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Arts & Entertainment

Westside Cultural Arts Center to Open

Veteran art dealer Fay Gold will direct the new art and event space when it opens this fall in West Midtown.

Spine surgeon Dr. James Chappuis wanted to give back to the community. Veteran art dealer Fay Gold wanted to share her passion for art with the public. And artist Anthony Liggins wanted to display, through glass windows, his creative process. 

Now, the three art lovers have come together to bring a new cultural experience to West Midtown. 

The Westside Cultural Arts Center -- a gallery, art studio and event space -- is set to open this October. Chappuis is the founder. Gold is the gallery curator, and Liggins is the artist in residence.

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“I want to get back to my roots [and] bring to Atlanta the things going on in the larger art world," Gold said in an interview.

The arts center will be located at 10th Street and Brady Avenue, near the Miller Union restaurant.

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The arts center will be a “blank canvas” to display works of new and established artists. It also will host public and private events such as seminars, plays, fundraisers, fashion shows and high school proms.

Art and education at the Westside center will be controversial and contemporary, according to spokesman Nicholas Miller, and will open with a dramatic theme. Featured art will be “nothing that’s been done before,” he said. Miller said some events at the arts center will teach people how politics shape art.

“Westside Cultural Arts Center was born to erase the borders between art and political action," Gold says on the center's website. 

"We want our events to push into new territories and blur the distinction between art and life; Art is not just for art’s sake but for people to influence people.”

The edgy nature of the gallery will be reflected in the warehouse-style space. The building, which Chappuis has owned for about 10 years, was built in 1969 and most recently was rented out to advertising agencies.

The 12,500-square-foot facility currently is a construction zone. The team is waiting on a city permit to be approved before they can design the interior. But the decor won't deviate much from the current raw, industrial feel of the space. Miller said the unfinished floor and exposed ceiling pipes will remain. The goal, he said, is to stay true to the community.

“It won’t be Buckhead,” Miller said. “What you see when you drive around outside [the building], is what we want you to see inside.”

The organic design of the building will not diminish the quality of the art inside. Miller said the center will display high-end fine arts that are suitable for the big collectors in the city. He said because Chappuis owns the building, the group is free to exhibit the art it wants, not just pieces with wide appeal.

“It’s not a Hallmark gallery,” he said.

Gold said her priority is not commercial gain, but cultural enrichment. She said art will not be high-brow or selective. She wants everyone to feel comfortable in the space – from boy scouts to doctors. 

“I’m not so concerned this time about buyers,” she said, comparing the new center to her former Fay Gold gallery in Buckhead. She closed that gallery two years ago after 25 years of business.

But "any door that opens, I walk through it," Gold said.

There will be a new Fay Gold Gallery inside the arts center. The nearly 8,000-square-foot gallery is predicted to bring strong interest to the Westside center. Gold said featured artists will come from around the world. There will be no style limitations, she said, only a high bar for quality.

Gold said she looks forward to the completion of the building, much of which she designed herself. She said the arts center might hold a celebration before the center is finished, but there is no official opening date set. 

“I believe it is impossible to make sense of life in this world except through art," Gold says on the center's website. "It is the signature of civilizations."

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