ARTSblog

In 2012, Americans for the Arts resolves to invigorate political discourse and the nation by continuing to spotlight the importance of the arts in America. Artists, teachers, arts managers and professionals, lawmakers, administrators, and advocates are integral to this mission.

This election year, the urgency is growing to have political candidates and office holders understand how arts are vital to our communities. We ask that you make your own resolutions this year by responding to this question:

How can the arts energize the political dialogue in your community this election year?

Here are some insightful responses to get you thinking. Add yours in the comments below! Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 25%

A solitary blue ribbon replaced Jerry Sandusky in this mural by artist Michael Pilato. (Photo from BusinessInsider.com)

We often see examples of art used as a way to heal a community following tragedy, whether it be something catastrophic like war or a sudden death, all of the arts can be used as an escape, a catalyst for further examination, or in countless other ways.

While reading through news articles last night, I happened upon a piece written for a student newspaper of Penn State.

It wasn’t very long ago that the name of the institution wouldn’t cause a shudder within me. Having grown up across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, the school’s football (and sometimes basketball) program often appeared on the local news thanks in part to sharing a state with Philly and a huge number of alumni living the the Delaware Valley.

Having gone to a small, liberal arts state school in New Jersey, I will probably never understand the culture of an enormous university like Penn State (although I think NPR’s This American Life shed some light on that for me a few weeks ago).

As most of America sat on the proverbial sidelines watching the fallout from the horrifying child molestation scandal unfolding in State College, PA, you could see that the town has a lot to work through as the case continues on into 2012.

This is where an artist can make an impact.

Local muralist Michael Pilato revisited a previous work (pictured above) and created a new one to honor victims of sexual abuse… Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 14%

Liesel Fenner

As Americans are well aware, Congress is going through some significant policy discussions regarding the proper role of government and federal funding. One particular program that funds numerous arts projects nationwide is the Transportation Enhancements program (TE) funded through the U.S. Department of Transportation, and administered by state transportation agencies often in partnership with local arts agencies.

The TE program is important to the arts sector because of the federal funds made available locally for public art and design, museums, and historic preservation projects. This blog post seeks to translate proposed Congressional legalese and the actions you can take to help retain this vital program.

On November 9, 2011, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee led a markup of a two-year surface transportation bill named “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21^st Century” or MAP-21. The committee approved the bill unanimously.

The $83.8 billion measure (S.1813) would retain the Transportation Enhancement program that has become a target for budget cutting. However, a proposed overhaul of the program would expand the types of projects that could be funded — in some cases including construction of new roads. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8%

Dear Readers,

Look over to the right side of this page and check out the tag cloud. (You might have to scroll a little. It’s under the “featured video”.)  Are your favorite topics there?

We want to match the content of our publications with what you need to be successful artists, arts administrators, advocates, and educators. That means tailoring the articles, blog posts, and news stories in our print and electronic communications based on your feedback. What topics do you want to read about more (or less)?

Take our short, six question survey and let us know how we’re doing: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZZWVFBB

Popularity: 19%

Erin Harkey

Started in 2002, as an alternative to mainstream gallery culture, High Desert Test Sites (HDTS) explores the connections between site, art and life.

Situated in the desert communities surrounding Joshua Tree, the biannual event produces a series of site-specific installations in the Mojave Desert. Belonging to no one and everyone at the same time, each project’s life cycle is inextricably linked to the site itself.

Intrigued by this year’s roster of artists, I ventured with a friend on a two-hour road trip from Los Angeles to check it out.

The map to the sites we picked up at the HDTS headquarters instructed us to “drive forever” on Route 62. To help us find our way, we relied on the tracks of the cars before us, the unreliable GPS on our phones, and the occasional hidden HDTS sign with a quiet arrow. As we drove, we were fascinated with the number of deserted buildings. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

Radhika Mohan

At the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, we hold several intimate sessions a year, each with 7-8 mayors and another 7-8 design and development professionals.

At every session, we hammer through case studies that the mayors bring and respond with concrete ways to begin implementing their project. Often, the critique on their urban design case studies sounds something like this: “This design could be anywhere, what makes this place in your city special and unique?”

I often call this the “avoiding the autotune” suggestion. Autotune, being the new(ish) technology of the music industry where a performer’s voice can be digitized, making anyone’s voice sound similar to one another in song.

One way to “avoid the autotune” is to bring artists into the mix of the planning process.

