by Tammy Peacy and Franco Tarsitano
Self-proclaimed “Queen of the World” Tammy Peacy (hey, she has business cards that say it, so it must be true) and, well, Franco Tarsitano hold court at a table in Pazzo to discuss the arts in Kenosha… among other things.
Tammy: Let’s turn this thing on, in case anything good comes out.
Franco[with much trepidation dripping from his voice]: O-kay.
T: What are they doing upstairs tonight?
F [squinting at the sign near the stairs]: I can’t read that.
T: I can’t either. Oh, it’s a party. It’s a party upstairs and we’re not invited.
F [gesturing to the pink satin jacket and poodle skirt outfitted woman on the stairs] She’s the bouncer.
T: She looks like a bouncer. Like the, what do you call them? The Pink Ladies. From Grease? With the jacket?
F: I think that’s a bowling jacket.
T: No, that skirt looks like a, almost like a poodle skirt.
F: It does.
T: See. Ah-kay, where’s my drink? I’m just ready.
F: [laughs]
T: This week went by really quick because I was sick. I had this bad cold.
F: Yeah, I did at the beginning of the week.
T: Yeah, so I just like slept the whole week. As much as I could, so this week’s gone.
F: I did too. Oh, my God. I did that too.
Melanie let me out early yesterday and I just like conked. And I have this new grand-niece, so I held her for a little while and fed her and then it was 7:30 and I was like, I’m going to bed.
T: I know.
F: But, you know, we needed it. I think the adrenaline and stuff from Christmas just caught up.
T: So what do you have going on in Milwaukee?
F: Oh!
The Delind? I had never heard of them. I was a little surprised. They had an annual called Bare Walls V. It has to do with, not overt nudity, but sort of like
Rebecca Venn?
T: I looked at the site because she posted that she was there on myspace and then when I was looking I was like, “Hey, that’s Franco’s stuff.”
F: Yeah. Melanie had told me about it and she said, “You know I think you should send some of your photography. And I actually sent them eight. They emailed me back and said, “Well, we’ll take two.” And then I found out that all eight are going up. So I’m like, okay, I need frames.
[laughter]
F: Yeah, it’s supposed to be a really beautiful gallery.
T: We’re going. I can’t go Friday, but I think Francisco and I are going on Saturday.
F: Yeah, I want to do that depending on what’s happening at Delind’s, cause I don’t know how late they stay open.
T: So, you’re going to go on Saturday?
F: Maybe. I have to go on Friday because that’s the opening.
T: I wanted to go Friday, but there’s a thing at the kids’ school.
F: Kids come first.
T: They do. Kids before art.
F: You should have named them art.
T: But I have three of them. They can’t all be named art. [Drinks arrive] Hmm, okay, here we go. This better be delicious.
[Franco and Tammy take a sip]
F: Wow.
T: That is so vodka-ey and delicious. Vodka is my booze of choice.
F: Me, too.
T: Because it’s, um, so clean. It’s not, uh, you know what I hate? [affecting her best Francisco accent] Rrrrum. You will never catch me drinking a Roman Cock. Never.
F: Mine is, I used to drink it, gin and tonic. Gin?
T: Yeah, that’s awful.
F: It’s nasty.
T: Why were you drinking it?
F: Well, because I lived in Boston, so the summer drink was a gin and tonic. But the winter drink was scotch.
T: Ewww.
F: And I had a boss who said, “You better develop a taste for this because that’s what people are going to buy you.” So I’d be out and if people were buying drinks I’d have one and then there’s be two right behind it. Yeah.
T: Uh, no gin. Vodka and tonic though. With lime.
F: Oh, yeah. Anything with vodka.
T: Mmhmm. Jello. You know, I don’t think that this is a blood orange cosmo.
F: You don’t? Isn’t it usually a little cloudy?
T: Yeah, it has orange juice. This is just a cosmo.
F: Should we ask her?
T: Yeah, once she comes back and after I’ve had most of it.
