Abstract
Liz Maugans, a professor at Cleveland State University and co-founder of Zygote Press, reflects on her career at every stage of her life. While she continues to create art, Maugans emphasizes the importance of community engagement and actively seeks innovative ways to support and inspire emerging artists in Cleveland. Throughout the interview, she shares insights about numerous projects she has led, the exhibits she has curated, and the creative methods she has used to advocate for both artists and the visual arts over the years. Some of the many initiatives Maugans has been involved in within Cleveland's dynamic art scene include The YARDS Project, ART EverySpace, the Collective Arts Network, Rooms-to-Let, and the Cleveland Artist Registry.
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Interviewee
Maugans, Elizabeth (interviewee)
Interviewer
Kanewa-Mariano, Makialani (interviewer)
Project
Community-Based Public Art
Date
10-14-2024
Document Type
Article
Duration
51 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Elizabeth Maugans interview, 14 October 2024" (2024). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 455007.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1347
Transcript
Elizabeth Maugans [00:00:00] Okay.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:00:04] Today’s date is Tuesday, October 15, 2024. My name is Makialani Kanewa-Mariano with the Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection at Cleveland State University. Today I’ll be interviewing Liz Maugans. Thank you so much for meeting with me today, Liz.
Elizabeth Maugans [00:00:18] Thank you.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:00:19] For the record, could you say and spell your name for me?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:00:21] Yes. Liz Maugans. M A, U, G A, N, S.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:00:26] Where and when were you born?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:00:27] I was born on May 13, 1967, in the fine city of Lakewood, Ohio, but it was in Fairview Hospital.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:00:37] Where did you go to high school?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:00:38] I went to Lakewood High School, class of 1985.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:00:42] And where did you go to college?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:00:44] I went to Kent State University, and I received my BFA in painting and printmaking and then went on to get my master’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, and I received an MFA in printmaking.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:00:59] Do you primarily live in the Cleveland area now?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:01:02] Yes, I live in Northeast Ohio. Sadly, I don’t live right in the city of Cleveland, but I identify with Cleveland very much.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:01:11] So you’ve been in the Cleveland area for most of your life, then?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:01:14] Yeah.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:01:16] And what is your current occupation?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:01:18] I teach at Cleveland State University, and I’m a Haddad Arts mentor there as well. And then I also am the curator of the Dalit collection and the director of Yards Projects Gallery.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:01:33] What year did you begin working for Cleveland State University?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:01:37] So I started working at Cleveland State in 20. No, no, no, 2023. But I’ve been working at various schools throughout Northeast Ohio for well over 25 years.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:01:54] When did you first realize that you had an interest in art?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:01:57] When I was five years old. I was at a friend’s family, friends, their family. And I was drawing because the parents and stuff were talking, and I had a picture taken of me at that time. And strangely, I just shared this with my class, that there was an exact portrait that was done by the artist Fairfield Porter many, many years ago called Lizzie’s Drawing. And it looked exactly like me in this drawing. And it was at that time, I just knew that it felt good, and that’s what I wanted to do for my life.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:02:39] What medium of art do you specialize in now?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:02:42] I would say I specialize in mixed media with a big accent on printmaking. I love to draw. And so I would say that that’s probably my main focus, very autobiographical, about what’s going on in my life.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:03:03] What themes or styles does your art kind of encompass?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:03:08] I would say that I really like sitting on the fence of both abstraction and realism. I like the tension that I can and the liberties that I have and freedom to be able to speak both languages. I love that people can recognize different things in my work. And it also pulls them into these abstract, more sort of unsure, unsteady spaces that allow them to think about their own association to those themes.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:03:49] What was your original goal for yourself as an artist?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:03:55] I think that for me, teaching was always a big goal for me. I knew I didn’t want to teach kids, young kids, because I recognized even in my own education, there was a lot of kids that didn’t like it and they didn’t want to do it. And so there was something that was fascinating to me that a lot of college students were much more focused on what their efforts were. And I appreciated that and felt like that would have been. That would have been favorable for me to get kids that know that this is something that they want to do as well.