Center Aims To Boost Provo Cultural Level

By Emily Hudson - 17 Mar 2008

Photo by Stephanie Rhodes From left, Ryan Neely, Maht Paulos, and Jason Metcalf stand in front of what will soon be the Sego Art Center. They wanted to bring some international culture with this soon to be art house cinema in Provo. With 1,000 square feet of gallery space, a basement with 1,500 square feet of studio space and a sculpture garden in the back, the new Sego Art Center has the potential to be a Mecca of sorts for starving modern artists in Utah County. Members of the Sego Arts Foundation recently signed the lease for the location of the Sego Art Center at 169 N. University Ave., which will serve as a modern art gallery and as the first step toward Provo's own art house cinema, among other things. Maht Paulos, the founder of the Sego Arts Foundation, said Sego has a three-fold mission: music, art and film. The new art center will be the home for several projects, such as the Provo Film Society, a cabaret poetry show once a month, art workshops and classes for community members. The center will open its doors on May 2 for its first show just 52 days after signing the building lease. "It's all happening fast," Paulos said. "Kind of just make it happen and then go for it." The gallery will feature local artists, as well as well-known artists who will bring national attention. "At Sego, our big thing is that we only accepted local art and music," Paulos said. "That might change in some ways, but will remain our emphasis." Another big project for Sego is the community outreach programs, especially those dealing with high school students. Paulos wants the new Sego center to have a program that will give high school students more venues to show their art. He also wants the center to provide workshops for high school art teachers. One of the goals of the Sego Arts Foundation is to eventually generate enough revenue to start an art house cinema, which would show international and local independent films. "It's going to take a lot of things coming together to get an art house cinema off the ground, including serious funding," Paulos said. "But we're formally organizing the Provo Film Society, which will have its home in the Sego Arts Center." The society is a recently organized group with the main purpose of helping promote and inspire local filmmakers and give them a venue to show their art. "We have so many talented filmmakers in this area who need to be let know what's going on with film around the world," said Raquel Smith Callis, the public arts program director for the Downtown Business Alliance. "I think that having an art house cinema so close to the university would fill a large niche." Since Sego is run on a 100 percent volunteer basis, it doesn't have the funding to start up an art house cinema from scratch. So Paulos along with other members of the Sego Art Center plan to start sponsoring small screenings of independent films in the basement of the building. "We're interested in bringing intellectually stimulating films to Provo to enhance the culture," said Ryan Neely, member of the Sego Arts Foundation and local business owner. "We're looking for art. We don't care if some arbitrary organization puts a rating on it." That ideology has given Neely and the other members of Sego some trouble when it comes to acquiring a space for the theater. Local property owners don't want to sell their buildings if R-rated films will be shown. However, supporters of the art house cinema don't see what the big deal is. "There have been movies that I've felt the need to walk out of and I walk out," Callis said. "It's not my place to draw the line for anyone else; they have to draw it for themselves according to their background and belief systems." Of course, not all of the movies that would be shown at the art house cinema would be rated R. Just like other movie theaters in Provo, there would be a wide variety of topics, film styles and ratings. Many independent and international films aren't gratuitously violent, vulgar or sexual. "Just from watching the Oscars I can see that there are some enchanting, beautiful films out there, and we just don't have a place to show them in Provo," Callis said. Neely, along with the other members of Sego and their supporters, thinks the unique demographic of Provo makes it an excellent candidate city for an art house cinema. "Within a five-mile radius there are more people in downtown Provo than there are surrounding the Broadway theater in Salt Lake City, and they are 10 years younger and have a higher income level." Neely said. "Statistically that is the best scenario for a successful art house cinema." According to income statistics, the Broadway theater brought in about $900,000 in 2007 from independent films. Approximately $800,000 of this money came from movies that never came to Provo. "One of the biggest film festivals in the world is right up the canyon from us, and it has no part in Provo," Neely said. But this isn't the first time a group of hopefuls tried to establish an art house cinema in Provo. In 1998, Melissa Puente, a BYU alumna who graduated from the film department, and her husband tried to buy the old Provo Academy Theater, once located downtown. But the couple found that while people seemed enthusiastic about the idea, there wasn't enough community support for independent cinema. "We did everything we could to promote the theater, but it was just a very clear message that people just weren't interested," Puente said. The building was later razed. In contrast, Paulos put together a screening for the Sigur Ros film, "Heima," at Velour, a local music venue, in November 2007. The turnout for the film was more than Paulos had expected. "About 400 people showed up and we ended up showing it over two days," Paulos said. "It was one of the most successful screenings of the film in the country." So it would seem public interest has grown since 1998. "I think it's interesting that they're trying to do the same thing that we did," Puente said. "That would be great if things have changed."