Most students don’t have water perpetually dripping down their desks when they attend class. But at 1650 Pleasant Street, the School of Art has 10 students working in conditions they have found to be unacceptable.

Last fall, students complained their necessary studio space at the Pleasant Street Art Annex was difficult to work in due to leaking water and concerns with security of artwork.

The building maintenance is handled differently because NIU leases its space within what was before the Wirlitzer Piano factory, which also houses three other tenants.

“The building’s in very poor condition and we’ve done all that we can,” said second-year graduate student Dustan Creech.

“That building scares me, I worry about the health of the people in there,” said Hunter Logan, third-year graduate art student.

Students have lost work time due to dealing with studio issues.

“The biggest part of what we did [last semester] was work on the building instead of our art,” Creech said. “We’re all there to be students. We met every class to work on the building or to clean instead of doing class work. The semester before that we weren’t able to really work because we were dodging water all the time.”

Some art students are disappointed with the School of Art’s use of the old facility to the point of avoiding it if necessary.

“My impression of [the Pleasant Street Art Annex] is that it’s a toxic waste dump.” Logan said. “If they gave me an assignment at Pleasant Street, I would have found another school.”

“We had issues with a lot of people with work getting ruined through leaking,” said second-year graduate sculpture student Nik Emerick. “[Students] had to set up tarps. They call it tent city sometimes because of all the tarps.”

The School of Art responded with a coordinated effort to give students the best possible working environment in an old facility.

Safety and security concerns

The leaking has caused some fear due to the amount of electricity in the building, coupled with water seeping down the walls of an old brick building.

“It’s pretty dangerous, because one of the trouble areas is the welding area, which has probably the most electricity coming into the building. It leaks even down the electrical panels like the fuse boxes. They’re always wet,” Creech said.

Students have expensive supplies and equipment with their workspace and were concerned about easy access.

“The back doors in my area don’t have secure locks. Either because employees who work in the building or students go out the door without locking it behind them or students who are new to the building are unaware of how to lock the doors. We need an automatic locking system,” Emerick said.

In response, the landlord installed two dead bolts, a peephole and additional lighting. More lighting will be added outside when the temperature rises so they can safely do the work, the School of Art director Adrian Tio said.

Poor Recommendations affecting recruitment

Creech came from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Students from the university interested in graduate school recently called Creech to ask if he recommended NIU.

“I said no,” Creech said. “I told them I wouldn’t send any student here given the facility for the graduate students. As a student, I feel I’ve wasted a year here because of the facility.”

Other graduate students are wary of recommending the School of Art in light of the facilities.

“I would tell them to run away,” Logan said. “In fairness, they are doing some things to make the program better. The art history and art education people are all top flight.”

Students wishing to come to NIU’s graduate art program who need off-site studio space are cautioned.

“We are honest with them,” Tio said. “Students should come and visit.”

Raw work space

The space has some positive qualities though, as students like the open feeling.

“What is nice about this facility is it’s an open environment,” Emerick said. “Everybody can work here and see each other’s studios and they can talk to each other.”

“We really hope for a better building, but it is a catch 22 because we also like and need the amount of space we have at the studio,” said Erin Coleman-Cruz, second-year masters in fine arts student. “In the meantime, we put up tarps and suck it up.”

Cruz is happy with the response from the School of Art.

“As a collective group of sculpture graduate students, we approached the director of the School of Art in September of 2006 about the facility,” Coleman-Cruz said. “Since then, there have been several improvements made, such as better locks for doors and better maintenance from the landlord and NIU.”

The landlord from the Rose Venture company was not available for comment.