Perpetually Curious

Every shaded county had both a community college and a Visiting Artist. So, on the one hand, I am totally in awe of the Visiting Artist Program, which ran from 1971 to 1995 here in North Carolina. The program was a collaboration between the fledgling NC Arts Council and the Community College System, then under the Department of Public Instruction. With a lot of moxie and limited resources, these groups were able to place over 330 world-class artists from all disciplines into each of the 58 community colleges across the state at the time. Since the goal of the community college system was to make an "affordable, excellent post-secondary education available within commuting distance of every North Carolinian," the Visiting Artist Program--with its inherent stipulations of community service and continued artistic growth--meant that "each citizen in the state was also within commuting distance of a professional artist (and vice versa) and free, open-door arts progra

We moved over the course of May & June to coastal NC. I'm also working on a new website and trying to find a paying gig. All of that to say, pardon the blog-radio silence at the moment. You can always find me on the social networks (all under my real name) for the latest doings/beings/thoughts/goings-on in the Theater & Relationship worlds. I've finished literal unpacking, but I'm still working on the metaphorical unpacking. There's more baggage there.

#the100dayproject 20/ 100

From Flickr: Coconino National Forest. Nobody  necessarily wants a fire, but they're actually important to the forest's health.  When studying animal or botanical health, researchers generally talk about the health of the "ecosystem". Dictionary .com offers two definitions:  1. a system, or a group of interconnected elements, formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment; 2. any system or network of interconnecting parts, as in a business. "Ecosystem" is a relatively recent word, only dating to the 1930s. Before that, everything was just a "system": "an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole." Seeing an ecosystem-- interconnected elements/parts/organisms-- is challenging. In recent arts attendance research, barriers to attendance are discussed, but there is little evidence that any changes are being made by organizations with this new knowledge. The few

I got the unexpected chance to catch up with my college chums Jared Axelrod and JR Blackwell when they were back in NC for a weekend visit in Greensboro.  Jared holds his comic book  "The Adventures of Comrade Cockroach" Jared and JR, in addition to being some of the coolest people ever and a very dynamic couple, are both professional artists. By professional, I mean they are earning a living from their art.* They were in Greensboro to talk about building artistic careers after graduating from college. They had 4 main points, all of which I heartily agree with. They work for any artist regardless of discipline (JR is a photographer, Jared is a writer and comic book artist). 1. Don't be afraid of 30. There is only way to gain experience in life: living it. Every year or decade brings with it innumerable opportunities to learn. Building a body of work takes time. JR quoted a colleague who said, "It takes 10 years of working and putting your art out

Finishing up the reading!

I love what I do and I'm so blessed to have so many other fantastic women who have walked this path before me and are on it now with me (and those yet to come!). I hope everyone takes a second to reflect on how far we've come... and then gets back to work on where we're headed.

“The masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator.” - -The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin, 1936 Is there any more contentious question in the art world than the concept of “high” versus “low” I like venn diagrams. And shouldn't art really be in the middle?  art? Who gets to judge? What are the parameters in which to judge? There is no standard definition for either concept and personal explanations range from simple to incredibly complex. One common theory about how to explain the difference is high art is “popular” and low art is “unpopular”, that is, appealing (or not) to many people. This also links to another version of the difference: that high art fosters the widest connection between people while a smaller subsection enjoys low art. This is in direct contradiction, though, to the idea of low art being part of mass culture (raising yet another question of “is art culture” or merely a com

What information are we not seeking? R-O-B/Structural Oscillations NYC Dept of Transportation Creative Commons license What feedback delays are we not paying attention to? What incentives are we ignoring? As well and artistically fantastic as subsidization is (through direct patronage or tax relief), it harms our organization and system because it severely weakens or removes several feedback flows necessary to a stable structure. -the oscillations of ticket sales do not provide a reinforcing loop to performance decisions (when, where, what, marketing) -the constant stock of free labor serves to reinforce the dangerous growth of itself, of unpaid labor -the reasons companies collapse are ignored because of ease of new company creation Yes, artistic growth can be hampered by the vagaries of market forces inclining artists to make comfortable choices. But it is also stymied by an inefficient support structure that is incapable of properly responding to market forces. T

I find myself pulling out Donella Meadow's Thinking in Systems: A Primer  again, as I read the hundred billionth blog/newspaper/magazine post about the (admittedly) amazing local food scene we have here. I will own up the truth: I am bitterly jealous, an emotion I have tried to root out in all other facets of my life. And it's not even jealous for me, it's a jealousy for my beloved field, all those hard working actors and directors and designers and theater lovers. The irony, of course, is that because we do what we do, restaurants, food trucks, all sorts of food-related night-life related establishments spring up around us to take advantage of OUR audience, of OUR casts needing some place to grab a quick bite before a show call or gather together after the performance to discuss meanings, nuances, or how great the energy was in the house.  So I go back and ask "What have they got that we ain't got?" (to coin a phrase). And that's when I get back to th

The teeny tiny beginning shoots of data capture/feedback to use for future planning. Can't wait to share with my production team.