Oral History Program Jake McIntire Interviewed by HallieKate Briggs 29 December 2021 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jake McIntire Interviewed by HallieKate Briggs 29 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: McIntire, Jake, an oral history by HallieKate Briggs, 29 December 2021, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Jake McIntire conducted by HallieKate Briggs over Zoom on December 29, 2021. Jake discusses his collaboration with Ogden City, his work and insights on the Nine Rails Creative District, and the Union Creative Agency. 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: Okay, it is 2:37 p.m. on Wednesday, December 29, 2021. This digital interview is being conducted over Zoom, both of us calling from our personal homes. 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's of Integrated Studies capstone project. This project will be housed in the Stewart Library Special Collections at Weber State University. My interviewee is Jake McIntire, founder of the Union Creative Agency and prolific creative consultant, I will say. Thank you again for both your time and willingness to participate in this. JM: Absolutely. HKB: I realize it's a bit of a workaround to fit our schedules together. Just so you know, I will be taking notes throughout the interview, so if I'm not looking at the camera, know I'm paying attention. JM: No worries. HKB: All right. Let's go ahead and jump right in. Can you tell me when and where you were born? JM: Ogden, Utah, 1990. 1 HKB: What was it like growing up here? JM: I think Ogden is an interesting place to grow up in. I grew up in Washington Terrace, South Ogden area. Also lived in North Ogden for a period of time. Always had connection to downtown Ogden, central Ogden area. My family has all been here for at least a couple of generations. I think that my parents brought me to 25th Street maybe a lot more than other families did at the time. I remember being downtown a lot more than many people were, at least at that period of time. You know, I think Ogden was really at its lowest point there, or at least pretty close to it. I always remember just having a connection, but also feeling like it was a place I would always leave, and then did leave, and then ultimately circled back to living here again, living in central, kind of downtown Ogden after graduate school. HKB: For people who aren't familiar, can you tell me a little bit about the lowest point of Ogden? What does that mean? JM: Yeah, starting in—and I can share with you my thesis work. I know you're doing other research on this, but I can share that. But, you know, I think Ogden's real low started—from at least the research that I've been able to piece together—I would say in about the 50s as city planning efforts changed to be more automobile-centric. That really was the beginning of the end. Between the 50s and the 2000s, that 50-year period, there was just a large amount of economic decline in the area. Fueled by a lot of different things, but ultimately it was sort of like de-investment in urban community and further investment in surrounding suburban communities, and there was sort of a flight out of Ogden. 2 That was also accompanied by—I will not remember the exact number, but if memory serves, the demolition of about a million square feet of real estate in downtown Ogden during that 50-year period. So, you had a large move to kind of demolish or remove what would otherwise be pretty significant historic structures today. I think the 70s and 80s were probably some of the worst times for downtown Ogden, and you had very high vacancies in the 90s as well. There just wasn't a lot to keep people downtown. There had been prior to the 50s and 60s, but there was a pretty rapid decline compared to what many communities go through. I haven't seen anything that really defines why that happened, but from the best I can tell it's the shift in priority to suburbs and shift in priority to carcentric development that didn't work here as well. HKB: A whole conglomeration of factors. JM: Yep. HKB: Out of curiosity, how do you perceive the difference between now and then in Ogden's downtown community? How have they grown? How has it changed? Has it improved? JM: I mean, I think “improved” is a somewhat challenging word to use, ‘cause I think then we have to ask the question of, “Improved for who?” But I think certainly there is a higher degree of businesses open, there are fewer vacant storefronts, though still a lot. I think there have been a lot of pretty brave risk-takers over the last, what, 30 years, that have really individually made this place kind of come back. I think that's how Ogden came to be in the first round. 