Ch-ch-ch-changes

Now-shuttered guitar repair storefront on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Photo @ MSillman

This weekend I learned that a longtime personal and professional friend had died.

Her death felt like another blow to Seattle’s arts community.

Misha Berson was a drama critic and arts writer, first in the San Francisco Bay area, then for the Seattle Times for many years. I first encountered Misha in our professional arts journalist capacities. Over the years she and her husband Paul became my personal friends. We saw each other at plays, concerts, the opera, and most recently at a friend’s New Year’s Day open house where we talked about Misha’s current writing project.

Misha’s death was shocking; even more so because it came so soon on the heels of the death of another personal and professional friend, Carlo Scandiuzzi.

I met Carlo and his wife, Lalie, more than 30 years ago. I have pictures Carlo took of my then-newborn son. Over the years, as Carlo became more embedded as an administrator for—and philanthropist to—Seattle’s arts community, our relationship became more professional. I saw Carlo at the various theater companies he worked with, most recently ACT Theatre.

Eventually Carlo founded his own arts consultancy business with his professional partner Joseph Krebs. Carlo—and Joseph—collaborated with many of my arts administrator friends, and he was always a warm and enthusiastic advocate for Seattle’s rich arts community.

These are only two of the arts community denizens we’ve recently lost. Over the weekend longtime theater artist William Hall Jr. died. I’d never interviewed Bill, but had seen him in various shows over the years. Bill’s passing left another hole. And only yesterday I learned that music’s Nasty Nes Rodriguez, a DJ and advocate for Seattle’s Hip Hop scene, has died as well.

Visual artists Ginny Ruffner and Elizabeth Sandvig both played important roles here before their deaths earlier this year. More recently writer and journalist Tom Robbins, longtime La Conner resident, died. I’d just been to La Conner, which prompted me to think about Robbins’ legacy there and in the wider Pacific Northwest, first as an arts writer and then as a best-selling author and mentor to younger creatives.

Local newspapers and social media have been filled with obituaries and personal tributes for all of these people. Misha, Carlo and Bill’s deaths prompted a new wave of memories, especially for those of us who knew them. They were formative to the arts community I began to learn about when I moved here the second time, in 1985, to work at KUOW radio. I watched their contributions as our arts community grew and became more institutionalized. I imagine a younger generation of Seattle-area artists and arts lovers may not have personal stories to share, but no doubt are forging bonds with their own generation of community shapers.

Thinking about both these people and the changes they made in our area has prompted me to think about life and legacy, about how people can leave indelible marks on the places where we live and work. I’m not talking about buildings and highways, although they’ve come and gone in my years here. I’m thinking more about the zeitgeist of a place, for lack of a better term. Seattle has always been a magnet for people with dreams of creating something new, but I think that’s become harder for younger artists.

I first moved to Seattle in September of 1979. This was a city of small buildings, shared housing, cheap studio spaces and cafes where you could park yourself with a book, or pen and paper, and while away the hours of gray skies and rain. We were pre-cell phones and personal computers, but we had independent cinemas and bookstores galore, and affordable spaces that attracted dreamers and artists looking for places to create. Misha and I spent our careers documenting what we saw here, while Carlo helped make the art happen.

Younger artists are trying to figure out how to create new work in a region that’s less affordable, and therefore less welcoming to them. Those old four-square houses on Capitol Hill, the places that four or five—or more of us—could share, have been demolished to make way for multi-family buildings, most of which are priced beyond our means. The pandemic accelerated the affordability crisis, but it had been coming on for decades.

Even if you can afford the rent, are there even studios and small performance spaces to be had? They exist, yes, but it seems like some developer or other requires a particular incentive to create below-market rate cultural space. And I wonder if, beyond the arts community, there’s even a general will to maintain and nourish our cultural community.

I’ve had conversations with well-meaning friends who wonder whether we should spend precious public dollars on our cultural sector. These friends like the arts, but in a budget-cutting era, they prioritize social services spending over financial support for our arts community. What do the arts contribute to our community, they wonder? That’s a subject for endless essays and conversations; I’ve had many and welcome more.

Carlo and Misha thought a lot about how the artists among us have helped shape the Seattle area, and how they help to keep our history alive. We see that in artworks. The newly redesigned waterfront, for example, has helped to concretize some of the stories of the indigenous people who lived here before the Denny party and other white settlers arrived. Playwrights and novelists like Robbins have woven our past into present day art.

Seattle has always attracted dreamers, people like Bill Boeing and George Pocock, who arrived in the early 20^th century, lured by an openness that welcomed new ideas and innovation. Boeing designed airplanes, Pocock refined rowing shells. Both the boats and aircraft have become Seattle iconography.

More recently, Subpop Records and our music scene lured the world’s attention to our corner of the globe, in the early ‘90’s. I remember when Nirvana, Soundgarden and so many other bands became our new icons, and defined Seattle internationally.

Carlo and Misha, Ginny Ruffner and Liz Sandvig (with her husband, the late Michael Spafford) all moved to this area because of both its natural beauty and its abundance of creativity. They mentored and taught, helped raise our artistic profile. Now young techies flock here for jobs at Amazon or Microsoft. Some are attracted by our rich arts scene, but others remain indifferent, maybe ignorant of it.

It's harder for young artists to afford to carve out creative lives here, but we do have new theaters and dance groups and musicians that come here to establish themselves, young writers and visual artists who figure out how they carve out lives doing what they love. We don’t hear as much about them because arts writers like Misha don’t have as many outlets for their articles and books.

This isn’t meant to be a woe-is-me essay, but more a prod to think about the creative generation we’re losing. People like Carlo who believed in the power of art and artists, and journalists like Misha who continued to write about the arts for years after her official “retirement.”

We may not be able to quantify their impact in dollars and cents. But they leave evidence of our thriving arts community in the Seattle area, and their legacy is a record of the cultural richness we’ve enjoyed. What they’ve left behind has helped shape this city for the better. May their memories, and legacies, be a blessing and a beacon to coming generations,.