Oral History Program Lorie Buckley Interviewed by HallieKate Briggs and Kathryn MacKay 21 December 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lorie Buckley Interviewed by HallieKate Briggs and Kathryn MacKay 21 December 2021 Copyright © 2025 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Buckley, Lorie, an oral history by HallieKate Briggs and Kathryn MacKay, 21 December 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Lorie Buckley Circa December 2019 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Lorie Buckley conducted by HallieKate Briggs and Kathryn MacKay on December 21, 2021 in the Ogden Municipal Building. Lorie discusses her role as Ogden City arts coordinator, the Nine Rails Creative District, and the city’s support of artists. Note: Active listening, transitions in dialogue (such as “um,” “so” “you know,” etc.), and false starts in conversations are not included in transcription for ease of reading. All additions to transcript noted with brackets. HKB: It is 10:07 a.m. on Tuesday, December 21, 2021. We are in the personal office of Lorie Buckley on the ninth floor of the Ogden Municipal Building on 2549 Washington Boulevard in Ogden, Utah. My name is HallieKate Briggs, and I will be conducting this interview on the history and impact of contemporary art in Ogden as part of my Bachelor of Integrated Studies major capstone project. This project will be housed in the Stewart Library Special Collections at Weber State University. My interviewee is Lorie Buckley, Ogden City arts coordinator. I believe that's your title? LB: It is. HKB: Okay, perfect. Also joining us is Dr. Kathryn MacKay of Weber State's history department acting as oversight. Thank you, Lorie, for both your time and your willingness to participate in this project through both of our technical difficulties and who knows what else is going on. Let's just jump right in. Would you mind sharing with me when and where you were born? LB: I was born in Ogden, Utah, at McKay-Dee Hospital on June 24 in 1971. HKB: Perfect. Did you grow up here in Ogden? 1 LB: I did. I actually lived in Ogden until I was about seven years old, and then my parents built a house just in South Weber and then they moved to South Weber. So, I just lived at the top of 27th Street. Actually, I lived on Custer Street between 20th and 21st for the first part. Then I lived with my grandmother at the top of 27th Street while we built our house and then moved to South Weber. I'm an original Ogdenite [laughs]. HKB: Ogden original. What was it like growing up here? LB: Oh, my gosh, I actually loved it. Living at the base of mountains, I think often us locals, you either love it or you've forgotten about how amazing it is and you kind of take it for granted. My husband and I have a lot of out-of-state friends. He's heavily involved in the action sports world, so we have a lot of people from all over the world that travel through and come stay at our house, and most of them are in complete awe of what it looks like here. They're like, "I can't believe you live"—basically, where my house is in Layton, we're almost on the foothills of Layton. They're like, "You live on a mountain. This is the biggest mountain I've ever seen." Having that around, and you hear that from others, it reminds you about how amazing it is here. The culture, the people are generally very friendly I think. I've traveled a lot, and I think Utah is a really, really special place. We have something magic here. HKB: I'd agree with that. KM: I would do. 2 HKB: I grew up here in Utah as well, and like, you don't even know it, until I drove across the country and went through Nebraska and everything. I'm like, "Wow, this looks boring." LB: You know, I think you don't realize it as a child. It just seems normal. But then when you leave and you start experiencing other places, you're like, "Okay, I understand." Like, it's a good place. It is really good. HKB: Well, speaking about that magic of Utah, will you tell me a little bit about your educational background? LB: Sure. I actually didn't do my degree until later in life. I went through high school, and back in the 80s, it was the thing to do to get married at a very young age and start your family. So, I did that and kind of did my education. I think I started when I was 39 or 40, so I waited to go to school, which was a better decision, because I really knew what I wanted and who I was by then. When you're going to school at that point, I think you're fully engaged with school and appreciating that you're there more. I've always loved art. I was really into art going through high school. You kind of fall out of it a little bit when you have small children and they're kind of sucking the life out of you, so to say. I love them dearly, but it consumes your life for a minute, then to come back to it was so refreshing and amazing. I honestly think everyone should go to school, or at least attend some sort of postsecondary school in their older age. Your mindset is so very different. You haven't just spent 12 years straight in school, so you're more excited and more open to learning and appreciative of what you're experiencing, and it definitely... I 3 think people just do better. You know, you're a little bit more stable and set in who you are. It's