Downtown Chelsea Cuts Ribbon on Chelsea Art Alley

Photo: Geek Brush Studio owner Brenda Fineman cuts the ribbon on the Chelsea Art Alley on June 4, during the season’s first Sounds & Sights on Thursday Nights, joined by Mayor Kate Henson, the Chelsea Chamber’s Terris Ahrens, and a crowd of about 50 neighbors and artists. Photo courtesy of Life in Michigan

As the season’s first Sounds & Sights on Thursday Nights filled downtown Chelsea, 50 neighbors, artists and visitors, including Chelsea’s Mayor Kate Henson, crowded into the pedestrian corridor between 105 and 107 Main Street. At 7:30 p.m., Brenda Fineman picked up the scissors and cut the ribbon on the Chelsea Art Alley — and very nearly lost her composure doing it.

“After Terris from the Chamber spoke, I already had watery eyes. There was no way I was getting through everything I wanted to say,” Fineman said.

What she wanted to say was a story that started a few years and a few hundred miles away, on a trip to Munising, a small town on Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Fineman and her husband, Ben, wandered through its art alley, a stretch of public art tucked between buildings.

“We took one look and said, ‘Someone should do this to that alley in Chelsea,’” she said.

The inaugural exhibition features 24 works by artists from across Southeast Michigan, reproduced on durable aluminum panels so the art can stay up throughout the year. A QR code beside each piece lets anyone meet the artist and learn more about the piece. There are no admission fees, no gallery hours and no reason not to stop.

Anchoring the corridor is the Art Alley Residency, a fishbowl studio with large windows onto the alley that artists can rent on a short-term basis to create and sell art in view of the public. For Chris Dragan, one of the 24 inaugural artists, that openness is the whole appeal.

“There’s no ticket and no gallery hours. You just walk through and take it however you want,” he said. “That’s the best kind of audience an artist can ask for.”

If the idea was Fineman’s, the execution belonged to the community. Grant funding came from the City of Chelsea’s Downtown Development Authority. The Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, with support from Destination Ann Arbor, is coordinating a custom wrought iron sign to mark the entrance. And the alley itself was made possible by neighboring property owners Curtis Gough, owner and designer of La Jolla Fine Jewelry, and Bill Ballagh of State Farm, who opened the walls of their buildings for public use.

“Projects like this don’t happen because one person pushes hard enough. They happen when a whole community decides it wants something,” Terris Ahrens of the Chelsea Chamber of Commerce said. “Brenda brought the vision. Chelsea brought the shoulders to lift it.”

The Chelsea Art Alley is curated and maintained by Geek Brush Studio, the art studio and shop Fineman runs directly behind it at 108 E. Middle St.

Running as part of Chelsa’s popular Sounds & Sights on Thursday Nights is the inaugural Main Street Masterpiece competition, open now through July 23. Anyone can scan the QR code by any piece and vote for their favorites. The winners, announced July 25 at the Chelsea Sounds & Sights Festival, earn an extra year on display in the alley’s place of honor. Details on the alley, voting and residency are available at geekbrushstudio.com/pages/art-alley.