[laughter]
T: Hey there’s Rick [McCluskey] from my writing group over there. Rick- he stopped at the gallery, he’s walking in. Rick. Rick.
F: Rick!
T: Hey, how’s it going?
Rick: Hi. Good.
T: What are you doing all the way in Kenosha?
R: This is my wife Ann.
Ann: Hi.
R: This is Tammy, from the writing group.
A: Oh, that’s why you look familiar.
T: We met at Loren’s shindig.
R [rolls his eyes] Oh, yeah. That. We just came from, hm, Todd? The wacko barber?
T: Oh, yeah, Sweeney Todd.
F: How was it?
R [astonished]: It’s a musical!
T: You didn’t know that?
A: We didn’t know.
T: Yeah, a Broadway musical.
F: I saw it on stage once.
R: Did you really?
F: It wasn’t bloody, but how they set it up, aw man. I was like, “I’m not gonna shave anymore.”
R: That’s why they make safety razors.
T: Right, because they’re safe.
R: What are you guys doing here?
T: We’re having cosmos and talking about art and it will be in
ExposeKenosha eventually. So, I’m working.
R: Is Francisco coming down?
T: No, he couldn’t. I told him and he was really disappointed.
R: I actually sat down with him the other day.
T: Are you gonna eat here?
R: Yeah.
T: The food’s good. I’ll see you guys.
R: Bye.
T: That’s funny, they live in Racine, so I never see them here.
F: That’s interesting.
T: He’s nice. Oh, he’s a Private Eye. Did you know that?
F: No.
T: Yeah. He was a cop for like twenty-five years or something and he started his own detective business.
F: Do you think he might work for us?
T: He could.
F: Although we get plenty of dirt anyway.
[laughter]
T: But we don’t record it.
F [to the recorder]: But she does write it down.
T: I write it down, but not for anybody to see. It’s for my own personal use.
F: Ah, blackmail.
T: Yeah. He writes like detective stories, um, novels actually.
F: Wow.
T: With serial killers.
F: Maybe that’s somebody I should interview.
T: That’d actually be a good idea. I want to start, um, because I got an email from Boyd Sutton. He’s with the Wisconsin Regional Writer’s Association. And he emailed and said, you know, “I really like Expose Kenosha and everything, but you are focusing mainly on visual and performing arts.” We aren’t doing it on purpose, it’s just what’s happened, so I want to start featuring more writers. He said, “You’re a writer, why wouldn’t you have more writers?”
F: And you know not necessarily just interviews. You could feature their work in there.
T: When I was listening to the interview from Maria, I think Ray suggested that.
F: Ray?
T: Forgianni.
F: Okay.
T: He said, “Well, why don’t you have some fiction in there sometime?” I was like, “That’s a good idea.”
So I did have one item on my agenda and that was the Sustainable Artist thing, I can’t remember the name of it. I honestly, don’t really have a lot to say about it because I don’t know anything about it. Do you know anything about it?
F: Yeah and I don’t know which way to go with it to tell you the truth.
T: This is, uh, Ellen is a part of this?
F: Ellen Furrguwah something?
T: Furrguwah?
F: Frg, I don’t know, but I’ll get you the name. Have you met her yet?
T: At that thing, the planning thing, she was in our group. She was the lamb, or the sheep lady.
F: Yeah.
T: And then I saw here again, said hello to her at Francisco’s reception, but I like her, just meeting her at the strategic planning meeting. Is this her thing or is this a group of people?
F: Well, right now it’s her thing and what she’s trying to do is get more people involved. She actually sent me a really long email today and we have an appointment, a phone appointment, to talk to each other tomorrow. I’m just a sounding board for her. I’m trying to be very positive about it. She’s just in the initial stages, trying to find who will support this. Because obviously, the more people you have interested in this—
T: Right.
F: She’s interested in Bain school. There is a company called
Artspace?
T: Uh-huh.