a good thing. So, I'm a late bloomer, but I got a bachelor in fine arts in two-dimensional. I'm a painter, a printmaker, so I do oils and acrylics, I work with inks. KM: This is where? LB: At Weber State, actually. I'm a Weber State alum. I graduated summa cum laude and with honors and absolutely loved every minute of it. And honestly have been kicking around getting my master's, but then MFA programs, I haven't really liked the ones here in Utah, and it's hard to leave. You know, I'm settled here. My husband and I own a business here. KM: Tell us your husband's name? LB: My husband's name is Edward Buckley, but he goes by Eddie. KM: What's your business? LB: We own 5050 Bike and Skate, and alternatively 5050 BMX. It's a brick-andmortar bike shop in Ogden, but also the 5050 BMX is known across the world as a BMX brand in the alternative sports world. We have a professional bicycle team that are professional athletes. We do shows in schools, anti-suicide, anti-drug, whatever the school is having. We have ramps that go in and then, you know, like motivational speaker, and that's when my athletes are trained. They speak to the students and then do shows for them. Then I also have professional athletes that like, X Games, they compete on that level. We have a website, and we sell parts and pieces and T-shirts to all over the place, like Australia, Europe, and 4 Japan. It's crazy. It's a very small little niche. We don't make a lot of money, but it's kind of cool. HKB: How long have you been running that program? LB: Oh, my gosh, the shows in the schools? So, my brother died from a heroin overdose, and that kind of pushed my husband and I. He died at 30. He wasn't married and didn't have any kids, thankfully. But we had the shop then, and we were like, "What can we do?" Like, if someone would have intervened with him, or at least influenced him on any level, could it had changed the direction that he went? So, we started actually looking for ways to make a difference in a way that—and children are kind of funny. They're not very receptive to a lot of things. Like, you can't go speak to them like you can adults. You kind of have to like catch them with something that's amazing and then give them the message that comes along with it. We had so many athletes that ride for the shop. There's actually surprisingly a really big BMX scene here in Utah. There's several world-renowned BMX riders that live here in Utah, in Layton, in Salt Lake. They were like, "Well, we'd definitely like to do something." So, my husband designed and built foldable ramps that fold up and go into a trailer and then they all fold down, and started working with PTAs. We started first working with PTA people, and then worked with a guy. Honestly, it was odd, the guy that sells chocolate and it was a prize. We kind of did a little bit of that, and a lot not in Utah. All over like the western United States, a lot in Oregon and Washington and Idaho. But getting 5 shows in Utah was like, I don't know, the schools in Utah weren't really interested or didn't see it was the problem. So, we did that, and then we started working for the Stand for Kind of organization here in Utah. That's how we do it. We also do like, Adobe parties and, you know, local fairs and things like this. We have a ramp that drives and goes up and down that goes in parades. So, we do a little bit of the like entertainmenty side of things, but the school shows were kind of where it all started on that side of thing, the ramps and stuff, to try to maybe direct, even if you can save one kid. Even if one kid is inspired by that to not go down that road, it's enough. KM: When I first met you, you were involved in a project for Layton. Would you talk about that a little bit? LB: Remind me what that is? With Layton City? KM: Weren't you involved in the arts—oh, God, it was with... Now I just spaced it completely. It was with the Weber Arts Council, which was an organization that was started years ago and is now defunct. But I thought you were involved with an art project involving Layton City. LB: I don't think so. That must not have been me. I, since joining and becoming a Change Leader, have become friends with the people that are, you know, the Davis County Arts Council. I don't know. It's not Layton City. Like, Layton City shares an office to the people there, so we kind of talk a little bit more and have talked about collaborating, but I haven't ever worked with them. So, that must have been someone else. I don't know. 6 KM: Okay. The Change Leader Institute has been a good organization through the years. I myself have gone through it. It's a wonderful organization, and they do lots of good stuff. LB: Yes, they do. KM: What was your project for them? Or to get certified, I should say. LB: My project was the painted streets here in Ogden. That's what I chose to do. That's the painted crosswalks that we did as part of the activation for the Creative District. So, I talked about, actually, the uphill battle of changing the minds of city administration and engineers about allowing more in your face, accessible public art projects that are in the streets or on the sidewalks. I'm still fighting that battle, and it was extremely hard, but we did win and got a few. You know, they've kind of worn