When Pelham “Pat” Pearce took over as executive director of the Eastern Shore Art Center in May 2023, he told the people who were curious that he’d need time. “Give me a year to get a lay of the land, then I’ll be ready,” he said.
A year and a half later, he was ready — and the lay of the land he mapped out says as much about Baldwin County’s growth as it does about the 73-year-old institution he now leads. The Eastern Shore Art Center has called Fairhope home since 1952, and it remains the largest art institution in Baldwin County. Pearce’s conclusion after his first 18 months: the building is full, the county is booming, and the next chapter of the organization’s mission has to happen outside its walls.
An opera career that prepared him for Fairhope
Pearce’s resume reads like a different era of the arts. Born in Mobile, the son of a Methodist minister who moved the family around the state before leaving the ministry for engineering, Pat earned an undergraduate degree at the University of South Alabama in choral conducting and literature and a master’s in vocal performance.
As an undergraduate he assisted at the Mobile Opera. When the top job opened after his graduation, he took it — serving as general director for a decade, from 1986 to 1996. From there he was recruited to lead Central City Opera in Denver, Colorado, the fifth-oldest opera company and second-oldest opera summer festival in the United States, where he spent 26 years managing both the business and artistic sides, including the historic properties that housed the more than 100 people who came each summer for the festival.
“It was a beast on its own. We did great work, and I’m very proud of my time there, but you reach a certain place in life when it’s time to move on,” he says.
The move home was part career and part family — aging parents to tend to, and a long-held pull back to the water. He returned to Mobile in 2022, and when the Eastern Shore Art Center job opened after Bryant Whelan’s retirement, he saw an organization at an inflection point. “When I arrived, I wanted to understand the mission, what we could do, where the energy was. Where there is energy, there is opportunity. We have a fantastic staff, and Baldwin County is thriving.”
Full building, bigger mission
Eighteen months in, his assessment of demand is blunt: “We are maxed out on physical space on the academy side. Art classes and summer camp programs sell out quickly.”
So the strategy is outreach. “Take what we do inside the building outside to the community to offer a greater impact,” Pearce says. “We are the largest art institution in Baldwin County, but we are called Eastern Shore Art Center. We want to reach the underserved communities in Baldwin County like Bay Minette, Elberta, Atmore and Brewton.”
The outreach program pairs the visual arts with the performing arts — bringing the Mobile Symphony, Mobile Ballet, Mobile Opera and the Eastern Shore Repertory Theater into rural communities. The results arrived quickly. ESAC hired Lindsey Lawrence as director of outreach, brought 400 children from Elberta to a production of Annie at the Eastern Shore Repertory Theater, and partnered with the Mobile Ballet to stage a free performance of The Princess and the Frog at Coastal Alabama Community College after sell-out weekends in Mobile.
Other initiatives reach audiences who can’t come to the galleries. A program developed with USA Children’s and Women’s Hospital — facilitated by ESAC board member Dr. Tom Myers and hospital CEO Debbie Brown — brings art to long-stay pediatric patients. The Storm Drain Project has children painting storm drain covers around the city. Local potter Zack Sierke is developing an exhibition with the Poarch Creek Indians exploring the importance of clay to Indigenous peoples of the region.
On why the arts need advocates now
Pearce speaks about arts exposure with the urgency of someone who spent 26 years in an industry that used to be everywhere. “It used to be that parents exposed their children to the arts,” he says. “The performing arts — symphony, opera, ballet, and theater — were on television frequently when we grew up. Even advertising exposed us to the visual arts. Today, you could go your entire life without exposure to the arts.”
“We haven’t created value for the arts. Art for art’s sake won’t get it anymore,” he continues. “We need to create value for the arts, so we have developed an outreach program to help bring visual and performing arts back into focus. This is how we add value to our mission.”
He describes art as “artistic medicine” — a form of self-expression and therapy that doesn’t require talent. “You don’t have to be the next Picasso, just learn the basics and go out on your own being artistic.”
Renovation and the next chapter
Even as the mission expands outward, the 1950s-era building is getting its first major upgrades in years. A grant from the State Arts Council, support from the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation and a private donation are funding a new elevator, a first-floor bathroom and a new entrance to the gift shop — improvements Pearce calls exciting and overdue, making the venue more accessible for exhibits, classes and private rentals, from a single room to the entire gallery.
The calendar keeps moving, too: the Spring Homes Tour focused on six waterfront properties, sponsored by the Pilot family with a VIP cocktail party at Old Barn at Chapel Farm, sent proceeds straight into the art center’s programming.
Nearly 75 years after Fairhope’s artists founded the institution, the Eastern Shore Art Center is betting that the county’s growth is an opportunity rather than a strain — and that the way to serve a booming Baldwin County is to put art in front of more people, in more places, than a single building ever could.