F: So you’ve heard of that. They’ve been successful with helping other communities develop buildings that are work spaces and living spaces [for artists]. And if you go to Milwaukee or Chicago on gallery nights what you’ll find is that these are individual artists and usually they live in the back. This is more, not a cooperative, but a collective of artists that live together, they do their work in their spaces, they have common space where they do their stuff. There is a building in Racine, but I can’t remember what it’s called, across the street from the police station and it’s actually flopped. It’s been around for years and years and years. But it’s a big building and to sustain it for just artists, it hasn’t been successful. It’s almost like too much space. And we’re not a huge arts community in terms of that. Across the United States there’s been either it becomes rental and so they generate income like that or they have an area for like performances and they sell tickets for that or there’s some kind of other, like a coffee shop or a deli.
The one that I’m familiar with is the one in San Francisco called
Theater Artaud. Theater Artaud is different in that it’s treated almost as condominiums, so what happens is they keep the price at about sixty thousand dollars for each unit. The artist would have to jury to get in, they have special financing if you need it, and the artist would purchase that particular unit. The deal is though that when you decide to move or sell, you can’t make a profit off of it. You keep it at the sixty thousand. They had some problems with that and they’ve had to reorganize, but that’s how it started.
T: How long ago was that?
F: Gosh, now it’s been, at least ten, eleven years. And it started as a non-profit. What happens then is how are you generating income? You can have performances. What was neat about it was that you have painters, writers, you have dancers, and they’re all housed in this one building. It was actually a cannery at one time, so that’s a huge building. They still exist and they’re income is generated primarily from those performances. What [the Sustainable Arts Center] lacks right now is that sort of definition and financially how’s this going to happen. That’s something that right now, I mean it’s not premature, you have those questions, she’s starting from step one. Her interest is in Bain School and whether that is on the market or off the market, I keep hearing that it’s on the market, there’s been a lot of interest in it. She sees the fact that it’s in that particular part of the city, that in sense of location, it’s not far from downtown, it has parking. It needs very little in terms of reconstruction. It would probably have to be brought to code.
T: But if people are going to live there, I mean, would it be communal as far as like the kitchen?
F: No, it’s really like having your own apartment.
T: I would think that would be kind of a lot of renovation.
F: In terms of spacing it and cutting it up, yeah. But what’s neat about the building is because it was a school at one time, it has an auditorium, it has big spaces that if you’re gonna have a show or a performance, it has a kitchen. It has a cafeteria. One of the other ones that kept coming up was St. Casmir’s which is the church.
T: Right on Washington, right down the street from me.
F: The problem with that is it’s such an old building and it’s been so long, it still has asbestos in it. That’s a huge expense. Ellen’s at that point right now where it’s being developed and talking to artists to see would you invest in this? She’s very aggressive and getting here and you know hitting the ground running.
T: Do you know anything about her, like, is she from Kenosha? Like her mother is here.
F: She’s from Kenosha. Her mother is here and on the board of the KAA. Her mother is pretty well known because of her involvement in the KAA. She also sits on the board of the
Kenosha Arts Foundation. What I’m not optimistic about is, I think, and I know because I lived in San Francisco and the arts community is gigantic, I mean it is an arts community.
T: How many people are how many people are in San Francisco?
F: Um, believe it or not, and I would have to check on this, San Francisco is nine miles square.
T: How big is Kenosha?
F: Well, we’re really spread out. San Francisco has such a concentration of population. I mean I could easily say a million, but I’m not sure.
T: I can always look that up. [For anyone curious, the estimated population for San Francisco in 2006 was 744,041]
F: She’s from San Francisco and just like myself, because I lived there long enough, to come back here is a real stretch to try and develop something like that in a town this size. At the same time, if Kenosha would just wake up and try to realize, and this is stuff we’ve continually discussed, the economic impact of attracting artists to the city, having something like that and become this diamond in the rough, would hopefully bring a lot of art and artists themselves. The donors typically in this city haven’t really supported the arts unless, you know, like small grants, contributions. It’s all the same people. The other is politically, okay fine, you want to buy this building, it belongs to the city, what kind of politics are involved in this. And you’ve met her, she’s got this strong personality and drive.