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:04:43] Have those missions or those goals kind of expanded since you first developed your skills or have they changed in any way?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:04:49] Yes. I love teaching little kids, and I love getting in front of them and trying to show them specifically the things that I feel was pivotal in my life and something that sort of shaped me with my own teachers, and it was surprising. Zygote Press, My time at Zygote allowed us to go into schools and to work with a lot of kids that don’t have access to the arts and creativity.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:05:30] For Zygote Press, could you explain a little bit more about what the organization is, when it was founded, and who’s part of it?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:05:35] Sure. I was teaching at that time at the Cleveland Institute of Art and was finding that I wanted to do something that sort of shifted gears. I had gone to Bob Blackburn’s printmaking studio that was in New York City. And Bob Blackburn Studio used to be called Atelier 17. And William Stanley Hayter came after World War II when many of the folks had to flee Europe. And so it was really fantastic to. To be able to think about this being the first community center for printmaking in the United States. And years and years later, as Bob Blackburn sort of took it over and started to work with really incredible artists. Rauschenberg and countless others did. I feel like that Cleveland, who was very strong in printmaking, with two fantastic print clubs, one being affiliated with the museum, the Print Club of Cleveland, and the other being the University Print Club that started at Case with lots of other professors who wanted to support artists and create additions that they could spread and disseminate into the region. And so it was a very healthy, fertile space for printmaking and to have a print shop that could exist here. We found an affordable space. My first co founder, whose name is Joe Siroca, was a student at Cleveland Institute of Art. And so we started to begin talking about it. And inspired by Bob Blackburns, I said, why not here in Cleveland, start a collective community co-op? Soon after that, Bellamy Prince and Kelly Novak, they came, and we found a location on East 72nd in St. Clair, a 2,500 square foot in the old Buckeye Carbon building. And Zygote was born.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:07:54] I like how you used the word the collective community co-op. How does that for you, how do you think that that works in terms of public art and creating spaces for artists to kind of expand their skills in the Cleveland area?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:08:12] Well, it seemed ridiculous after finding these huge presses, which were not easy to find or move, to have it just for ourselves. And printmaking, like ceramics, is a collective energy where different artists are learning and interested in different pursuits, including lithography or etching or monoprinting or letter press. And so as we started to acquire equipment and space, we wanted to share this with the community and be able to have access for other print artists to not only make their work, but to exhibit their work, to learn more about how they can expand their work. And so it became a home base for print activity and print collecting and print viewing and really making sure that we could continue that and make it sustainable. And so we started to get involved with other university print shops for a place after they leave college that they could come here and they could use that space as well. We started scholarships, we started residency programs. And so it became really vital, energetic space for the city of Cleveland. It went on to become a certain kind of model here for other disciplines. We spoke with many of the other cooperatives, including Praxis, Morgan Conservatory, Soulcraft Studios, the Print Room, and they were inquiring, what kind of contracts do we have with people to rent out studios? How do we do this? How have we been able to get certain kinds of grants, and how are we able to kind of get our feet off the ground and become sustainable? And so Cleveland, I think, is an exciting place right now to actually produce art. It is, I think, a manufacturing hub where people who are visitors here and people who have done residencies from all over the world are just dumbfounded at the opportunities and access that artists have to facilities to communities of folks that are skilled and are excited and passionate about what they’re doing. Many of these organizations that are like minded to Zygote also have studios, their own facilities, their own goals. And most of these are rooted deep in neighborhoods where they could afford to open. And these are neighborhoods that also, in some ways, are seen as not vital, rich cultural hubs that we, that we have all become a part of. And so that public interface has been strong, it has been dynamic, it has been connected to these, you know, not only the soul of young people who are where the schools are, where a lot of these organizations go into, but I think also even economic development, where people come to Zygote and they go to eat somewhere afterwards, or they go to another gallery or another, you know, space in the neighborhood that another entertainment space that they can enjoy. And I think these are the types of things that we have seen with very few gentrifying outcomes. And so I think Cleveland has also been a vital space across the United States that can be looked at in those ways that we have not sort of, whatever it is, had our rents increase, that we found other, you know, gentrification initiatives going on. And so this is also, I think, that been really authentic to Cleveland.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:13:15] Besides either with, affiliated with or not affiliated with Zygote, are there any other organizations or projects that you’ve been involved with that kind of promoted our artist skills or the collective community kind of like what you were talking about before?