out and it's time to do it again, but I thought it actually worked perfectly, and we had over 200 community volunteers that came and helped to paint the streets. We did kind of paint by numbers. They were so engaged, and when you can engage people with that, they take ownership in it. You know, they're so proud and they'll show more people. I just think projects like that are really where it's at. Like, if you can get people to engage on a level where they're very proud of it, or they've had a hand in helping, or they got to at least voice their opinion—we do a lot of public input sessioning when we're doing new public art projects where we have the artists come in and talk to the community on some level when they're planning designs for things. The Don Rimx murals, you know, we did. Of course, it was in the pandemic, so we did Zoom meetings with him, but I think it's a really important 7 piece of a healthy arts and culture scene of a community, to ensure that we are not programming at them; you're programming with them. KM: What year was that, the Change Leader project? LB: Oh, my gosh, that was 2016? 2016 or 17. I'm sorry, I can't remember. It's kind of all blurred into... [All laugh] HKB: And the pandemic's thrown time off entirely, so. LB: I know, it is so weird. It's like, what year even is it? I don't even know. Just has all become a big blur. HKB: How did you first become involved with Ogden City? LB: When I finished my degree, I was... I've been self-employed for a long time. Like, my husband and I, before our bike shop, owned a construction company; we built houses. So, I'd been self-employed and hadn't actually worked outside of our own businesses for a long time. I was like, "Okay, I can sit in my studio and just create art and hope someone buys it, or I can get away from my husband"—who I love dearly, but working with him for all those years, it was time for me to do my own thing away from him. I just started. I wasn't really focusing; I didn't need to go get a job right away, but I wanted to find something that, you know, was worth my time. Something that I was like, "I can make a difference," or "This is very interesting to me, at least on some level." So, I kind of looked. I looked for about five or six months and then saw this one, and it was only part time. At that point, I was still heavily involved in helping my husband run our business. You know, did all the payroll and all the yucky stuff that he didn't want 8 to do. All the boring stuff, the paperwork, the important stuff. But he's the more like, "I just want to run around and be the star of the show," you know. I was like, “Okay, that works. I can do both. I can still help him and then do this and see how it is.” So, I came and worked actually with Diane Stern, and she was here. Because there was two women that ran Ogden City Arts before me, Robin and Diane. Robin... I can't think of her last name. KM: I can think of it either. LB: She moved to Florida with her husband. But she was leaving and Diane was still here, so I came and worked with Diane, who like, she's an amazing woman. Like, I learned so much from her, and she inspired me and taught me a lot about how to view community art in a different lens. Like, when you're not when you've never actually worked—and then she was a presenter for years up at Weber State. Did a lot of bringing different acts, like Jake Shimabukuro, or people like this that are these really talented, amazing people that, you know, kind of are running under the radar. You don't really know who they are. She brought him to Ogden on one of her projects, and he played at the Eccles. I was like, "Okay, it's a guy playing the ukulele, like for an hour," or whatever the show was. I'm looking at Diane like she was crazy, and then I saw him play and I was blown away. Like, I have told everyone I know like, "You should look this guy up. He's so very talented." She is just an amazing woman, and I miss working with her. But she left working for the city to venture out and do other things. I think working under the 9 restraints of city bureaucracy and red tape was hard for her. You know, she really just wants to do her own thing, and like, "We need to do this and we're gonna do it," and that's not how things work at the city. There's so many steps and processes. KM: Well, that's not how it works at the university either. Because she was the cultural arts programmer for the university, and same kind of constraints and frustration, ended up working for the city. She's a creative individual. LB: She really is. She's an amazing seamstress. HKB: Those government structures. LB: Yeah. KM: Well, it's the bureaucracy. LB: It's like putting this amazing shape into a peg hole, you know what I mean? Sometimes they don't fit. So, yeah, I think she struggled a little bit with that. I think she seems much happier now. Like, I've run into her a few times, and she's doing well. KM: I miss working with her. The Weber Arts Project was a good project, and of course, the county commissioners put the kibosh on that. LB: Well, and then they kind of tried to do their own thing, and then that went away, and I'm like, "What is happening? We should just let that thing stay. It was doing great things." KM: Yeah, it was. LB: So, the Weber Arts Council, one