A secret to ArtWorks' success
Program is celebrating 10 great years, thanks in large part to Tamara Harkavy
BY MARILYN BAUER | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Tamara Harkavy lights up the bar room at Palomino restaurant on Fountain Square. She's dressed in a floral duster and pencil skirt, recent purchases from a trip to New York. Around her neck is a fashionably scruffy scarf and a necklace of big, round plastic beads.
Harkavy has just come from a meeting with Cincinnati City Manager Milton Dohoney. He's called together the city's most influential people in services for young people, and as executive director of ArtWorks, Harkavy is among them.
Settling into one of the restaurant's leatherette club chairs, she is ready to begin talking about herself.
"I went to graduate school to study historic preservation and ended up in urban planning," she says.
"So I love the idea of creating an urban center that is an exciting place full of surprises and opportunity."
By all accounts, ArtWorks, celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, is a success story.
That success is due in large part to Harkavy's commanding personality and determination to get things done.
"I begged them for the job," she says of founders Roxanne Qualls, Chad Wick and John Bryant.
Bryant had organized a trip to Chicago to see kids' art space Gallery 37 with an eye on starting something simliar in Cincinnati.
What developed is ArtWorks, an organization dedicated to public art and teenage artists. It hires working artists to educate the apprentices - 1,800 since the program started.
Although Harkavy, 49, was educated as a planner, she took the reins and started spending money.
"It was so funny," she says. "One time early on I called John a few times, and when he didn't get back to me right away, I called one of his 'colonels' and said: 'OK. Tell John I'm spending money.' He called me back after that!
"Sometimes I think this whole thing was scripted for me," she says. "I was always interested in working with young people, and I'm so excited by the opportunities in the city. I think people saw that in me."
INFLUENCING LIVES
"Tamara is tremendous," says Bryant. "She walks on water. She took us from scratch and made us into a premier program. She's been a guiding force."
It is hard to imagine the Cincinnati art scene without Harkavy, who lives in Norwood. She is omnipresent at gallery and museum openings, educational presentations and benefits, Her husband, Matt, is an artist and son Ben is a jazz drummer.
"She really did change my life," says LeBraun Colvin, 26, of North Avondale, a 1997 high school apprentice. "If it hadn't been for her advising me on better ways of handling things, keeping me connected to people who might help with the projects I was involved in and encouraging me, I would not be doing some of the things I am doing now."
Colvin is now a working artist. He paints, has his own clothing line, makes custom sneakers and is working on a 20-piece installation in a nightclub.
"I worked as an (ArtWorks) artist teacher this summer," Colvin says. "And I am coming back next summer. ... I want to tell those kids ArtWorks is something you can turn into a career."
Harkavy clearly loves the job.
"I had this opportunity to create a program that impacts the lives of teenagers by providing them with a very unique job experience, at the same time giving opportunities to professional artists by hiring them to work with these kids," she says. "On top of that, the projects they're creating have a tremendous public impact."