Fests in flux Convergence stalls, but Pawtucket thrives By Bill Rodriguez
	Artsapalooza The Convergence International Arts Festival is down but not entirely out. A few events on its schedule will take place. • Still set to wing their way here from Poland for Convergence, Castle of the Imagination International Performance Festival of Gdansk will team with Providence artists and Boston’s Mobius Artists Group. On September 19 and 29 they will present site-specific performances and installations at Collier Point Park in Providence Harbor, at the Russian Submarine Museum. The title of the collective presentation, Juliett 484, is named after the decommissioned Russian submarine docked there. Another customary part of Convergence, the fourth Annual Providence Street Painting Festival, will take place on September 20 along South Water Street. • The Pawtucket Arts Festival is now in its fifth year, and from September 5-21 they will demonstrate how far they’ve come along. As in Providence and Newport, sculpture is a part of this event, with an ongoing Traditions in Sculpture exhibition of East Coast figurative sculptors at the Blackstone Valley Visitor Center. Nearly 20 events range from Chinese dragon boat races and the Taiwan Day Festival on September 6, to the first annual Rubber Ducky Derby on September 7. A modest folk festival will take place at Stone Soup Coffeehouse September 13 and 14, and a film festival will run from September 10-16 at the Visitor Center. Other featured events include a jazz and blues history lecture and performance by Greg Abate on September 18, and Consuelo Sherba and Virginia Erskine performing on viola and piano in the Blackstone Valley Heritage Concert Series on September 21. Fireworks will fill the sky on September 20 after the Rhode Island Philharmonic performs at Slater Memorial Park, starting at 4:30 p.m. For further details, go to Pawtucketartsfestival.org. • Only two or three of the expected 20 public sculptures of Convergence will be installed this year in Providence, and those will wait till October to arrive. But art lovers geared up for more will have plenty to see from September 6-October 26, with the sixth annual Wind Sea Sky outdoor sculpture festival at Easton’s Beach, in Newport. Dozens of site-specific pieces will be exhibited. The opening is on September 6 from 12 to 3 p.m. — B.R.

Yes, the bad news is that the 16th annual Convergence International Arts Festival will not happen this year. The good news is that it’s only being pushed back to next July. Plus, there’s not only an arts festival in Pawtucket to take up the slack, but also lots of sculptures — the Convergence raison d’être — on a beach in Newport.

The current arts money crunch is the problem, the same one that has made WaterFire Providence cadge donations from visitors and has even threatened First Night Providence with not happening at all this coming New Year’s Eve.

In recent years, the city has paid for half of the roughly $100,000 it costs to put on Convergence. With City Hall in the midst of organizing a new arts and film office, the budget for such expenditures had not been decided in time.

"Unfortunately, this had to be the thing that took the hit," said Bob Rizzo, the founder of Convergence. Rizzo is director of the Office of Cultural Affairs at the Providence Department of Public Parks, and will soon function under the still-gestating Mayor’s Office of Arts, Film & Tourism. He and associate director Lynne McCormack saw other arts and entertainment programs step up first for funds on hand. "We had the most successful Friday night concert series we’ve had in years. We had the single most successful jazz and blues festival we’ve ever done, that we did for the fourth and fifth of July.

"We had hoped to make up the shortfall somewhere else, but it didn’t happen," Rizzo said.

It would have been a different story if his little two-person office could have spent most of their time organizing and fund-raising for the arts festival alone, he noted.

In the past, they have gotten some money from foundations, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, but nothing came through this year.

"The City of Providence is the major stakeholder in convergence," Rizzo said. "And then the state would usually put in around $10,000. Then the rest would be made up with corporate sponsorships."

A thousand dollars from this company, $5000 from that. Nothing so generous that its absence the next year would put a big hole in the budget. Maybe $50,000 to $75,000 all together, he said.

So how much was received from the business community for Convergence XVI?

Nothing. Nada. Zero.

Come again?

"We did not raise any of that this year — it’s flat, zip," Rizzo said. "Except for WJAR, which has helped us dramatically with media support, we’ve had nothing."

Art costs more than the sweat equity of its creators.

"We’ve gotten people used to the fact that the arts are free," Rizzo said and laughed lightly. "So we have to explain to people that, ‘Hey, that concert we just gave you last week that you didn’t pay anything for, that anywhere else would cost you $35 to $50 . . .’ "

He trailed off. "They need to understand that they need to help contribute to that."

An irony is that, considering all that Convergence offers every year — performances to poetry readings — it costs only $100,000.

"Of course, I would love more," Rizzo said. "Especially when consider the fact that [one] WaterFire supposedly costs about $60,000." Ten full-length WaterFire evenings are scheduled for this year.

After years of taking place in June, Convergence started happening in September in 2000, to promote tourism in what was then a fallow month in the city. The way Rizzo figures it, bigger and better next July beats barely scraping by this September.

"We’ve been through this kind of thing before," he said of budget crunches. "We’ve managed to be resilient enough to say, ‘OK, let’s not go and deficit spend and hope that we make it at the other end. Let’s stop and stay in business.’ Because a lot of other folks have had to go out of business. I’m not about to do that."

The Pawtucket Arts Festival was the baby festival on the block when it started out in 1999 with a $15,000 budget. Now the budget is $200,000 in cash and in-kind services, plus loads of volunteer time, and the event runs this year from September 5 through 21.

Able to devote more time to organizing the festival, Herb Weiss and Christine Boudreau of the sponsoring Pawtucket Planning & Redevelopment Agency can tally 219 local businesses and organizations that contributed to the event this year.

"Two of our larger donors from last year didn’t come aboard this year, but I picked up others — we’ve got a good program to sell," says Weiss, who is also in charge of developing Pawtucket’s arts district.

"A lot of people jumped on the bandwagon," Weiss says. "The support for our festival has increased steadily over the years."