The time has come to say farewell

After nearly 12 years of activity, Eugene Contemporary Art has decided to shut down it’s operations completely.

There is a mix of disappointment and relief in writing this, and I’ve re-written this post three or four times over the last few weeks. But the time has come. Last May we moved out of ANTI-ASTHETIC, our downtown space since October 2019. After we put everything in storage we thought that we would be able to pick things back up and adapt once again. Almost a year has passed and we’ve all found ourselves in very different places. We have day jobs, families, and art practices that are priority. The time and energy it takes to maintain the most recent version of our community and nonprofit is no longer sustainable.

We never know how long something will last. The older I get, the more I come to terms with the different seasons of my life. ECA happens to have been a part of several seasons for me. I’ve had major job changes, got married, had my third child, and moved three times. Then there was that global pandemic.  During all of these events over the last decade I always had an ECA project cooking in the background.

When we moved out of our downtown space last spring I thought it was just another season as well. We would take a pause, regroup and figure out the next steps. ECA has been through a lot of transitions already. Any time my life shifted I would adjust what ECA was and how it operated in order to keep it going. I cofounded this project in 2011 with my wife Kari and friend and artist Wes Hurd. At the beginning ECA was just a simple event calendar. We were interested in finding contemporary art happenings in town, and figured we could help others find out about them too. Then we hosted a lecture series in what soon became our first space at 547 Blair in the Whiteaker neighborhood. Once we took over the lease we let artists have the keys and used it as a residency space. When that phase ended we moved out and paused for several months while Kari and I brought my youngest into the world and I started my own design studio. During this time I paid some folks out of my own pocket to write about other aritsts for the ECA blog. Later that year I started hosting popup shows in my work space downtown, and supporting an art writing workshop and live public reading. Then we started hosting shows in a coffee shop on East 8th. When that phase ended, we did a podcast. Everything was in response to the  obstacles and opportunities as they came up, always with a focus on the people and the needs of artists I met along the way. By 2019 we were ready to really kick things off. This new season brought with it a committed team of co-conspirators, bigger donations, an amazing group of artist members and a new space right downtown. We managed to plow right through the pandemic, adjusting (again) our expectations in how we functioned in order to make good on our support and a suddenly empty location. Our space became a defacto studio opportunity for some of our artist members, and we created an online exhibition space and residency. Finally in 2021 we became a 501c3 nonprofit. This really changed things. More grant opportunities, more details, more infrastructure. Ultimately, it was a lot more work.

ECA’s goal has always been to create connections between artists and our surrounding community that foster, challenge and engage with what it means to be human in today’s world. We feel like we succeeded at this and hope that the artists we worked with were helped by what we did. Those of us who worked to make ECA the amazing organization that it became gave up a lot of weekends and nights to plan events, curate, hang shows, write emails, post to social media, write grants, gallery sit, pickup the beer and wine… all to make the experience fun, welcoming and accessible to artist and nonartist alike. But burnout is real. Constantly worrying about funding, chasing donations and writing grants is not something to fit into an already busy life for very long. It’s a full time job. We made it through the pandemic with the gracious support of a few key donors. The rest was all volunteer support by our artist members, who were giving and supportive and wanted the space to work more than anyone. And it did work. But constant adaptation wears you out. You can only ride the rollercoaster so many times. 

Eugene has felt like a tough nut to crack. While I have a lot of thoughts and opinions about the difficulty of supporting critically engaged art in this city, I don’t think our experience is that unique. Running a space and nonprofit is just hard. Trying to operate within and against capitalist expectations is hard. Finding your audience and support network is hard. Taking time to explain why art is important to our humanness and our communities alike takes time. And this is just the infrastructure part. Do you know what is actually hard? Making art. Giving expressive form to ideas from deep inside your mind and being and sharing them with others. Staying healthy while maintaining an art practice and whatever day job and family you have all at once. Finding your voice. Finding people to care about what you make. Getting paid fairly for your time and labor. Finding spaces to put on a show yourself if nobody will put one on for you. Making art is infinitely harder than running an art organization. 

So now ECA join the myriads of artist-run spaces that come and go and there is one less org in town supporting artists who are doing the hardest part. We regret nothing. To the other collectives and nonprofits that are still around, your work matters and I hope you are able to continue. To the donors and other folks I’ve worked with over the years to make things happen for the visual arts in Eugene, you push back against insanity and have my gratitude. I want to thank Agnese Cebere for being an amazing program director these last few years. I didn’t think I could find another person who would put as much of themselves into this project as I have. Wes Hurd, our weekly lunchtime discussions all those years ago gave life to this project and your mentorship and support have been at the core of ECA’s mission since day one. To my wife Kari – you are the biggest reason ECA lasted as long as it did. I can’t thank you enough for all your support and encouragement over the years. It’s my turn to make dinner and pick up the kids. Lastly – to all of the artists we were able to support – you are the reason we existed. You are all mad geniuses pulling infinity out of nothingness and giving the world new ways to see that are unique, weird, challenging and perfect. 

Art is hard. Keep going.

Courtney Stubbert

Executive Director / Co-founder

May 19th, 2023