of their projects was the Rachel Pohl mural, which is there on the corner of Adams and 25th Street, was kind of the beginning 10 piece of the Nine Rails Creative District. They helped fund that. So, you know, for that organization to go away, it was a big hit to Ogden, I think. KM: I agree. We tried for a year. We did the theater internship, the residency project, and that went really well. LB: Yeah, you guys wrote for an art grant for it, and then the pandemic hit and then it was—you need to circle back to that. KM: I think so. HKB: Can you tell me a little bit about the Nine Rails Creative District? What's the connection there? LB: Okay. When I started this department, or Diana—so, I am in arts, culture and events, and our department, in particular the art side of thing, was tasked with creating a master plan for arts and culture. I believe years back there was one that was started; I don't know if it was ever really finished. So, the city had been running all these years without any sort of master plan, and cities run off of master plans. There's master plans for lots of different projects. Diane and Robin were tasked with starting that process. They were working with Sara Meess, who is in community and economic development under the business side where they're like, trying to get new businesses to move to the city, you know, bring their businesses, hire employees. It's like business development in the city. Sara loves the arts, so we can always try to snag her in any project that we can bring her in, 'cause she's super knowledgeable about all things outside of arts, which is the inner workings of what properties we own, 11 and... You know what I mean? Like, a lot of the mathy numbers, stuff that I'm not good at, so I'm super glad she is here and is helping. She worked, and together they wrote for an NEA grant for the development of a creative district. When I came on, they had received the grant, and we just started really working on writing and creating this master plan. We did so many public input sessions and meetings with the community and surveying and asking them, "What would you like? How would you like a creative district to function? Have you visited any in the other countries? What did you like about them?" We wanted a plan that wasn't a time-based plan. A lot of plans are like, "Here's the plan: year one we're going to do this, year two"—you know, and then the years go by and the plan is defunct and it goes away. So, the plan was actually developed and created as a value-based plan so it can go on for many years. It's like a big-picture plan with goals and strategies that we can work towards. Of course, if you meet them, you know, they're met. But there's overreaching goals that can change with the way the city changes and the way the community's needs change. It was actually genius. Jake McIntire with Union Creative Agency was a consultant on that, and I think that was a lot of his idea, too. He has a master's in urban and creative urban development. If I could clone him like 25 times and just say, "K, I need this one to do this, and—" He is a gem. He serves on the Arts Advisory Committee. He's currently sitting as the vice chair, and he is amazing. He's just so amazing. 12 Like, he puts so much time and effort into this community and developing and advocating for the arts. I'm like, "Hey, you ready to be mayor?" He's like, "No." But we work together. Gosh, I think we did... It was a twoyear process, and I think we did over 20 or 30 public input sessions. Actually, one was super fun. We had people come, and we gave them— HKB: [Laughs] One of the 30 was fun. LB: Well, there were a lot, but one was super engaging. We used money, like play money, and made poster boards of different things that we'd collected from all the other meetings. Like, "Okay, this is kind of what we're hearing," and created vision boards, and people would go and they would vote with their dollars, their little play money. Which is really kind of a cool concept, because you don't have enough money to put it in all the little bins, so you have to really think about what what's important to you. It's not real money, but it is kind of the same concept of, "I only have this many votes." So, they would go and vote for what, you know, did they want lighting? Did they want professional development for artists? Did they want programming? The plan was actually adopted. We went through and did it all. It was written, revised, edited, you know, you work through all the things. The City Council adopted the plan actually February 28 of 2017. From that plan, that's where the Nine Rails Creative District came from. Part of that plan, one of the goals or strategies was to create a creative district. So, from there, we jumped off with Sara Meess again and worked on the development of the creative district. 13 We started doing activation projects, which was painting the streets, doing Moments Festival. We did that May, 2017 or 18. