The ASU Herberger Institute’s School of Art’s recent announcement to move five of its 10 Master of Fine Arts programs to the Levine Machine, a renovated warehouse downtown, has been met with positive reactions from ASU students, faculty and the downtown Phoenix community in general.
The Levine Machine will be home to nearly 35 studios for MFA students, along with a student art gallery and critique space. Having most of the studios in close proximity to each other is one of the most positive aspects of the move, said MFA students Kara Roschi and Ally Glowacki.
“I know with a lot of other institutions, the other graduate students get to work in proximity of each other,” said Roschi, whose MFA concentration is in intermedia. “This is a nice opportunity for everyone to be in one common facility.”
Painting and drawing MFA student Ally Glowacki expressed a similar attitude toward the move.
“I think we can really create a nice hub, and I think it’ll be really beneficial for cross-package critiques,” Glowacki said. “We can have sculpture students critiquing painting students. That’ll be really exciting, that you can walk down the hallway and find someone who is in a different artistic discipline.”
The location in downtown Phoenix will not only provide a common studio space for MFA students, but will give them better exposure to collectors, galleries and the downtown arts community, said Greg Esser, the Herberger Institute’s Desert Initiative director.
“This physical location is located next to so many other elements that will benefit not only the students, but all of the other people they’ll be in contact with,” Esser said.
Glowacki said that, as a student, the location could be beneficial for the futures of the art students.
“I think it’ll help in the long run with building professional connections and getting work more out there than in Tempe,” Glowacki said. “It’ll be easier for students to show their work and promote themselves.”
The facility itself is one of the reasons students and faculty alike said they are excited about the upcoming move. Gregory Sale, an assistant professor of intermedia at the Herberger Institute, says the facility will not only cater to current students’ needs, but will help draw prospective students.
“I also think it’s going to be a draw for other graduates or incoming graduate students to want to come and study here,” Sale said. “It sort of complements and completes a very good program that we already have in a nice way. It brings our facilities to a level equal to the education and faculty that the school of arts already offers.”
The Levine Machine is located near arts facilities such as the Bentley Gallery and Icehouse Arts.
“Bentley Gallery is really happy that the graduate art students are just going to be down the street from us and it adds to the whole neighborhood by making it a more cohesive arts district,” said Emmett Potter, primary arts and sales consultant at Bentley Gallery.
Icehouse Arts director Peter Conley noted that the School of Art’s move to downtown Phoenix would also help the warehouse district’s growing arts scene, one that is less prominent than those of Roosevelt Row’s or Grand Avenue’s.
“It can only be a benefit for the neighborhood,” Conley said. “Having other (arts) spaces sort of on this side of downtown can only help the area a lot.”
Conley also said that the School of Art’s move downtown could potentially benefit Icehouse Arts, which has been involved with ASU for about 20 years, but noted that it was still too early to say.
“It can only be a great thing for us to have them so close,” Conley said. “The Icehouse benefits from ASU on many levels and I should say I hope we’re offering ASU something as well, kind of a canvas, if you will, for them to kind of come in and explore all different kinds of things.”
Contact the reporter at pkunthar@asu.edu