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:13:31] Yeah, I think the dynamic artist community that was very disconnected before and spangled all around Cleveland that we did find through the recession, that there was going to be an overwhelming, sometimes impossibility for us all to survive. And so through Zygote and through some of the connections that we had, we began talks of the Collective Arts Network. And we started with 16 organizations in the visual arts because we were so concerned and so worried about our existence, our future existence. We were also seeing arts writing and arts criticism going by the wayside with magazines and sort of newspaper dailies who had people talking about the arts going by the wayside. And so we were fortunate to have Michael Gill working at Zygote as an artist and making artist made books. And Michael, who was a writer for the Free Times and for some of the other publications going around, we connected, and we thought this would be a great opportunity for us to reach out to other visual arts organizations that were also very concerned about the trying times that the recession was, that we faced with the recession. So Michael was on board, and so we got all these people in the room, and we selected out of a hat straws where each of the directors of the 16 organizations, visual arts organizations picked another person’s name out of a hat. We interviewed them, much like we’re talking right now, and we wrote about them and what they were doing in their own organizations. And we looked at what their whole year looked like in terms of exhibitions or classes or workshops. And we created a newsprint 40 page publication and made 10,000 of them. We had a big, huge launch party and everybody said, when’s the next one going to come out? And we didn’t really have a plan. It was a one off. It was an initiative that we thought was going to just kind of get us to the sort of get us through however long the recession was going to last. And so Michael and I got together and we pursued other. We pursued other organizations, print printer companies. And we connected with Wally Lancey and Consolidated Graphics, who heroically, how he and his family have supported the arts through printing is not just for us, but for the AIDS Task Force for the Cleveland Arts Prize. And so they’ve been very long time believers in the glories of the arts. And so because of Wally Lancey and Consolidated Printing, we were able to do two years of a quarterly that improved the quality of the printing. We gained new members. And so Currently in its 12th year, we have over 100 organizations from Cleveland to Columbus that are participants in participating visual arts organizations in CAN, which is amazing.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:17:50] What are some of those organizations involved with? Are they mainly all art? Is there some organizations that focus on just history or?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:18:00] Yeah, I mean, we have a few organizations even here in Cleveland that are not only looking to preserve the past of artists, which would be Artist Archives of the Western Reserve, and the other would be Art Neo. And both of them are really important. Not only that, there is a place after many of our incredible artists pass to the other side, that there’s an archive that can celebrate their work as well as the Art Neo that has the Cleveland School on. And where there’s exhibitions matching them with contemporary artists and kind of creating these. Creating these dialogues and these exhibitions in these pairings that have been curated at both locations. Artist Archives is just expanded, which is great news. And so they’ll be able to have more shows, more space, as well as more artists that can be archived there and more people to study what’s in the archives. And the Art Neo is basically in the thriving 78 Street Studios, so new audiences that are coming in can know more about the history of artists that are no longer here.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:19:41] Was there any organizations or projects that you were involved with that I know you talked a little bit about? Like archiving artists and trying to promote them and bring attention to them. Besides CAN, was there anything else that you were involved with that kind of fostered that?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:19:56] Yeah, I think that there is a lot to say about this region when it comes to things like the Cleveland Arts Prize and this sort of celebration of not only the philanthropic sides, the folks that are sort of impacting the arts, whether they’re administrative or whether they’re folks like Wally Lancey, who I just mentioned, as well as these artists that really have been pivotal and shaped this region. We’re also very fortunate to be able to have, you know, very complicated advocacy group that’s called the Assembly for the Arts that came from a very long string of advocacy organizations, including Community Partnership for Arts and Culture that soon became Arts Cleveland. This began many, many years ago to find how we could support publicly, through public initiatives, arts and culture here in Cuyahoga County.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:21:27] You mentioned earlier that you are curating right now, you are actively curating right now. What are some of the exhibits or projects where we could find some of your shows?