Many of us have written that art, as an expression of our cultural identity, can be a great communicator in the design of the public realm and institutional amenities. Through storytelling, mural-painting, exhibitions, and more, we can foster the exchange of ideas on important projects in our community. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

Participants take part in integrated creative, interactive activities during the workshop. (Photo by Roxanne Earley)

In reading my fellow bloggers’ posts, I was thinking about the different sets of strategies used to interest and involve community members in the short-term (what we might call “one-offs”), and those used to cultivate engagement in the long-term.

The potential of art to involve community in the shorter term is well-documented and recognized. We recognize the value of performance and temporary public art in activating public space during large (and small) community events.

Art is also recognized as an important communication tool, a way to get across a complex message that might otherwise be technical or seem far removed from daily life. Creative processes can even be used to diffuse conflict and create the space for dialogue.

Urban planners and designers have also integrated creative, interactive activities into the charrette workshop model. This week I attended a lecture and workshop at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, led by James Rojas on his interactive, art-based technique of using semi-abstract models and moving pieces to involve community members in reimagining and redesigning urban spaces.

The materials used were simple—blocks, string, plastic toys—but the colors and shapes clearly activated different parts of the participants’ brains, and encouraged new ideas and solutions—even among a crowd of planning and architecture students that is used to addressing urban design issues every day. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10%

Anamika Goyal

Stunned.

It’s really the only word to describe my reaction to all of the previous posts. As a newly-minted, 21-year-old college graduate, I become quickly overwhelmed by the plethora of next steps available to me.

And, after reading the posts from all of this week’s bloggers–socially responsible, creative, like-minded people doing good and interesting work–I felt exactly that.

It’s odd to me that being presented with so many interesting and feasible options elicits such angst. I would imagine that many people in the same situation would be excited, elated even. I can’t help but feel immediately burdened by the inevitable ‘choice.’ I immediately start thinking that I need to pick one and begin to fear that I might pick wrong.

So yesterday, after Googling all of the organizations and projects mentioned in the posts and finding a number of groups doing things that intrigued me, I jotted down keywords of particular interest on Post-Its and stuck them on a wall in my apartment.

‘Community’, ‘arts’, ‘engagement’, ‘interactive’, ‘installation’, ‘industrial’, ‘design’, ‘redesign’, ‘urban’, and ‘group’ were all words that kept popping up.

It felt good to write them down, but then I found myself a little stuck again. I feel like this process tends to leave me with more questions than answers, which I will now pose to you all: Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 13%

Brendon Greaves

I just returned from several days in Wilson, NC, where I am assisting with the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park Project. This ambitious project involves conserving twenty-nine of local artist Vollis Simpson’s monumental wind-powered kinetic sculptures and relocating them from a field outside his repair shop at a crossroads in rural Lucama to an expressly designed downtown sculpture park in nearby Wilson.

This weekend was the annual Whirligig Festival, a street fair inspired by the community’s affection for Mr. Simpson’s artworks, which already adorn several public locations downtown, providing an aesthetic identity and metereological indicator for Wilsonians.

Despite enthusiastic sanction and financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts, ArtPlace, the Educational Foundation of America, the North Carolina Arts Council, and many others, the true power of this remarkable placemaking project resides in its grassroots foundation.

The concept of using vernacular art to leverage investment in the community for the goal of cultural tourism and arts-driven economic development originated with local stakeholders concerned about both Mr. Simpson’s legacy (he is 92 and can no longer climb the 55-foot sculptures to grease bearings and repaint rusting surfaces) and the economic future of Wilson in a post-tobacco economy (Wilson once boasted the title of the world’s largest tobacco market). Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10%

Tatiana Hernandez

People have looked to the arts to help define their communities and create a sense of place for generations. So, why are we so excited about creative placemaking today?

Perhaps it has something to do with context. In this digital world, many are reexamining the fundamental nature of “community” and our relationship to place. We now know, based on findings from the Knight Soul of the Community report, that social offerings, followed by openness and aesthetics explain why we love where we live. What does that tell us about the essential importance of our connection to place?

