FOR THE SAKE OF ART
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| The Gear Factory, Artist Studios and Rehearsal Space. Owned by Rick Destito. Facebook The Gear Factory Syracuse |
I only write about my friends. In 2008, I began submitting stories to publishers about friends who were demonstrating leadership in businesses, city cultural affairs, politics and the arts. That's real news to me, and during that time, Rick Destito was a real man who was involved and invested in city developments in Syracuse, NY.
Rick is a young, very good-looking and ambitious developer with his own construction company named Vibrant Spaces. He is not rich, yet owns property including a five-story warehouse that he is slowly converting into artist studios/rehearsal spaces. He is an artist who has produced large welded works in metal and who appreciates all art styles, especially graffiti and the cooler guy stuff.
The warehouse he owns is now called Gear Factory. I wrote about a very unique website that he set up for it, where anyone who is invited to join can drop ideas about how to finance, design and promote the place. Every so often a real meeting is held at the factory and better developed ideas are voted on so that the place really moves forward and those who are involved can become a real part of the development process.
Rick and I met at Redfield's, a hotel restaurant, and ordered the same lunch special - lobster bisque and filet minon open faced sandwich for ten bucks. And we talked about developing different neighborhoods and areas of the city. Then I interviewed him about the GF site.
In that interview, Rick told me that he spent every last penny he had when he purchased the building at auction. When it came down to him and only one other bidder, he gave the other guy the look of death that scared him away. So Rick won the bid.
The article appeared in the City Eagle soon after. It was a beautiful full-pager with a photo of a rendering of the finished GF location, created by a designer who contributed to the whole GF project. The actual warehouse at the time still looked undeveloped from the outside, with windows sealed up by cinder blocks and a sign that read something like "studio space available" and Rick's cell number.
People noticed the building but hardly ever brought it up. So I brought it up, and when I did, I mentioned Rick. He's not a guy who smiles a whole lot, but he's super nice, smart and vibrant in his drive to work together and accomplish great things. He has a stutter.
In the summer of 2007, I met him while preparing a corner installation for a large group show in a huge exhibit space. He was helping Andrea Audi - as in Stickley/Audi furniture, who was producing shows named Floating Galleries in unused public spaces.
We had our show, and then the work just hung there for a long time. So I called Rick and Andrea to complain about how all of the contributing artists, especially the young ones, were just being used and that nobody was trying to sell or represent them. I thought they were taken advantage of, for the sake of the producers, and not because anyone really cared about them. That wasn't the point of the show, but we all have our causes.
They both responded that the purpose of that show was to promote empty downtown buildings in order to make them appear useful to renters and buyers. And the art was just a very attractive way of doing that, but they weren't functioning as a retail operation. So I backed off, because I saw the bigger picture, and appreciated trying to help your whole city maintain its integrity. Currently, Los Angeles is full of dead store fronts and buildings in every neighborhood. It hurts to see your city that way. What they did was responsible and special.
Rick invited me to check out the Gear Factory that summer. I met Brian, one of his renters, a graf artist we called Boots who was full of ink and looked at you with huge angel eyes and mad energy. Boots was not sleeping for a week while cranking out yards of canvas for a group show that was to take place at GF. I exhibited at that show with dozens of other artists, and got kicked out of that party for being too drunk. In fact, Rick asked Boots to 86 me because we had become friends. Soon, Boots left Syracuse and I never saw him again.
But I saw Rick still. I rented the entire second floor from him in the summer of 2008. And one nite I got completely fucked up and pissed him off. He approached me and asked me for my key back. He was already a daddy then, but didn't know it yet. I remember him telling me that I was usually 90% awesome, but still 10% screwed up. After considering that I would leave soon, after a large exhibit that I was preparing for, he let me stay.
About a month later, I bumped into him during a public park meeting held at my rep's gallery. Lipe Art Park was having a new show and in the concept, they were going to use mannequins in the public park. Except they didn't have any dummies, so I offered to help them in that department. The meeting ended but Rick stayed with Mel (owner of OrangeLine Gallery) and I for a while.
We talked about how slowly cities develop. When we thought about who was really responsible, Rick blamed it on bullshit and politics. "But who exactly?" I kept asking. None of us knew who, so we finally just guessed that the mayor was to blame. Later that week, I told him to x the mannequin idea and make silhouettes out of plywood instead. And that was the last of my friendship with Rick, because I left Syracuse and returned to LA.
We had a common cause. Art and city developments were topics we could go on about all day. He produced a show at Lipe Art Park where he used graf on a temporary installation to be provocative about street art. He liked to push buttons like I did.
What I loved about Rick was that when we did talk, it was always to the point. I gave many people his phone number and trusted he could help in his way better than anyone else in Syracuse. That's how we were friends. He liked the article that I wrote about him and GF. I shook his hand and told him he had big hands and he said thank you.
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