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:21:37] Well, I the head curator here at Worthington Yards as well as at Tinnerman Lofts, and I’ve been really thrilled to be able to shape what I believe are group exhibitions that look like Cleveland, that support artists of all ilk, all ages, all cultural, you know, sort of all cultural positioning in terms of how different artists make, whether they’re craftsmen or. Or self taught artists or really just trying to find artists where they’re at. I love that you have emergent artists with artists that have been making art for many, many years. I love having exhibitions that are emerging group shows from 250 people with open submissions, where everybody, including students, can be involved in that process, to shows that are similar to the one that’s currently up called Belonging With or Without You, which is 14 different artists that are. The show is about missing, longing, belonging, and the spaces and the places and the people that make those feelings happen. We have three international artists that were born in other countries where much of their work about place and being disconnected from those places. We have an artist named Jules Briggs who’s in the show, who works from her own family photographs and was estranged from one of her young cousins and uses her painting to be closer to how she misses that relationship that they had. And so I find that when these types of shows happen, it’s almost like a potluck. And so everybody gets to intermingle and meet each other and there’s dialogues that happen within the gallery that shape and are spectacular and they’re surprises that they present. And then I find that everybody has new friends and new intersections, and that sort of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon becomes possible. And in a world, art world, particularly where artists are very siloed, they’re very much in their own spaces. It is that spirit of Zygote, of that collaborative collective energy that completely gives me a buzz. So I don’t know anything other than continuing to try to find that buzz.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:25:19] In terms of accessibility and interaction with the public. I know Tinnerman and Yards, they’re kind of showing art in more public places, I would say. You know, residents are interacting with them every day. How does your other exhibits or any of the projects you’ve done in the past kind of bring the public into the space where the art is?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:25:40] Well, I think the several shows that have been curated off site, one that happened also after the pandemic, that was at 78 Street Studios, at the current gallery, which is. Which is no longer there. But I felt like we were all kind of coming into this space or still a little bit fragile and nervous to sort of come out of our own spaces. And so I felt like we were coming out of a mouse hole. And so I was commissioned through the Akron Art Museum to do a show that was. That was sort of celebrating these. This sort of concept. And so we had. I had created templates that looked like mouse holes and different artists from around the region could participate in making what their mouse hole looked like. And so we had a big, huge exhibition of those. I think we had over 200. And so it was really nice that we could have timed openings and that people still felt that they could be a part of something that was still sort of. That was kind of familiar in the more standardized exhibition, but that there was this sort of freeing moment that they could celebrate their own work and work on something new, more importantly. So that was one that sort of sticks out for me. The Artist Trust of Cuyahoga County. I was invited to be one of the several artists from the Midwest to participate. They were inviting artists who have a social practice. And so because there was a lot of disconnect and tension within the art community that had to do with public sector funding for artists from this regressive cigarette tax. I felt like that these divides that were not only, oh, you have a community engaged practice and you have a studio practice. And so that makes one better, because this is community dollars. There was a lot of dysfunction and sort of devastating effects on artists of color who were not receiving a lot of this support from this regressive tax that was primarily on communities of color who smoked. So I created a moment from a platform that I received to have other artists in this exhibition with their self portraits as artists next to each other, to be able to celebrate all of us in a sort of united front, which was leaning to create an initiative to a artist union. Part of that was to create a registry that was very rudimentary, where their website, if they had one, their email and their simple image could create, could be created on a database. From that, we had the opportunity through Carrie Carpenter, when she was at the Gordon Square Arts District, to expand on that, to expand it to other disciplines, to expand it to demographics, neighborhoods, type of art that they made, whether it was music, film, poetry. And so the Cleveland Artist Registry was born from that effort that I was very proud of in the sense that Carrie created an opportunity to have people who don’t have wifi, that don’t have computer access, that don’t have a website, to be able to be seen, to be able to be found, to be able to be. To exercise their talents and for other people to be able to connect with them.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:30:29] Some other projects. I know you talked a little bit about your studio practice and a social or more community practice. What are some other projects that you’ve done? Maybe more in the community. What’s the Rooms-to-Let project? Can you explain a little bit about what?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:30:46] Sure. So Rooms-to-Let was a project that I participated in in Columbus by another artist named Melissa Vogli woods that would work with a vacant house and other artists before the house came down, to be able to activate that space and to create works. Prior to the demise of that property, I had been working in Slavic Village with my friend Claudio Orzo, with Cleveland Public Schools and former CMSD director, who wanted to assist with artists who could come in for third graders who needed support to pass their literacy exams, who were having a difficult time. The arts created this energy that activated some of the things that they were learning in terms of reading. I did that for two summers. And then I also worked at a place called Community Cats, which was Community, Community Assessment and Treatment Services, which was a reentry program for women where women