The Long Haul / Le Corrid'art is a community of artists that offers affordable studios and an exhibition space to emerging and established artists, students and collectives in the visual arts and crafts. We mount group shows of our own work, and host open studio events and the events of outside cultural organisations and individual artists. Artists here work in a diversity of media. Our members span the gamut from students still in art school to veterans with forty years of production behind them, from the most obscure to those with international followings.
The Long Haul was founded by Vanessa Yanow and John Tinholt in September 2001 with the discovery and renovation of the 6000 sq. ft. second floor of the building at 450-454 Beaumont with fourteen studios from 100-600 sq. ft., a lounge/kitchen/bathroom, and an exhibition space.
In 2005 the landlord offered us another 900 sq. ft. on the ground floor. Again we renovated the raw concrete into usable studios, and added another four artists to our membership.
In 2006 our landlords came close to evicting us to make way for the addition of two more stories to the building, which they planned to turn into a ministorage facility. We met them a number of times to try to negotiate our existence here, as well as mounting an internet and street level petition to impress upon them the number of people their decision would affect. Then the local press got involved, and the landlords decided to keep us on, going so far as to build new studios to replace the rooms their project destroyed. By 2008 we occupied eighteen studios totalling more than 8000 sq. ft., and nearly thirty members.
In 2009 we attained official Non Profit Status. By offering artists, both established and emerging, students and collectives a creative space to work out of and to exhibit from, we create a stimulating community of artists, which in turn stimulates the local community and economy. By fostering local artists and their work and by promoting alternatives to the economic constraints of the mainstream art scene the Long Hall strives to maintain these ideals as it continues to evolve.