3 Part of what my graduate research focused on and why I got interested in even exploring Ogden was the resurgence of Ogden seemed to be being fueled by a lot of different people, not a small number. That was really intriguing to me, and it's actually a pretty unique model for how community redevelopment happens. It's often really fueled by a few top real estate developers and/or city government, and not to say that those people don't have influence in our community, but I think, really, Ogden came back because of individual entrepreneurs and individual passionate people who are willing to put in the work to make things happen, and who approach things in a collaborative way and with multi-generational intentions. I remember during my graduate thesis work seeing a comment from I think Kym Buttschardt, who is one of the owners of Roosters'. They were really one of the first businesses that dared to open on 25th Street. I remember her saying something about wanting to improve the city for her grandchildren that she didn't have yet. I was really struck by that idea of, you know, what would it look like if communities built for two generations out instead of for themselves? I think that's how places used to be built, but it's not how we build them anymore. So, I was just really intrigued. I actually still see that characteristic really strong in Ogden. I think there are some factors at play here that I still don't fully understand, even after being immersed in it for quite a few years. There are factors at play here in terms of the way the community is changing that I just don't think are common in other places. Sorry, rambley answer. 4 HKB: No, absolutely not. I'm fascinated. You mentioned always feeling like you were destined to leave Ogden. Where did you go? Where did it take you? JM: First I went to Salt Lake to go to the University of Utah and did my bachelor's degree there, and then sort of always had intentions from there in going to graduate school beyond Utah. So, I went to Portland, Oregon, and then oddly enough, very quickly into my time there—I did not intend on studying urban theory. That was not even really in my scope of consideration at the time when I went to graduate school. The program that I went to was extremely flexible and exposed me to some very different ways of seeing the world, and I very quickly started being drawn to urban theory and an interest in the way communities change. That, I think, just inherently led me back to thinking about home and thinking about Ogden and just knowing all that Ogden had been through as a place, and that's really all I knew. That led me into, you know, wanting to really study it and research it, and then I just sort of dove head-in from there and kind of never looked back. But yeah, that was that was at least the general trajectory. HKB: Can you clarify what your bachelor's was in at the U? JM: Yeah, so I have a bachelor's degree in intermediate sculpture, as well as a minor in business administration. Then my master's degree is in collaborative design, and that's a Master's of Fine Arts. HKB: Can you tell me about your collaborative design degree? JM: Yeah. That degree is rooted in some similarities to other programs around the country that really focus on design thinking and creative problem solving. The 5 interesting thing about that program and what drew me in is that the large majority of the students in that program come in as artists with broader interests that don't really know how to position those or how to think about them. So, we all kind of came in as artists and left as other things. We were taught really how to harness the way an artist thinks, but to apply those to other challenges or opportunity spaces in the world, particularly approaching things from a systems thinking lens and looking at wicked problems. I don't know if you’re not familiar with that term, but really looking at how can you apply the way an artist or designer sees the world? Can you take that way of thinking and start to apply it to wicked problems? And what happens in that space? That was kind of the core intention of the graduate program I went to. It was a very small program, very small cohorts, so a lot of very close collaboration. But I was very much drawn to it, because unlike other design thinking degrees, it was cool because it was a lot of individual artists who I guess wanted to find a different way to work in the world, which was a little bit different than what you see in a lot of other kind of traditional multidisciplinary design programs. They were young, they were just figuring themselves out, and I liked the idea of being able to go to a place and help to form the culture of a program. I think I was only the third cohort, so it was pretty young, pretty new at the time. HKB: So, it was very interdisciplinary, despite all being artists? JM: Yep, very interdisciplinary. All artists, but all with different opportunity interests or interests in different topics. So, I was the only one in the program who kind of explored—or at least within my cohort—who was exploring ideas around urban 6 theory and urban transformation. There were people studying healthcare systems and wellness and technology's role in the future. There were, you know, quite a few different topic areas, so it was a lot of fun to be able to work alongside those people and learn to question our different topic areas through the same methods. I think that's then given me a freedom to apply my way of thinking to any discipline. That's served to be pretty beneficial, and I think given me the courage to be able to step into really any kind of problem space and know that I can work within that and can utilize my way of thinking broadly. Because, you know, there's nothing about the way that I see the world or do my work that has anything to do with art or urban theory. That's just the space that I choose to apply it in. HKB: What brought you back to Ogden? JM: This