Featured Articles

Image by aflcio2008 via Flickr

Not only is tomorrow an important day for us as a nation it is also critical for artists. Below is a compilation of where each candidate stands relative to the arts and more importantly their stand regarding the arts and its’ role in our culture.

Click here to download a pdf of the summary above

Obama Policy

Image via Wikipedia

(Copied directly from http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/additional/Obama_FactSheet_Arts.pdf )

Our nation’s creativity has filled the world’s libraries, museums, recital halls, movie houses, and marketplaces with works of genius. The arts embody the American spirit of self-definition. As the author of two best-selling books - Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama uniquely appreciates the role and value of creative expression.

A PLATFORM IN SUPPORT OF THE ARTS

Reinvest in Arts Education: To remain competitive in the global economy, America needs to reinvigorate the kind of creativity and innovation that has made this country great. To do so, we must nourish our children’s
creative skills. In addition to giving our children the science and math skills they need to compete in the new global context, we should also encourage the ability to think creatively that comes from a meaningful arts education. Unfortunately, many school districts are cutting instructional time for art and music education. Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that the arts should be a central part of effective teaching and learning. The Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts recently said “The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.”

To support greater arts education, Obama will:

• Expand Public/Private Partnerships Between Schools and Arts Organizations: Barack Obama and Joe Biden will increase resources for the U.S. Department of Education’s Arts Education Model Development and Dissemination Grants, which develop public/private partnerships between schools and arts organizations. They will also engage the foundation and corporate community to increase support for public/private partnerships.

• Create an Artist Corps: Barack Obama and Joe Biden support the creation of an “Artists Corps” of young artists trained to work in low-income schools and their communities. Studies in Chicago have demonstrated that test scores improved faster for students enrolled in low-income schools that link arts across the curriculum than scores for students in schools lacking such programs.

• Publicly Champion the Importance of Arts Education: As president, Barack Obama will use the bully pulpit and the example he will set in the White House to promote the importance of arts and arts education in America. Not only is arts education indispensable for success in a rapidly changing, high skill, information economy, but studies show that arts education raises test scores in other subject areas as well.

• Support Increased Funding for the NEA: Over the last 15 years, government funding for the National Endowment for the Arts has been slashed from $175 million annually in 1992 to $125 million today. Barack Obama and Joe Biden support increased funding for the NEA, the support of which enriches schools and neighborhoods all across the nation and helps to promote the economic development of countless communities.

• Promote Cultural Diplomacy: American artists, performers and thinkers - representing our values and ideals - can inspire people both at home and all over the world. Through efforts like that of the United States Information Agency, America’s cultural leaders were deployed around the world during the Cold War as artistic ambassadors and helped win the war of ideas by demonstrating to the world the promise of America. Artists can be utilized again to help us win the war of ideas against Islamic extremism. Unfortunately, our resources for cultural diplomacy are at their lowest level in a decade. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will work to reverse this trend and improve and expand public-private partnerships to expand cultural and arts exchanges throughout the world.

• Attract Foreign Talent: The flipside to promoting American arts and culture abroad is welcoming members of the foreign arts community to America. Opening America’s doors to students and professional artists provides the kind of two-way cultural understanding that can break down the barriers that feed hatred and fear. As America tightened visa restrictions after 9/11, the world’s most talented students and artists, who used to comehere, went elsewhere. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will streamline the visa process to return America to its rightful place as the world’s top destination for artists and art students.

• Provide Health Care to Artists: Finding affordable health coverage has often been one of the most vexing obstacles for artists and those in the creative community. Since many artists work independently or have nontraditional employment relationships, employer-based coverage is unavailable and individual policies are financially out of reach. The Obama-Biden plan will provide all Americans with quality, affordable health care. Their plan includes the creation of a new public program that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health care similar to that available to federal employees. Their plan also creates a National Health Insurance Exchange to reform the private insurance market and allow Americans to enroll in participating private plans, which would have to provide comprehensive benefits, issue every applicant a policy, and charge fair and stable premiums. For those who still cannot afford coverage, the government will provide a subsidy. His health plan will lower costs for the typical American family by up to $2,500 per year.

