Some MFA students are back in New Bedford

This is the first of two columns covering the latest developments on the removal of the UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts from New Bedford.

Chancellor Mark Fuller and UMass President Marty Meehan may have turned their backs on downtown New Bedford. But some of the College of Visual and Performing Arts students have not.

Even as Fuller, in his three years on South Coast, has had a “no” answer to every possible scenario of UMD owning the wonderful CVPA building in downtown New Bedford, a couple of Master of Fine Art students have now rolled up their sleeves and recommitted to the city that they have come to call home during their academic careers.

Fallon Navarro and Anis Beigzadeh, with the help of some of the university’s labor unions and activist Annie Hayes, have opened a storefront at 65 William St. There, on the edge of the historic district, they intend for the next six months to display their creative work and run arts-focused workshops and events. A third student, Marilyn Perry, is also exhibiting with them.

“We’re going to do art in New Bedford. And we want the students to be giving free art and workshops and interacting with the community,” Navarro said. “That’s our plan for next year to make this a space.”

Debuting at last week’s AHA! Night, the graduate students, union members and the public gathered to look at impressive ceramic and mixed media pieces that the students have completed this fall. This despite being deprived of much of what they needed for a successful master’s experience. They did not have access to their Star Store studios, the large kilns they need for some of their creative work, easy access to university glazing materials and the overall collegial graduate environment that UMass Dartmouth promised them.

Other students ran open studios at the Dartmouth CVPA building and the Bed Bath & Beyond campus this week.

The work they displayed last week was impressive.

Navarro’s highly detailed clay lattice work explores the intricate internal processes connected to everyday life; Beigzadeh’s clay, string and woven work ponders the theme of loss, both after last year’s protests in her native Iran and this year after UMD abruptly closed the Star Store campus; Perry’s wall pieces and sculptures highlight a part of the cryosphere, sometimes using melting ice to document the state of transition of things. 

A last-minute planned candlelight vigil to the Star Store on Thursday didn’t materialize with attendees, but union leaders Nick Gula of the university’s Maintainers, Local 6350, and Dan Brush of the Teamsters Local 59 (which represents teachers, police and other university workers) say they are committed to working with the students to keep art education at the forefront of consciousness in New Bedford over the coming weeks and months. They are funding their presence in the downtown storefront.

Because the master of fine arts program was run almost exclusively at the Star Store, it is students like Navarro and Beigzadeh who have been most adversely affected by Fuller’s evacuation of the Star Store two weeks before classes started. Meehan claims to have had nothing to do with the closure that some students say has been catastrophic for their semester. But the former congressman, now reincarnated as a university president, has made a determined defense of Fuller if not blessing of UMass Dartmouth’s urban flight, in a letter to The New Bedford Light.

The administration may be united but the faculty is not. 

Current and former UMass Dartmouth professors have told me that faculty fear retribution from the school’s administration should they speak out in favor of keeping the MFA program in New Bedford. Not a single one has commented publicly on the controversy beyond former Faculty Senate President Douglas Roscoe, which seems odd.

So it has been left to this handful of students and union leaders to continue to say that UMD’s academic hejira from the region’s center city should not stand.

“We’re basically trying to make awareness about the arts and how important it is to the city of New Bedford,” said Gula. “Losing the Star Store was a very gut-wrenching thing.”

Like the students, Gula is not impressed by what he’s seen from the team of Fuller and Meehan.

“They’re kind of just doubling down at this point,” he said. 

The things the administrators are talking about, like building a one-story addition to the CVPA building on the Dartmouth campus, will not replicate the kind of program the Star Store artisan program was, he said.

“It’s not adequate for the use of this stuff,” Gula said. “Basically, the Star Store was this program. The MFA program was the Star Store.”

The administration’s suggested one-story addition to the Dartmouth CVPA structure will not be its equivalent, he said. “Now that you’ve taken it out, it’s hard to replicate that situation. They (the MFA artisan programs) have been there, doing this for 20 years, and it’s worked,” he said.

In light of the ongoing negotiations and developments between the university, city and Legislature, Gula said the group’s goal is to keep the limelight focused on the importance of an arts education program functioning in New Bedford. He even suggested that if UMass Dartmouth will not run the MFA artisan program in the city —  where it existed at the university’s Purchase Street campus before moving to the Star Store — then perhaps Bridgewater State, Bristol Community College or some other academic entity would.

He doesn’t find the university’s protestation’s that they would like to stay in New Bedford credible, Gula said.

“My opinion is that they never wanted this program from the start,” he said, noting Sen. Mark Montigny’s comment that even Chancellor Peter Cressey did not want to locate in the Star Store when it was first proposed 25 years ago.

“In the current state, I don’t see how they run that program,” Gula said. “Either they give that MFA program up, and give it to someone that wants to do it, or do it themselves. But in the current state, I just don’t see how they run that program.”

Asked for reaction to Gula’s comments, the UMD director of strategic communications, did not offer much. “They are wrong,” wrote Ryan Merrill without explaining why.

The name advertised for the William Street installment was: “Star Store No More — Works in Ceramics, a Student Exhibition.

I asked the students about whether it might be possible in the future to return them to their natural light-filled fourth-floor studios overlooking New Bedford harbor. What about the university renting out, at least temporarily, other floors at the structure, to make money, I asked?

Navarro and Beigzadeh place the blame squarely on university leadership.

“I think there are so many solutions they could have come up with,” Navarro said. “There’s so many ways that this didn’t have to hurt the community, to hurt people.”

Navarro is in her third and final year, and with the recent closure of the state budget without any money in it for the Star Store, she said she knows the opportunity to finish her program surrounded by her beloved faculty and graduate colleagues is now gone. But she has come to love New Bedford and hopes to work here perhaps in her own studio, she said. And she’d like to leave something for the students who come after her at the CVPA.