work. I committed pretty early into graduate school on doing my thesis on Ogden and its transformation and its potential future and envisioning what a better future of a place could look like, and using Ogden as kind of a case study for that. That wasn't really the intention originally, but as we dove through it, the opportunity seemed ripe to come back and explore the work in a hands-on way. Then we have family here, so that helps as well. But, you know, I loved the idea of being able to come back and move to central Ogden, a place that I never would have imagined I would have lived growing up, just because it was, both in reality and perception, not the safest place to be. But, yeah, moved right back to central Ogden and we bought a house here and just kind of dove in. 7 HKB: What unique atmosphere does Utah, and more specifically Ogden, provide for artists and creators? JM: So, I'll talk specifically about Ogden. I think one of the things that really drew me back and continues to fuel my passion for seeing the specifically contemporary arts grow here is that Ogden in many ways is a bigger city than it feels like it is, and that's in part because it was originally built to be a much bigger city than it is. It was comparable to Salt Lake City in population for quite a number of years. I don't remember the exact year that Salt Lake surpassed it, but there were many years that they were really comparable cities in population size. Before the 50s, when Ogden really declined, it was a thriving urban community, right? It was a real city. There was arts and culture here that was thriving, particularly the jazz movement. But you had like real culture here, and you had a real city here, and I think that infrastructure still lives on. Even though we've lost a lot of it, this is an actual city, despite people not thinking of it as one. When you look at other cities that are 87,000 people, Ogden feels, in terms of urban infrastructure, like a bigger place than it really is. I think that I always saw that as an opportunity to see contemporary arts grow in this place, even though it had never really existed in a meaningful way. There were other art forms that had a presence, but contemporary art specifically, there wasn't a lot here. But that ability to connect to this kind of urban opportunity seemed really ripe to me. Then I think we can't discount nature and connection to the natural environment here. But I think I'm increasingly seeing that as pretty generic. Like, access to nature is something everywhere along the 8 Wasatch Front has and countless communities have, and there's something we have beyond that. I think the city of Ogden is finally starting to see that as well. I've talked to quite a few people in some of the some of the city departments who have acknowledged that Ogden's unique offering as a place is not access to nature and trails, because essentially that's something everyone has, but to be able to have a real urban downtown that also has access to trails is a much more unique offering. HKB: So, how would you describe your job and your role within Ogden City as artistic development? JM: Okay. My job, work, whatever, I think the easiest description is that I'm most often an organizational and community development consultant. That's probably kind of the closest traditional definition of what I am. That's broadly. Within Ogden, I don't know that there's a great name or definition for what I do. As part of my graduate thesis, I conceptualized a term which I do think still applies to me in some degree, which is urban curator. I think of myself in that way still, to a pretty significant degree. I always theorized that that is approaching city planning or city development in the same way that a curator would, which is to think about all of the parts and how they fit together to create a meaningful experience and create a very intentional experience for somebody either living in or coming through that space. I always kind of thought that was the job of a city planner, but turns out it's not, and that's not really a job that any city has. Nobody in most communities is 9 really thinking holistically about a place and what the experience of that place is and how all the variables within that place fit together. I think even though most of my work manifests in the arts and culture space, both in Ogden and outside, that tends to be a tool a medium that I like to work in, but I think much more broadly than that. I'm always, within Ogden, really thinking about, holistically, what is this place and what are the things we have and what are the things we don't have? Then thinking about how can the arts be a tool that can help us move past some of our historic challenges, or maybe the future challenges? How can how can we use the arts in a very meaningful and thoughtful way to improve the quality of life in our community, again, in very intentional ways? I think one of the things that I do maybe more than others is spend a lot of time thinking about unintended consequences and thinking about what are those unintended consequences, or what might they be, of the work that we do? And being just very strategic about the decisions that we make, whether it's hiring an artist to do a mural or a sculpture, or it's thinking about where to put kind of advocacy efforts on what should be the next big project in Ogden be, or whatever. It's never just thinking about like, "Well, this is the project that's ahead," or "This is the artist whose work is strongest or speaks to me most." It's always a very kind of holistic feeling about, what does this mean for the larger trajectory of the community, and how do we really design for positive impact and design to avoid unintended consequences? Or at least to predict those unintended consequences? 