"Sowing Art on the Kansas Prairie"
By STEPHEN KINZER
New York Times
EDAN, Kan. — Not long ago this isolated town nestled in the Flint Hills seemed about to blow off the map. The bank failed, farmers lost or sold their land, stores shut down, and people drifted away.
Now, however, life here is changing. Driven in part by the dream of Bill Kurtis, a Kansan and longtime television newscaster, Sedan is reinventing itself as a prairie art colony.
As word spreads, artists have begun arriving. Some are refugees from what they say are overcommercialized art scenes in places like Santa Fe, N.M. One, Stan Herd, a pioneer of environmental art, has built a monumental stone work called "Prairiehenge" on a hilltop outside town.
Mr. Herd lives in Lawrence, 180 miles north of Sedan, but spent much of 2003 here working on his installation. During last year he saw Sedan begin to flower. "This is a very unique spot for the evolving of an art that is about land and place," he said. Mr. Herd and several other artists are considering buying homes and relocating part time to Sedan. "As the place builds, we'll have weekend houses and then see where we go from there," he said.
Tourists are also finding their way to Sedan. Local merchants estimate that about 80,000 visited in 2003, and they expect substantially more this year. The visitors not only buy art but flit among new shops to scoop up antiques, quilts and homemade candy. To accommodate them, developers plan to renovate the town's only hotel, which has been closed since the 1970's.
Many troubled Midwestern towns are grasping for ways to fend off decline and, in some cases, extinction. People in Sedan, which has 1,200 residents and is in one of the poorest parts of Kansas, believe they have found what hundreds of communities are seeking: a formula that will lead them back toward prosperity.
"It's just mind-boggling to see what can happen," said Judy Tolbert, who grew up nearby, now owns a bed-and-breakfast here and is a former president of the town's chamber of commerce. "When I got back to Sedan four and a half years ago, there were 14 empty buildings on Main Street. Now there are two. The cultural aspect is the key. When people come to see renowned artists and galleries, that's a different clientele you're attracting." The town's first and so far only gallery, called Art of the Prairie, is the centerpiece of Mr. Kurtis's effort to make prairie art a signature Sedan product. "Western art has become very popular and expensive," he said. "Indian art is on the same track. This prairie art strikes those same chords of land and heritage."
The gallery is hung with paintings of the prairie, a landscape that generations of artists have shunned as featureless and uninteresting. "The prairie is so subtle that it's hard to get the atmosphere," said Judith Mackey, who since July has been an artist in residence at Art of the Prairie. "It doesn't have the grandeur of the mountains or canyons, but the beauty is there."
A prominent American Indian artist, the ceramic sculptor Barry Coffin, who lived in New Mexico for more than 20 years, recently moved back to his hometown, Lawrence, partly because he wanted to be close to Sedan. He said he planned to open a studio here this spring, and to teach workshops in ceramic art.
"I really like what's going on there, and I decided I'd like to be a part of it," Mr. Coffin said.
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas visited Sedan in October and said afterward that she considered this "very much a model" for other struggling communities.
"It's not only art and culture, but the land itself," Ms. Sebelius said. "Ninety-five percent of the tallgrass prairie that remains in the world is here in Kansas. It's a terrain that needs to be seen and appreciated the same way people go down the Amazon River or into a rain forest."
Prairie grassland once covered much of North America's midsection. European settlers turned nearly all of it into farms and ranches, and today the prairie landscape survives mainly in isolated reserves. The area around Sedan, however, looks much as it did when Indians first roamed here. Its appeal is central to the town's revitalization.
"The idea is not just to introduce people to art from the prairie," Mr. Kurtis said. "We also want to help them experience this environment so they feel a closer connection to the art and to the landscape it represents."
Dick Jones, a real estate agent, said that in the 1950's Sedan was "a robust rural community." He recalled watching it decline into "a ghost town" by 1980. But he said that 33 homes have been built in the area during the last three years, compared with 11 during the previous three years. Real estate prices have risen by a total of 24 percent since 1998, he said.
Residents have initiated a handful of civic efforts since the late 1980's, including a successful campaign to save the local movie house. The big break came in 1999 when Mr. Kurtis, who had already bought land nearby, decided to make rescuing Sedan his personal project.
Mr. Kurtis, who is 63, grew up in Independence, Kan., 40 miles east of here. He built a reputation as a correspondent and news anchor for CBS (he was a co-anchor on the "Morning" program in the early 1980's) and now runs a company in Chicago that produces documentaries for cable television, including the History Channel and A&E.
During the last four years he has bought 14 buildings in Sedan, many along Main Street, and paid to renovate most of them. He has also assembled 10,000 acres west of town, on which he grazes about 1,000 head of cattle and 50 buffalo. By his own account he has invested about $1 million here. He said he hoped to turn a profit, although that is not his main goal.
"For me it was getting back in touch with the land, especially after 9/11," he said while driving over a frozen hillside on his ranch. "When towers fall, you reach out for some permanent anchor."
By renovating buildings on Main Street and renting them to shopkeepers for $1 a year, Mr. Kurtis fueled Sedan's rebirth. This has made him something of a local hero, but some people here fear that Sedan is losing its rural identity.
"We've seen a lot of hype, but not much for the average Joe," said Jeanette Myers, who works with disabled children at the nearby elementary school. "Bill did straighten up his buildings, which made other stores clean up and paint. If you talk to business people, they'll tell you business has really picked up. Yeah, he's helped, but everything he does also helps himself."
Larry Powell, a city council member, said he has heard that some older residents resent Mr. Kurtis and fear that his project will drive up property taxes. "But when you ask people directly, no one says anything really negative," Mr. Powell said. "How can they? This is the first time in many years that we've had something to look forward to."
The latest building Mr. Kurtis has bought here is an old lumber mill that he plans to turn into a residence and studio space for three artists.
Some people want to renovate the old 300-seat playhouse, where the last production was staged more than half a century ago. Others dream of mounting a clown festival or performance series, tied to Emmett Kelly, one of the most famous clowns of the 20th century and a Sedan native. Mr. Kurtis said he planned to open his ranch to tourists who want to relive the Old West experience.
"If there's a lesson here, it's that towns can regenerate themselves by doing something different," Mr. Kurtis said. "Imagination is the key."
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