• Ensure Tax Fairness for Artists: Barack Obama supports the Artist-Museum Partnership Act, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). The Act amends the Internal Revenue Code to allow artists to deduct the fair market value of their work, rather than just the costs of the materials, when they make charitable contributions.

McCain Statement

Image via Wikipedia

A comprehensive statement of McCains’ position on the arts could be found on McCain’s web site, a search on the Internet found this recently released statement from the McCain campaign:

• John McCain believes that arts education can play a vital role fostering creativity and expression. He is a strong believer in empowering local school districts to establish priorities based on the needs of local schools and school districts. Schools receiving federal funds for education must be held accountable for providing a quality education in basic subjects critical to ensuring students are prepared to compete and succeed in the global economy. Where these local priorities allow, he believes investing in arts education can play a role in nurturing the creativity of expression so vital to the health of our cultural life and providing a means of creative expression for young people.

(Additional note: McCain has voted to cut funding or terminate the National Endowment for the Arts in the past.)

After you have voted go have a cup of coffee on Starbucks!

Tweet This

Yesterday I received my preview copy of Seth Godin’s new book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us in  it he addresses a growing movement that I have been mentioning in previous posts when referring to social media. The subject of community and tribes and the role they can play in cultural growth and eventual paradigm shifts is something I have been chewing on for several decades, going back to my days in city planning. The power of the book stirred up  memories, of the ‘60s and later graduate school, as I read on, I started thinking of Godin’s premise in the context of our current state of things especially the shifts I have been noticing lately.  There was something familiar about it all.

So I went to my basement and dug around to find one of my favorite books from grad school…Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. While Kuhn’s focus was on science it is worth looking at how his theory applies to cultural and political change…no this is not going to be a dissertation of the nature of revolution. Re-reading Kuhn reawakened me to the process of paradigm shifts and how they might apply to our present circumstances and in turn to the notion of community, collaboration and art. Really, there is a link here…just hold on!

You see part of Kuhn’s theory was to draw parallels to the process of political (and cultural) change. This process originates with a growing sense that institutions originally created to resolve problems faced by the community can no longer function as solutions to the problems they were originally designed to solve…an old paradigm stops working. Over time alternative paradigms  come and go each offering different and conflicting models of community life. Eventually, these new paradigms start to start to merge as followers of lesser paradigms  are assimilated replacing the old which cannot coexist with the new. The end result is a change in world view, we in essence begin seeing the world in a completely different light. We have evolved to another level allowing us to look at the old problems differently.In doing so we also  may  see things we were not able to see under the previous way we looked at the world.

“Led by a new paradigm, scientists adapt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.” - Thomas Kuhn… Revolutions as Changes of World View in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

How and what does this have to do with anything? It has been my long held belief that our “old paradigm” of top down industrial management was not long for the world and was not natural to the way we as humans prefer to live. That model it can be argued served a purpose… it brought us to where we are now ( for good or bad). The early rumblings of the paradigm shift I think began in the ’60s and led inevitably to the shake ups we are experiencing now. No we are not experiencing the “End of Days”…we are experiencing the death rattle of a dying way of life and the roughness that is being dramatically exclaimed is the shift to a new level.

Collaboration, community and Tribes

Civil rights bill collaboration

Since the ’60s we have been moving to the  music of the come close go away dance of rediscovering our socialness (is that even a word?). Those hippy dippy days started to re-expose us to the intimacy of community albeit not well developed. Most of these changes could be classified as social/cultural for example, the civil rights movement realized success as did women’s rights. What didn’t change was the fundamental organizing principle  of our structure…that of top down organization. Work was still thought of as “Real” primarily in terms of industrialized definitions, i.e. anything that didn’t have to do with the mind or the ego was not taken seriously and that included self employment. Employment statistics were built around jobs as in working within an organization.