10 HKB: You discussed the hiring of artists. What is the relationship with those artists? How often do you go and search and find them, and do you have artists that come to you with ideas and requests? JM: Yeah, most often that is through my role with the Ogden City Arts Advisory Committee, which I've been on for I think five years, something like that. I've been back in Ogden for about six; I think it's been most of that time. I am the vice chair of that committee and the chair of the public art subcommittee. Through my role on public art, that's where I have the most recent opportunities to sort of play a role in hiring artists. We've really stepped that program up to be able to bring in some biggername artists like Don Rimx, who did the big murals in the back of The Junction, and Hou de Sousa, who is an artist couple that probably isn't being talked about too much yet because their work's not here yet, but a New York-based husband and wife team who's going to be doing a sculpture at 25th and Washington. So, you know, selecting artists like that to that capacity. I also, less so now, but early in my time in Ogden, I was hiring more artists, just trying to find opportunities for artists and trying to find places to plug people in. Like you probably know the mural across from The Monarch at 25th and Adams, where Platforms is now. I kind of organized and curated that effort and made the selection process to hire Rachel Pohl to do that project. Again, that was one of those examples where it wasn't just finding a random wall to put some paint on and picking the first artist I could find. It was a very intentional selection of every component throughout the process, from where that mural was 11 and how it was produced and which artist was selected and how it was funded. All those things were really thoughtful to a particular intention, not just to put paint on a wall. So, I think earlier in my time here, it was much more just kind of ad hoc and I was just finding artists for random projects. Now I kind of still serve as a conduit to help artists find opportunities locally in the community, and they do reach out often, but most of my kind of formal selection of artists is through the Arts Advisory Committee at this point, just ‘cause most of my professional work has taken me outside of Ogden. HKB: Just to clarify for me, that advisory committee, that's for the Ogden City Arts? JM: Yep. Ogden City Arts Advisory Committee, yeah. It is a city committee that advises Ogden City Arts, yes. HKB: Do you mind me asking what the connection with the Nine Rails Creative District is? JM: Yeah. That work actually emerged out of my thesis work. I started that effort in collaboration with a few folks from the city when I was still in Portland. Part of my thesis work, and if I can track it down and send it to you, you'll see that a chunk of my thesis was actually about starting a kind of collaborative workspace/maker space in Ogden. That was a big part of what we moved back to do, and then the real estate transactions on that fell through and I moved on from it. But I originally had reached out to folks at Ogden City with some specific requests to start a kind of collaborative art and design maker space in Ogden, and through those conversations, I and the folks at Ogden City, primarily Sara 12 Meess—I don't know if her name's come up yet or you've talked to her, but she's in business development. She's a huge ally and a big reason why this stuff has happened. But her and I and then Lori Buckley's predecessor, Diane Stern, the three of us kind of just created, I don't know, a little bit of a task force of the three of us and took on wanting to create this collaborative maker space in Ogden, but then expanded that in our minds to [the idea that] we could create a campus where cool arts and culture things could happen. That was conceptualized as what is sometimes referred to as the Weber Commons Block, but it's the old—where Cuppa is now, if you know that block. It's like 24th to 25th and Adams to Jefferson; that's all Weber State's original campus—Weber Academy at the time. But it was basically a concept to turn that whole block into kind of an arts and culture development. So, we worked together to write a grant to the NEA and were—actually, several grants, but we were awarded one from the NEA called the Our Town Grant, and we used that funding. We got $50,000, and we used that funding to conceptualize this arts campus. Pretty quickly into our work on that project, we saw an opportunity to not just build a campus but to build a district that filled what we referred to as the Bermuda Triangle of The Junction, Historic 25th Street, and the Jefferson Historic District. So, we saw that there is Jefferson, where there's these amazing homes that had really been invested in and that neighborhood was thriving. The Junction had some good things going, Historic 25th street had some good things going. 