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Apples of our eyes || Fruitful futures brought by arts || Create make share do

Thank you Washington State Arts Alliance for the invitation to experience Yakima at least a bit and to delve into the knowledge that art gives voice to individuals and inspires people to expand their minds. Art changes lives for the better.

Cultural Congress is an annual gathering for arts advocates. We are artists and arts administrators working in not-for-profit organizations, government agencies and foundations. We converge on the destination from all over Washington State, embodying the “small world” of any single industry.

Libby Gerber and I met for our road trip to Yakima on the nicest Sunday you ever saw in Seattle. The drive over Snoqualmie Pass, filled to the brim with talk of our respective art practices was decorated by blue skies, snow and ice still on the waters of Kachess Lake.  Yet, families frolicked in bathing suits along the riverbanks. First stop, Ellensburg, a town dating to 1875 that has retained its cowboy charm and added art. At Gallery One, we saw works by renowned jewelry, fabric and visual artists of Washington, and made a few purchases. Two exhibits captured our fancy:  the Kittitas County Teen Exhibit and Passing the Torch by the Seattle Metals Guild. Don’t miss Gallery One’s Art About, a self guided tour of artists’ homes and studios in the Kittitas Valley on June 2. And, the 8th annual Ellensburg Film Festival on October 5, 6, and 7!

On to Cultural Congress : we descended into the Yakima Valley lunarscape and the enveloping warmth of its high caliber sunshine. Right away, we met old friends representing Twisp,  Leavenworth and Wenatchee. In an evening of exuberant music, Mariachi Huenachi’s director cited great news of its members – all high school students – getting into colleges using the dedication and discipline inherent to practicing a musical instrument and the supportive community within an artistic troupe. They were violin, guitar and horn players, singers, and dancers. That night on our walk to dinner, we enjoyed sprinklers, lush lawns, family b-b-q’s, and porch sitters – all that is a neighborhood in a place where people stay outdoors at night. By the way, Taco Borracho on Fair Avenue serves extra-fine tamale.

Artist in Residence Lillian Pitt’s presentation on Sunday inspired me to attend her workshop on Monday. She spoke of the future of native and folk arts being influenced today by international travel among native and aboriginal artists from New Zealand, Japan and Hawaii sharing perspectives on art based in honoring ancestors and belief systems. She shared her community work with the Celilo Falls community. How did they first engage youth? “We just found a live moving body and grabbed it and said you’re coming down to play in clay.” Since then, the whole village became more aware of works that honor ancestors, and the young artists have been validated in their pursuits by being featured on Artbeat. On Monday morning, I chose Lillian’s session on mask making. This was more than a crafts project. We learned about the Stick Indian boogieman that keeps children in line: whistling bad children into the forest and whistling good ones the way out. She shared books of petroglyphs and expertly whipped up a sample mask. Our only assignment that ours be whistling. We shaped them with shells, sticks, rocks and pinecones. My mask is the whistler that calls me to the Pacific Ocean. Lillian is a Native Creative EDGE program graduate!

Monday afternoon, Libby and I got down to business giving our presentation on Artist Opportunities and Legacy, a workshop within our Creating a Lasting Legacy (CALL) program with the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Artists produced goals in our session that indicate the nature of the benefits of setting CALL goals:

* Label all bins and containers
* Create a single location for art archive record to ensure transfer to new equipment and back up facilities
* Identify a friend to exchange studio clean up help for talents in filing and systems

After the session, participants Rick Lawson and Valery Tolle, creators of the War Experience Project project introduced themselves. They inspired me, telling me that Artist Trust had a hand in the uniforms hand-painted by Iraq war veterans hanging throughout the auditorium. Each jacket gave a poignant glimpse on a personal message and unique expression: each one a returning veteran’s core reflections. Rick and Valery shared that they had first visited Miguel Guillen to discuss their project and his counsel had truly guided them. The War Experience project exemplifies how art is voice. Their own session later was “Military Veteran Painted Uniforms: Catalyst for Community Dialog”. The War Experience Project reminds us that art is not solely technique or excellence. Rather, it is self-expression and a key to understanding one another.

Many more highlights abounded: Kathleen Flenniken Washington State poet laureate invited schools in all regions to engage her in leading sessions – she loves third grade where students are first comprehending metaphor. We heard keynote speaker Arlene (Here To Get Your Hopes Up) Goldbard give comforts and challenges; interacted with arts folks from the furthest reaches of Washington State including Kettle Falls and Newport; visited creative community Mighty Tieton and participated in a lively discussion on the Washington State Arts Commission’s next strategic plan.

If you are reading this far, you really should make a point of attending next year’s Cultural Congress. You would be welcomed. Also, we need you to advocate for art to your elected officials and other powers-that-be all year long. Please be a voice for art.