It is the internet’s fault
All of this started to change with the introduction of the internet which can arguably be considered the primary catalyst powering the current intense shifts in our lives. Like any tool newly introduced into a culture it was first seen as a novelty but not by those pesky early adaptors who live for new ways of being in the world. However, as those early adaptors started showing us the possibilities more and more of us started to see deeper and deeper. We started seeing how we were no longer limited by geography, we could reach out and find like minded souls and even unlike minded ones. We started to see that we could use this new tool to engage each other…to talk, to collaborate and to build communities that spanned vast portions of geography.

The result was that many who were itching to strike out on their own, to escape the rat race of corporate America began to do so leading to a rising number of sole proprietor small businesses, largely organized around the internet. With geography no longer an issue, collaborations have increased to a point that “freelancers” are now solo-preneurs working mostly by themselves supported by other service providers ranging from virtual assistants to programers. Collaboration has led to virtual communities able to connect and provide support to each other regardless of geography.

So you ask where are we going with this? Well basically what we are experiencing is a shift in the paradigm of business and the exciting part of the change is growing opportunities for solo businesses, like working artists. These new opportunities are there as a result of the virtual elimination of geography and the connective tools that are just beginning to emerge, the tools I talked about in previous articles on Social Media. But there is more to it…there are an almost infinite supply of market niches available as the result of the Long Tail described by Chris  Anderson in his book Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More ( I’m currently writing material on that effect so hang on).

The Long Tail

It’s the tail stupid..
Because of the Long Tail, working artists now have the ability to really focus on and develop their own unique niche to a point that has not been available to date. More importantly they are not restricted by geography. An artist here in Minnesota can not only identify her perfect follower here but can also identify similar followers wherever she chooses to market her work and she can decide if the trip to west hooterville will be worth it…if not she can still connect with her followers either online or off because she has built a community around her work.

But…there is more! The tighter focus of niche interests offered by the Long Tail provides an even easier way for you to not only connect with the right people but also to lead them. All of those people interested in what you make are looking for someone to lead them, to guide them in the marketplace, to educate them about the value of what you do. So within the niche of wood fired pottery there might be a sub-group who is really interested in the style you produce. By connecting with them and teaching them about not only the value of wood fired pottery but also the value and uniqueness your style offers you suddenly become their leader. When they feel the need to buy wood fired pottery who do you think they will buy from? You guessed it …you, because you are their leader and they trust you. You have taken time and interest in them perhaps led workshops, perhaps mentored some and because you took the risk and knew that your sharing with them would create far greater value than worrying about them competing with you.  You have created a tribe…congratulations! Now you have greatly reduced the “random purchase” factor you have faced all these years at every art fair or exhibit.

Long Tail niche opportunities

Also, you don’t need to limit yourself to just one tribe …you may find people interested in large wood fired platters in your style. You will likely find them lurking in your original tribe, you can now help them and create another following based on their specific interests. As you are building your tribe and it’s communities you also have the opportunity to develop evangelists, people who will be more than happy to spread the word about your greatness.

Open Source Art
All of this focus brings us to another unique phenomenon that has surfaced recently, in fact in many ways it is driving the changes we have been talking about. Once, the interactivity of the internet became convenient and easy to use people started wanting to create their own content, they saw the satisfaction of creative work, granted at an all together different level than the masters. So, now we are seeing a rise in Consumer Generated Content (CGC), and a strong desire to learn that is going unfulfilled because there are no leaders/teachers to guide them. This is were the working artist has a plum of an opportunity! But before you say “I don’t have time to teach/lead” consider the chain of connection I mentioned above and the alternative of relying on “random purchases”.

The trend of CGC has relevancy to working artists because as you are teaching your tribe you are also teaching…Collaboration,and increasing the perceived value of art in the process.

Which ultimately leads to increasing your value and your mojo!! The power of the medicine in your art suddenly starts to increase and spread helping all who touch it. You are also creating what I have come to call Open Source Art modeled after the concept of open source software which makes the basic core of the code available for others to adapt, expand, or develop add ons for. It is basically community design. Our application of the concept to art however goes a little further because it involve inspiring and empowering in a way that gives others the permission and room they need to grow and experience what we experience when we create. You are being the ultimate master…letting those you touch see you and by seeing you they become inspired and empowered.

