TROY — In 2020, the Arts Center of the Capital Region CEO Elizabeth Reiss was working as a census counter in North Central Troy when a light bulb went off.
The neighborhood was not only closest to the center’s River Street building but also the least involved with its programming — why not set up a satellite center there to introduce the community to the art center and vice versa? An empty fish market on Sixth Avenue became the answer.
The Fish Market project officially launched as a new artist residency out of the rehabilitated storefront in 2021. Local artists spent six months working on creating new bodies of work and facilitating community workshops twice a week. Since last summer, the Fish Market has leaned into the latter to become a center for and by the community.
“The residency was a way to just say, ‘Hello,’ ” Reiss said. “It was a way of establishing a presence and providing an opportunity for artists at the same time and letting this relationship between the Arts Center and the community build up slowly and organically.”
Anyone who wants to stay up-to-date on events should follow the Fish Market’s Instagram @fishmarketproject.
D. Colin, who is the current resident artist managing the Fish Market, began as an artist-in-residence. She succeeded Meg Jala, and both residents were written into the National Endowment for the Arts grant to evolve the Fish Market into a creative community center that became N. Central Troy Creates.
“The biggest transition was that the focus wasn’t necessarily on creating a new body of work,” Colin said. “It was about creating new connections in order to help foster art space and bring more folks in to create their own art, rather than us creating our own art.”
Figuring out what the community wanted from the space was…
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