Americans for the Arts

Price Tower Arts Center

One of the wonderful things I’m re-discovering about Oklahoma is that art, culture, and innovation aren’t just thriving in OKC, but all across the state!

Tulsa, the state's second largest city, is chock full of arts and culture innovators - from the Greenwood Cultural Center to the Philbrook Museum, which is currently exhibiting a collection of Robert Rauschenburg's iconic prints, multiples, and other projects that resulted from his long-term relationship with Los Angeles-based publishing workshop, Gemini G.E.L.

Tulsa’s Living Arts, a unique contemporary art space, organizes an annual New Genre Festival with the support of the Warhol Foundation and the National Performance Network. Going on its 19th year, the New Genre Festival brings provocative contemporary art and performance to Oklahoma and endeavors to challenge the preconceptions around the role of art in culture by supporting artists working in nontraditional media, action-based performance, and unsanctioned guerilla methods.

Naomi Natale

For me, great art works challenge a viewer’s initial perspective and enables her or him to look at something in a different way, aesthetically, culturally, possibly politically.

That may be enough. But in my own work, I want to do more. I am specifically fascinated by the relationship between art and action and how it can effectively be applied to create social impact.

Each work I make has three stages: the creation of a visual concept; sharing that concept through hands-on workshops, education, and personal interactions; and collecting the individual artworks created during that process for a resulting public installation.

My work functions at that tipping point where an individual is so moved by a visual concept that the new, challenged, or changed perspective compels him or her to action. The action is to make an artwork that supports the visual concept. And all these actions piled one on top of another transforms my visual concept into a collaborative public work.

Jaime Austin

ZER01 is an arts organization based in Silicon Valley, a place renowned globally as a hub of entrepreneurship and innovation. So lately I’ve been pondering the questions: How can the arts more visibly contribute to this culture of innovation? And how can we as an arts organization better reflect the area where we are based?

One of the main projects I work on is organizing the ZER01 Biennial. The fourth iteration of the biennial will take place in September 2012. Any organization that plans a biennial should always ask the question “why another biennial?” each time they embark on another planning cycle.

Recently, biennials are a dime a dozen. There are the longstanding biennials like Venice and Sao Paulo, and then there are a growing number of new biennials that are often used as vehicles to put non art centers on the map.

In my mind, one key to a successful biennial is that it reflects the location and history of where it is based. For example, the ZER01 Biennial in San Jose is a relatively new biennial. San Jose isn’t Venice or Istanbul or Sao Paulo. It’s the capital of Silicon Valley. Being situated here has inspired me, as the curator/organizer, to experiment with models outside of the arts so that the structure of the biennial more closely reflects the modes of operation that thrive here.

Angela Harris

My name is Angela Harris, and I am the executive director of Dance Canvas, an Atlanta-based dance organization, which I founded four years ago. My first blog entry is chronicling the start of my organization, and the lessons learned along the way:

#1: FILL A NEED: In 2007, I was planning to leave my career as a professional ballet dancer, and begin to focus on choreography. As I explored choreography, I encountered barrier after barrier: I didn’t have a reel of work; I had only choreographed on pre-professionals; and I was not being taken seriously as a choreographer, only a performer.

I realized that I would need to produce my own work, and while researching how to do so, I met many other dancer/choreographers in my same position. I began to conceptualize a choreography company that was devoted to developing and presenting work of emerging choreographers. I was excited about the idea, and bounced it off of many colleagues. Yet, amongst the arts administrators that heard my concept, the overwhelming sentiment was that I should not start a nonprofit in the economic/funding climate at the time.

The 53rd Street Community Garden

The goal of the 53rd Street Community Garden was to create a sustainable community garden with colorful artistic components and outdoor classrooms. Students would utilize this outdoor space to discover scientific exploration of plants, insects, and animals, while fostering a respect for the neighborhood.

Although this project is still pretty fresh and constantly evolving, we have seen an amazing community effort in building a space where education, cultivation, and neighborhood come together. It has been beautiful to have a place where teachers can bring their classrooms outside to plant vegetables, where community members tend to their plots and interact with the youth, and where two schools that rarely socialize now have some common ground.

We are currently working with the school on plans for developing a culinary arts program, installing a gazebo, and scheduling a community harvest event. We are excited about expanding the school/community garden model, which we’ve named Growing Great Gardens (3G), to other Milwaukee Public Schools.

June Rogers

I was born in Fairbanks, AK, at St. Joseph's Hospital, now Denali State Bank. Our town has gone through many changes, but we remain the same spirited people that I remember as I was growing up. People from all walks of life choose to live here and there's a special thread that weaves us all together, creating a rich and wonderful tapestry.

For those of us who make our home in Fairbanks, the arts scene provides challenging and rewarding paths. With nothing more than a desire to participate, I've danced and sung in light opera productions, coordinated operations for a professional theatre company, enjoyed a career in singing, and currently direct the operations of Fairbanks Arts Association (FAA).

Living in Alaska requires innovation. My innovative ties go back generations, to my grandparents who made do with whatever was at hand and always managed to make it look and feel or taste quite grand.

Innovating, or making change through new ideas, doesn’t necessarily require a totally new direction, only that the direction be new to the moment. Working with what you have is coming full circle as a concept, now that people are returning to the idea of supporting local farms and industries.