were learning through the arts, how to express themselves. And so this neighborhood I fell in love with, and this neighborhood was most impacted by the foreclosure crisis and devastated. And so when this opportunity came up, my brother in law, Ben Campbell, was working at the Slavic Village Community Development Corporation. And I had him come down to witness some of the activations that were Taking place in Columbus. It was really a great alignment for him to see this. We brought it back to the CDC in Slavic Village, and Rooms-to-Let was born. It was really important for us to work with people who live and work there, different artists. And so the curators of the very first year were all living or working in Slavic Village. And that included an architect, an architecture firm, and Barbara Bechtel, who is running the Broadway School of Music and the Arts, and Scott Pickering, who was also a public artist, muralist, and an incredible musician who became our first curators. And so artists could submit and they could participate in creating. And we worked with the Land Bank and found homes that were slated for demolition. And so this was something to bring folks into a space, conversation, dialogue, complicated, painful, hard, wondrous to see all of it and to also show some of the new development initiatives of affordable housing that existed in Slavic Village. It was a place sharing opportunity. That has changed over the years in different iterations. But initially, that first effort was really coming to show the history, get more of Slavic Village in sight, to not only see the devastation of this crisis that had occurred, but also show the beautiful cultural riches of that region.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:35:26] And what year was that again? That it began?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:35:27] I want to say, like, 2013.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:35:36] Is it ongoing or is it just?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:35:38] It’s still going on. It’s been. It’s. It’s sort of changed quite a bit because of different leadership and different people who have been, you know, carrying the torch. I. And just like the cast of Saturday Night Live, a lot of people, some like it, some people don’t, but it has been something that has been ongoing and trying to reshape and reimagine itself each of these years. And I applaud all of those different iterations. How’s that for diplomatic?
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:36:25] Can you talk a little bit about Art Every Space and kind of explain what that project was or what that’s about?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:36:35] Yeah. So, Art Every Space started after I was working here at Worthington Yards. And as I’m, Dalad groups, who’s a development company who runs this place, I felt like, well, every place should have this. Every building, every government space, every apartment complex. That is engaging folks who live here, many who are transplants, many that are, you know, bored of living in the suburbs and wanting to come back into the city. So it just seems like it was a great idea. If you don’t activate art, it just becomes wallpaper, and it just sits there in a sort of stagnant way. It is. It loses its context, it loses its energy. Where, if you don’t have somebody celebrating it, putting it into focus, putting in the story of why the artist made it, what that perspective was, who that artist is, what neighborhood they’re in. All of those types of things have a shape, the way that somebody feels about it. Here at Worthington Yards, we also take folks from our exhibitions where we meet here and then we call them artventurers. We go out into the city, much like I do in my museology class and my artist and communities classes, so they can actually see what the place looks like, meet the people who work there, see what neighborhood it’s in, become familiar with those places, and the people who work there give them a business card. All of these types of things are extensions of a lot of these incubated spaces that don’t often feel welcoming, that sometimes are just white cube spaces that are a little overwhelming and kind of create some anxiety, I think, in people, because there is such a disconnect. So this warms things up for people, those stories that artists get to tell. And it warms up buildings, workspaces, and it allows a connection between the cities, the stories, and the places that are also trying to work towards those efforts of making products, services, materials that shape the city. Then the pandemic came, and Art Every Space became something that we found was just financially, for the work that we were doing, impossible because of, you know, the change in the development of how things are built, of the city, of financing their own projects where supply chain and everything cost a lot more. And so, unfortunately, once again, the arts took a very, very bad turn in terms of line items for budgets for projects. So we have sunset Art Every Space. But I do believe that sort of art tours and trying to connect folks more beautifully to our artist community, our creative community, is paramount for us to move forward, to get new folks collecting, to get new folks attending our events at these various Zygotes or the Morgan or, you know, Praxis or the print room. And we need to really do a much more outstanding, extravagant welcome to people because there’s just too many barriers there. There’s barriers to my students who have no idea that these places exist. And so we are setting them, we’re setting them up, I think, for failure unless we start to make these connections stronger, better, clearer, and those navigations more profound.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:41:34] Have you ever collaborated with or worked for the Land Studio?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:41:38] I have been a recipient of many of their projects as an artist and have a lot of work in different initiatives that they’ve managed as well as sat in and moderated. Many of their community project panels. And so it’s been really nice to know many of the people and actually many of the staff have also exhibited here at Yards.