Twelve miles southeast of Skaneateles Lake, a small Central New York town appears like Brigadoon in the mist. Homer, with a population of 6,000 and national historic district spanning the length of its main street, has recently become a haven for culture, especially live music.
Its beating heart is an old brick church built in 1893 next to the village green. Since 2001, that structure has housed the Center for the Arts of Homer, a venue whose scope stretches wider than the stone Cardiff Giant replica on its lawn.
Ty Marshal, the center’s executive director since 2015, said it’s a destination for arts patrons, artists themselves and the members who power its operation. “The minute they get here, it’s as if they’ve discovered a magical place,” he said. “They fall in love.”
The center hosts community theater, book clubs, music and dance lessons, an art gallery that shows work year-round and a new initiative that pairs agrarian growers with artists. But the biggest draw remains live concerts inside its 400-seat theater.
In the past few months alone, that stage has seen musicians as eclectic as cult songwriter Jonathan Richman, doomy Canadian band Godspeed You! Black Emperor, New Orleans institution Preservation Hall Jazz Band and even actor and occasional folk singer Kiefer Sutherland.
“The concert series is the first introduction,” Marshal said. “You come to a concert, you enjoy it and then our hope is that you come back for other events or become a member.”
What about getting acts to Homer, Upstate New York’s very own Brigadoon, in the first place? Marshal said it all comes down to hospitality. The center’s cozy green room, with its leather couches and windows that look out onto the town, is an antidote to cinder-block basement rooms.
Marshal and his staff pride themselves both on their good relationships with bookers like DSP Shows as much as on the amenities they provide.
“We have Band-Aids, we have toothbrushes and toothpaste,” events director Sheila Ryan said. “They send us a (tour) rider, and we fill every single thing.”
Marshal pointed out that the nearest big box stores are in Ithaca and Syracuse, about 30 miles away.
“Think about when you’re traveling and you get a hangnail or a piece of popcorn stuck in your tooth,” he said. “Let’s ease the burden (so they don’t) have to run to the store.”
In the middle of Marshal’s explanation, a delivery truck pulled into the parking lot. The driver began offloading crowd-control posts.
“Are they still delivering stanchions?” Marshal asked, puzzled, from the porch of the adjacent building which the center also owns. “How many stanchions did we order?”
Ryan laughed and said she didn’t know.
The vibe at the center follows suit: relentlessly upbeat forward momentum with a dash of manic energy. It may be the only way to handle all of what’s required to maintain a historic building: restoring the stained-glass windows, rebuilding a falling-down brick wall, installing a new HVAC system and more.
Ethan Zoeckler, the center’s program director, at first joined to “scrub toilets and move heavy objects.” He now juggles its many endeavors.
He’s at the helm of the theater program, staging “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” at Homer’s high school July 18 through 21, and the Agrarian Arts Initiative, which he began with a local veterinarian to inspire collaboration between artists and growers.
“It's really the driving force behind anything culinary arts that we're doing,” Zoeckler said, “because ecological sourcing is such a big part of that. Instead of cooking (classes), I went straight to agriculture.”
The ecological through-line intersects with the center’s goal to source 100% of its concessions from the region: hot dogs from Syracuse’s Hofmann Sausage Company, grass-fed bison from Skaneateles Buffalo, cheese from local dairy farms and so on.
The center has also acquired another nearby historic church that they’ll use grant funds to restore and turn into a “creative community center.” It might host theater rehearsals or science lectures in its 200-seat space. Maybe they’ll open a cafe.
“Right now, we're kind of in the dream phase,” Marshal said. He feels comfortable in that place, knowing the endgame will arrive organically. “Once again, it will be the community that tells us what they want to see come forth from that space and how they want to use it.”
Patrick Hosken is an arts writer at CITY.