T: She reminds me of Ellen.
F: She does.
T: She has the same name and everything. Why does she remind me of her?
F: Because of her mannerisms particularly.
T: And her look a little bit. Not a lot, but a little bit.
F: I don’t know if I had said that to you before.
T: No you didn’t.
F: I was like, Oh, my God, it’s Ellen on TV. It’s like the closest cloning we could do. It’s really neat. There’s an animation there that we’re not used to in Kenosha, but maybe that’s the energy that it takes. You and I have seen that and within the last year the personalities that have been involved have had a really tremendous impact. Maybe that’s what the city isn’t aware of, that these people can make a difference. Part of it is that it is happening, whether it’s you or me or the other artists, it’s like this cohesiveness that’s starting to happen and an over-lapping that’s starting to happen. How can that not have an effect in some way? But then I’m also getting disappointment. I don’t know if you want me to say this, but—
T: I want you to say whatever is on your mind.
F: — well, with you… You know me, I’m going to be totally honest with you.
T: And you should be.
F: And I know you are with me. Like
Ron Kelly, what a great personality.
T: I love him. He invited me to be a part of his Mother’s Day show and I’m really excited. But go ahead.
F: He didn’t tell me about the Mother’s Day show. What is the Mother’s Day show?
T: He said it’s gonna be called Word To Your Mother. And I love him, but go ahead.
F: I love him too and he wants to have a burlesque show.
T: Mmmhmm. A burlesque show?
F: And I said I so want to be in that. I brought it up to Lemon Street that this would be a great fundraiser for AHA! even though they’re not ready for it. But this city should have an annual variety show. Why not? Have it at the Rhode, whatever. He actually came to see me this week and not to just talk about, and this is actually about the gay thing. And I’ve been open enough about that. I think what happens is because to a certain extent the city is still very, very…
T: It’s still Kenosha.
F: It is still Kenosha. I mean they’re very accepting once they know, but I mean, it’s just not out there. I was talking to this other gay couple and they always say, “I have yet to see a rainbow flag” and I always say, “Yeah, but in Kenosha, it’s just a rainbow.” And let alone that someone will say to me, you know I saw one on 39th Avenue. And nobody has objected to it, because it’s just a rainbow. So what happens is, and I get questions about this all the time. Ron is what I would call like the itch, I mean you get to the point where, you don’t get to talk to other gay people, so what happens is you start really craving that, just because that’s sort of your family and you get this sort of homesickness, you can’t walk down the street and see another gay person. For one people don’t walk down the street here, so how do you get to know people? We had this long conversation and what it ended up being is he wants to move to Racine. I think he has so much to offer Kenosha.
T: He wants to move to Racine? I’m not letting him, but go ahead.
F: Part of it I understand. People do walk there and as little as I have been there I can walk down the street and know like, okay, that’s a gay person. And one is that and the other is that he really, really wants a storefront. He can get it cheaper there. So, what do we do? And it’s not just because he’s gay, it’s because he’s a good artist. You know? It just left me like, I don’t want you to do that, but at the same time I understand. So he’s looking at possibly getting a space on Sixth Street, but what you may want to know that I found out is that Sixth Street is going to be closed for the next three years because it’s all going to be under construction.
T: Does he know that?
F: No, I found out a couple days later. But you may want to put that in. As another gay person, what he talks about in terms of conversing, he’s one of the few people I have where we sit there and we totally get the innuendos, I mean, we finish each others sentences. There’s a lot of people that don’t get that. I talked to Melanie about it and she doesn’t get it. She’s like, well I don’t understand what gays have that you can communicate with. If you look at it ethnically and you have a group of Mexicans or a group of blacks, they’ve got their own language. And so do gay people.
