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Dillsboro Green Energy Park
tapped for art school partnership
The arts have a reputation as among the first to suffer in difficult economic times. A bad economy coupled with rising fossil fuel prices are a double-whammy for glass and metalworking studios – the energy hogs of the art world.
“They’re shutting down,” said Richard Tichich, director of WCU’s School of Art and Design. “Universities and artists in general can’t afford them.” In fact, cost concerns led Western Carolina to shutter its own glassblowing studio about a decade ago, and the university shelved plans for a metalworking studio.
But with Jackson County’s Green Energy Park now up and running, the art school has an opportunity to benefit its students and the town of Dillsboro – the latter in accord with Chancellor John W. Bardo’s call for the university to assist the town in a time of economic hardship.
WCU graduate student Tracy Kirchmann shapes glass in a studio at the Green Energy Park.
Situated beside a closed Dillsboro landfill, the Green Energy Park is a county initiative that captures the landfill’s methane gas and uses it to power glassblowing and metalworking equipment. Its goal is threefold: economic development, environmental protection and education. The park advertises its foundry – the piece of equipment where metals such as aluminum or bronze are melted for castings – as the first in the world fueled by landfill methane. Its glassblowing studio opened in September.
The university and the Green Energy Park are in the process of formalizing a collaboration agreement that will include graduate assistantships and classroom instruction based at the park, Tichich said. The park’s resources can help the School of Art and Design develop as “a fine arts center of a four-state area,” Tichich said.
Timm Muth, director of the energy park, said the collaboration is mutually beneficial. The park can provide resources not available at WCU, and new Western Carolina art graduates might take advantage of the Green Energy Park’s role as a business incubator by renting studio space as a step between academics and a career. “I feel that the park could prove to be an invaluable partner for WCU, offering students opportunities to put what they’ve learned into real-world practice,” Muth said.
During his 2009-10 academic year address to faculty and staff, Bardo urged the university community to use its expertise to help Dillsboro, whose economy was upended in 2008 when Great Smoky Mountains Railroad out of Bryson City discontinued its regular run to Dillsboro. Such assistance is in the spirit of UNC Tomorrow, a university system initiative to help solve critical statewide problems, and WCU’s Quality Enhancement Plan, an effort to enhance undergraduate education by linking student experiences in and out of the classroom.
The Jackson County Green Energy Park harnesses methane gas from a
nearby landfill to generate power.
“The creative partnership of the university’s School of Art and Design and Dillsboro’s Green Energy Park illustrates just one of many ways the WCU and Dillsboro communities might work together,” said Bardo. “This wonderful example of engagement helps further the university’s mission to help Dillsboro through a difficult economic time and is a positive step for our students and faculty as well.”
A formal agreement between the university and the Green Energy Park would follow years of informal collaboration. Frank Lockwood, an associate professor of entrepreneurship, helped the county write a grant that helped launch the park, which opened in 2006. Early on, George Ford, an assistant professor in the department of construction management, spoke with Muth about combustion issues; and Joan Byrd, a ceramics professor, brought a group of students to the park to brainstorm ideas for a future pottery studio.
It was with the arrival of Tracy Kirchmann, a graduate student in the School of Art and Design, in fall 2007 that the university’s partnership with WCU began to assume a more formal structure. Kirchmann, who earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from Southern Illinois University, was working for an area glass artist and living in Asheville when she decided to return to school for a master’s degree in fine arts. She had heard of WCU’s art program, but the lack of a glass studio was problematic for someone with a focus on glass. Kirchmann knew of the park and its plan to build a glass studio, which played a large part in her decision to attend WCU. When she approached Tichich about entering the art program, she proposed an assistantship with the park, and Tichich agreed.
Chris Proffitt, a glass artist from Asheville, stands by to assist WCU
graduate student Tracy Kirchmann as she adds color to glass at a
studio in the Jackson County Green Energy Park.
Photos courtesy of Jackson County Green Energy Park
“I saw it as an incredible opportunity to learn about alternative energy and glass,” said Kirchmann, who now lives in Sylva with her husband, Adam Kirchmann, a social work student at WCU.
Since beginning her master’s degree in the fall of 2007, Kirchmann has been integral in developing the park’s glass studio and foundry. Working with an $80,000 grant, she used her connections in the art world and found used glass equipment. She helped the park locate its foundry, donated by WCU alumnus Joel Queen. She also arranged for the park’s first artist-in-residence, Christian Benefiel, a metalworker – among other art forms – whom Kirchmann met at a metals conference.
In 2008, she represented the Green Energy Park at a Glass Art Society conference in Portland, Ore., where she was part of a green energy panel and spoke about alternative energy for fueling artist studios. She gave demonstrations when the park debuted the glass studio at its annual Art in the Park festival.
Kirchmann, due to graduate in May, began leasing her own space at the park in September and plans to create her thesis project there. She plans to teach a WCU glass class in the space this spring.
Already an accomplished artist – she recently was recognized in a student sculpture competition sponsored by the International Sculpture Center – Kirchmann’s experience with the Green Energy Park will be key in launching her career, said Tichich, who believes the art world’s use of green energy will become the norm. “Once people realize the impact, Tracy will be on the speakers tour for a decade,” he said.
Marya Roland, an associate professor of sculpture who has worked closely with Kirchmann, appreciates the parity of the blossoming WCU-Green Energy Park relationship. While Bardo has charged the university with helping Dillsboro, in this instance Dillsboro is just as much helping Western Carolina. “We’re doing each other a favor,” said Roland, who loaned the park metalworking gear and equipment. “It’s really of mutual benefit, and I think that’s the brilliance of it.”
At this point, the park and art school are discussing multiple collaborations, and Muth imagines opportunities to work with other of the university’s programs, as well. For example, engineering students might help the park recover heat from the forges, or one day build anaerobic digesters to produce another form of renewable energy, and design students might help create a new logo. Like natural gas trapped beneath an abandoned landfill, the potential is there, waiting for work and imagination to bring it to the surface.