We as artists hold all powers to transform our lives and communities. New Orleans, nearly six years after Katrina, is in the midst of a cultural renaissance driven by artists. Representing Artist Trust as part of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Creating a Lasting Legacy (CALL) program cohort, my introduction to New Orleans was deeply inspiring. Perhaps like a Joan Mitchell painting, my experience there was a deep impression of momentum, color and truth. Let me share a little with you.

Stepping outside the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, the spice of the bayou wafted through the warm humid air, and my adventure began. Whisked away to Faubourg Tremé, into the fold of Southern hospitality that is the Joan Mitchell Center and all of the Foundation team, I found myself on two lush acres of a former indigo plantation, turned bed and breakfast, turned new arts center and future artist residency. I spent the late evening on a porch reading and writing, porch living to me being the quintessential enjoyment of visiting the South. In the morning, woke up to swim in the outdoor pool in the midst of blossoms and their multitudinous fragrances carried by warm breezes.

On Sunday the French Quarter Festival was in full vigor. My hospitable hostess dropped me off at Jackson Square where painters had set up to sell their works. Music was everywhere. I stumbled onto the Dutch Alley Artist Co-op where I met UW alum Kate Beck. Her Katrina story is indicative of the renaissance I mentioned. A textile artist, Kate works in shibori, a Japanese term for several methods of dyeing cloth with a pattern. When Kate was evacuated, her surroundings were more amenable to felting. Now, back in New Orleans, Kate has created an innovative art form that combines shibori and felting. You might see me wearing my new warm-as-New-Orleans scarf any time of year in Seattle. Also enjoyed the fleur de lis glass art of Gerald Haessig.

The Joan Mitchell Foundation kindly invited us to a screening of Chasing Dreams: A Leah Chase Storyat the famous Dooky Chase Restaurant. This short film was visually gorgeous and inspiring on many levels, integrating the story of Leah Chase as restaurateur, chef, civil rights leader, art collector and role model. Only thanks to our earlier visit to the Back Street Cultural Museum, was I able to read several of Mrs. Chase’s paintings. There, we had a complete introduction to the Mardi Gras Indians, Jazz Funerals, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Baby Dolls and more. Sylvester was our guide. His sheer commitment and openness to helping us understand the New Orleans culture and history was remarkable.

Two inspiring people at the screening reappeared the next day: Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormack. This photographer-couple had left town the day before Katrina hit, and they returned to find their home and their own photographic works full of toxic mud and debris. As they started to throw it all away, their son said stop! They froze their slides and developed them, creating elegant abstract colorful works that retain fugitive images of people and ceremony. Their collection is at the L9 Center For The Arts. Located in the lower ninth ward, Keith and Chandra have taken the opportunity to introduce neighbors to art making. They invited us to walk on the river bank where the river was poignantly calm, the sky pure blue, with a delicate breeze. Later that afternoon, I visited the Jean LaFitte Preserve for a swamp nature encounter! My new art buddy, Kathleen of Springboard for the Arts had brought watercolor supplies for two! We walked the shaded boardwalk with the geckos and alligators then perched atop a high bridge to take in the verdant view by painting it.

On Thursday, the Ogden Museum of Southern ArtAfter Hours provided musical accompaniment by David Torkanowsky while exploring paintings by two “old friends” and several new ones. Notably, Bo Bartlett and Walter Anderson. Bo Bartlett is a painter from Georgia who resides on Vashon Island. I first discovered him via his exhibit at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle. His painting Young Life was on view to remind me of his scant and meaningful paint application. A friend introduced me to Walter Anderson a few years ago on the occasion of Katrina, by lending me Approaching The Magic Hour. To view his Don Quixote was a real find.

A video installation at the Ogden called Hostile Takeover: The Lower Ninth Ward and Other Evidenceby Andrew Garn as a Central City Artist Project showed the former homes, five feet below sea level, that have not been rebuilt, now occupied by dogs, opossums and the like.

Waiting for the airport shuttle, I got to talk with George the doorman, who lamented that as a visitor to New Orleans, I would have only seen what “they” wanted me to. Reflecting over the plentiful week, I realized that approaching the City through art had given me quite a truthful exposure. And listening to an interview with a New Orleanean jazzman on All Blueswith John Kessler last Sunday, I found I’d learned a new language.

~Sheila Siden April 2011

There is a great story to be told about the value of Art to society. It does not fit in a sound byte. Art’s great story spans freedom of expression, cultural exchange, meaning, truth, beauty, voice, jobs, urban renewal and economic development. Sometimes, its plot line gets confused with entertainment and hobby. Art’s great story can seem to stray off to myth: an advisory condemning Art to being a trivial pursuit and rejection of Art as a major economic driver.

Imagine: you are one of more than one thousand people from the entire US of A (acknowledging new friends of the Alaska contingent) to gather for the Americans for the Arts 50^th Annual Summit: Building A Vibrant Future For The Arts in America to discover, cheer and further plan to TELL the great story of Art. The place is Baltimore, Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay. 