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, I'm terrible with dates, but it was a light and time-based public event. So, we did it at night, there was light-based things and there was performances, and it was all within the creative district. There was a map and people were giving, you know, like, "This is happening, this is happening," so they had to choose and go around to see all the things. But it was all within the creative district. So, as we worked through that, we continue to work on what you wanted to see in the creative district, and then the master plan for the Nine Rails Creative District and the official designation of the creative district was adopted in 2019, I want to say. 2017, 18, 19. I believe it. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that's the right date. In that plan, and in the master plan too, if you look at them both, some of the goals mesh well together. Things like we needed to activate the creative district. The Monarch coming on board, The Monarch creative studios and stuff, was a huge activation piece, so that was great. The Platforms, which is the little outside gallery in front of the Rachel Pohl mural, these just little pieces. Then we started programming on First Friday Art Stroll at the corner here, which we took control of, our department did, so it's used as, you know, people can go up to it and find out what's happening in arts and culture, also like what you can do in the city. You know, there's the museums and there's like the dinosaur park and all this stuff. So, we can program that space which falls in the creative district. 14 Brandon Cooper, who is the deputy director of community and economic development, came to me and said, "We're working on maybe buying the Courtyard Inn," which was the where the Dumke Arts Plaza is now, but this was several years back. He's like, "Because there's so much problem." It was a lot of crime, you know, police were going there almost every day, and the only way they could figure out how to fix that was to buy the property and do something with it. He's like, "I don't know what to do with it. You know, we can sell it, we can have a building built there." We were all trying to figure out how to activate the district, but there wasn't any space besides in the streets, and to close down a street for an activity is hard. It's a lot of logistics, and you have to have the police involved, so we needed a program little space. I was like, "I know exactly what we can do. We need to make it an arts plaza." It's at the epicenter of the creative district, it's right next to The Monarch, it would be perfect. Thankfully, he agreed, but we were like, "Okay, this is gonna cost several millions of dollars. We'll start saving up for it. It can be a CIP project years down the road or whatever." So, I actually asked for public art money, $150,000 towards the design for a plaza there, so that the city would earmark that and nothing would happen to that plaza. I'm like, "I know it's gonna be a patch of dirt for a while. Maybe we can throw some gravel down and like have outdoor dancing on it or something." I'm like, "We're saving this. Like, nothing else can happen." 15 The public art money was approved from City Council, and then we did an RFQ, which is a request for qualifications for a design firm. We do something different with ours, if we have control of it. When we're doing an RFQ for something like that, we required them to work with local—they had to work at least one local organization. Sasaki chose. They hired Shalae with Io Land Design and Jake with Union Creative. So, they looked— KM: This is Shalae Larsen? LB: Shalae Larsen, yes. Io LandArch Design, I believe her name is. She's a local architect. And of course, Jake, thankfully. So, there were actually three in the running, and I honestly can't remember the names of the other three that were up for the design job. But one, you know, one [was] working with Lauren Argo from the Argo house, James, and they had chosen them as their partner, and I don't remember who else. But Sasaki won. They, you know, their presentation, their previous work, and just they seem so much more open to, I like to say, coloring outside the lines, 'cause what I wanted for this was something that's not very normal. You don't normally see this anywhere. That's what we asked them for. You know, we were like, "I want you to design something that is nowhere else. I don't want you copy and pasting from one of your old designs, you know, and we want the community heavily involved." Sasaski, they were excited, and the lead architect on the project was super challenged by the project, but not scared to listen to our crazy ideas. So, we started designing it before we even had money. We're like, "K, 16 we're going to get to like 60% design and then we're gonna stop, because we don't have money to build this. We'll at least know what we want to do." Thaine Fischer, who built The Monarch and who is a large property owner here, caught wind of this and through his channels knew— KM: He has many [laughs]. LB: He has many. He knew that the Dumke Foundation, they were looking to close out their foundation. They wanted to spend down and close it out, and they were looking for a legacy project. He was like, "You know, there's this arts plaza that Ogden City is trying to do." So, they came and they looked at the dirt patch. Oh, no, the motel was still there when they came and looked at it. I'm amazed they even signed up for this. I have thanked them so many times, like, "Thank you for your vision of seeing past what was there." They somehow convince him. Scott Springer was involved at the very beginning. I met with Scott and Thaine early on about what we could do there. You know, some ideas while they were working. I didn't meet the Dumke Foundation members until the tail end, but their representative, Jeff Glebocki, I worked with heavily through this whole design process. They were like, "We want in. We're going to give you," you know, I think they gave $2.4 million towards the project. So, here we are with it when I was thinking, "Okay, this is gonna be 10 years down the road [when] we might be able to build this plaza." 