A short walk away from campus is an art community that pulses with life: new events every week attract people with all interests like moths to a flame.

The indie art venue, Spark Contemporary Art Space, located on East Fayette Street, has been in Syracuse for the past 20 years. This month, it plans to continue hosting live music, art shows and poetry nights in its three commercial spaces.

Live music is, arguably, what the venue is known for: historically, fans of hard core and punk musicians have found their place here. Acts lined up for this month and next include Zola Jesus, Vein and Abandoned By Bears — they will be playing Sept. 23, Oct. 10 and Oct. 15, respectively. Each weekday event usually has about 30 to 40 attendees, and the space fills up pretty quickly.

“There’s something to be said about having that intimacy,” said co-owner Patrick Tuohey.

While tickets to performances on average range from $8-10, poetry nights, workshops and some music events are free.

Themes of these free events are determined by the needs and wants of the Syracuse community, Tuohey said. He strives to talk to people in the community to identify what there’s a sufficient amount of and what there’s not. The space fulfills those needs, he said.

While live music is one of Spark’s staples, periodic art installations are on display for up to weeks at a time. Work from students in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University is fair game for being chosen and displayed, Tuohey said.

Co-owner Jacob Roberts plays a large part in curating the art installations — Tuohey is more on the music side of the business.

While Roberts and Tuohey both work hard to plan lively events, they aren’t always the ones coming up with the ideas. The space can be rented out for community members. About 50 percent of events are outsourced, Tuohey said.

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That’s something Tuohey appreciates because it still gives him a chance to be a patron at Spark, as he once was before co-owning it.

“My favorite thing is being able to come into other people’s events and kind of appreciate them from afar,” he said. “Be a showgoer at a space like this.”

Some events are themed and have a combination of different elements in them. On Sept. 7 they hosted an event called “Darkest Night,” which was goth-themed. This event had live music which included various goth bands, and the venue was covered in Halloween decorations.

Spark used to be under the discretion of SU for students in VPA. In 2017, Roberts and Tuohey transitioned to co-owners and became fiscally sponsored by the Syracuse-based nonprofit Alchemical Nursery.

The two have been working toward improving the space and have a lot of plans for the future.

They are trying to add a cafe element to Spark to make it more usable during the day. Plans to renovate the space are going to move to the next step this month, and they hope to make concrete changes in the near future.

“My favorite thing about this is that it’s so fringe and it’s such an anomaly, even if it might not seem that bizarre from the outside,” Tuohey said.

Published on September 9, 2018 at 11:33 pm

Contact Sarah: srslavin@syr.edu