T: Well, even if you group them by age, if you have a group of teenagers, it would be that way.
F: Even the few gay people in Kenosha that I’ve met don’t get it. But we’ve both lived in San Francisco, you know, we’ve been around [laughs]. We also know in terms of Kenosha, if you are going to get involved in the gay community it’s going to have to be around a bar. And that’s
Icon.
T: And I go there because I like to dance there and it’s just very, just sex.
F: And that’s really, really true, but it doesn’t matter if it’s a gay bar or a straight bar, in a straight bar, in particular if you’re a woman—
T: This is why I don’t like to dance in straight bars.
F: But if I go to Icon, the first thought is, this guy’s here to pick somebody up, you know. And I’m too old. I’ll go there with a straight woman or a lesbian, but I am not going to walk into that bar alone because chances are, I’m just going to be rejected even if I don’t ask anything.
F: If I just walk through the door, it’ll be, “Oh, what an old queen.” It isn’t fun. I shouldn’t make seem like such a necessity, and one of the things I talked to Ron about, and it doesn’t matter if you’re gay or straight, you find yourself in a community and you find a passion and it sets the standard and that passion is so strong and you’re not gonna move. Okay, my passion is Lemon Street and being an artist there and seeing that this place grows. I’m not gonna move. You have somebody like Ron who wants to grow, he wants that, but the thing we both don’t have is just the connection. And I have all this extended family, I consider you extended family, you know Tamara’s a daughter, you’re a daughter, my adopted kids, but at the same time I really miss my friends. So what do you do with that? Are you forced to go to Chicago? I don’t know. For me, my passion is too strong and I’m old enough, and it’s not just a sex thing, that’s not important to me, but to some people that is important, they want a relationship. So what do you do? You move. It’s just like, young artists here and not just artists but talent with whatever skill it is, they’re gonna lose them. What can you do?
T: You have to find a way to keep them.
F: Exactly.
T: So what do you suggest?
F: I think it goes back to what Ellen is trying to do, and here’s a perfect example: She could stay in San Francisco, right? But she wants to move back here, granted for her mom, I did the same thing, so here’s someone that’s committed to their family but wants to have some kind of significant difference in the city.
T: Is she an artist?
F: I don’t think so. It might just be that she hasn’t told me yet. She wants to come here, commit to something that’s gonna be a big change for the city. That’s part of somehow getting the support for her. And I think that’s really important. I think that the support, but again it’s gonna be the usual people. How can we extend this? How do we get beyond 52nd Avenue. Do you know David and Mark?
T: No.
F: They’re a gay couple, if you saw them I think you would know them. They’ve been together for about ten years if not more. I can see when I’m with them and because I’m so open and not open in the sense that I’m like, “Oh, hi, I’m Franco and I’m gay.” People know. They own property in downtown Kenosha. You know what it needs. It needs a lot of gay people with money who will come down here and just take. Gays are sort of known for it. They’ll go and buy it out, build it up and sell it. I’m not saying Kenosha should become the Gay Mecca.
T: Why not?
F: Yeah, I know, it’d be a lot of fun. It’s just all these relationships that should be happening, we’re trying for something. The few people that there are, I think even now, whether it’s
ExposeKenosha and us talking, how do we get to the next level? Is it somebody like Ellen or are we missing steps in between there? I don’t know. I think you should talk for a while. And we should get another drink.
T: We should get another drink definitely. I’m not in a hurry. My husband’s at home with the kids. Oh, yeah. It’s 7:20. It’s so early. Let’s get a panini. Here they’ve got a whole list of them.
F: Let me get my glasses. These are my office glasses.
T: Those are beautiful.
F: Melanie and I always lose our glasses, so I just go into the store and grab half a dozen.
T: I wish I had my camera. I’ll have to make a note that those glasses have rhinestones.
Waitress: Can I get you anything else?
F: Well, we want to do another one of these.
T: More blood orange cosmos, though I don’t think these were.
F: Do you sell them by the pitcher?