'Cause each year I'm like, "Okay, each cycle of public art money"—'cause we only get $100,000 a year from the city into public art funds, which isn't very much, so I have to save up for things. I have to earmark and encumber and be 17 like, "K, $50,000 out of the $100,000, or $30,000, and we'll just save a little bit and then hope that the city will take it on as a CIP," which is a community improvement project. But luckily, the Dumke people came in and saved the day, and we have this amazing arts plaza, which is a programmable space in our creative district. The fact that we have artwork from Chakaia Booker in Ogden, Utah is, like, I can't even—sometimes I'm like, "Is this real? Can I pinch myself?" I can't believe we have Chakaia Booker pieces in Ogden, something that when I'm traveling I would go see in L.A. or Chicago or you know. It's so cool. It's so cool that we can offer the local community members and children and people who are inspired by art that experience of interacting with art on that level, and they don't have to travel. It doesn't cost them thousands of dollars to travel to one of these bigger cities to see this. They can come here at home and see it. It's just amazing. I can't even. It makes me want to cry. I don't know if I lost track of what we were talking about. What was I saying? Kind of go off on a tangent. HKB: You're good. I also lost track; I was so invested. Can I ask, how do you guys measure your impact on the Ogden community from the arts projects? LB: Oh my gosh, that is a really hard thing, and that's something that I feel like [we] maybe could do better with, like the evaluation tools and assessing your programming and what you're doing. Really, community feedback is huge. Attendance, of course, is an easy way to look at what you're doing. Because I don't have any tools and we're so short staffed, it's hard to spend a lot of time 18 and effort looking at or figuring out how to evaluate when we're just running at full speed all the time to the next. 'Cause the next thing's coming down the pipeline, so we don't have a lot of time to sit back and go, "How'd that go? Should we do this again?" I did something that is on my fat-burner to-do list when I get time. I'm taking on an intern in the spring to try to help me just try to grab the things that need to be done but I just can't. I'm one person. Like, we're a very small team. We have an amphitheater coordinator, an arts coordinator, and a special events. The special events coordinator, we have like almost 300 special event applications a year in Ogden. Any time you have a public event, you have to do a special event application that runs through the city. It gets approved by fire, police, risk, and all that stuff. We do the Twilight Concerts and, you know, any public art, anything First Friday Art Stroll, the little things. Like today is winter solstice, so we have an event there to draw attention to the public art in Ogden, but also to experience the Andy Dufford sculpture, because the snowflake comes perfectly centered on the rock today. I always have a little bit. We give hot chocolate and donuts and talk about public art, and then you get to watch the snowflake get to the center. It's kind of cool. So, just all those things that are continually coming at you. Arts grants is a huge time that takes away. I don't have an evaluative process, other than you have the feel of what's happening in the community and who's responding and attending things. That's kind of where we're at. Our team, we have weekly staff 19 meetings and we talk about like, "Is this working? Are we wasting our time doing things like—" Tunes at Noon was a program that we did that I think is kind of phasing out. We've watched attendance dwindle and dwindle. I love it, I think it's amazing, and maybe it's something we can bring back now that we have the Dumke Arts Plaza and it'll be a better programmable space, because it was on that corner and there's a lot of road noise and it wasn't really working well. So, we're like, "We're spending a lot of time and effort to find artists," which is good. We want to support local artists and, you know, pay them to play. But if people aren't coming, then you have to then assess and go, "Well, we need to steer in a different direction and try something else." So, I don't really have a good answer for that. Like, that's how we do it. We kind of just take the pulse of what's happening and who's attending and, you know, what the response is on social media a lot. Comments and things. That's kind of what we're doing right now, which isn't ideal, but... HKB: Well, I'd say that for a program that's so community focused that taking the pulse and measuring