Open House

How it works

The metamorphosis of Open House is designed to require cooperation. It takes four people 1-1/2 hours to unfold the structure. The foundation is made of used railroad ties that anchor the custom fabricated industrial hinges to five rows of stadium seating. The rows of seats fold down with the aid of a hand winch and enough manpower to counter balance the hefty, but agile structure.

Were there any significant challenges that arose during the project? If so, how did you respond to them?

(Response by Shana Berger, Co-Director of the Coleman Center for the Arts)

“Open House” began as a conversation amongst residents, and in it’s implementation the project had to overcome all of the issues it sought to mitigate. The story of the project reveals the very loss of public space the artist sought to reverse. Mazzotta’s original concept was to transform a blighted property – a private space that is negatively impacting public space – into a public space that would serve as common ground, a space for creative exploration and expression that would bond citizens together and forge a common identity.

Striving to build something that would reveal transformation and defy what seems possible, the artist conceived “Floating Free,” a floating theater on York’s Lake Louise that would be made from salvaged materials from a blighted property – a space free from connotations of the materials’ previous incarnation, and literally floating on new ground. “Floating Free” would facilitate the deconstruction of social barriers and the construction of new possibilities. A space like that could provide the kind of atmosphere residents were seeking in their previous conversations with Mazzotta.

All of this came to a halt in the summer of 2012 when York’s Lake Louise was in danger of being seized by the IRS due the City of York’s unpaid payroll tax debt, totaling over $300,000, a huge amount for a small municipality with a limited tax base and income. The IRS was just one of a number of the City’s debtors, and the City proceeded to take out a $700,000 high interest loan. Lake Louise, in addition to the Hightower Center (York’s town hall and polling place) and the City sales tax were put up as collateral for the loan. While the lake, town hall and city income via sales tax remained in jeopardy if the struggling municipality could not pay its loan back, a new additional round of IRS debt was announced and the fate of the lake was inextricably tied to the City’s interminable financial woes. In November of 2012 a new Mayor and City Council took office and with the citizens of York they now face the significant challenge of paying back the staggering debt for the tiny town.

As the loss of a vital community space loomed over York, Mazzotta re-conceptualized his project and “Floating Free” became “Open House.” Now an even more direct transformation of a private space into a public space would happen on the site of the blighted property. A dysfunctional house would be turned into a sculpture of a house that in it’s closed state has no function, but in its transformation becomes a public space for performance, celebration, dialogue, fellowship and community.

How would you describe the architecture of Alabama and how does the building relate to it?

(Response by Shana Berger)

Open House is a public space made from the remnants of a privately owned blighted property, like those that still litter the landscape across rural Alabama and so many other parts of America, urban and rural alike.

What is the relationship between blight and public space? Why do homes, businesses, investments, inheritances, turn into blight while public spaces deteriorate and disappear? A web of globalization, economic decline, low property values, low property taxes, poverty, racism, absentee landowners, and a municipal lack of resources and infrastructure conspire to make blight and declining public space inevitable. These systemic conditions dictate the fate of structures and property, and yet each house contains it’s own story of who lived there and how it fell into disrepair, or didn’t.

The property at 202 Main Street was an iconic piece of blight in York, a bright pink mess that littered a main downtown intersection across the street from the Piggly Wiggly, the town grocery store. Home to numerous families over its lifetime, the property was most recently purchased by a group of local women intending to open a daycare center. The house was outfitted with toys and interior walls were painted bright rainbow colors, but an inability to repair forced the house into decline. Pre-demolition the house was an eerie metaphor for the sad potential of unused space–a place for children to grow and learn had become a community danger. The house, much stronger than originally estimated, was eventually demolished with the help of volunteers, local experts, city employees and the City of York Fire Department.

Email interview conducted by John Hill.

What were the circumstances of receiving the commission for this project?

I was invited by the Coleman Center for the Arts, the arts organization that has served York, Alabama, for the last 30 years, as an artist to meet with the people of York to see if I could stage an event that could bring to light some of their sentiments. I asked people to bring something from their living room so we could set up an "outdoor living room" in the middle of the street to provoke discussion. Out of this discussion we identified the lack of public space in York and then abundance of abandoned buildings.

After experiencing the communities desires, I developed the plans for a transforming house/theater. The Coleman Center for the Arts wrote a grant on behalf of the project to the National Endowment for the Arts and the Visual Artists Network.

Please provide an overview of the project.

What happens when an artist is invited to use the resources of a small town to help transform its identity? Artist Matthew Mazzotta, the Coleman Center for the Arts, and the people of York Alabama teamed up to transform one of York's most iconic blighted properties into a new public space. Open House is a house with a secret, it physically transforms from the shape of a house into an open-air theater that seats one hundred people by having its walls and roof fold down. Open House is located at 202 Main Street, between the town post office and the main grocery store. 

On June 15, 2013, a ribbon cutting by the Mayor of York, Gena Robbins, inaugurated Open House. The symbolic gesture was followed with an invocation prayer to bless the project by Reverend Willie, performances by a gospel choir and the local R&B funk band Time Zone, as well as an outdoor film screening of Dr. Suess's The Lorax. For the town of York, this is the beginning of a series of free public events programed by the Coleman Center for the Arts. The theatre is free and open to the public.

Through the project I hoped to directly address the lack of public space in York by providing a physical location that becomes a common ground for community dialogue and activities. The new structure carries the weight of the past through the materials that were salvaged and repurposed from the old structure, most visibly the original pink siding. When Open House is fully unfolded, it provides an opportunity for people to come together and experience the community from a new perspective. When it folds back up, it resembles the original abandoned house, reminding people of the history of what was there before.