LAWRENCE — The Immigrant City’s cultural landscape is growing, with a dozen artists staking out space at 599 Canal St. in the historic Lorenzo Mill building.
The Canal Street Artists Studios stand just short of Broadway, almost a mile west of the city’s art, history and museum hub at Island and Union streets.
The Canal Street artists are shaping their visions in first-floor lofts where mill hands once made textiles for the world.
The artists say the space and chance to work with fellow artists make a fertile ground for art, and they look forward to welcoming visitors at an open house and art sale from 10:30 to 4 p.m. both Saturday, June 13 and Sunday, June 14.
The studios’ painters, printmakers, tintype photographers, weaver, multimedia artist and others hone their skills in the seven-story, brick-and-beam mill built in 1902 and restored in 1988.
Their mediums are as diverse as their places in their art journeys.
They range from accomplished professionals, including printmaker Mary Webber, to those restarting or embarking on careers, says Katherine Bagshaw, a designer and multi-disciplinary artist.
“We all kind of play off one another,” she says.
This represents a change. The studios had until recently been largely quiet working spaces where artists came and went on solo journeys.
Bagshaw stands just inside the wing’s entrance, in the foyer/gallery where works by resident artists hang.
Here are woven pieces by painter and weaver Nancy Wood, recently relocated from a Somerville studio.
Also a painting by Darren Cole, an image sound artist pursuing a doctorate degree at Worcester Polytechnical Institute.
The entry also has space for the group to kick back in the afternoon, host visiting art groups or hold meetings.
A window looks upon a scenic stretch at the start of the North Canal, not far from the old Lawton’s hot dogs (a former Lawrence institution, 1929-2010) and the Falls Bridge and historic Great Stone Dam.
Through the foyer window rest the canal’s granite walls, forming a mosaic-like pattern below another red-brick mill building, this one low-slung.
The scene looks like an Edward Hopper painting.
Back in the foyer a parlor guitar leans on a couch, awaiting a song from Francis Kavanagh.
Kavanagh and Henry Jackson of Oldies Tintype Studio make vintage photographs in the way they were made in the 1850s. That was right about the time the planned industrial city of Lawrence incorporated — in 1853.
An antique box camera stands in the corner, to the left, with its signature accordion-like bellows in the mid-section.
Kavanagh explains that they take a piece of metal into the darkroom and coat it with an emulsion of silver crystals, place it in the back of the camera, make the exposure and bring it back to the dark room.
“The finished product is there within 10 or 15 minutes,” he says.
“It’s like making your own piece of film,” Jackson says.
Their tintype portraits have an old-timey appearance, giving faces an earnest look and the background blur on the tin evoking mists of time.
One of their photos is of Steve DiLeo, of Methuen, a fellow 599 artist who works in graphics at Northern Essex Community College and graduated with a degree in art from UMass Boston.
DiLeo paints iconic scenes in Lawrence and Methuen and beyond, and is exploring abstract avenues.
Colorful paintings of his on display in the gallery and outside his studio include the Methuen Square Clock Tower, the Basiliere Bridge in Haverhill and the Custom House in Boston.
DiLeo, who started an art club for NECC students a year and a half ago, is reconnecting with art after having raised a family. It excites him to be part of a group of people with similar interests.
Bagshaw points out a resident treasure, a 1965 Charles Brand Etching Press, polished chrome, gears and a tray set in the studios’ roomy maker space.
The lofts align to the left and right and in the center of the U-shaped space is the glassed-in maker space.
Mary Webber loves movement in her work.
She has been moving to the rhythms of her artistic impulses since she was five years old or younger, and studied at the Massachusetts School of Art and the graduate art program at Boston University.
Webber works in pastels, watercolors, and, primarily, printmaking. She remains focused and engaged in her art and her work ethic leads by example.
Set by the 1965 etching press is a framed print of hers, a harbor scene with tilted fishing boats, swirling tidal currents, wharfs, buildings and sky.
It’s a testament to perspective, composition and detail born of decades of practice.
Webber, whose daughter is a general practitioner doctor at the Lawrence Medical Center, is glad to be working at the Lorenzo and in Lawrence.
“I feel there’s a lot of possibility here for change,” she says. “I mean, these mill buildings are a gift of space.”
The art studios have been at the Lorenzo for some six or seven years.
When the building was erected in 1902, Lawrence was well on its way to becoming the worsted wool capital of the world, producing the smooth strong wool used for tailored clothing, especially suits and also uniforms and gloves.
When the building was restored in 1988, it was dedicated to Lorenzo (a builder) and Alfia Palmisano and the city’s immigrants past and present.
Hard work and dedication have been Lawrence mainstays, an ethos that extends to the Lorenzo artists.
There is a steady current of engagement in the studios, an energy generated by the artists’ as they work on their projects.
Bagshaw likes to dive deep into research and make multiple preliminary pieces for her projects, giving them a layered quality.
Some of her latest pieces include a textile and tactile quality. She salvages art canvases and repurposes them into different pieces of art.
The series is based on a Japanese method, boro sashiko, patchwork clothing, made out of necessity.
Americans of a certain age from working-class families know the patches as well. Squares of corduroy or denim from an old shirt or pants that their mothers’ sewed onto holes in pant knees and shirt elbows.
Lemons in bowls and a series of pears are among her studies on the wall in her colorful, organized studio, a work of art in its own right.
Here are dancing peppers in process. They came from a still life and are moving in her mind to an abstract form.
Lawrence has a rich cultural legacy. It’s where great American poet Robert Frost spent his formative years and graduated high school. American maestro Leonard Bernstein’s mother gave birth to her son in the fair city.
Today it has a growing reservoir of artists creating public art including murals and rotating pieces at Howard Stockton Park. Also exhibits at the Essex Art Center and The Ateneo Dominicano de Nueva Inglaterra and the New England Arts and Culture Hub.
Lawrence City Councilor Marc Laplante, who grew up in the city, says having artists depict beauty, life and death, and the more mundane day-to-day living makes us think and is an important resource for the vitality of any major city.
Younger artists at 599 Canal St. include Julian Guy, a new artist from New York, living in Malden, who drives to the studio three or four times a week.
“There’s a lot of good collaboration here,” Guy says.
He recently transitioned from a career in creative production to focus on his art.
Charcoal, pastel, pencil and watercolor works fill his studio. Some works are from life, others are studies of images by masters including Matisse.
He based a self-portrait in the room on a tintype photograph Kavanagh took of him.
The Canal Street Artists Studios artists are connecting with each other and the larger art landscape in Lawrence, enriching the Immigrant City with new art, new visions.