Selling Creative Capital: Providence’s beloved artist haven, Atlantic Mills, faces uncertain future

There is a silence that accompanies a setting sun – as though the day is using all its power to transform into night. A concentration that bleeds orange into the sky, muting the vibrant signs of life. There is a finality in the spaces of transition: everything resembles an end, the click of a key turning in an ignition, a car door slamming, a house door opening, the illuminated glow of a warm window. The Atlantic Mills stands guard over Olneyville as a timekeeper for this transition, an imposing old brick structure with wandering towers that act as fingers pressing on the enumerable, unknowable, buttons that govern our world. As I stand in the parking lot, gazing up at the curved walls of its glass-topped tower silhouetted by an autumn sky, I am certain of its power; of its mythical existence; something that contains multitudes – something that exists outside our world, but is essential to it.

The Mills began in 1851 as a factory for wool muslin, and more than 100 years later serves as a cheap rental space for artist studios. The inside of the Mills is a surrealistic dream. There are long, white hallways with black doors that open to caverns of the mind. I stand underneath a floating, tubular fluorescent light, listening to the footsteps of the alive and the dead. In front of me appears a man in a reflective purple suit, donning matrix-esque sunglasses. His hair is wild and white; his shoes stretch towards the ceiling. He looks at me with a smile, shoves a key into one of the doors, and flicks the light switch. It is as though, by committing this simple act, we have inexplicably silenced a party of monsters; a mass of strange tentacles lounge on the floor, a head with a duck beak slumps on a suited shoulder, a robot is still amidst a humble crowd of creatures. Erminio Pinque, the creator of the madness, turns to me with a raised eyebrow, “This is just one of the rooms.”

Pinque is one of the many artists with a studio space (or multiple) in the Atlantic Mills. His baby is Big Nazo, per their website, “an international performance group of visual artists, puppet performers, and masked musicians who unite to create bizarre and hilarious larger-than-life-sized characters, environments, and spectacles.” The Atlantic Mills appears to summon those who are involved, and Pinque is no different. His fascination began early when his parents and he were going to check out RISD, but they got lost and ended up at the famous Atlantic Mills Big Flea Market. Pinque says, “The parking lot was like a scene in a Victor Hugo movie, it was so unlike any marketplace I have seen. It made an impression on me as a mythical, strange, interesting place that looks like an industrial zone but has the magical quality of these rocketship towers out of a children’s book.”

Jenine Bressner, another artist of the Mills, agrees with Pinque. She says, “ I remember the first time I went to the Atlantic Mills, it was for a noise show in 1997; my friend brought me there, I knew nothing about the place but I remember looking at the tower and going ‘What is this Victorian rocketship, and what do you have to do to be cool enough to rent here?’”. The Atlantic Mills has been a harbor for the various characters of Providence’s intrinsic art scene, a place that Bressner reflects on as “a haven of safety and freedom to help us get closer to reaching our potential and true self.”

Within the past few months, the building has gone up for sale, alerting a call for arms from the artistic patrons of the creative capital. It has been a source of contention across local news channels, surrounded by a wealth of misinformation and pivoting viewpoints. Many of its tenants fear the new owners will raise the rent and begin evictions. Its former owners were in cahoots with the artists and understanding of their symbiotic relationship, according to both Pinque and Bressner, who spoke only kind words. Pinque muses on the fact that the owners were understanding of the artist’s plight, and would even strike them a deal sometimes on rent if they had a lean month and couldn’t pay.

Pinque believes offering affordable, empathetically run artist studios to the denizens of our creative capital is essential to its existence. He states “If there is no affordable space, if Atlantic Mills were to fall, no one would know it until it was too late. It’s just like the plankton dying off, you love the whales but if you don’t love and take care of the little fish you will have no whales.” Pinque’s dystopian Providence is full of tourist traps, sticky with boring signs and blank buildings; a city of faceless consumers.

Eric Edelman is part of Mana Tree Properties, the organization seeking to purchase Atlantic Mills. He was a history major and says, “I spent my realistic career preserving old buildings and architecture. This building is amazing, our plan is to preserve it so that it lasts another 150 years; to not make a strip mall of it. If that’s considered evil, then I guess I’m happy to be the bad guy, but I think most people can understand and support the fact that it takes resources to preserve these buildings.” Edelman mentions no plans for immediate rent increases and says that he is happy to work with local nonprofits to provide further subsidies to artists who are struggling to pay.

Although, some artists do not believe him. One artist believes, “Edelman is a capitalist, who comes from New York and is here for money. They want to kick us out and rent to tenants with more money.” They mention an unsubstantiated rumor going around that, under the new owners, the maintenance workers will be paid bonuses for making their lives so miserable that they will willingly leave.

Enrique Sanchez, Democratic House Representative for District 9, is alarmed by the transfer of power. He elaborates, “We have to do everything we can to preserve the status of the Atlantic Mills. I’m very concerned, I don’t know how much I can express my concern over the building under these new buyers.” Sanchez tells me he does not trust a word the new buyers say and supports recent efforts from the artists to form a union-like association for protection. He recollects a conversation he had with Edelman, saying “he was actually quite hostile. I don’t tolerate rich people’s attitudes around project developments; I can tell off the bat the guy doesn’t care about working people and the surrounding communities.”

When Sanchez asked Edelman to meet with the current tenants, talk to them, to convince them they wouldn’t be kicked out, Edelman replied, “I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t work for you, you are not my boss.” Sanchez reminded him that whatever project he wanted to pursue would rely on state funding, to which Edelman said, “I’ll go about it my way.”

The two haven’t spoken since. Edelman was involved with the purchase of the Lauderdale building in downtown PVD this year and, according to Sanchez, kicked out five to six tenants and was pushing residential housing by asking for state subsidies and tax cuts. There is the fear that a similar fate will happen to the Atlantic Mills, but Edelman rebuts, “Anyone with common sense about architecture or development knows that this building is not a good fit for condos.”

Pinque sits on a rolling chair in his dimly lit creature cavern. He looks pleasant, serene, behind a robot head adorned in a robe of Christmas lights. Bressner, a brightly dressed person with elaborate orange hair, sits high above us on a stool, staring off into an ambiguous distance. Pinque crosses his legs, and sighs with an unpresumptuous air, “What I would say to the new owners, whoever they may be, is keep the character of the building. Make that what you tout– that you’re a great person to do business with, and that you respect the individuals and the characters of the building. Show people you get it, this community likes it if you get it.” Outside, the clocks keep ticking. •

Updates: As of press time, the building has not been officially bought yet. A new management team, Acropolis, has taken over and will be serviced under the new owners. The webpage and phone number for Eric Edelman, along with his team members from Mana Tree Properties, have mysteriously been removed from their website since we last spoke.

Photos by Mara Hagen. Top: Atlantic Mills. Middle: Erminio Pinque. Bottom: Jenine Bressner.