Just outside the hipster hub that is the Main Street-East Chapel Hill Street intersection is a low cinderblock warehouse, unmarked except for a large “715” painted across the front in splashy colors. Formerly an auto garage, then a supplier of cremation-ready coffins, the 2,400-square-foot warehouse at 715 Washington Street is now the home of a vibrant artistic collective.
The Space—as the warehouse is called—is shared by seven local artistic figures, spearheaded by poet-cum-muscian and Duke Performances Marketing Director Ken Rumble. He and other scene stalwarts had been using a different venue across from the Marriott for regular rock music sessions when forced to relocate. After a day of biking around Durham and making mostly fruitless inquiries, Rumble landed upon the current garage space. The sprawling room became an official studio in late April.
Now, shared by artists whose interests cast a wide net from writing to performance to painting, The Space has become a place of artistic innovation and collaboration. A frequent rehearsal space for various musical ventures, The Space has hosted two art installations since its inception. In tell-tale, genre-swapping form, an original “poet’s play” by Space member Chris Vitiello is slated for tomorrow’s Third Friday events.
“I think Durham has a really great art scene, but in my experience it’s pretty genre-specific,” Rumble said. “There’s not necessarily a space where things that don’t fit into any categories happen. On a really basic level, that kind of variety is necessary. It shows people... that they can do something much more idiosyncratic and much more particular to what their vision is.”
Looking around The Space, evidence of media integration abounds. Musical instruments are set up in one corner mere feet away from a makeshift stage Vitiello is constructing for his play. Drawings, amateur graffiti and musical bars span the walls, while a disco ball glistens at the center of the ceiling. Creative detritus such as masks, figurines and empty beer cans spill from available surfaces, lending a colorfully cluttered air to the montone cement flooring.
The overall impression is not only of the mingling interests of the many players who practice and perform there but of a tension between private studio space and a more universally welcoming performance environment—an issue that has become vital in The Space’s current and continuing evolution.
“The challenge is navigating between the public and private. Personally, I’m not interested in running a gallery or venue. I want to maintain a modicum of privacy in the space for it to retain a somewhat anarchic and free-form aura,” wrote Space member Brian Howe in an e-mail. “If you can point to The Space and say, ‘it’s a venue,’ or ‘it’s a gallery,’ then something has gone wrong from my perspective.”
Frequenters of The Space are constantly finding themselves negotiating this relationship along with the different artistic ambitions of seven people, a balancing act that is complicated by a common desire to share the warehouse’s potential with the outside community.
“At first, it was really just intended to be practice and studio space, but it’s such as large and evocative space, we immediately thought we need to have events here, performances here,” Vitiello said. “The work we’re making—we should be presenting it and letting people in.”
For the time being, the artists seem to have struck a comfortable agreement. Most days, at least a few of the members can be found in The Space, creating, collaborating or just hanging out on the building’s front stoop, sipping drinks and watching a resident family of foxes dart down the street. The venue will continue to periodically open to outsiders, at least until the lease runs out.
Rumble, illuminated by the shifting light of The Space’s disco ball, said, “It’s basically a billion dreams come true.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.