W: It would get warmed up and then they are not good anymore.
T: That’s a good point. We don’t want it by the pitcher. I will have an Italian panini.
F: I’m gonna do, oh, God, the portabella mushroom? Doesn’t that sound good?
[Waitress exits]
F: Let me ask you something.
T: Okay, ask me something.
F: Well, with your going around— [laughs]
T [into the recorder]: Yeah, I’m goin’ around.
F: And I don’t mean a specific corner. What’s your take on things? You’ve talked to enough people you’ve seen enough things. What’s your feeling?
T: Before I started doing this I was just at home most of the time, except for going to writers group once month, so I had no idea what was happening and then to get out and finally see what was going on, I don’t know, I think it’s just really exciting and it seems like everything is like, right there, ready to come together and happen.
F: It’s sort of like waiting for the curtain to go up.
T: And for every one to be like, Ta-da! But it doesn’t seem like anyone is sure about what their cue is. I mean we have ExposeKenosha, which of course is awesome, but aside from the artists in Kenosha and maybe Racine and people somehow involved in the arts in general, in terms of the general population, nobody really knows. And I think they need to.
F: Do you think part of it is that the general public and to a certain extent the art community too, because we’re certainly in that momentum that when we say, Ta-da! they don’t know what’s behind that curtain?
T: Right. Um, yeah. And I think that I don’t know what it’s going to take for everyone to see it and to know that Kenosha could be someplace. People can come here and do things. You don’t have to go to Chicago, you don’t have to go to Milwaukee. I think that it could become a fact that people come here on purpose.
F: Do you think part of that is that we’re looking within our boundaries and maybe we have to make Milwaukee and Chicago aware that you know what is here? It’s more fun. We don’t have metered parking. How do we do this? Is it the responsibility of the tourism board? Is it individual organizations contacting similar organizations? Maybe with
AHA! it’ll make a difference.
T: I think with AHA! still deciding what their purpose is, maybe part of it is to help get people in here. I think maybe it’s everybody’s responsibility.
[More drinks arrive.]
T: Okay, this is a blood orange cosmo. I knew that wasn’t before.
F: Now we’ll try again.
T: To art.
F: Oh, my God, what a difference. This is a totally different drink.
T: The first one was just a cosmo. I drank it, but it was just a cosmo. Anyway, I think it’s a matter of the tourism bureau, AHA!, everybody getting the word out that there are things here that are comparable to what you can get in a bigger city, some of them not so much, but some of them yes.
F: I know this is going to sound so bad, but one of the advantages we have here is a grass roots effort could work in a city like this because we’re small enough, yet big enough, you know, I don’t think a grass roots thing would work in Chicago. That brings us back to the people who are doing things, and we talked about this before, to keep doing things you have to keep finding the energy and making that plate bigger and that’s really hard.
T: It is. It is hard to keep up momentum and I think right now it hasn’t peaked, but at some point it will and there will need to be more people, more everything to keep it from slowing down after it’s peaked. Once it goes back down… hasn’t that happened here before? We don’t want that.
F: You have to stick with it because I don’t know how many times I saw people [in the modeling business] on the edge of success and it was maybe hang on an extra year, but they’d throw it all away. And then that person’s not going to start all over again. I know that Kenosha still decides to see what’s happened with American Motors, and that’s had an impact, but at the same time they need to realize that you don’t have to depend on manufacturing. I had, and I think you’ve heard this before, just like sex sells, that’s never going to change, so does entertainment. It doesn’t cost anything to go to a gallery, go to the opening receptions, free food, free drinks. And I don’t think they get that. And bring the family and kids. Start educating them a little bit. Some of that means evolvement and that takes time. So much depends on the younger artists and the younger leaders staying.
To be continued….
2 comments ↓
This should be a podcast!
Maybe it should be on podcast but than it should be continued but with more people. When Barbar Lawton was in town, she said we should have the creative types meet regularly for open discussions to spring ideas. When is the next court?
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