“Vibrancy” is popping up as a way of describing the intangible nature of a neighborhood’s character. Here are three projects working to help define a sense of place in each of their communities:

Philadelphia has a strong tradition of mural work, and thanks to Mural Arts, artists and residents continue to come together to help define “home.” As part of their Knight Arts Challenge project, Mural Arts brought two Dutch artists, Haas&Hahn, to North Philadelphia to live, work, and engage the community around a large-scale mural that will span several blocks of Germantown Avenue. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10%

Bill Mackey

You just finished writing the notes to the meeting you attended, made a .pdf of it, and sent it off via email to all the necessary parties. You check your email; you see what band is playing tonight. You leave your office and get into your car. The A/C is going and the voice on the radio is giving you a good mix of the economy, culture, sports, and weather…

Imagine attending an event about the environment or economy or planning in your community. The group that sponsors the event sounds official and they speak with official language and they speak of official issues, but there is something amiss.

They appear to be in costume, you have never heard of their agency or department, and some of the questions on the survey they have handed you are just plain odd. You realize it is a mock organization putting on a mock event, but they are tackling very real issues in a different way – with some levity, less bureaucracy. You buy into their prank, reorient your perception, and participate.

You drive up to the ATM and insert your card, enter your PIN, and request cash. You receive your cash and receipt. You put the car in D and set off. You pass signs, billboards, curbs, buildings, houses, and bus stops. You should go to the store and grab some prepared food, but you are too lazy… Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8%

Liesel Fenner

Modernist plazas. Those large vast expanses of concrete often in the heart of a city’s downtown, perhaps lined with an allée of trees, a modernist sculpture, and a water feature.

I have fond memories of spaces like these – running as a child as fast as I could from one end to the other then looking up at skyscrapers that seemed to touch the sky. Wind, air, city smells, all combined to inform of my earliest aesthetic preferences and my professional career in landscape architecture and public art.

Many examples of these plazas include: Boston City Hall, the Christian Science Church in Boston, and Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco are significant places designed by some of the twentieth-century’s most outstanding designers – Hideo Sasaki and Lawrence Halprin to name a few.

Place is personal. Understanding what informed our earliest memories of spaces helps us understand our preferences in creating new places in conversation with community – people who have all had different life experiences and ideas of what define place. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

Brendon Greaves (left)

Invoking placemaking inevitably demands a description of process, a term with both positive and negative valences and connotations. (Process art, processed foods, an excruciating process.)

In some essential sense, resident in the word itself, placemaking virtually prescribes process, an action, enaction. When we speak of placemaking, rather than places already made, we are describing a process, though that process can vary enormously from program to program, project to project, collaboration to collaboration.

We are describing a process of evaluating an extant site from a variety of perspectives—aesthetic, environmental, historical, cultural, socioeconomic, etc.—and formulating a strategy to clarify, transform, and enhance that place in terms of a variety of enmeshed contexts: aesthetics, identity, and design integrity; integration with the surrounding built and natural environments; environmental sustainability; livability and local use value; accessibility and safety; cultural relevance to the community and extant place; potential appeal to tourists and visitors; and ultimately (with time and luck) viability as an engine for local and regional economic development. Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

As National Arts and Humanities Month continues, amazing people around the country are hosting Creative Conversations!

This Americans for the Arts program, started in 2004, helps to unify groups of people engaged in arts and culture by sparking dialogue, spurring advocacy efforts, and creating networking opportunities.

So far this month, we have already had five great events in places as diverse as Nashville, Virginia Beach, Chicago, and Buffalo.

If you missed out on these events, never fear! October still holds over 30 more events – with more being added every day.

This week’s upcoming events include:

•    Artist Conversation with Don Seiden, artist and Jane Stevens, curator – Today, Oct 13! (Chicago, IL)
•    Champaign County ARSCONNECT: pARTner up! – Today, Oct 13! (Urbana, IL) Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 18%

Four Americans for the Arts Advisory Councils — the Arts Education Council, Emerging Leader Council, Private Sector Council, and the Public Art Network Council — are currently seeking nominations for new council members to serve three-year terms from January 1, 2012 through December 30, 2014.

Americans for the Arts asks, first and foremost, that the councils advise our staff on programs and services that will build a deeper connection to the field and their network members.

This gives council members the opportunity to be spotlighted as national leaders and to give back to the field by connecting the national work of Americans for the Arts to the local level.

Here are quotes from current leadership council members on the value of serving in that role:

“Having people from across the country serve on the council gives Americans for the Arts insight into the unique challenges we face on a day-to-day basis. It helps connect ELs at a very grassroots level by connecting networks and creates a web of resources and support for ELs.” – Ruby Harper, Emerging Leader Council Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 17%