feedback is the most important thing that needs to go into evaluation. LB: Yeah. But I don't have like, a set process, you know what I mean? Which bothers me, you know. I would like to be like... I don't know. People don't like to do surveys anymore, so I'm trying to figure out how to do it without being like, "Will you fill out this survey?" They run away. "No! I don't want to." 20 KM: It's a challenge for all arts organizations, for any organization. I'm challenged at the university. How do I authentically assess? I mean, it's a bunch of tests and such, but is that really authentically assessing what students are learning and how they feel about what they're doing? It's a challenge for all of us. LB: It really is. Especially with testing, 'cause some people do so well on tests, and others who have the knowledge, they just don't test well, so you think that they don't have it, but they do. KM: Yeah, exactly. We're curious as to the specific connection between the Ogden Contemporary Arts program and the larger Nine Rails project. Could you speak to that? LB: Okay, repeat that question. Like, what is...? KM: Well, the Ogden Contemporary Arts program is housed in The Monarch, and I'm curious as to—well, actually, she's curious as to how does it fit into the larger Nine Rails District, the vision that the city has for creating a creative district? LB: Okay, so Ogden Contemporary Arts is a separate nonprofit from the city. They apply for arts grants and receive funding, usually. Sometimes they don't, depending on what their application comes in as. They're a really important piece in the Nine Rails Creative District, because, first of all, they program and take care of that outdoor gallery, the Platforms, which is in front of the Rachel Pohl mural. That is their project. They have taken that over and they take care of the space, and right now Lauren Argo's cube pieces are up, which light up, which I think is a fantastic outdoor piece, so I'm sure that will... Those are kind of longer exhibits than their ones that they're having inside, but they're the first gallery 21 here, I believe since my time here in the city, that actually is functioning like a community gallery space. It's free. You know, they do have some ticketed time, but like the King's Mouth Exhibit, for example, that was here. That's Wayne Conye's—he's the singer of the Flaming Lips. Did you go see that exhibit? HKB: I didn't. I was taking exams at the time, but I wanted to so bad. LB: Oh, my gosh. It was—like, that is the type of art I want in Ogden. It's more approachable, even though it's still the gallery space, which I'm fighting that battle with the community here of making them feel welcome in that gallery space and understanding that it's— HKB: In kind of an institutional atmosphere? LB: Yeah. It's okay to walk in there and not know anything about that. Installations like the King's Mouth where it's not paintings on the wall, it's something that you interact with, is the type of artwork that we need here. You know what I mean? Like, I love all art, so don't get me wrong, but I think we need to bring the community up together. I think if you start at the top, you're losing the people at the bottom. If we bring them up with interacting with more playful art that you don't really have to have a lot of art history knowledge to understand or think about is such a better way to bridge that gap, to bring them further into looking at more high-level... I guess more maybe intellectual art pieces, I don't know what to call it. The King's Mouth was you got inside the big tree and you wore these 3D glasses and it was sound and music and the lights. Like, it was the coolest thing. I've been to the Biennale. I went to the Biennale with Weber State on my final 22 year of school and interacted with... Like, in Venice, every other year they have a big art show that almost every country sends an artist. They have a pavilion, and they build out, and there's the type of art that you can walk into and experience like all over there. I was like, "This is where it's at. This is how you really draw people into experiencing art and thinking about things differently." I just love that that's what they're doing there. Like, they're not in it to make money or sell paintings. They're in it to interact with the community, and that's what we needed in the creative district. You know, you can walk in there for free. Their staff is amazing, and it's very friendly, and you don't feel intimidated. I love that they're there. I am so thrilled that it's such an active space within, you know, having The Monarch open and the working studio spaces of artists there in the gallery. It's like a perfect hub of creativeness that, as we all know, will tend to spread. So, we're kind of still in the genesis of what will become of the Nine Rails creative district, and maybe even Ogden as this, you know, we get more creatives to live and work here and creative businesses opening and supporting them. That's why it's really important to me. I've kind of had an uphill battle with bringing in outside artists and not hiring locals for everything. They get upset with me, and they're like, "You're not supporting us." I'm like, "No, this is supporting you. If Ogden becomes known as an art town, people will