The power of this effect to bring change is obvious…just multiply it by the number artists at any given show. Imagine if every one had their own tribe and some tribes followed more than one leader…just imagine the cultural changes that could be possible. So the next time you feel the weight of our current inner turmoil pushing you down, the next time you start  doubting yourself and your choice of path, the next time you wonder whether it is all worth it, stop and realize that you are needed. Think about what the world would be like without the beauty you create then reach out and touch your tribe they are waiting for you.

Are you an open source artist? Can you identify your tribe? Are you willing to step out and take a risk to lead, to be the force behind your tribe? Join the conversation by entering your thoughts in the comments below.

open source art

Please join the conversation by completing the form below

Tweet This

The community loom opens colaboration to the public

Saturday Sept. 20 approximately 30 artists and community members participated in the round table conversation for the Venus exhibit. My intention for the conversation was to provide an opportunity for

participating artists, poets and community members to sit together and have a conversation about what it means to collaborate. To share the challenges and joy, the process of what happened in creating pieces for this exhibit and the relevance of this work to other aspects of work and life.

What is collaboration?

The dictionary defines it as working together. Somehow that isn’t enough. Successful collaboration requires willingness and intention. The words of Napolean Hill about intention and risk taking certainly ring true for this endeavor.

Let me take a moment to give some exhibit background, to outline some of the process participants worked within. Fiber artists and poets were paired at random one cold January evening by poet Ellie Schoenfeld, bead artist Jo Wood and I. We gathered in Ellie’s Duluth hillside home over a bowl of chocolate, and 2 bowls of names…. 1 with invited fiber artists, another with invited poets. We drew from the bowls between bites of chocolate and the pairings were created. At a meeting of invited artists and poets in Oct 2007, the group decided that working in the create and respond method would deepen the collaboration. Two teams chose to work fully collaboratively…. the rest created, exchanged, and responded.

What did the round table reveal?

• artists and poets took risks in creating that they would not have taken working alone. Many allowed themselves to create experimental work that is inspiring new directions of working.
• Surprise at how well partners were able to work together. Styles of working together ranged from fully collaborative with regular meetings between the partners, to only occasional email idea sharing until the night before the deadline.
• There is more interest, curiosity, understanding, respect for the other’s medium. New relationships have been formed.
• Energy was high, people were inspired, and a deeper level of conversation was opened that carried a new level of seeing and richness into the reception that followed.

Perhaps J.Ruth Gendler’s words from her book ‘Notes on the Need for Beauty’…summarize best.

“We live in a reciprocal conversation with the world. There are so many ways to say this…. Whatever we work on — music, creek restoration, teaching, gardening, cooking — works on us. It is always a conversation between the cook and the vegetables, the gardener and the plants, the artist and her materials, the bee and the flower, the body and the soul.
How do we honor this exchange, the generous reciprocity that sustains us? …. Praise, celebrate, honor, bless this moment…. remember to trust the wisdom of beauty…. Beauty connects us to what is holy…. Beauty lives in heirloom apple trees and seeds and the soft luxuious wool called cashmere, in so many things that I don’t think about in my world — in motorcycle dealerships and junkyards, in hospital corridors, the tender tentative steps of people walking after surgery, in the birds-eye view out of the airplane of the line of the river and the patchwork quilt of the field and forest.
We are travelers passing through. We belong to this place, to this time. Growing into ourselves, we meet each other.”

venus poets and fiber artists reflect

To receive regular updates complete the form below

Tweet This

Random acts of commerce

As a working clay artist for 15 years one of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of being a working artist was the random nature of the public buying cycle, the huge lack of understanding of the buying public about the value of art, and the relative lack of tools available to effect my destiny, and hence my ability to continue making my art. All of this coupled with the unpredictable and rather arbitrary nature of jurying into a show had the makings of serious feelings of not knowing how to take some level of control.