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:42:17] In the community that you grew up in, were there any works of public art that you can remember from when you were younger?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:42:25] Wow, that’s a good question. So I had. When I was in high school, I used to take the Rapid to Cleveland Institute of Art and I took some of the early education classes. And there was. It was always wonderful to go to take the Rapid and get off at that little. I guess it’s off of Ford Road as it goes up to Mayfield. And it wasn’t actually public art as much as it was the profound impact that looking at the Cleveland Institute, I mean, the Cleveland Museum of Art, from the front of it, that over the lake, the little pond there, Wade Oval, I guess it’s called. It was just one of those images that was so impressive and so beautiful and is sort of permeated into my head. This leads me to the second part of that, is that that museum is always free forever. The free stamp by Klaus Oldenburg, which is over by City Hall, is also another one that sort of rages in my brain to the. Not to be misconstrued, that artists and creatives shouldn’t be paid for what they’re valued and for their skills and for what it is that they do. But there is something that’s beautiful, that it is always free and forever to not have these barriers that people can access these spaces. It always hasn’t been successful, but I think that Cleveland and its early histories of really striving for that anthem within the arts and within public comment and within how we can be advocates for our lives and for our quality of life here in Cleveland. I think that those two ideas are closely connected for me.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:45:00] What advice would you give to artists who wish to design creative spaces in their own communities through maybe some of these more public art exhibits or just murals on the streets? You know, anything that kind of creates that creative space in the community.
Elizabeth Maugans [00:45:17] Yeah, I would go and talk to the building owner and talk about how or if they know somebody or find a space that you think might need some love or might need a little vitality to it. And I think it’s as simple as that. If you need a little bit of dough to bankroll that project, try the Community Development Corporation, go to Home Depot and see if they have some donated paint that are seconds or mistakes that you can get. I think ingenuity and just being able to go and shake hands and say, I’d love to do something here. This would also help me get my own foot in the door to be able to have my first public piece of art. I don’t think it’s complicated. I don’t think you need to wait for a grant. I don’t think that you have to wait for somebody to give you a seal of approval. I think you just need to find even like minded people that are interested in your project that want to help you. Maybe it’s a teacher at a school in that neighborhood and their kids want to come out and help. I think that if there’s, if there’s something that you really want to do from having a pop up event in a store or space that or a property that you see has been vacant for a while, find out who owns the property. Go talk to the land bank, see if there’s something that you could do to, you know, begin to find some energy in a space that brings some musician friends with you. Ask a food truck to show up to make a little bit of money. I really think that if you’re organized about what your vision is and you can get all this stuff down on paper and be polite and engaged as you’re talking to the people and the places that you want to do these things, I think it’s a simple as that.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:47:30] Is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up the interview? Any final thoughts or anything you think that it’s important for others to know about you or your work that you do?
Elizabeth Maugans [00:47:40] Yes. I wanted to talk about Quest for the Fest in the spirit of that a lot of us feel all too often that we have to be connected to an organization. We have to be supported through a grant. We have to be have a stamp of approval by some other institutional power. I want to use an idea of we just had a block party and everybody brought a casserole. We had a fire pit there. We had some other people come and they played some music on her guitar and another lady sang. And I think that there’s something that seems so natural about that. But we have been so, we’ve been so reprogrammed to think that we as artists before that National Endowment for the Arts, before Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, before public sector funding, before institutions have been competing and unfortunately imposing these ideas that are not directly created by creatives, that we have been unfortunately feeling like we can’t do these types of spontaneous, exclusive, I mean inclusive, joyful, affordable projects anymore. So a number of people who have been meeting monthly in the spirit of places like Ingenuity Fest and Waterloo Arts Fest and a lot of other organizations that are doing these much more inclusive initiatives. For me, it’s been beautiful. It’s been a beautiful gift to see creatives in a grassroots way, trying to figure out how we can take those barriers, those boundaries of curated juried shows, whatever, whatever it is that can get more people involved in this strange, beautiful, incredible space of creativity here in the region.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:50:53] Well, thank you so much again.
Elizabeth Maugans [00:50:54] You are so welcome.
Makialani Kanewa-Mariano [00:50:55] Really appreciate it. There’s nothing else you want to add for? Wrap it up. Okay. The time is now 11:09. I’m going to stop the recorder completing this interview with Liz. Thank you so much.
Elizabeth Maugans [00:51:06] You are so welcome.
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