Moblizing by Moosifying

It was impossible to choose a best photo from this event but Ms Dogwood dunking the ex-mayor was typical. [more]

In case you ever needed another reason to go Moose’s Restaurant (and there were already plenty), they just did a super-cool fundraiser for the Shelter for Help in Emergency.

The fun unfolded in three parts. They kicked off on Friday (the 13th) with a doughnut eating contest. Saturday morning (the 14th) they had a block party that included music, dancing, a craft fair, a race car you could touch (and pose with) and—best of all—a dunk tank that was extremely busy. Saturday night was a concert at the Jefferson School. The fundraiser netted $3050 and lots of fun and community fellowship.

When I first visited Moose’s (then called Moore’s Creek) I was afraid to go inside 1) because they share a building with a gun shop and 2) because there were a million police cars parked outside. That seemed like a bad combination, but come to find out that the cruisers were there because it’s the best short-order restaurant in Charlottesville. They all stop there on their way into town or between shifts.

The Arts and Public Policy: Intro

As part of my professional education and ongoing research, I’m fortunate to be permitted to audit George Sampson and Lindsey Hepler’s class on the Arts and Public Policy in the Architecture School at the University of Virginia.

The class examines the dynamics between art—that which challenges the unknown—and the exercise of power (in a variety of domains), public life and Democracy. The discussion is founded on a variety of texts but most primarily on Arts, Inc. by Bill Ivey and the Gardens of Democracy by Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer.

I’ve already read both books and will have more to say about them soon, but it’s clear that these ideas are foundational questions for the Monticello Road Project. George says that art tells a story and is designed to make change, whether perceptual or social (as opposed to entertainment, which reinforces the comfortable). Monticello Road engages both fronts (perception and connectedness). It does so from the most granular level but with a purpose of doing its small part to revitalize democracy. I firmly believe the notion that small, individual actions are society and small things such as respect, courtesy and mutual curiosity can yield big change. 

Today’s opening session ended with a discussion of the ancient Greek notion of Agonism: an emphasis on the struggle itself far more than the end result, mutual respect for the contestants and the idea that defeat to a worth foe is superior to an easy victory. The project is a process not a product. That’s why it is art.

Where's the Art Version of Streetball?

The book I’m reading, Arts Inc. by Bill Ivey (former head of the NEA) is full of provocative and smart ideas but one quote made me throw the book in the air and start clapping. It’s spot-on accurate but I really love it because it makes an explicit connection that I’m always reaching for between my two twin interests: art and running. Furthermore he states explicitly what I’m always preaching: that art organizations should study sports marketing and especially those groups working on the grassroots—like, my employer, New YorkRoad Runners. They are doing a better job of changing lives than anyone in the arts and there are specific reasons why. Here’s Bill's blurb:

We first need to reframe our connection to art-making to match the way we think of athletics and exercise. In the world of museums, symphony orchestras, and dance companies, “participation” today means “attendance”; we’re participating in art when we buy a ticket to an exhibition or plant ourselves in a seat at a Mozart festival. In the world of sports we also participate by purchasing tickets and attending competitions, sometimes alongside thousands of fellow fans. But real sports activity is spread throughout the population; for those who don’t play tennis or golf or participate in an amateur softball league, society offers plenty of encouragement to exercise—even if it’s just a long, brisk walk three or four times a week. Our relationship with amateur sport seems healthy and rounded; we are accepting of wide disparities in talent and generous to those who can only take part in limited ways: we applaud the ten-minute miler just as vigorously as the sub-four champion. “Participation”, in sports and exercise means just what it says, doing. And, as a bonus, broad participation produces knowledgeable, enthusiastic audiences who support substantial compensation for thousands of professional athletes.

In contrast, most Americans are almost afraid to make art casually; there’s no longer an equivalent, in music, dance, drama, or drawing to the pickup touch football game on the back lawn on a Sunday afternoon. If we’re going to make art, it’s got to be serious business and the result has to be good. As Kimmelman observes, “Amateur equates to amateurish.” My friends in classical music talk with envy about European opera or symphony performances at which innovative or controversial performances once produced audience outrage and near-riots—people over there really care! Of course American enthusiasts are just wishing for the kind of audiences we find today at U.S. sporting events. To reach such a point we need to reconfigure the hierarchical pyramid that today is geared toward elevating only the best.[1]

Bill actually doesn’t go far enough. Sports programs that are well done create a virtuous cycle of health and fitness and that cycle is self-powered. He cites running, an industry I understand extremely well. Here’s how it works at the most macro level:

1. Small groups gather informally at the amateur level to train or play. They are very welcoming.
2. They work alongside one another pushing their own limits and each-others’ in a mutually supportive environment.
3. Some few rise to such prominence that others want to come out and see them.
4. Those performances inspire others (of all abilities) to run alongside them.
5. People of all ages get out there and try to better themselves literally one step at a time.
6. Here’s the cool part: others, including (and especially) the professionals see those kids, old folks and couch potatoes moving and they are hugely inspired.
7. Repeat, only in larger numbers…

Of course, the analogy has limits. Running does not produce a very large cadre of people earning a living that way. It may seem impossible, but the odds of “making it” as a performer are even less for a runner than as an artist. Running is quirky that way. But the endeavor attracts breathtakingly many committed practitioners. Imagine what America would be like if as much time, and numbers, were devoted to actively exercising our souls as we do at the gym, trail or park. I suspect that many things would change.

