Programs at Central School Project

Exhibitions

Central School Project presents multiple exhibitions each year, including an annual Open Show. The Open Show provides regional, professional and amateur artists the opportunity to exhibit and sell their work and is an excellent opportunity to view a broad selection of art work including collage, painting, sculpture, ceramics and photography.

Film Series

Throughout the years a variety of film series have been offered at CSP in a variety of themes. At present, CSP, in partnership with Cochise College, presents the International Film Series.

Performance

Central School Project offers multiple performances each year, including theater, music and poetry. CSP's theater is the home theater of Bisbee's Obscure Productions, a grassroots community-based theatre and production company. Bisbee's Obscure Productions recent performances have included The Tempest, The Belle of Amherst and The Vagina Monologues. CSP also presents performances by poets of international renown. Past readings include Patricia Smith, Alice Notley, and Poet Laureate Robert Haas, among others.

Visiting Artist Program

In 2009, Central School Project initiated a pilot Visiting Artist Program. Participants have included Noah Saterstrom and Paul Catanese. Each project in the Visiting Artist Program must engage the Bisbee community through workshops, lectures or other forms of outreach. Projects that are site specific to the Central School building, the City of Bisbee, or unique qualities of Southeastern Arizona, are encouraged. During the pilot program there will be no formal calls for applications.

Students in Studios

The CSP Students in Studios Program is in its 9th year thanks to CSP member Danielle Winter. The Program offers weekly art education classes during the school year. Last year's art projects included weaving, collage, clay masks, and self-portraits. In addition, her classes' delightful paper mache animal sculptures were recently exhibited in this year's Young Artists Exhibition. Enrollment for her class is currently full, but phone (520) 432-4866 or email us to be added to the wait list.

Historic Preservation

The Bisbee Central School is a prominent landmark and cultural feature of the Bisbee Historic District. Built by Boston and Brown in 1905, the three-storey building designed by architect F.C. Hurst has been a cultural center of the community since then. It was an elementary school until the school closed following shut-down of underground mining in Bisbee in 1975.

Since 1985 it has been a community arts center under direction of Central School Project. CSP has vigorously addressed its mandate to preserve the building after purchasing it from the Bisbee School District in 1992. CSP has invested thousands of dollars and volunteer hours into stabilization, upgrading plumbing and electrical systems, installing security devices, renovating the main floor hallway and various associated spaces for adaptive re-use as art galleries and artist studios, and restoring decorative portico moldings.

In 1997, the organization acquired a grant from the Arizona Heritage Fund to re-roof the building, which was listed at that time as the top preservation priority in the state by the Arizona Preservation Foundation. The re-roofing project (including addition of rain gutters, previously absent) was completed in that year, thus checking the most obvious source of erosion to the interior and exterior of the structure.

While the structure at large is sound, several architectural consultants have concurred that the next urgently-needed step in preservation is stabilization of the building's foundation and restoration of the stucco exterior. The foundation shows signs of rising dampness and resulting salt erosion in localized areas. In places the slope of adjacent ground causes water to collect next to the building, contributing to surface checking and weakening of the mortar joints. The edifice has deteriorated due to age and weather and is badly in need of repair and renovation to prevent damage to the structural integrity of the building. The exterior of the jumbo-block walls are coated with a slurry of cement and painted; that finish has generally deteriorated and must be removed, the mortar joints repointed and the walls repainted.

Repairs will be undertaken in a step-wise fashion as funding becomes available, including 1) repair of the foundations, 2) regrading of slopes adjacent to the foundations, and 3) refinishing of the exterior walls (removing the current finish, repointing mortar joints, and repainting).

Accelerated deterioration of the Central School exterior has imperiled all other aspects of the building and the planned adaptive re-use of the building. In addition, because of its prominent location in the heart of the Bisbee Historic District, the whole District suffers from the deteriorated appearance of the exterior, and will be correspondingly improved by the proposed resurfacing.