She wondered about the honesty of the UMD administrators. 

“They said they’re committed to downtown New Bedford. Where are they? I don’t see them down here.”

She noted that the ceramics students in particular, with no big kilns, or gas-fired ones, had to go out on their own and find the clay ovens and studio space at the Hatch Street Studios in New Bedford’s North End. They have been cut off from their large-scale projects, with Fallon and her Anis having to delicately place a large, fragile piece down into a smaller kiln, instead of sliding it in the large kilns that UMass Dartmouth dismantled after it left the Star Store in August.

The university did nothing to help them, she said.

Asked what it’s been like to concentrate on their work amidst the upheaval, the MFA students grow emotional.

“It’s more than difficult,” Beigzadeh said.

“It’s been almost impossible sometimes,” said Navarro. “The only reason we’ve made it this far is the support we have from each other, and our family, and the community. Because from UMass we’ve received no support.”

The complex work of heating their sculptures in inadequate ovens and without their own space has really been challenging, the students said.

“It’s been very difficult to me to figure out everything on your own,” Beigzadeh said.

“For the ceramics students, it’s been harder because we don’t have access to the kilns, especially for me the big kilns. There’s no gas kilns, and there is no glaze material. We have to just drive around the city to find a place to fire.”

One of the pieces Beigzadeh exhibited at 65 William St. was the last large-scale pottery made at the Star Store before the university dismantled the building’s big kilns.

Beigzadeh and Navarro also spoke of a CVPA facilities and materials fee, a little short of $500, that they say the university refused to rescind.

Given that the school did not supply studios and other materials, it should have been eliminated, Navarro said.

“We’d rather see them taking off that fee, a $500 fee for something we’re not receiving,” she said. “They said, ‘No, we can’t. That’s not fair. This happens at universities.’ That’s what the chancellor told us.”

Merill said there is a $464.50 materials, not facilities, fee. But the students included materials and facilities in their description of the fee.

Other things like money for gasoline or glazing materials and large kilns, which the university used to supply at The Star Store, have been up to them to supply themselves. Navarro explained that the graduate students are already under financial strain over the high cost of tuition and fees (as much as $10,000 a semester although several thousand can be written off by work-study programs) for the six-semester MFA program. Many are not in a position to buy materials up front, even if the university will reimburse them later.

“And no money back for gas. None of that. So it’s very much a financial burden, emotional, as well as educational,” she said.

Fuller’s spokesperson Merril gave a different version of the university’s commitment to the students.

“You should know that the university has reimbursed more than $8,000 to MFA students who have submitted expenses for travel, approved supplies, utilities, and rent at private studios,” he wrote.

As far as the CVPA fee, he said, each college at UMass Dartmouth has its own fee that goes toward program-specific fees.

Navarro responded that half of  the $8,000 in reimbursements went to one student who had to repeatedly write justifications and keep advocating for her expenses because of the slowness of the school paying. Many reimbursements have been delayed until just a few weeks ago, she contended. It has been nothing but grief trying to get the administrators to listen to their financial challenges, both students said.

“That’s what is the most upsetting. We set up everything on our own, with the help of community members. None of it was facilitated by UMass but we’re still paying them tuition,” she said. “And we’re still paying on equipment and material fees for things we’re not getting.”

State Sen. Mark Montigny has included a provision in the end-of-the-year budget directing unspent Star Store maintenance money to the students who have been adversely affected by the sudden closure. Fallon and Beigzadeh, however, said they have no idea how to get that money or how much will be available to individual students.

Beigzadeh, in the second year of the three-year MFA program, was not sure when I asked her about her hopes for her final year. 

“Hope or wish, which one?” she asked. “I wish we can take back the Star Store. Really. Even if I’m supposed to be here for one day (before she finishes her degree), that’s fine. That building in New Bedford downtown, it means a lot. Either for students or the community here.”

Beigzadeh explained that the Star Store was a tight group. The students from the different majors were nearby each other and they shared ideas. They had big studios where faculty and students could easily interact with each other. The graduate students had very little reason to go to the Dartmouth campus, and had a very positive experience at the New Bedford Star Store, the students said.

“The big problem is that they just separated us. Like all the programs, we’re not together anymore,” Beigzadeh said. “That’s hurt me. Because the big point of being in grad school is being with other students, like other programs’ students. And now everyone is in different places, and not being together.”

The painting students and ceramics students used to share methods. Other majors shared too. They all cross-pollinated at the Star Store.

So the Williams Street storefront is filling the role that the MFA students envisioned would be their year at the New Bedford campus this year, the students said.

“It’s important for us to be a part of New Bedford this semester,” Navarro said. “We felt very separated from everyone. Other students, the community, sort of everyone. We are on our own. And that’s not why I came here.”

“We feel so much better because we are really close to the Star Store,” Beigzadeh said. “There is like a sense of being near the Star Store.”

The UMass Dartmouth administrators do not seem to think any of this counts for much. They’re busy designing smaller studio spaces in the Dartmouth CVPA building, and talking about a possible new one-story Dartmouth building that students fear will be far inferior to what they had at the Star Store.

It’s more than emotional for them.

“We already lost our home, which was Star Store,” said Beigzadeh. “And I don’t want to lose my family.”

Email columnist Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.

Clarification: UMass Dartmouth describes a $464.50 fee as a materials, not a facilities, fee. It is applicable in some amount to all of the school’s colleges. The ceramics students, however, described it as a fee just short of $500 and they argued that since they have received inadequate studios, kilns, glazing and other materials, the CVPA fee should have been waived.