with the first festival, of course, being '96. So they did the first several years and then spun it off as a 501(c)3 in 1999. So it's really our baby. We're sort of the grandparent of Artown, so to speak, and I was the staff member at that time. I was the boots-on-the-ground doing the work in the beginning with a contract person we had hired to help run the festival. And then as it grew and grew and became more prominent and it became its own 501(c)3, they established a board and so I continued to be the staff liaison to their board. I served in that capacity for about 12 or 13 years. It was a long time—over a decade, certainly. Then as they matured, our involvement didn't have to be quite as much hands-on, so now we have a city councilmember who serves as a city liaison to their board and then I do sort of the nuts and bolts work of it.

And why is this important to the City of Reno?

It's very important to the City of Reno because of several reasons. One, because when we first started it, our goal was to bring our citizens back downtown because they had kind of disinvested themselves in the downtown back in '95. Anyone who was here at that time will remember that. And so our goal was to showcase the arts and invite people back to the living room of our community, which is our river corridor and Wingfield Park. We had a nice amphitheater and the only thing happening in there at that time were the municipal band concerts, which were wonderful, but we knew it could be much, much more. And so the City also receives a great deal of international and national visibility for Reno from Artown because there's so many people that come here for it, there's so much press coverage all over the place. And so anytime we can show Reno in the vibrant, positive light—and featuring the artists and art of Reno is certainly one way to do that—it shows us as a really mature, interesting place, an interesting city people want to go to and attend something.

How about personally? Why do you like Artown?

Well, again, I was there at the beginning, and, to me, Artown serves a very important place in my mind in this community. It does showcase the arts. It brings together so many different arts organizations, all of whom put on their own shows. Sometimes people don't realize how Artown actually works. Artown is really much more of a marketing arm for the arts, for what happens during the festival. They certainly produce a number of events, and they do it beautifully, but there's so many organizations that also produce events and at their own cost. The City of Reno gives grants to those groups that are a part of Artown, not every single one certainly, but many, many of them. And we consider that to be important because, for me, anytime that we can give people a reason to come down to their own living room and we can give them an excuse to investigate and discover some absolutely fabulous entity or group or genre of art that they've never experienced. They may become an opera fan, for instance, if they get to see an opera in the park, little tidbits of an opera because they would do the opera in blue jeans. It's more low key. If they get a chance to see a painter out there, they may decide to not buy posters, but buy paintings. And if they get chance to see ballet, they may be surprised and say, “Wow, I thought ballet was kind of something different and this is really fun, and I'm going to go to the ballet.” I've always seen Artown as a way for local arts organizations to really present themselves that are not currently their audience in a really safe, condensed environment where there's a lot of hype and it makes it really hip to go do it. So, for me, Artown serves a really important role in continuing to showcase the arts and the amazing art offerings that are here as well as bringing in artists who then stimulate our local artists and our local organizations. It's really a win-win.

Since you've been with Artown since the beginning, how has it evolved?

The first year of course was very tenuous, and people weren't quite sure what to expect and we were lucky to manage to do one thing or two things or three things a day. And it was only three weeks long. As it has progressed, people have expected—it's almost like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval—people have come to expect really high caliber, high quality, innovative, interesting things to happen during Artown. But that evolved over time. So at the beginning, we kinda took all comers, and later, they kinda became more discerning in what really constituted art. They don't jury it based on whether they think it's good or bad. They jury it based on, Is this really art? Because sometimes there's things that want to come in that really aren't art. They're something else, and there are other places for them to be. But Artown really does strive to make sure that they are continuing to hit a high caliber in art and so the ones that maybe weren't as high a caliber in the past have kinda dropped away because it's such a big field now and there's so much happening. It's really sort of a Darwinian thing. The best are rising to the top, and they're the ones that are continuing to be able to perpetuate and go. At the beginning, it was purely a local thing. Now, I'll be in the park and see the same people year after year who will wave and say hi because they recognize me from years ago and as well as all the Artown staff. It's like coming to meet relatives. And then we find out that they vacation in Graeagle every summer and they pick their vacation for July, and there's certain nights that they make sure that they drive down here, without fail, for those events. Wednesday nights especially. There's this couple that I don't think they've missed a year in 15 years. I mean, they're just always there front and center. And when you start hearing about locals saying back in the day, “Oh well, I usually go on vacation in July.” And now instead they say, “Oh, I've rearranged my vacation schedule. I never miss July. I don't leave Reno in July.” That is a change of mindset.

The goal was to bring people downtown and stimulate the downtown area. How do you think that has worked?

I think it's worked in an unbelievable way. The Reno Arts and Culture Commission … they were hoping to help revitalize downtown. Now, I'm not gonna suggest that that's the only thing that did it. It's sort of like a three-legged milk stool. You had redevelopment efforts, you had arts and culture which brought people downtown, and then you had the casinos and business owners that really were ratcheting up what they were doing. But when you look at what's happening in that corridor and you see the number of restaurants that have opened and you see little business and you know that hundreds of thousands of people come down—approximately 300,000 people come down—to various Artown events, not literally all downtown. But several hundred thousand people are coming downtown over the course of 31 days every night and are going to other events and are eating in restaurants—I think the proof is in the pudding. Look at all the restaurants and things. I think it's had a tremendous impact. And it's not just Artown, it's arts and culture in general. It's the Pioneer Center. It's Brüka Theater. It's Good Luck Macbeth. It's the Reno Philharmonic, and the Chamber Orchestra, and the two ballet companies. It's the Museum of Art. It's such a combined effort. Artown is one of the arts and culture groups, but Artown shines such a spotlight for a condensed period of time that it really has a lot of impact.

Are you specifically excited for any particular events this year?

Opening and closing nights are going to be amazing. I wouldn't miss those. Wednesday nights, I always love the World Music Series. It's just always fabulous. The dance series, they just get better and better every year. And the family series, I mean, I don't have any young kids anymore, but I like to go to the family series because it's always innovative and fun, and you get home at a decent hour, which is nice. But they're adding a new series at Bartley [Ranch Regional Park]—they already have several series at Bartley—but they're gonna have some really big headliners, like Don McLean and Judy Collins. There are several that are going to be amazing down there. I think that that's a nice addition—having a few gated events as well as the free events because that shows people that there's a lot that's for free but you can also go to some that have an expense and they aren't necessarily in a show room or casino, you get to be out in the beautiful weather. So I'm looking forward to a lot of things, actually. And then there's the visual arts day. And the Cortalina Art Auction. … But I'll be taking [my Artown book] home this weekend with a highlighter and I go through and I highlight everything that I plan to do. And they do their own work now, I really just manage the City side of it. But I do, we do get presentations. The Arts and Culture Commission is one of the sponsors of opening and closing night, so we saw the tapes and the videos and listened to the music that's going to be opening and closing night. It's going to be just phenomenal. And I'm very excited about that. I go through and highlight what I want to see, but I will be at something everyday and most days I'll do two, three or four things because there's that much to do. … And the nice thing is that our community is compact enough that you can do that. So you kind of get your fill for a little while.

Sounds like one busy month for you.

It's a very busy month, but I love it.