During those days  artists had little in the way of avenues or channels to connect to their buyers and for their buyers to connect to them. What engagement there was basically consisted of money changing hands reinforcing the commoditization of art. Sales for the most part  were the result of random consumer behavior intensified by the failure of traditional market research tools available to retail outlets  that could use them to identify and market to a particular niche of buyers.

The potential of the Internet as we know it now was not yet yet available. Instead it was  seen as little more than an electronic version of traditional advertising. E-mail as a communication/stay- in-touch tool was yet to be realized. To further complicate matters the nomadic nature of working artists following the art fair circuit had few tools to identify and  reliably stay in touch with their tribe of followers wherever they went.

Interactivity is elevated

In a previous post I described how the emergence of more and more interactive possibilities on the web led to inevitable death for traditional advertising. That death opened the way for an entirely new model of selling our work…a model that is multi-dimensional and multi-directional. An organic system of feedback loops that bring makers and buyers together in a hybridized collaboration held together by multi-level connections. This organically dynamic model has steadily erased  the need to “sell”  replaced instead by a more refined buying model that brings buyers closer to makers giving them an ability to know of and anticipate  work that seems to be made just for them. The result…focus is taken off the actual “product” and placed instead on the maker and the maker’s reputation, values and ability to connect with their “tribe”  or community of followers.

Remember when…

Corner store in Savannah

The concept of tribes as a community of like mindedness is just emerging in importance in the business and marketing world. It is in many ways reflective of neighborhoods so common in pre-suburban America where ethnic, economic and social similarities brought people together in physical proximity. Neighborhoods became social and economic centers where the corner grocer knew who walked in the door or the barber a couple of blocks away kept his patrons up to date on “the news”, were merchants freely kept running tabs trusting that they would be paid. Merchants had followers that often overlapped depending on what was being offered, social circles overlapped depending on their focus. In short…the success or failure of the corner drug store was closely linked to  the ability of the owner and employees  to develop and maintain connections based on interaction.  This sense of connection and community reinforced by physical proximity vanished with the rise of suburban development and its inherent reduction of social interaction.

A natural evolution
What we are seeing and experiencing today is the natural return to our social roots, but on a different level spurred on by an ever increasing number of tools whose primary purpose is to encourage, increase and simplify interaction. Now, we don’t have to limit ourselves to one way communication we can supplement it with other choices. By combining old ways with new ways we can use the right tool for the right job. As artists, we can now build our tribes by using both digital and analog media, snail mail can be used to supplement e-mail and visa versa. We can both send out post cards to our followers and connect regularly via e-mail and social media. One-way web sites, which were nothing more than electronic brochures have been replaced with regularly updated blogs that can provide a running view into our work and our creativity. RSS feeds coupled with e-mail brings our followers even closer by eliminating the need to open a browser.

Making space for conversation….
So…how do we start? Among other things we need to start making room for connection we need to let go of our fears of intimacy, judgement and open ourselves up to the world. We need to start taking responsibility for our own path and let go of seeking fulfillment outside of ourselves. Letting go of fear opens our hearts to new possibilities that are free of expectations which in turn can make us attractive to receiving connections. To delve even deeper by opening ourselves we are giving our art, our voices and ourselves a chance to be seen and recognized by whom ever is seeking what we have. By taking responsibility for ourselves and our destiny we no longer need to blame outside sources for our failures which turns us into glowing beacons of our value lighting the way for those wishing to connect with us.

Making space for conversation

When all of this happens we are then able to welcome all conversation that enables us to use our gifts to help everyone in our community/tribe  realize their visions as well. It may come in the form of a commission, or the legacy of teaching others, or being an inspiration. Regardless of how it manifests make no mistake it will have an impact on all those it touches and in the process open us up to an entirely new way of being in the world.