13 They're all what, like not even a quarter mile away from one another? And there's just this huge dead space in between. At the time when we moved back, walking from the Junction to Historic 25th Street would have just not even been a consideration. Like, people just wouldn't have done that, and people wouldn't have walked from the library down to Historic 25th Street. It was just this small space that was completely dead. So, we saw an opportunity to expand our boundaries from this campus and use the arts as an opportunity to kind of stitch that fabric together better and to really build a bridge between east-central and downtown, but really specifically to stitch together the Junction, Historic 25th Street, and the Historic Jefferson District. HKB: How do you assess the impact of this creative district? JM: Now, let me jump back, sorry. I was also on the design team to do the Nine Rails master plan. But, separate. So, assessing the impact. I think that's a bit of a weakness that we have in that we have not invested in… I'm gonna say infrastructure, I largely mean people power, to really thoughtfully drive the creative district forward and to assess its impact. For me, I think the impact largely is, can the arts and culture district make the community more walkable? Can it make it feel like a more welcoming place for a more diverse collection of people? I'm interested in, can the creative district—and I think it is becoming this—but can the creative district feel like a little bit of a home to a group of people or a series of groups of people who never really felt like they had a home in Ogden? Whether that's the artists or that's minority groups or whomever that is. 14 I think The Junction and Historic 25th Street have their own audiences and have long attracted those audiences. A lot of the folks who I think have been drawn to the creative district, there is some overlap there, but I think it's a new group of people. I think we're seeing new people's faces emerge; not that those people are new here, but that they are finding a place where they maybe feel a little bit more represented and welcome. But yeah, I mean, those are some of the key—I think we've always thought a little bit about public safety. For me, that's more about walkability and can we see people out and about moving around? Can we see these spaces reimagined and reinvigorated? I think the ultimate measure of success, though, that I don't know if we'll succeed on, is can the area remain viable as a place for artists to live and work? I think that's the piece that we didn't do a good enough job of. Like, it's codified in the plan, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen. I think in retrospect, we didn't do enough early enough to really make sure that piece was happening. Maybe it still will, but that one’s the one that I think was like my ultimate goal that I don't know that we'll succeed on. I think we'll make some progress, but I don't know that we'll hit what we could have. HKB: How do you incorporate businesses into this? What business partnerships and collaborations do you pursue as someone who's trying to help create this creative district? JM: So, you might have noticed when I talk about at least my graduate research—but it's still tied to my existing work—that I often refer to both arts and 15 entrepreneurship, which is an interesting pairing that a lot of people don't make. But I think that both artists and entrepreneurs are critical in shaping the culture of a place. I think we don't credit small businesses and entrepreneurs enough as actually having a huge amount of control and power, whether they use it intentionally or not, of defining what a place is. So, whenever we're doing work in a community, and certainly in Ogden, we're often thinking about what are business partnerships that we want to form, and what roles can some of those people play? I think there's always the obvious of getting funding support, funding and volunteer support, and Ogden is great about both of those things, and businesses in Ogden are great in both those things. With the Nine Rails Creative District specifically, it was interesting to begin to develop relationships with real estate developers, because even at the time that we started to conceptualize this before it had really become a thing, we recognized the need to connect with some of the property owners in this area and start to work with them to shape what that looks like. Because ultimately, they have the control in what happens. The city actually has very little control. They can only regulate within zoning parameters, but that doesn't give them a lot of control of thoughtfully shaping what a district or community is, so those property owners actually became far more critical to get them invested in doing arts-based development with their projects, and doing so in a way that was mindful to the success of artists. I do think that is a place we've been successful. I think the work that Thaine Fischer has done with The Monarch and some of the other projects he 16 has coming up and other projects he has done. You know, he's very much driven by his need to make those projects profitable. But, you know, The Monarch wasn't the most profitable use of that building. There were