Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994 TAG: 9404040155
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-16 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: By PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI LENGTH: Medium
All of that describes Michael Dowell, who can be found most days in the center's Main Street Gallery in downtown Pulaski.
Dowell's early priorities include increasing the numbers of the center's arts outreach programs and its volunteers.
``I want to see more accessibility, hopefully, across the New River Valley,'' he said.
``It's very exciting to find organizations to foster the arts,'' he said, such as the 17-year-old Fine Arts Center. ``I'm really impressed by its history.''
But Dowell had never heard of the center when he moved to Virginia from Charlotte, N.C., where he was general manager of the Children's Theatre of Charlotte and had worked there for seven years.
He and free-lance graphic artist Pat Gooch got married about a year and a half ago, and she had been offered a job at a school in Rural Retreat. The job did not work out, but they liked the area. They moved into a former Lutheran parsonage at Rural Retreat and Gooch began doing free-lance work in Blacksburg.
She had driven through Pulaski's revived downtown area and stopped in the Fine Arts Center, which she mentioned to her husband. Dowell had been operations manager for Shenandoah Designs International in Rural Retreat, but stopped by the Fine Arts Center one day to ask the volunteer on duty if she knew of any umbrella arts organization with information on job possibilities in the arts field.
``Well, actually, we're looking for an executive director,'' she told him.
Dowell met with center President Edna Love and other board members and was hired on an interim basis in January. The board offered him the job on a permanent basis in February.
The center has a changing exhibit every month, as well as a gift shop. It offers classes in various aspects of the arts.
``I hope that we start reaching out more than we have,'' Dowell said. ``I do want our education to reach out more, for sure. You know, this organization was founded with the belief and sense that there was not enough fine arts education in the schoolsI can't say there's not enough but I can say there's always room for more.
``I'm not just talking about teaching art classes, but educating the general public about what art is,'' he said. ``That's something you have to do by example.''
Part of that is getting more downtown visitors into the center gallery and showing them that it is not ``some hoity-toity organization, and that there is art on everyone's level. ... It's for everybody.''
Dowell wants more arts center members, not just for their dues but for their skills in areas ranging from teaching and clerical work to cleaning and decorating.
``There's always something to be done, and we rely on our volunteers,'' he said. ``Everybody needs to contribute to make it happen. We're small and lean. The economic climate is not necessarily the best for paying the bills. ... I'm still trying to figure out where the money comes from.''
Dowell grew up in Alabama. ``I could never really get rid of my accent,'' he said, despite speech training in connection with his stage work, ``and don't mind my accent. Right proud of it, actually.''
He did some studying at University College in Oxford, England, and earned a degree in 1976 at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. He had various arts-related jobs between then and his return to the classroom in 1980 when he began working toward a master of fine arts degree at the University of South Carolina. He completed the requirements for that in 1983.
He has worked as an actor and director since then in theater, films, commercials and industrial promotion pieces. In Charlotte, where he stayed for 10 years, he did a stint as artistic director for the Tarradiddle Players and as artistic director for Peace Child International productions in addition to his work at the Children's Theatre.
``My main background is in theater and performing arts,'' he said. He has also been named to the Lincoln Theatre Executive Board in Marion where a group is trying to restore that former movie theater. His connection was that his mother graduated from Marion College when it existed there.
A similar movement is underway to restore the Pulaski Theatre, across the street from the arts center, as a performing arts center.
``I think it's great that the group is forming,'' Dowell said. ``I hope ope that we can really complement each other and I look forward to really being able to do things together.''
by CNB