A holistic approach
While the focus of this discussion has been on Virtual social networks underlying this focus is the more holistic notion of networks regardless of what form they take. In the end networks are tools and in conceptual nature a web of nodes connected to each other by communication channels. The evolutions and usefulness of this web of channels has evolved with human development from grunts to the tapping of keyboard keys. How we use these networks depends on what we hope to accomplish and what we want to say. So having a deep tool bag with a variety of tools helps us adapt and in the process serve each other better.

Final Note…

Joseph Jaffe in his groundbreaking book Join the Conversation says about  conversation and connection..

“Brands have to know their role and place in conversation. Truthfully, it is an extremely loose , amorphous, and situational role that not only changes from case to case but indeed may evolve and shift within a single conversation. The art of conversation is absolutely an art, and the ability deftly navigate the thin ice of tolerance, patience, emotion, and submission may very well mean the difference between connection and disconnection.”

To receive this and other articles please complete the form below

social media

Tweet This

Today begins an amazing cross media collaboration in of all places…our frozen North! Actually, Duluth, MN and its’ sister city Superior,WI have a very active art community on the shores of the greatest muse of all Lake Superior.

My dear friend Erika Mock is not only an amazing fiber artist but also very devoted to bringing art to everyday people which as it happens is one of the Major goals of this site and the programs I am developing through it. An interesting aside the photos you see on this site of weaving looms, hands knitting thread and yarn bins are all Erika. Beginning in ‘4 Erika, our mutual friend Brenna and I collaborated in a couple year long project we dubbed Persephone’s Voice. Over the span of a year I photographed them as they worked and as they exhibited their work. The goal was to document the creative process in a way that they as artists could use to share with their patrons. The year culminated in a gallery show that was nothing short of amazing.

So the rest of this post comes from Erika who will be providing me with updates and news during the course of the show…take it away Erika!

Yesterday we hung a  huge tapestry loom  (5ft X 13 feet tall) that we are inviting anyone who wishes, to weave into.  The loom project will be ‘unveiled’ at the reception. This interactive weaving is to invite the community to have an opportunity to

The Venus Loom for collaboration

add voice and hand,  to create  with textiles and poetry  in harmony with the theme of  the exhibit……Venus…
(planet.  Morning Star.  Evening star.   Goddess.
The fool.  Spontaneity.  The ability to laugh at self.  The aha moment.  The energy present in communication and creative process that transforms and engages in new ways.The ability to expand viewpoints.  Life force.  Beauty.)

In the spirit of the exhibit, we are taking a broad approach…..participants can use the materials provided or bring something personal or worldy to include… whether it be tangible, fiber or not, a wish, a hope, a statement.
As well as fiber: fabric, grasses, wire,  plastic bags, etc, we invite words, wishes, poems also.  These can be written on fabric strips of paper and woven in.  We are telling people the following things:

• since the beginning of time our textiles have held our stories
• community is that which you wish to share
• collaboration is willingness to work together.

Please invite….. your creative imagination,  a sense of play, and an open heart

Wednesday nite the Duluth Knitting guild (an offshoot of the MN Knitters guild with an office in the Textile Center) lended their hands and spirit and patience to help finish the warp and prep materials.  A knitting group…. you are asking.  I was thrilled with this because it  was a wonderful stretch and opportunity to bridge worlds for all of us!  I look forward to having them back.
below is a quote from their guild leader:

Thank you so much for opening up this opportunity. I, like you, believe that we all have an artist within and projects like this help to legitimatize the art - work women have done for centuries.

Poster for the Venus collaborative event

North End Art Gallery and Red Mug Coffeehouse cordially invite you to join us for a dynamic collaborative exhibit and 7 weeks of events, featuring 20 renowned poets and 20 regarded fiber artists.

