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Since he moved to Winston-Salem a little more than 10 years ago, Richard Emmett has worn just about every hat on the rack in the arts community.

He is not the kind of man who sits around waiting for things to happen.

Emmett may be best known as the founder and majority owner of The Garage, a music and performing-arts venue in Winston-Salem's Downtown Arts District. But since moving to the city in 1996, Emmett has worked with, created and overseen countless art, film and music projects.

He helped organize three popular downtown music series (Summer on Trade, Alive After Five and Downtown Jazz), was instrumental in starting a downtown film series (Films on Fourth) and served as executive director of the Children's Theatre of Winston-Salem for two years. He also programs and markets the Eastern Music Festival's Fringe series in Greensboro.

Now, as chief operating officer of the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, Emmett is managing an $11 million construction project that will give downtown a 300-seat black box performance space and an overhaul of the historic Sawtooth building.

Emmett hopes this project, which is being called the Downtown Arts Center, will change the cultural landscape of the city and create a "critical mass" similar to what happened when the Stevens Center opened in the 1980s.

"I think this new project will do the same thing," Emmett said. "We feel this is going to be a huge boon to the downtown experience."

The Downtown Arts Center is scheduled to be completed in summer 2010.

I I I

Emmett was born in Delaware and grew up in Pittsburgh. After getting a m aster of public administration degree at Penn State University, he worked for four years at The Acadia Institute managing a three-year study of physician education. The job allowed him to visit Winston-Salem on business, and he liked what he saw.

"I ended up falling in love with the community," he said. "I lived a lot of places before I came here. This is where I chose to stay. It's where I feel like I'm meant to be."

His first job in Winston-Salem was at The Horse's Mouth, a coffeehouse and downtown hangout. Millicent Greason, owner of Urban Artware in the arts district, said even at that time Emmett was organizing offbeat film screenings.

"He was doing all sorts of inspired things to get people downtown," she said.

Emmett remembers that period in downtown as pivotal for the emerging "creative class."

"It was just a good time. There wasn't much here, but it was all easily accessible," he said.

Lynette Matthews-Murphy, an events coordinator who has worked with the Downtown Winston-Salem Partnership, met Emmett when he was planning the downtown music series.

"At first, I thought, 'Wow, he's kind of different,' and the more I got to know him, he is just so much beyond 'music guy,' " she said. "He's like a big onion. There are so many layers to Richard."

She may have thought Emmett seemed "bohemian and funky" when she first met him, but now she says that is part of who he is.

"Genuine is the one word I think of," she said. "He's just somebody that you can talk to, and there is no guise there. He just lays it out. If he has a thought, he shares it. There is not any political issue that he won't face head-on. He's just very true to himself."

At this point The Garage remains Emmett's baby and his legacy in downtown. He opened it in 1999, the same year he married Kim Lawson. Throughout Emmett's job changes, The Garage has remained.

Still, Emmett's real passion is working with people and community groups to make a project come to life.

That's his art form and a big part of why he keeps working to make things happen in Winston-Salem.

For the next two years, Emmett will try to create what he hopes will be "a true community living room" with the Downtown Arts Center. The arts, he says, are the soul of the city.

"Saying Winston-Salem is 'The City of the Arts' is authentic. That's not made up," Emmett said. "I believe wholeheartedly that we have many artists, performers, groups, organizations that are worthy of reaching wider audiences and who should be able to continue to pursue their artist avocations, hopefully right here in Winston."

Matthews-Murphy believes that if anyone can make the project a success, it's Emmett.

"I truly believe for us to become the true city of the arts, we need somebody like Richard who can identify with all of us out here who may not be symphony aficionados or opera fans but who embrace the culture of the arts and want it to succeed in all its various forms," she said.

"He kind of epitomizes the arts in Winston-Salem in my mind."

 

Michael Huie is a freelance writer who lives in Winston-Salem. E-mail him at mhuie@bellsouth.net.

 

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