other things he could have done with that building to have made more money. But he is a great example of someone who bought into the vision of what everybody was trying to do, and he made that possible. I think without his investment in that space, we still wouldn't have kind of an anchor of things. Then similarly, I don't know if you've talked to Chris Parker and Giv Group at all; they're the ones who own the building where Cuppa is. Well, they own most of that block, actually. They own the—it's called the Portland Apartments and the Imagine Jefferson Apartments, I think. There's a few, but they are a huge partner who bought into the vision. Their apartments are 80% affordable housing, so that is one thing that was always important for us, to align this district with their efforts to make sure that there is at least that long-term commitment to affordability in the neighborhood. They do not currently prioritize artists in their selection process, but they do have the ability to if they ever so choose. But they haven't found that to be necessary; they've already attracted a pretty high number of artists living in their spaces. HKB: It's true. So, you've been working on kind of both this macro and micro scale within the city, both individual businesses and larger businesses, and you say that there’s some things where you succeed, some things where there haven't been successes. What changes do you still hope to see and implement? 17 JM: So, I think because it's easier to do so, we can maybe hyper-focus on the Nine Rails Creative District, since that's where more things are happening. I would really like to just see a continued and increased investment in public spaces. I think the Dumke Arts Plaza is an amazing step in the right direction. I think it's only a portion of what we need. There are plans in place to do kind of arts-based streetscape improvements through much of the district, and I'd love to see that come to fruition. I think that would really set us apart even further in our work. I would ideally really like to see the Nine Rails Creative District grow into an actual organization with its own funding mechanisms to a pretty considerable degree, to function similar to how the RiNo District in Denver operates, who has a budget much larger than—I think they have an $8 million a year budget. We don't need that, and it's a very different community. You know, there are much higher dollar amounts coming through that place. But, you know, if I have any regrets around the work that was done on the creative district, it's not pushing that hard enough earlier and sticking with it. We really needed an organization to have been developed alongside the whole thing and built capacity for that to have happened. Because now in retrospect, it's not really been possible to make happen unless there's somebody who's gonna step up and do it, and that's unfortunately just not me. So, that would be something I would love to see, but I don't know that it will happen. But the most successful creative districts I think do have an organization and funding structure behind them, because you need somebody that's kind of keeping the district as a whole's interest at heart, and we don't 18 totally have that at the moment. We have individual people who care a lot about it, but it's not anybody's sole focus. HKB: So, you don't mind me pivoting a little bit? JM: You're good. Pivot away. HKB: There was something that Venessa mentioned in her interview that I thought was fascinating. She talked about these "vision meetings" that you help with. Can you tell me a little bit about what a vision meeting is, and what happened with Ogden Contemporary Arts’ vision meeting back when it was Ogden First? JM: Yeah. A core part of my kind of daily life is—so, through Union Creative Agency, we do a lot of organizational consulting, and we tend to develop quite a few strategic plans for organizations, and part of that is always visioning. It's a big part of the work that we do, whether it's with communities or organizations. It's essentially about really focusing time and attention with a group of people to envision really who they want to be, whether that's, like I said, a place or an organization. Who do they want to be in the future? We have some specific exercises that we use to get to that. But our goal is to really understand on a much deeper level than that group of people probably has ever considered, where are they going, and where do they want to be, and when? We don't really define any of that for them; we facilitate the process to help them come to those answers themselves. We've found it to be incredibly meaningful for a lot of the projects we've been able to do, because it's really easy for people to just want to talk about the things they want to do, but it's hard to be to be strategic towards any sort of long- 19 term goal or vision without understanding who you want to be. Not what you want to be, or not what you want to do to get somewhere, but to take that time to really think in the future and imagine the possibilities of who you can be. So, yeah, we ran a vision process for Ogden Contemporary Arts as they were transitioning from Ogden First to Ogden Contemporary Arts, before they had even made that name change. Really, right when Venessa had stepped in as the new executive director, and