Venus: Poets and Fiber Artists Reflect
Thursday Sept 11 -  Thursday Oct 30

• Sat. Sept 20:  Round table conversation… 2-4pm Reception…  5-8pm (music by Georganne Hunter, harp and  Kevin Ostedahl, hammer dolcimer)

• Sat. Sept 27:  Eclipsed… 7pm  Patrick Eller, Kathy McTavish, Sheila Packa  Multimedia Performance

• Sat Oct 4: Poetry Night … 7pm Barton Sutter, Liz Minette, Rebecca Paradis, Connie Wanek, Cal bennson

• Sat. Oct 11:  Intertwined … 7pm 2 Writing Groups

1.  Rachel Mock, Jennifer Derrick, Tera Freese, Kyle Elden
2.  Deborah Cooper, Ann Niedringhaus, Candace Ginsberg, Anne Simpson, Ellie Schoenfeld

• Fri. Oct 17:  Signs Out of Time …  7pm Belili Productions documentary film the story of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas

• Sat Oct 18:   Poetry Afternoon…  3pm Louis Jenkins, Jim Johnson, Yvonne Rutford, Bob Monahan, Richard Gruchalla

• Sat Oct 18:   Beauty:  The Invisible Embrace  10am -3pm Fiber Workshop with Erika Mock …. call to register  715.392.1150

• Sat Oct 25:  Closing Reception …. 5-7pm (music by Kathy McTavish, Cello)

Exhibit coordinators Erika Mock, Ellie Schoenfeld, and Jo Wood have arranged events to foster artistic expression, invite community conversation, and  raise imaginative energy in all of us.  Collaboration was intentionally chosen  to unleash possibilities The participants reflect the diversity of poets and fiber artists creating work in Wisconsin and Minnesota.  The activities scheduled offer an opportunity for artists and the community to come together, share thoughts, and enrich one another.

Events are free and open to the public. (workshop offered on a sliding fee scale)
Funded in part by grants from the Community Opportunity Fund of the Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
…………………………………………….
For more information contact:
Arna at 715.392.6007 or
info@neartscouncil.org
Erika Mock at 715.392.1150
www.neartscouncil.org
…………………………………………..
“This collaboration has created fertile ground for the imagination to soar…”
Kit Eastman,  complex surface design
St. Paul, MN

“Artists and writers spend a large part of time working in solitude.  I am glad to collaborate with visual artists because their images trigger my own creative work.   This project inspired me to put together a chapbook just for the exhibit, “Love’s Cloth.”    I hand colored the cover of my chapbook…it’s available as a limited edition.  ”
Sheila Packa, poet
Duluth, MN

“When a poem arrives full grown, the result is a delight like no other.  I crave those mystical visits of the muse, whoever she is, whenever she comes.

But there is another ecstasy which I experience on occasion in the writing of poetry, an experience which is represented in this show.  That is the spark created by collaboration — collaboration between emotion and nature, between idea and experience, between word, form and music, and, in this show, the collaboration between fiber artist and poet.

Leslie Williamson White shared with me her sense of an aging woman’s body — in a self-portrait fiber torso and in her words.  She also shared a book she loved about the mythology of Aphrodite or Venus.  I responded from my own experience as a woman older than Leslie and with my knowledge of poetic forms that could order images — both those from Leslie’s fiber creation and from the earth.

I believe, working alone, Leslie and I could not have created works with the resonance which came from the echoes between us.  I am convinced this complex creativity is a mystical experience which is no less miraculous than my hoped for visit of the poetic muse.  ”
Ann Floreen Niedringaus, poet
Duluth, MN

Tweet This

Social media?

Many of my posts so far have hinted at a phenomenon that has  increased pace of change in the world leading many to wonder often doubtfully about it’s role in day to day life. Much of the doubt comes from those who are mystified by technology and can’t imagine how technology can help them.  Since the phenomenon I am talking about is technology based  but it is and will effect the way we live our lives far more than we can imagine now. Technology and specifically the web has been seen in the not to distant past as an isolating influence on our culture, causing us to lose touch with the world around us as our intimate circle of friends shrinks. There have been fears of a growing social alienation especially in the iGeneration as we have tried to understand the meaning of Facebook, MySpace etc. Not even a year ago I really didn’t see the point of Facebook but that has changed.