come here to look for art and buy it from you, because you are here." Like, it's a whole ecosystem. We can't live in a bubble, so we need to bring bigger-name artists here. 23 That's why Don Rimx murals are here. It creates a hub of news that goes across the nation. You know, "Oh, these murals are here," and it brings visitors here, and in the whole big picture, it's actually better for the artists living and working here. It creates more activity, more opportunities for them to expand. They can learn and watch these bigger artists work and be inspired so that when they are ready to climb that ladder of venturing out into the public art world, they've seen it. You know, we try to have the artists, when they come in, talk. We always arrange for them to do an artist talk so people can come and ask them questions and learn from these bigger-name working artists that have maybe been helped or mentored by someone else on the level to get to the level they're at. So, I'm trying to bring all of them up. Like, how can I help you become more successful? We can't live in a bubble, we have to bring outside, we have to do a healthy combination of both. I don't know what question you had. Did I answer it? KM: No, you did. HKB: You did. KM: Because we were trying to figure out the connection between the Ogden Contemporary Arts and the Nine Rails District. HKB: You did it. Perfect. LB: Okay, perfect. They're important. They are a very important piece. HKB: I would love to keep talking forever, but we're running short on time, so is there anything you'd like to say before my final question? 24 LB: No, I'll just talk and talk your ear off. HKB: Okay. What would be your ultimate vision for Ogden City arts and events and coordination? LB: Well, specifically in the creative district, which is, I think, where I'm spending a lot of time right now, but to where when you crossed into the creative district on any border, you know you're in the creative district, that there is a definite change in the fabric of that area. Either there's so much artwork, the sidewalks are painted. You know you're in the creative district. That's kind of my goal, and it's a big, lofty one. But also, with that in mind, I feel like that art is heavily focused in downtown. So, besides focusing on the creative district—which I need that. I need that. It's like getting a toddler. Just, you're holding its hands right now. I'm holding the creative district's hands, but it's almost there to where it's organically being programmed just by the community. I don't have to hold its hands anymore, and then I can let go and start focusing on bringing more public. My biggest focus is that programming, or especially public art, is accessible. It's not behind doors; it's out where the community—because it's paid for by community dollars usually, and if we put it in places where they can't interact with it, then it's not public art. I don't want you to have to go through a security system and be searched by guards to go look at public art, so my goal is to get it out. Out in plazas, out in parks, on sidewalks, in the streets. Like maybe if we start getting roundabouts here—we're getting them in Layton and stuff—that area in that circle becomes a place you can place public 25 art. As we move forward—and it's gonna be small 'cause our budget is very small, unfortunately. I'm like, "We need more money!" They're like, "Well, we need garbage and sewer and you know," so I get a little bit. But the UTA bus stations is a big jump forward. That will spread public art all the way from downtown Ogden up across Harrison, through the university, and stop at the hospital. We'll have these amazing colorful glass pieces of art that will react different to the environment when the sun shines through 'em. They're gonna be transparent, so that color will reflect on the ground. KM: That's gonna be great. LB: I'm so excited for it. HKB: Dichroic glass, or...? LB: It's actually laminated glass. I wish dichroic glass, but UTA wouldn't go for that. But it's laminated glass, so the artwork is color transparency that's sandwiched between the two glasses, but it will still work. Like, it shines through. They gave me an example piece. The color, when the light shines through it, it will like create color that you'll be engulfed in or reflect on. So, that, more utility boxes, 'cause that's a great way for me to support local artists. They can submit artwork, and then we can just print 'em and wrap the boxes. There's like 20 of 'em around here. But that's, you know, just little baby steps, 'cause I only get $100,000 a year, so I have to go, "K, what's on the plate? Where can I—?" Just things like that, spreading artwork out of downtown, 'cause there's so many children that 26 never even have been to 25th Street or downtown. Their families don't come down here. They're just kind of in their little bubble of space, and I want them to interact with art in their daily lives, like to run into it and to be surprised by it and inspired and just, you know, I think it makes you smile and gives you community pride. I think it's just super important. That's it. HKB: Thank you. KM: [Speaking at same time] Thank you. LB: Thank you, ladies. It was fun to talk about it. I don't sit down and talk about what I do very often. 27