"Art is for the People," RIP, Tom Tipton

      

Tom Tipton

Cambridge art icon, and friend Tom Tipton died this week. Here's a video, an outtake from a documentary, filmed in 2005. Come on and take a drive through Cambridge with Tom Tipton. 

Some 24 years ago, the Dire Literary Series had a 3 month run at The Cantab, which for the record was 3 events held. Poet Gary Hicks told me of this little place called The Out of the Blue Art Gallery in Cambridge, so I went down and met Tom Tipton and Debra Priestly. Within 10 minutes they said I could have a Friday Night there, once a month for 50 bucks. Simple, easy, and when it came to art, there was no other way with Tom. Without this, without Tom and Debra, the connections I've made in the writing community which has helped fueled my work and following would look paltry. Because of his generosity, Tom Tipton gets a lot of credit for what my writing career grew to. 

   Tom was a unique, hardworking gem to work with. His dream was to have an art gallery that anyone could access and make art. We developed a relationship, running into each other the nights of the Dire and during weekly meetings for the Gallery every Monday held at The Middle East. 

  Tom never gave up. The gallery moved from Brookline Ave., then to it's most well-known location, Prospect Street. In order to get an idea about what it was like, here's a clip from a Dire event in Tom's gallery in 2008. I'm the guy with hair. 

When the Prospect Street building was sold, Joseph and Nabil from The Middle East helped they move into a huge space, the former Blockbuster Video in Cambridge.  It still held art and now spaces/stores for the artist. It still made art and artists accessible. It still hosted poetry and it became kind of a rock club with live music on the weekends. It hosted electronic, eclectic, experimental, and this 80's sounding thing below by Dead Leaf Echo---it gave bands a venue to play out when they couldn't get into other clubs.  I ended up hosting198 Dire Events at those three OOTB Galleries. 

 After a few years there, in 2017, the rent went up to 10,000 dollars a month, and pretty much live Dire ended. There wasn't a solid reliable place to host it. Then I lost track of Tom and the Gallery, mostly because I didn't vibe with his new partner, but I regret not keeping in touch with Tom. He was a good one.