Starting to converse

Of course the phenomenon I am talking about is Social Media. A recent article in the NY Times by Clive Thompson  discloses the true nature and value of Social Media both to our relationships and to our businesses. It also hints at the role it can play in creating community…something we collectively seem to be longing for. Joseph Jaffe in his book Join the Conversation talks about the changes in the marketing world that are occuring as the result of Social Media/networking especially as it has hastened the demise of advertising as we used to know it an event which has long been over due.

Isolation moves to connection

Before I go into how all this should concern us as artists let me continue with the thread brought up by Thompson’s article and Jaffe’s book by brining in another player t he guy who pretty much star ted it all, Mark Zuckerberg the college student behind Facebook. You see a couple of years after he launched it he realized it’s major problem was the time it required for users to stay up to date with their friends…so he set out to fix it. Overnight, he set up what has come to be called the news feed that works very much like RSS subscriptions permitting friends to basically “subscribe” to each other’s updates. The next morning saw a  major revolt when users began logging on to their Facebook pages. They flooded Zuckerberg with e-mails wanting the old system back. But Zuckerberg knew his audience well within a couple of days everyone was happy. The primary point of contention was much the same as today when non- social media users as”why would I want to know every time Joe eats a sandwich and what kind he is eating?”  or “why should I care if he broke up with his latest girlfriend?” Well it turns out  that they ultimately did want to know those tidbits and they found that knowing them created a different level of knowing their friends…kind of like having them in the same room.

Ambient intimacy at work

Ambient Intimacy

What they were experiencing was something social scientists have called ” ambient intimacy” it is in essence similar to the feeling of closeness we have when we sit across the room from someone and watch their quirky mumblings, or gestures. Individually such actions have little meaning but lumped together over time they start adding up to a description of the person’s mood, their inner workings. If you are an unabashed people watcher you know what I mean! Friends found themselves much closer when they met because the time distance had shrunk, they were able to converse as if they had just seen each other…in short they knew more about what was occurring in each other lives and how it effected them.

Facebook,Twitter and the tools for conversation

Facebook is no longer the only game in town, last year Twitter broke the surface followed closely by Friend feed. Both of these services offered one thing, a way to stay in touch a way to be closer to each other yet remain far away. Both services are what has become know as “micro-blogs” limited by the amount of text that can be written they have become a way for people in a particular circle to stay in touch and more importantly to widen that circle or have different circles for different levels of acquaintance.

So last year when I found out about Twitter I joined but really didn’t get it until the last few months. Coupled with my Facebook toolbar for Firefox I now get regular little blurbs that pop up on the bottom of my screen whenever one of the people I am connected with has something to say. That very action has allowed me to get to know what used to be pretty close to complete strangers. As a result, I have several potential partners for workshops or seminars each having a strong skill I am lacking in. I hinted above about communities, again this is one of the things social scientists have found occuring more and more as a result of staying connected with each other. And these communities are no longer limited by geography. Families like mine that are spread across the globe can stay connected and in each others lives much better than an hour phone call every couple of months.

Artists Twitter?

So…how does this help us as artists? Well, in a nutshell it provides us with tools we didn’t have available even as recent as a year ago. Furthermore, it has along with Tivo has played a major role in the demise of traditional advertising. It has essentially changed the way we can help our clients and patrons by giving us the means to develop and maintain conversations that are based on a many-to-many model instead of a one -to-many model. It has empowered our clients and patrons to converse with us and us with them around what we offer and how we deliver it, it allows us to focus more on them and them  on us. As a result, artists can develop networks of clients/patrons everywhere they go and they can stay in each others minds so when an artist travels to an art fair their local follows know to show up and also know what treasures await them.

For the fearful these tools are a threat because they nag at their self esteem, bringing judgmental demons, but they also remind us that our success ultimately depends on us and our ability to adapt and grow. An example of the strength of these networks happened to me last week someone on my Twitter feed saw one of my posts and commented on it…the world is indeed changing as it shrinks the revolution is here and we are it!

Please join the conversation by leaving a comment or subscribing to our newsletter or feed below.

social media

To receive our newsletter and announcements subscribe here

To receive our RSS feed in your e-mail subscribe here

Tweet This