You arrive at 6am Baltimore time, 3am your Seattle time. It is already 90 degrees to your Seattle 55. Delirious, and happy, you proceed to discover the Baltimore Inner Harbor and downtown on your free day. You notice many vacant stalls at Lexington Market and people loitering around there even at 9am. You keep on walking and sit on a bench in the shade in a greenbelt with sprinklers on to eat your cubed Lexington Market watermelon and read something delicious from Milton Crane’s 50 Great Short Stories. You move on to air-conditioned Caribou Coffee and listen to two old veterans telling their Vietnam War stories while East Coast corporate lackeys come and go. You see that these East Coast people have a particular ease with each other. People are cordial. In the afternoon, you venture out on the number 11 bus up Charles Street to see the Baltimore Museum of Art. Most notable for this blog, you explore works on exhibit by the Sondheim Artscape Prize: 2010 Finalists. You mentally elaborate on the idea of innovation, seeing that everyday life or bizarre creations are as good a subject of Art as any.

That evening, you join your Americans for the Arts (AFTA) tribe in the nick of time to get some curried ravioli from the buffet and get on the bus for John Waters: This Filthy World. John is a good talker, an individual Artist – boy of Baltimore – who’s made it beyond all expectations. The Pearlstone Theater is a bus ride away, and you borrow a pen to write in the dark of the theater. “Art meant dirty when I was young and we should keep it that way.” “Stealing was politically correct in the ‘60’s.”  Unfortunately the rest of your notes are mostly illegible, but in John’s world, that is part of the story, too.

The following days are a wonderfully warm whirlwind where you wear sleeveless clothes and never suffer any chill. Big names: Robert Redford, Arianna Huffington, Rocco Landesman, the new cowboy boot-wearing, Broadway theater tycoon (aka master storyteller) Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) serenade you with their assurances and examples that ART IS IMPORTANT. Robert Redford applauds YOU for being grassroots, the driver of change. You and your colleagues stand in ovation for the Golden Boy of Film who went on to create Sundance, a forum for independent filmmaking and who testified to Congress, garnering significant funds for the NEA to be distributed in really miniscule amounts in the scheme of Federal spending that make a big difference to arts organizations: millions into grants of tens of thousands. You ponder on Rocco’s story about his insisting on interfacing with departments outside his own at the Federal level, and realize that he is doing exactly what needs to be done to bring Art into every realm it belongs and out of its isolation as Art. You feel real genuine hope that Art will live out its great story.

The highlight is traveling to the opening reception at the American Visionary Art Museum. Water Taxi seems good, but what is this other option… no ordinary walking tour as advertised. It is a parade with Dixieland band, tall iconic streamer bodies, stilt walkers and a chic enthusiastic parade master. Walking through the waterfront as a parade, we Arts Administrators are the focus of the Public. We see, they love it. Children jump. Adolescent boys leap into the parade and dance along. Families point and laugh together. Old julep drinkers put down their glass and pay attention. That is the power of Art: participation, sharing and social cohesion.

You and your colleagues finally come to a confusing realization that the very term “The Arts” pulls it out of its synergy as freedom of expression, cultural exchange, meaning, truth, beauty, voice, jobs, urban renewal and economic development. “The Arts” as a moniker places Art on its own when in fact Art truly exists within every facet of life, learning, and pursuit of happiness.  The great story of Art is really a huge tome of anthologies, perfect material for the one-minute plays of the The New York Neo-Futurists, artists in residence at Summit 2010.

I am intrigued these days by improvisational theater. It is fun, scary and challenging, providing good doses of play and therapeutic laughter.  Learning by doing narrative structures influenced my last series of paintings. Still need to post those. The paintings have already had the priviledge of being refused for the CoCA Annual 2009. My visual art all seems to belong in the salon des refuses. Van Gogh’s failures give me comfort. Of course, he worked a lot harder at painting than I do. Then again, I have an income and he did not, ie a job that requires my time in return for a certain sense of financial stability. He was driven to know color and improve his drawing. I cave to retail therapy. Currently working on my self portrait for the Gage Academy of Art self portrait show. They won’t refuse it but it might not win a prize. This self portrait is quite ambitious – 36″x36″ is pretty large, and it goes beyond the cropped headshots I’ve usually done, bringing in the landscape of my childhood memories at Corona del  Mar. It was the first place and time I ever seriously wiped out in surf, and I distinctly remember eating skittles there as well as Big Hunk bars and fried burritos. Mom also had a formula for excellent refreshment: freeze lemonade in tupperware cups (with their lids you know) over night and take them to the beach frozen solid. Shake hard around noon and you have a slush!   

Coming up on February 20 - Artist Trust Benefit Art Auction 2010 – all art collectors encouraged to attend and purchase something fabulous!  I have my eye on one – watch for the art preview. When you buy your ticket you can ask to sit at my table :^)  http://www.artisttrust.org

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