New Mesa arts director takes center stage

Apr. 2—Richard Parison is taking on a big job.

As the new head of the Mesa Arts and Culture Department, he oversees the Mesa Arts Center, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, the Arizona Museum of Natural History and the i.d.e.a. Museum.

Far from being daunted by the breadth of the portfolio, Parison said having science and art in one department was part of the job's attractiveness.

"This is an added perk for me that I have the opportunity to include a children's and a natural history museum in my ecosystem," he said.

Parison came up in the world of theater, spending time as an actor, director and producer.

He went on to lead large arts organizations, including the Richmond Performing Arts Center and then the Arts and Culture department for Hampton, Virginia.

His arrival to Mesa's Arts and Culture Department had a bit of drama: He was identified as a prospect early in Mesa's national search process, but withdrew his application in July to take a job in Ohio near his hometown.

Mesa went on to select five finalists and held community meet and greets, but the city decided that none of the finalists were the right fit. It opened the job up again to candidates.

While this was happening, Parison decided that the job leading the Great Lakes Theater in Ohio "was not the right fit for me at the right time in my life" and resigned.

While deciding what to do next, he saw the Mesa job in October on one of the recruiting firm's regular email blasts.

"I sent an email to the search executive and I said, 'this must be a mistake. ...You might want to cross Mesa off your email blast,'" he said.

But it was no mistake, and Parison began a "rigorous" interview process with Mesa.

"I knew by the second visit that it felt right in a way that it had not felt when I withdrew. And they made the offer and it just felt like the universe had redirected me and all of a sudden I was on the path now that I was meant to be on."

As Parison comes into the Mesa role, he said he's not looking to change the direction of the arts and museums in the first act. He said he respects the path the department is currently on.

"I never want to be so arrogant and presumptuous to assume that after being here for only six weeks, that I would impose my vision on something that has existed here for well over 25 years," he said.

And there is currently a lot happening in the Arts and Culture Department.

,mknThe MAC is getting ready to kick off its 20th anniversary season with a party in April and is in the final stages of creating a strategic plan.

The Arizona Museum of Natural History is getting ready to embark on a multi-year master planning process.

Parison mentioned one change he's implemented right away — he's asked for staff meetings to be in-person again. He sees a benefit to being face-to-face with his colleagues.

While he says his vision for Mesa will "evolve" over time on the job, Parison goes into the role with a guiding principle for the city's arts and culture assets.

"My vision is for all of our assets ... to be the creative living room for Mesa and the Valley," he said.

"You go to your living room to feel comfortable and to have a comfortable family experience in the family room," Parison continued. "And I want everybody in Mesa and in the Valley to feel like they can come here and have an experience."

He said that one of the strengths of Mesa's arts and culture assets is "there is something that can appeal to every sensibility."

Parison said he was struck with the arts bug at a young age. When he was in sixth grade, a traveling theater group came to his school and performed a play during an assembly.

"At the end of it when they were doing a Q&A, I shot my hand up and I said, 'How do I do that?' I don't even think I knew what 'that' was, but I knew that I wanted to do it," he said.

He later auditioned and performed with the troupe that sparked his interest and continued to nurture the passion in high school.

Theater "allowed me to express a creativity that I hadn't done before," he said. The arts also helped him find an identity and a network of friends.

In Parison's message to patrons at the front of this season's MAC program, the director writes that his goal is to "ignite in others the same spark I found through the arts."

Parison studied fine arts in college. His studies included acting, but he said his mentors quickly steered him into directing and production.

"I was immediately able to understand how to stage that scene to make that actor enter so that it was a dramatic, full-stop entrance," he said.

From directing, it was a slippery slope into producing and then administration.

He connects his later career in organizational leadership to his experience in the theater.

"A director has to see all the pieces how they fit together," he said. "If you're the director of arts and culture, you're still marshaling a group of passionate administrators, artists and collaborators together toward a singular goal of presenting the community with arts and culture."

While Parison's ideal for Mesa's art and cultural facilities is a giant living room for the community, he acknowledges that art is sometimes challenging and provocative to some viewers.

He connects the challenging side of art with the idea of "catharsis" — a purge of emotions through art.

"I want artists to be able to present thought-provoking and challenging art," he said.

Asked how he meshes his vision of a comfortable, creative living room, with art that can be challenging and cathartic, Parison's answer is "context."

"My goal as director of arts and culture is to always provide context around the art so that if somebody has this reaction we can provide an educational and engaging context around it," he said.

On the subject of artistic freedom, he is diplomatic.

"My goal would be to balance the artistic freedom and importance of artistic expression with the idea that we are a municipally-owned and operated organization that serves a very diverse citizenry and community," he said.