just kind of helping them—I think really for the first time—sit down and be thoughtful about who they wanted to be, not necessarily how they wanted to get there. That's a big difference, I guess. Does that sort of answer your question? HKB: Yeah, that's perfect. Let me think. So, you are credited for like co-founding a variety of art collectives, including Project Ground Floor? JM: Oh, yeah [laughs]. Back in the day, yeah. HKB: Can you tell me about those projects as well? JM: Yeah. I think if I really reflect back, this isn't something I saw in the moment, but that's the seed of where all of this work comes from. In… let's see. As part of my work in undergraduate school—actually, we can zoom all the way back. In high school, I started the first art club at the high school, largely as a desire to just want to use the arts as a form to connect people and to be able to give a place for artists to more meaningfully connect to one another. Then at the University of Utah, we started the school's first sculpture club, and again, just became about this opportunity for the arts to be a form of connection. That really is like absolutely at the very core, the meaty goodness in the middle of everything I do. 20 It's that idea of connection, and how can the arts be that catalyst for connection? So, this goes all the way back. It just, these aren't things you don't see until you're through them. I think the real catalyst—I guess I should say, that was my first opportunity into seeing how the arts could be this catalyst for creating new connections between people, and starting to break down the barriers between individual artists and starting to think of the arts as a collective. So, that was a big emphasis in the sculpture club we founded at the U. We raised quite a bit of money through that club through some of the university's research funding, and gaining access to new funding. We developed one really large—we developed several key exhibits, but one I think that was the most successful where we stripped away all the artists' names and all semblance of individualism, and we did an entire show that was all about the collective, and you didn't know who produced what. You didn't know the name of any of the individual pieces. It was really just about, we as a group of people created this work together. That started to become something really interesting to me, and that's still how I see a lot of the work today. Then Project Ground Floor was done as—so, the University of Utah has a residency program where they bring in a contemporary artist from elsewhere in the world to work with students. I took that class and was paired up with Andrea Bowers, a contemporary artist out of California. That was my first connection into kind of the arts as social change, I would say. She's really rooted in kind of political dynamics, but much of the work that we talked about in that class was 21 really more broadly about the arts as a tool for social change. So, she introduced me to a number of artists and kind of activists who were just blowing my mind at the time. I think Project Ground Floor was a project we did as a group where we took a took a space and used that as a platform for kind of dialog and discourse and, you know, displaying art and all sorts of just like, weird things. That ultimately is I think what probably pushed me into the direction I went with graduate school. I saw that as a program that could foster me looking that way further, then graduate school gave me the tools to really apply that work. So, I guess it's always been part of me. HKB: The seed's always been there. JM: Always there. HKB: Okay, I'm almost out of audio time for recording, which is frustrating because I feel like I've only just scratched the surface of everything that's going on. You're just a well of information and wisdom. But how do you hope your role in this will grow and continue to be shaped? JM: Ogden specifically? Or just broadly? HKB: Both. JM: Okay. So, Ogden specifically, you know, I really just hope that the work that collectively, "the we," the work we're doing is making Ogden just a more interesting and diverse and welcoming and weird place, and specifically just a more thoughtful place, and for generations to come. I think I really take a lot of what I mentioned Kym Buttschardt said about building a place for her 22 grandchildren. My work in graduate school taught me that, with this kind of work in this kind of space, you'll never see the result of your work, and I truly believe that. I believe the work that I'm doing I will see benefits from and we will see some things come to fruition, but I hope it's much longer term than that. I hope that the work that we're doing now, whether it's in Ogden or other communities, is really helping to create better places for many generations out, that we're kind of laying that foundation that we won't ever see the fruits of, but somebody will. HKB: Well, you all are doing a wonderful job. I've only been here for three or four years, but already I can see the growth and the roots of something strong that's going to continue to develop, and it's fascinating. Already the city has grown so much in just the past few years, and you are no small part in that work. JM: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. HKB: Thank you again for joining me. 23