The positive trends in health and fitness are exactly that: positive; so no one would advocate staying in a room (or a studio) at the expense of going for a run. Yet, the time and energy needs to come from someplace and I suspect the book will go on to advocate that we make time and money for informal, spontaneous art by refraining from so much consumerism and passive entertainment.

He’s interested in finding a way to get everyone involved and inspired and to feel empowered to do so at whatever level makes sense. That’s what we’re trying to do too.

---

1. Ivey, Bill. Arts Inc: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyedour Cultural Rights. University of California Press, 2008 pp. 118-119. Reprinted without permission. Since Bill devoted  about 50 pages prior to that quote arguing that fair use is essential for a thriving democracy, I will take my chances…

Inspiration: Chalkville

Monticello Road is an in-depth exploration of one street in Charlottesville, VA. It asks how art can be a key, everyday part of a healthy and vibrant community. This blog normally focuses, as it should, on the people and places in that neighborhood but it also occasionally presents related examples and inspirations from elsewhere.

Elinor Slomba is an artist/organizer/agent/angel and a lifetime collaborator and friend of mine. I caught up with Elinor as she was catching her breath after the completion of Chalkville, a monumental chalk drawing on a high school parking lot in West Haven, CT and an excellent example of art-centric community organizing.



Tell us about Chalkville. What was it about and how did it go?

Elinor: Chalkville was a Guinness-approved world record attempt for Largest Chalk Pavement Art. The record we had to beat was 90,000 square feet of one unified chalk drawing, set by Mark Wagner of Alameda, California. After I got the idea this might be a good civic art project, we got seed funding from the Awesome Foundation, Connecticut Chapter. They give $1,000 grants to individuals for creative projects that benefit communities. That was enough for a little less than half of the chalk, but it enabled us to begin saying "we have funding for this." It wasn't just a crazy idea, we were certified Awesome!

Primary Colors

The Awakening. Ink and watercolor on paper, 9" x 12". I made this drawing while in residency in a secluded mountain cabin. I've never felt so awake or alive.

Richard Louv talks about the importance primary (as opposed to secondary or received) experience, conveyed through the five senses.

I’ve always felt that it’s the artist’s role to invigorate those senses, to tickle them with a feather. It’s the artist’s job to investigate the world, to be active explorers and then report back in a way that awakens others to their own experiences and see the world with more intensity and nuance.

There's a linkage between the natural world and our engagement in our sensory experience and Louv discusses that as well. That’s the main thing I want to explore with the Story|Line kids: encourage them to tune in to the world around them, make note of it and share what they’ve found.

The more they do that, the more they will be artists.

The Hummus Revolution

This picture doesn't match the subject matter exactly but it's new and I like it. Maybe it's more about how nature pulls things down instead of pushing them up, but it's really all part of the same story isn't it?

Springtime comes as a a shock every year--suddenly backyard and garden are in full riot--but it shouldn't. The vivacious life we see all over the place in April is always there but it's hidden under the leaves and in the soil. The real action is at the bacterial level, weeks and months of plotting and planning in a fully decentralized way. By the time shoots break the surface, it's just a few days until full flowering and winter's dreary cloak shoved aside without possibility of reversal.

Where does it come from? Broadly speaking the answer is "the soil," the unorganized hummus left over from what came before. The ground we walk on is alive and the source of all things.

I'm really interested to see how humans manifest the same pattern. Who organized the current upheaval in the Middle East? The answer is dispersed, quite different from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century revolutions with their parties and manifestos. It came from the People. In a world where information is widely shared and communications dispersed, there is a new process for developing ideas. It's less like a brain and more like a gut, which is how the garden works and its power is unmistakable--and difficult or impossible to control.

The creative spirit works the same way. The artist channels unnameable energies from unknown sources toward an unknowable end and this is why poets and musicians always show up on the barricades. In a time of great uncertainty, the artist is in his element. We're well accustomed to getting all muddy and we have work to do.

Sources and Inspirations

Amherst, VA 2008.

A few years back, I went to the show of one of my art heroes Glen Rubsamen. He paints silhouettes of trees (black) on either a white or vividly-colored background. I love his work for many reasons and the exhibition was amazing. Of course I couldn’t afford any of the big oil paintings but I had to have something so I bought the catalog. It was entitled Those Useless Trees” and it featured a strong black and white painting on its cover. It was shrink-wrapped and I didn’t open it until I got to the subway.

I was in for quite a surprise. There was not a single image of a painting inside. Instead, the book was full of his source photos: unusual-looking trees, mostly—though not exclusively—in his native Los Angeles. I had never seen anything like that before and it was very interesting not only to see his working process, but a bit more objective view of the origins of his inspirations. In that spirit, my upcoming exhibition Scratch will include a section dedicated to the source photos from which the scratch boards and prints derive.

As I edited the images on my computer then arranged them on my work table, I was impressed at how strong they are as works of art. I probably shouldn’t be surprised: I have been playing with a camera since I was a child, and photography represents at least as much time and effort as the entire rest of my oeuvre. Not only do the pictures hold their own in the exhibition, they might well be its strongest leg. In the exhibition, they will be presented mostly as small, poloroid-sized, prints with a few enlargements to show detail.

There will be a companion to the exhibition catalog dedicated to these sources and inspirations. Perhaps I should call it “Those Wonderful Trees!”